2
25
547
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/155/2171/PWhitworthJ1513.2.jpg
04203fa435e9c0f47268a971d9e28c5f
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/155/2171/PWhitworthJ1514.2.jpg
19a77d2e04d9223d00c7572c5792f681
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
Whitworth, John
J Whitworth
John Leslie Whitworth
J L Whitworth
Description
An account of the resource
17 items. The collection consists of an oral history interview with Flying Officer John L Whitworth (b. 1921), one photocopy, seven pilot’s navigation charts and eight photographs which include seven target photographs. John Whitworth was a pilot and flew Mosquitos with 162 Squadron Pathfinders from RAF Bourn in 1944 and 1945.
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
2016-06-22
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
Whitworth, JL
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
Berlin
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1945-03-27
1945-03-28
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PWhitworthJ1513, PWhitworthJ1514
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
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
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One b/w photograph
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1945-03-27
1945-03-28
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Germany--Berlin
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
Description
An account of the resource
Target photograph of Berlin with no ground features visible. Some target indicator streaks appear in the bottom right corner of the photograph. Captioned '5/B' and, '4450 BRN 27/28.3.45//NT8" 21500 262 2128.30 Berlin A 3MC500DT 1M500LD C 37½ secs F/L Whitworth A162'. On the reverse 'SKY-MARKERS OVER BERLIN'. This item has been redacted in order to protect the privacy of the lender.
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
aerial photograph
bombing
Pathfinders
target indicator
target photograph
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/155/2172/PWhitworthJ1515.2.jpg
94ca0c4cccfa51b0db5a611ca72acd47
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/155/2172/PWhitworthJ1516.2.jpg
71465727745c8701bda2400c06efabaf
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
Whitworth, John
J Whitworth
John Leslie Whitworth
J L Whitworth
Description
An account of the resource
17 items. The collection consists of an oral history interview with Flying Officer John L Whitworth (b. 1921), one photocopy, seven pilot’s navigation charts and eight photographs which include seven target photographs. John Whitworth was a pilot and flew Mosquitos with 162 Squadron Pathfinders from RAF Bourn in 1944 and 1945.
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
2016-06-22
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
Whitworth, JL
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
Berlin
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PWhitworthJ1515, PWhitworthJ1516
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1945-03-22
1945-03-23
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
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
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One b/w photograph
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1945-03-22
1945-03-23
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Germany--Berlin
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
Description
An account of the resource
Target photograph taken on an operation to Berlin. Several streaks of light are clustered toward the top left of the photograph and others are across the centre and lower half. No ground features are visible. One small flare is visible to the right of centre and the photograph seems to have been annotated with an arrow pointing towards this. The photograph is also annotated '5B' in the upper left corner and is captioned:
'4403. BRN 22/23.3.45//NT8" 25000 357 2340 Berlin C
4MC500DT C42secs F/L WHITWORTH C162'
On the reverse is written 'GROUND MARKERS AND SKY MARKERS'. Further information has been redacted to protect the privacy of the lender.
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
Andy Fitter
162 Squadron
aerial photograph
bombing
Pathfinders
target indicator
target photograph
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/155/2173/WhitworthJ.1.jpg
24bd96b9837be57b873fc91da711adcf
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/155/2173/AWhitworthJL160622.1.mp3
035dbbe8410756ff1b3360461b4b946f
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
Whitworth, John
J Whitworth
John Leslie Whitworth
J L Whitworth
Description
An account of the resource
17 items. The collection consists of an oral history interview with Flying Officer John L Whitworth (b. 1921), one photocopy, seven pilot’s navigation charts and eight photographs which include seven target photographs. John Whitworth was a pilot and flew Mosquitos with 162 Squadron Pathfinders from RAF Bourn in 1944 and 1945.
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
2016-06-22
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
Whitworth, JL
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
PL: Hello, my name is Pam Locker and I’m in the home of Mr John Leslie Whitworth of *** Harrogate, HG2 0NTand it’s the 22nd of June 2016.
JW: Yes
PL: So John, can I just start by saying on behalf of the International Bomber Command Memorial Trust, an enormous thank you for agreeing to talk to us and share your memories.
JW: My pleasure.
PL: Can I start with your — start at the beginning?
JW: Yes, I came from a large family, eight, born in Sutton Coldfield. I was number seven, five elder sisters, one older brother and one younger brother. My father and mother — for many years my father had, before the war, had a very substantial motor, er, motor car showroom business, service station, everything, which the war killed There was no business, it collapsed completely. My father was too honest. He paid out everybody, every employer and everything, and started up and expanded this cycle business. A very wonderful father, er, man, with all these kids he educated. I was educated at Bishop Peter’s School, Sutton Coldfield, a famous old grammar school. Anyway, I was, I was then being trained as an articled clerk, chartered accountancy. The war came, we struggled a bit. My younger brother, because of the collapse of my father’s business, couldn’t go to university, so I’ve always been very, very bitter about Germans. I don’t like Germans. I don’t trust them anymore or anything and the sooner we get far away from them in the European Union the better. But that’s me. Anyway (pause), England, Britain was hit very hard. Along came Dunkirk. To me, we looked after ourselves marvellously. Got our army back. Like everybody else I’d already signed up to go in the Air Force, put on reserve and everything. After the complete collapse I joined the Home Guard with all my powers, the whole lot. To say that Britain couldn’t look after itself is rubbish. We did, we had to then, we’d got nothing. Thousands of little boats went across and got people back from the Channel and to say we fought on our own, cannot live without the European Union, is rubbish. We can, we’ve done it once and we can do it again. Anyway, in the Home Guard, name Whitworth. Everybody had volunteered for aircrew, all my friends, or the Fleet Air Arm. We were at the end of the queue. It was 1940 [laugh]. It was 1941 before I eventually went in the Air Force, signed up down at Cardington in the week and then training at Torquay, at ITW, and then flying training at Sywell, near Northampton. Learned to fly Tigers. At that time, er, most training was going on in Britain. I went down to Lyneham where, to learn to fly Oxfords, um, and literally we were almost the last [emphasis] of aircrew, bomber aircrew at any rate, trained in Britain. Everything went to Canada, Rhodesia and everything, all the whole lot. I was almost the last one. Learnt to fly Oxfords, and then went to Moreton in the Marsh. What was I doing in ’42? I got my wings. I didn’t get a commission because [laugh], I’ll say this, I was marched in for my final interview in front of the group captain and everything, and a certain Warrant Officer Marsh said, ‘This gentleman has not had — this candidate has not had the courtesy of having a haircut’. I was not a long haired — it was about like — I was not — well of course — well that ruined that. I got my wings at Little Rissington, er, sergeant pilot, posted very rapidly to Moreton in the Marsh, which — Wellingtons — which was the feeder station for crews, Wellington crews, all going out to the Middle East. Trained there, formed a crew and the second pilot, a Geordie, two Australians, three Brits, two Australians, and a New Zealander. A mixed-up crew. Wonderful. Great. Always remember going together. When you first got together on Wellingtons, you’re all stuck in a crew room and you sort yourselves out and a nice looking fella, there’s his picture there, called Brian Hurd, walked up to me, looked at me, looked at me, said, ‘My name’s Brian Hurd. Do you want a good navigator?’ I said, ‘I’m John Whitworth’, I said, ‘I’m one pilot to two but I think I shall be captain’. I jolly well intended to be anyway [laugh], I knew I was better than the other lad who’d asked to fly with me. Formed up, we trained there, down to Portreath, Cornwall. Waited for a week for a following wind in a brand new Wellington. Gibraltar. A night’s sleep. Off to Malta. As we got near Malta, we knew we, we were getting there [slight laugh]. It was getting evening then. It was a long flight. It’s a long flight, seven hours, with no friends either side. There wasn’t any going to Gibraltar. If you didn’t make it, well nobody would see what’s [unclear], you know, occupied [unclear], one or the other and it was the same down there. As we stood there, there was flak going up. It was an air raid. Oh, it was good to see. It was the only time in my life I’ve ever been glad, as a bomber pilot, to see flak. That was ours [emphasis], shooting at the Germans [laugh] who were raiding it and stopped it. In we went and they were - pow! All over the plane, gave our three passengers a pop! Gone. In twenty minutes we were gone, up to Egypt, non- stop. When we got to Egypt, straight down into unit, tied up in the central transit camp. We hadn’t had any sleep of any sort for thirty-six hours. That was it. That was what happened to everyone. Posted almost immediately to 37 Squadron, Wellingtons, at Abu Suier, near Ismailia, and started my first tour.
PL: Who were your passengers?
JW: Three army fellas. A sergeant and an officer who were all — I think were a bit huffy. I mean in a Wellington, you’ve no room. We said, ‘Make yourself as comfortable as you can on the bed’. And that’s it. He sort of got the idea he could come up the front. Were all sergeants, even a lieutenant, and well, it meant nothing to us at all, ‘Behave yourself. Don’t be sick’. [unclear] And then, ‘Don’t be sick. Here’s some bags. Don’t be sick in my aeroplane’. They listened to me. They weren’t. When he went back, he said, ‘We were flown out from Malta by a little bastard sergeant who pushed us around and said, ‘Don’t be sick’’. And I meant it. [unclear] I always remember, ‘Don’t be —’ [laugh] Well that was it. I’d tell my passenger. Never mind them. If someone’s sick in your aeroplane it stinks and clearing up and anyway, that was our squadron. Almost immediately I was informed that I’d have to do a number of operations as a second pilot, er, and learn the trade, fair enough, before I got my captaincy. I did — my crew didn’t like that, especially as the fella that took over — his name was Pierce, it was Pilot Pierce. I went up, took — had to take a plane up to Tel Aviv in Palestine and while I was there, he went on his first op with my crew, crashed on take-off and my great friend Alex Sutcliffe, the New Zealander, who’d come all the way from New Zealand, trained, trained with me. He used to come home, met my family, and they liked him. He was a quiet country lad, was lovely, was killed on his very first — hadn’t even done his first op. Anyway, but I came back from Palestine and they said Alex was killed last night. Oh God, they crashed and he as front gunner, was in the fuselage. It set on fire and he had difficulty getting out. They got him out but he was badly burned and died. A particularly terrible tragedy for someone who’d come all the way from New Zealand to help us and flown all the way, halfway back to the Middle East and everything, had friends and everything, was killed. Anyway, now I’m going to tell you, I was lucky that I didn’t get commissioned. When it came through on the Squadron later on, all the things came through. There was no Marsh to muck it up. I was commissioned later on Squadron but I was lucky in my crew,the whole way because we were all sergeants and I made wonderful friends for the time they lived. We operated from there. I did two ops, on the third op I went to Tobruk, which was a seven hour flight. Three hours or so each way, three and a half hours over the target. On the second flight an engine started to play up, seized up, lost a propeller. Wellingtons lost — would lose, the best Wellington, best for petrol, would lose a hundred feet a minute, so if you were at eighty, eight thousand feet we’d got eighty minutes flying. That was three hours flying to do back. We got a fair bit the way back but eventually we gradually sank, sank, sank down and we were getting back towards the lines and we just flew into the ground. No option. No don’t jump out in the desert in a parachute or anything like that. No option, you, you stuck together, we crashed, all walked out. The pilot I was with was good but we combined well on that crash. I still had quite a bit to do with it. We could have landed better, I can say that now. I said it then and I say it now, I was a better pilot than the fella I was attached with but that was it. Anyway we walked out. We walked, oh, I suppose this was about 2 o’clock in the morning, and we walked all through the night across the desert. The desert was pretty flat scrub like bracken, you know, all through into daylight. And believe you me, when you’re walking to save your life or to avoid being captured, you walk. We carried ten gallon of water, which was in every Wellington strapped to the ladder, and the six of us walked and there wasn’t a grumble all the way of any description. We walked and walked and walked. And dawn came up and we kept walking and it got hotter and hotter but we still walked. Er, it was est— estimated we’d done over twenty, twenty-five kilometres which was somewhere between ten to fifteen miles but we walked and we weren’t sure whether we’d got over the lines. We were well south of the lines on the edge of [unclear], a depression there and the walking wasn’t bad but we didn’t know if it was mined. We didn’t know anything, we just walked. We weren’t really certain but we thought we were — had reached safety, but there was no trouble that far south which we’d deliberately come. The navigator had got us there, er, and suddenly we looked and there coming down the sand, a wadi, a shallow depression there, was a truck in desert colouring and everything, you couldn’t — no markings on it at all and we looked at it and somebody said, ‘Oh God. Look at those front mudguards’. They were flat. British trucks were Bedfords, curved mudguards. The Germans and Italians were — militar had a big flat front at the top where they could load a mach or you could load three chaps when you were escaping or going forward to the mach and you could sit on there and hang on. These had got flat mudguards. We dropped down on the ground in a little huddle, all six of us there. I had got a thirty-eight pistol that the pilot had, all the pilots had those, carried them. Don’t know why but we did. [laugh] We had a little conflab. What can we do? There’s nowhere to run. No, we mustn’t get separated. We just got to give up. I mean, the fella got out and he’d got a machine gun, obvious a — never knew what sort it was — it was a machine gun and that and if he shoots [unclear] all packed up, we got to give up and the captain, Mick Marne, said, ‘If anyone’s got to give up, it’s my responsibility’. Tied the handkerchief on his pistol, hands up and walk towards the truck, and I suppose this truck was a hundred and fifty, two hundred yards away, and he got about halfway holding this up. I see it so clearly, you know, in my mind and this chap standing in the front of the truck with this and just watching him come. And all of sudden he started [applause], yelling and jumping, ‘He’s British, he’s British, he’s British’. It wasn’t an American truck they were using. This was a research salvage unit, four wheel drive, desert truck with American flat mudguards. Oh God. Oh, a cup of tea that’s all we thought of. They were out looking for crashed aircraft, all other manner of vehicles picking up spares or anything and that’s it. Anyway, we had cup of tea, that’s all we could think of. Out came a primus stove and we had a cap of tea. Picked us up. We got in the back of that truck. Steel floor, steel floor with a few bits, nothing else, no, nothing at all. And that was the best seat I’ve ever sat on. We were safe and we headed off for the nearest airport which, well was about — I suppose at this time it was about 11 o’clock in the morning, 11 o’clock, and we headed off - bump, bump, bump - and bump on our bottoms in the back, no, no padding, [laugh], all there was the steel floor and some parts that they’d got which had at least been strapped so they didn’t get — and off we went to back to Cairo, Almaza airport. Another truck and we were back, all six of us. The only injury was a fellow called Barlow, he’d whitish fair hair, almost snowy, he got a terrific black eye, that was the only thing and we were back home. And thank heaven. We were known to the — by the signals we’d sent back as we came back that we were somewhere in the desert, and not even, nothing had been sent back to England about missing or anything. They were waiting for some news so no bad news had been sent back. And we were back. Now, I said I’m lucky. I’m lucky and possibly one of the luckiest people who ever got in the Air Force. Two days later, we were all lined up for another operation, again to go — this was August the 2nd and August the 4th or August the 1st or thereabouts.
PL: 19—
JW: 70 Squadron was the other squadron and they were sending about fifteen aircraft on another operation. It was all Tobruk at that time it was because that was —
PL: What year was this, John? What year was this?
JW: This was 1942. This was August 1942. We’d flown out in June. This was August. Er, the captain was a pilot officer. Alright. He seemed a decent bloke. He wasn’t — we were all sergeants. We took our kit out before going to briefing [cough], five of us, myself and — and I was second pilot. I was not in charge anyway. Just seeing that was everything before going to briefing. The aircraft, thirty aircraft, were all down the side of the airfield, not all in a line but all round the edge waiting and we were the front one at an angle. The others were all straight, and the other four got in, the plane, checking the thing and I was in the front talking to an airmen. I don’t know what it was, something about the aircraft or something, and then I heard this noise, a noisy aircraft in the circuit, obviously not running properly, and I watched it and it was a Boston, an American light bomber but part of the South African Air Force, and it was coming round and it was in trouble, and it came round and, didn’t realise at the time, he came round downwind, had to. The other four in the aircraft hung on, one in the rear turret, and I was with the airmen in the front and I watched, watched it. I was right by the ladder, instead of climbing up, I just watched it, watched, and watched and he came down and touched down at the end of the runway, bounced and he completely lost it, lost control completely and he headed straight for us, absolutely — we’re number 1. Aircraft 1, 2, 3, we’re — straight for us. All I could do was scream something to the others, nothing, could do nothing, and I ran with the airman, just ran and, er, as we ran, there was this a terrific petrol explosion behind us as the two hit - woof! And the fully, fully bombed up, all these aircraft had all got five— five hundreds on board, and we dived into a slip trench which was put fairly close behind in case of German low flying attacks, which didn’t happen but could have happen. This was the nearest thing, you dived in, we dived in there, lay down and the first bomb went off and blew, blew — I was suppose I was thirty, thirty yards, forty yards from where it blew up, blew it to bits, a piece of geodetic that big landed on the back of the airmen in front of me and - pow! We rolled over, over and over. I said, ‘We’ve got to run’. The two of us just scampered off as hard as we could go and I never saw that airman again, no reason to, and I ran and ran and ran, er, get into a proper air raid shelter, which I found another bomb had gone off in an aircraft, and dived in. Well of course nobody but the people out there and flying control could see what happened. Everybody thought it was an air raid, these bombs were going off, there was aircraft somewhere, Jerrys or something, Italians were bombing us and these were bombs and the whole of the air raid warnings had gone off and everybody was in the shelters and everything. The natives working were running screaming and, oh dear, and I collapsed in the shelter and two of my friends were there, one of which was Brian Hurd, his picture’s there, my previous navigator, and they took me off to the, the sick quarters and, er, which time, there were one or two people coming in, and took me back and I was given this injection and I was put to bed by two of them, put to bed, and — but for the rest of the night, um, this aircraft and the others caught fire and five blew up and a number of others were damaged in that, in it, and of course the whole airfield was chaos. So, I know but I really — the next day I was — I just never got out of bed but anyway I survived. Eight, eight air crew in that collision, two survived. Our rear gunner, he got out of the rear cockpit somehow or other. He was injured. I never saw him again. That was the only survivor out of eight. Now there was lucky for you and I hadn’t got a scratch. Our air gunner, the New Zealander, he was taken — I know he was taken to a hospital in Cairo. What was he? He was injured. I never saw him again. But there was luck. I was one survivor out of eight or half as, or one of two and I was burned here on the — I’ve got all the reports. In, in the reports this was the worst damaged aircraft and airfield at Abu Suier of any axis air raid in the whole [emphasis] of the North Africa campaign. It’s in the RAF records that this was the worst and I was a survivor. Anyway, there we are. I was attached to it then and attached to another crew who —
PL: John, can I just ask you, what about the other planes? Were other, I mean I imagine it to be like a domino effect.
JW: Yes, all five in a row were set on fire and blew up.
PL: Goodness.
JW: Five and we were all one crew.
PL: Did any of the other crews managed to escape?
JW: And others were damaged. Somewhere or other I’ve got the report with the numbers of them. But it says in the records that was the most damage done by any air raid and it was done, done by ourselves.
PL: Did any of the other crews manage to escape?
JW: They all got away. Er, probably in, in the one or two others they hadn’t come out. We’d just gone out with our kit and it happened in that minute or two. That was all. We were only out there three minutes but nobody else was hurt or anything and I was a survivor and that was it. Myself and the airman, he was alright. There, there we are. I survived that. Went on to do — that was three ops, another thirty-four, after I did about ten. Well for one thing I had to do was as second pilot, because this was the crew I should have inherited, was getting near, the captain was getting near the end of his tour and I should have inherited but they’d gone. And so I’ve got to be found a place in another crew and, and there wasn’t one with a place coming up for a while so I had to do, I think I did about another ten and then I got — took over a crew which I kept right to the end. Did another thirty-four ops. Two hundred and fifty hours [laugh]. It’s all there. All in that book.
PL: Goodness me. And did you —
JW: Anyway, er, I finished the tour up at — we got moved forward at that time. Of course, there was the big advance. The — if you could be exciting in the Wellington bombers. Jerry was streaming back, streaming back and we, at night, we bombed them. And the front line, the British front line, they had a strip of lights wherever they’d got to. So anything west of that was the Germans or Italians. We’d bomb that at quite low level, er, all the battle area and groups and that were lit up by Aboukir by the Fleet Air Arm who were in Alexandria, who weren’t very far away, but they were on a carrier that was stuck, they were stuck, they were stuck and they did a very good job of blooming hitting it and in a flat area, after bombing, we used to go down to low level, about three hundred feet, and empty our machine guns on anything we could see and back, er, that was introduced by the squadron commander, the Australian Rankin, who couldn’t do enough to kill Germans. He’d got some reason. It started, Rankin, said, ‘When you come back at low level anything, there’s not big bombs, you’re at three feet, anything you can see west of the British lights shoot at’. [laugh] And we had these big Wellingtons. That’s what they were there for. Strafers. It made a bit of variety [laugh] but anyway, I finished my tour, back to Cairo, there at Cairo stuck in a transit camp for ages waiting for a way back. There was nothing. You couldn’t go up the Mediterranean or anything. You got to get — eventually the Americans sent up a very good, er, military airline, a military airline, which flew us across the southern Sahara to West Africa to Lagos and there, then we sat at Lagos waiting for a boat until an absolute hell ship came, which was full, full of coloured troops in the basement. They were going up to Freetown for some reason I don’t know, and, er, as we flew, we sailed from Lagos to Freetown which was a week’s journey, covered by a rickety old armed trawler [laugh], so they could only draw water from one side for some reason. The Cap Cadoran was her name. This was a French merchant boat which we converted into a troop carrier. As we did so we got a bigger list and when we eventually arrived in Freetown we’d got a list like that [laugh]. Well that meant going down into the mess decks or anything like that, you got steps like that or the other side [laugh], there you climbed up them or go down, either up or down, according to which side. Oh dear, that meant that one day someone with buckets of porridge were coming into, from the cook, cook area into eating (we ate and slept in this area) and someone slipped and the buckets fell down the steps and everybody got a bit, you know what I mean [laugh]. It was a joke, anyway. We said, ‘Did you get any porridge today?’ Up to Freetown and there were these coloured troops and the rest were all returning aircrew, there was a hell of a lot of them. All parts of Bomber Command were there, all the volunteers, Canadians, New Zealanders and Australians and when we got to Freetown, they absolutely — we were going home. We’d have literally got in a row boat and rowed across, if you could think of it [laugh]. They weren’t. They went, they were just going from there to, the Aussies and New Zealanders were getting further from home again and the Canadians weren’t getting any nearer really and they refused to move until they’d inspected — and literally — it wasn’t a strike, it wasn’t a mutiny, it was a plain fact. They just stated that we shall not to move off this boat until we can expect the next and rightly so as I say. All the Brits, we agreed with them but we were going home. We’d row a blooming thing. They weren’t. Anyway we were put on — oh, several big troop ships came up from South Africa, all loaded with prisoners of war and, and other people going back to the European, going to — South African troops as well going up to Europe. We were put on a Dutch boat which was good and, er, they formed up a huge, huge quarry, huge convoy in Freetown which has a huge harbour, and almost with them I think we had a cruiser and three destroyers and about, I think it was six troop carriers, and right smack in the middle, protected all around, was the Warspite Battleship which had been — had come all the way round. It was badly damaged somehow or other by an air raid in the Mediterranean, and it come down through and was on its way back to Britain for repair but they stuck that right in the blooming middle, which we — it was correct. It was proper battle order, but to RAF blokes to have the blooming Navy in a warship with us all round [laugh], it was funny. We came up, back up and stopped off at the Canaries for a while, while the battleship refuelled and destroyers, and we just walloping along and nothing but we had — we heard some explosions a long away which we believe was someone expected something and let off one of the depth charges but never knew. Up to Liverpool, back on leave, a week or two’s leave and I was posted down to Wing to a Wellington Instructor Unit. I’d been there as a sergeant. While there my flight sergeant came through and was called up and my commission had came through on December the 5th 1942 and I was commissioned in February. Hung on for a week or so to get my uniform and everything and I was then — oh, the chief ground instructor seemed to think I’d, I’d make a good ground instructor, probably because I could speak reasonable English [laugh] and that, and sent me on a number of courses, a PO and a flying course, that was on Oxfords, and did well on that and then I went on a ground instruction course. Oh, a great course at Luffenham Airfield, how to intruct, which was a very instructive course, taught how to, how to make a speech, and how to tell things and everything, things which were so handy in later life, how to put it together and things. Very, very good — how to bomb things. It was a very, very good course. Then I went on an engine handling course down at Bristol. And then, then they decided they wanted a squadron air sea rescue officer, so I went on an air sea rescue course, um, took, told how to land an aircraft in the sea in fog. But no way you could pass on and no way of practising that except above the clouds, try it on the clouds and that [unclear]. I spent a whole lot of, a whole period there, early days, and then I was put straight in ch— second in the ground instruction area, er, airmanship, and I had a cushy job, absolute cushy job. Formed up a golf team. We used to sneak off for an afternoon and that sort of thing up to, up to the local golf course at Leighton Buzzard and, oh dear and, er, I had a great friend called Atkins, he was an engineer. He’d done a tour on Stirlings and we got on like a house on fire, and he was a keen golfer and he suddenly found out I was a golfer. He said, ‘I hear you play’. Yes, I was one handicap. ‘Oh’, he said, ‘Let’s — I play off about seven up at Liverpool way’. He said, ‘Let’s go up and hire us some clubs at the nine hole course at Leighton Buzzard’. And off we went up there and across. Saw the pro. Oh yes, he’d hire us some clubs, some very old ones and he didn’t have any idea. He just thought we were people trying it out. And some old balls and that and we had a few holes. Anyway, we came in and he apologised. He said, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry about these’. And he went off up the [unclear]. You couldn’t make it up. Anyway we joined up and, oh dear, it was a really cushy number there. Really was. We could disappear out for the afternoon. We both joined the local club and played in competitions and organised the team. And, um, on one great occasion I remember, always and so will he, we went and played and he said, ‘I’ve got a car’. And the original leave petrol I got when I was demobbed right at the beginning lasted about 18 months [laugh]. I mean, we found it and never really had to use our own petrol but you went in the right garage and you got a coupon for one and we’d say, ‘Come on, come on. We’re rested air crew, bomber air crew. What can you do for us?’ And, you know, ‘C’mon, where’s the gaffer?’ I never got away with less than five gallons from the one [laugh]. We always had petrol. Anyway, he said, ‘Ashridge is a good course just down by [unclear] not very far away’, he said. That’s the famous course where Henry Cotton, who we knew was in the Air Force, is, was pro and everything. ‘Let’s go down and have a weekend stay in the hotel nearby at Ashridge’. And we went down there and played golf. Went down the Friday, that’s right, the Friday evening, booked in the hotel. Nice and comfortable. We didn’t earn a lot of money but we got enough to stay and we went up to Ashridge and played golf on the Saturday, and met a number of people, and got chatting about this and aircrew and God knows what, and, um, someone said, ‘Oh, Henry Cotton is back in his house just down the road. He was a pro there and been a pro there’. He said, ‘He’s back there and he comes up to play occasionally’. Henry had been invalided out. He was invalided because he’d got stomach ulcers, duodenal ulcers, which you had to have a special diet and you were straight out in the Forces because they couldn’t do it. And, ‘He’ll probably be around’, and we said we’d like to meet him, you know. We were equivalent in rank in any case to what he’d been, and in any case in the Air Force, he was non-aircrew. We were pretty, pretty snooty, you know, especially after operations. You’d done a tour of ops and you looked down on everybody else, which we had. And we came in and there was Henry Cotton and we were introduced to him and had a long chat and that sort of thing and, er, I don’t know, we got on and we were going to play on the Sunday morning and then go off. And we said we were there and he said, ‘I must be playing tomorrow afternoon with my wife, Toots’. Toots, she was a South American, I think it was, a nice person. He said, ‘Would you like to join us for a few holes?’ Join Henry Cotton! Ay? Henry Cotton! Good Lord yes, definitely yes and we had nine holes with Henry Cotton. That was something. In my golfing career people said, ‘Who’d you played with?’ I’d say, ‘Oh yes, I’ve played with Henry Cotton’. ‘What?’ [laugh] True. The only boast in all my life, but the great Henry Cotton. Anyway, er, it came to a point in September ‘44 I’d been where life was too easy, er, my greatest pal was shot down at Arnhem in Thunderbolts, attacking, and I volunteered to go back on ops and Fox started to form up a Lancaster team. One or two people came up and, er, started touring and, um, Charlie — what’s his — the chief engineer, said, ‘I hear you’re going back on ops, Lancs, John’. I didn’t call him Charlie. ‘Yes Sir. Yes Sir. Yes Sir. I’m going’. He said, ‘Well, I can get you on Mosquitos’. I said, ‘What? Mosquitos’. I mean, they were only really coming out as the fastest propeller plane in the world, and faster than anything, absolutely, well bombers. ‘I can get you onto those’. What? Oh golly, and off I went to Mosquitos. No, first I had to pass the high altitude test, which was three times in a decompression chamber, the equivalent of thirty-five thousand feet, so you that didn’t get the bends. I mean Mosquitos operated at around thirty thousand feet and some people get the bends, you know, at around thirty thousand feet. Of course, you never did it on heavies or anything else and I remember sitting in there, didn’t dare move, you know, in case, in case you got a pain. Anyway I passed it and was on — I went straight off onto a Mosquito Training Unit and onto the squadron. And the Mosquitos, not just an ordinary squadron, a squadron being formed for Pathfinder Force. We were — we did spoofs and everything for the other Pathfinders, the Bennetts and — a light night striking force and Mosquitos attached to it. We did spoofs and things, window in front of the heavies and that, all sorts of things. I did fifty ops on Mossies. Twenty-one to Berlin.
PL: Goodness. I’m sorry John. I don’t understand, what’s spoofs? When you say spoofs, what do you mean?
JW: [laugh] Spoofs. What it is, a spoof, we went in front of the main force when they were going to a target and that, and then we branched off, like wherever it was going, we branched off to another target, bunging out this window, these bits and pieces, to give it that we were a much bigger force, deliberate to take — they thought that the Pathfinders who were in the front were going to so and so, and we used to go towards that, alert the German fighters, they’re going Berlin. Everything they thought, ‘cause of Mosses, they thought it was Berlin. Thought the heavies were going there but they weren’t. They were going to another target. And that was it. And that was the lot to my job. And then we, I was moved from 142 to 162 — 142 was a stick it squadron on the worst station in Bomber Command, the ground and lodge, all mud. Oh, we were glad to get posted from there. I did about ten ops, mainly to Berlin, from there and we were posted to 162 at Bourn, which is a nice station, with another Mossie squadron, and, er, not too big a mess and no mud, [unclear] was shocking. This, this was October, you know, October ’40, blimey, October ’44 and it was terribly wet. Terribly. You couldn’t go anywhere without wellingtons or flying boots, awful place, and not even a decent pub which [laugh] — and we were posted to Bourn, which was near Cambridge, and that was where I finished up. Completed fifty ops from there just in time, just before the war ended, and back to Group and two tours. I was — if you were a fighter and you got five killed, you were considered an Ace. In Bomber Command there was no such thing as that, but if you survived two tours as a pilot you were, you were a Bomber Baron. That’s what I acquired. A Bomber Baron. It meant nothing. It meant nothing. It was just a phrase. I’d done two tours and I could go up to Group, Pathfinder Force, and could pick anything I wanted. And at that time, I meant to stay in the Air Force and I wanted to go onto a Dakota transport unit to learn how to fly those, which would be good if I wanted to carry through to civilian flying. I went up there. They said. ‘That’s easy, but there’s a cracking good job for you I can put you on at Pershore’, which was quite near home. A ferry unit, Number 1 Ferry Unit. They were ferrying aircraft, Mosquitos, out to India and everything like that, for the huge build up at that time for the big attack planned, Army, Navy and Air Force, on Malaya and Singapore and they were pouring out. And I went out there and then a posting came to go to Islamabad, Number 9 Ferry Unit in India, which was a very established station and I thought, ‘Oh, there’d be something of a job out there’, which there was. And I took it, I needn’t have gone as I’d done one overseas tour. I needn’t have gone, but I did go and ended up there and, of course, out there we were getting everything ready, and everything all ready to — the most experienced going right to the forward ‘drome so that when the big attack came, we could take aircraft to where they captured an airfield and established a unit, and we moved down there, Rangoon, and we were all ready and someone came and said, ‘There a great big bomb. Huge bomb. We think the war will be over’. It was the atomic bomb and it was all over. And, um, we were stuck there. Nobody wanted to know anything or anyone. There was nobody wanted aircraft, nothing. All the chaps could think was, ‘How can we get home? How? ’ Army, Navy, the lot. We were stuck there, absolutely. I was the second in command of the ferry flight at Maubin there, and, er, Squadron Leader Poutney, he was posted to somewhere else. He’d got his permanent commission, he was posted somewhere and I was appointed CO, Temporary Acting Squadron Leader, Temporary Acting Confirmation Flight Lieutenant Whitworth to Supervisor disbandment of the unit. Just somebody had seen I was a trained chartered accountant and must have thought I could do something, which I did. I did a good job, ended up being posted down to another unit, the group, the group communication flight to disband it as well and I ended up with nothing but an aeroplane and the first one — two aeroplanes and I got instruction for everything, every blooming thing, everything off, where it went in. The crews, all the crews, all the ground crews but nothing for the aeroplanes. I left them, but obviously the, the things were in control. And it had been a ferry crew had come and collected, abandoned them there and the second [unclear]. Anyway, I could see I’d get a good job but it would be in administration and I hadn’t stayed in the Air Force as pilot. And up came my demob number and I came home and out.
PL: So how did you get home?
JW: How did I get home?
PL: Yes.
JW: Boat. Boat. All the way from Rangoon across the Ind— oh, nice boat. Empress of Canada, nice boat but jammed full of troops, jammed full. And the officer’s thing was absolutely a mess. The first day out of — oh, two sittings for food and, er, we sailed out into the Indian Ocean there, south Indian Ocean, and I thought, oh, this is going to be a slog, we’ll be a week up to Colombo. Got to cross this and one in the know said, ‘Don’t worry’, he said, ‘Don’t worry, Sir. Once we get out and starts to roll a bit there won’t be two sitting for meals. Half of these blokes which you’ll never see again’. And we didn’t. Oh, whether they only had every other meal. There was no crowding in the mess for food or anything [laugh] and I never had to worry about seeing these people. And there was not half of them I never saw again, and it was quite a comfortable trip up to Colombo, er, collected a few more, off then and up the — across the South Indian Sea and round Aden, and up through the Suez Canal and up to Hyéres, not far from a port quite near Marseille and they landed us there and the boat was immediately going back. And we came by train across France, right through to the channel ports and across and that was it. And, er, I was demobbed and within a week and then of course I was dead lucky. Dead lucky. I survived everything and then a further great bit of luck occurred. I really didn’t want — I did go back to the office accountancy people for a while. I shouldn’t have been, I shouldn’t have had to take the intermediate exam. I should have gone straight to the final. To be quite candid, having been in charge of two big units, with rather responsible jobs for the last few years, sitting down, swatting and doing — taking the exam I didn’t know what to do. My father — my brother was also coming home and he was going into the business which my father had built up quite a bit, his cycle business, quite considerable. I got in and I looked around all sorts of things, I went out to New Zealand flying, flying crop spraying, I got that and it was a bloody great thing. Canada. And, as I saym I had five sisters and four of them were married, substantially, and one of them, name of George, nice fella, came to me and said, ‘I hear you’re giving up accountancy?’ I said, ‘Yes, George. I really don’t know I’m going what to do. I’m trying to make up my mind to whether go to Canada or something like that or fly with one of the smaller airlines’. He said, ‘Well, I’ve inherited a small engineering manufacturing business’, he said, ‘It’s going alright. Would you like to join me?’ I couldn’t believe my ears. I couldn’t, I couldn’t believe my ears. Anyway I joined him and we worked damned, damned hard and everything and built it up to a substantial business over the next period. Really wasn’t expecting it. And I got married, got married to Audrey, who I’d met before the war and had always — we were parted for seven years but she was the girl and we got married. We had money, we had children and enough money to send them to good schools and was very comfortably off. Very comfortably off, er, right, right until getting towards retirement and I was — George had then retired and died and I was managing director, Chairman and managing director. It was a substantial company and things were getting hard. They were — things were getting, you know, a bit tough about then, er, and I was, I was sixty-one and took one job instead of the sales director. I said, ‘I’ll handle this’. And I made a mess of it. It was a very [unclear] Leyland on trucks. It was a big, big contract. I didn’t make a mess of it but I went and they said, ‘You didn’t do us good’. I was never a great salesman but, ‘You didn’t do a good job on that. Barry Watkins would have done a lot better, got much better terms. You’re over the hill’. And I retired at sixty-two. Came out. There we are. There we are.
PL: So what about the golf, John? What about the golf?
JW: I — oh dear. As soon as I got back straight back to Walmley, a good club. And straight — I got back, I was one handicap and I got down to scratch in 1950, which at that time I was thirty-eight, and for three years, and then in 1953, they altered all the calculations of the handicaps and everybody went up and I went up to three. And I got back to one. I never got back to scratch again. But I was in the County team, I won the County championship, I won the knockout and a few other things and I had very good years, very good years, a lovely wife, two boys, money, nice cars. I lived well. But then —
PL: Wonderful. Wonderful.
JW: As I say then at this time when I reached sixty I retired, I took early retirement, I took early retirement. It cost me as everything was based on the last three years. It cost me, but there we are. I wasn’t hard up. Then we lived in the same house. Bought the house, rented the house when we first got married in ‘54, I bought the house, nice house, in a nice area and everything, Oxford, in my front room. I remember buying it. I had good friends in, in the business and costed it all for me and everything and said you should buy. This was in 1957. You should, um, you should be able to buy this for about four thousand, four thousand three hundred, which was a good market price for a very nice house with land around it too. And I bought it in the front room and I got to our figure and my wife walked out the room. I wasn’t sure she wanted this house but I bought it for four thousand six hundred and I went out and she was crying in the hallway, ‘Oh John. I did so want I this house, you know’. I said ‘I’ve bought it’, ‘What?’ Oh, what, my wife moved, what, grabbed her handbag and tore back in and said there were things she’d lined up to buy in the Oxford area. We bought it and lived in it for fifty-four years until, until she died. Extended it and everything. Nice house, nice house, extended it and added a granny flat for the wife’s father. I lived well but I never thought I’d live to ninety-five, you know. Pension wasn’t great. It wasn’t bad but I’ve got plenty of capital which I’ve spent quite a bit of it, living well, but I thought all the rest of my family had gone into the eighties, and one sister did go into her nineties but, as I say, I never thought I’d live to ninety-five [laugh].
PL: Amazing. Amazing.
JW: Here I am now, still able to get round, losing my teeth [laugh].
PL: But not your memory?
JW: No. Not my memory, no, no.
PL: So John how did you, how do you about feel about how the veterans of Bomber Command have been treated over the years?
JW: How what?
PL: How the veterans form Bomber Command were treated over the years?
JW: Oh, it was a dreadful long time before they gave us the clasp. We shouldn’t have had anything. I mean, in the Middle East, I got the Africa Star and clasp for North Africa on it. At home, got the Air Crew Europe thing but nothing else, nothing else. But there were, considering there were fifty-three thousand, your chances, as I say, Mosquitos yes, Lancs a different matter, different matter.
PL: Did you feel that you were more in —
JW: There were a lot of gongs dished out but an awful lot of them, they were dished out and dead the next week and that sort of thing. People think they didn’t but they were. There was, but the people that got ‘em were dead. And the survivors, well there were quite a few. As I say, I survived and got the DFC and that but it took a long while for them to, to really acknowledge that clasp, Bomber Command, at long last, um, what’s his name? Our Prime Minister, he did authorise it. It should have gone through a long, long time and really I don’t think Churchill did enough and the end of the war to appreciate — to be honest I don’t think he realised that we’d lost fifty-three thousand volunteers, fifty-three thousand of volunteers, not one was pushed in. Everyone was volunteers and all educated, even, even, I mean, my brother was trained as a pilot and got through, served his flying training school in Canada and was near getting his wings but he couldn’t navigate. Jim couldn’t navigate. My brother could never learn how to read maps and getting near his final wings flying test he got lost in Canada and had to land and find out where he was and ring through and they sent for him and everything. And he couldn’t navigate. He couldn’t — he could go to the other side of Birmingham, Sutton Coldfield, and have a job to find his way back. Although it meant going north I don’t think he ever could put the sun and time together. I mean, you know, even in summertime. South, the suns around the 12 o’clock or, or a bit earlier than that to read summer time and east and west and all that and he could never do that. I don’t know why. I don’t know why. He was a damn good engineer. He’d be a blooming good pilot. He should have — he was scrubbed as a pilot right, right at the end of his flying course, right at the very end he was scrubbed. Well, I mean, um, the three categories of pilot, navigator, bomb aimer, the top one. Well [slight laugh] navigator, bomb aimer navigation was essential. So, he — there was no training. He would have made a good flight engineer, really good one, engineering trained and everything. He was really good. He knew all about — but there weren’t any in Canada. All the engineers, nearly all were trained in, in Britain or from British people who had been fitters, etcetera, in Canada and had gone out there. That’s where the basic trained and so of course.
PL: So what did he do?
JW: He became a gunner and put on a squadron, 462 Squadron, which was an Aussie squadron with Aussies, er, up here, up in this part of the world, 5 Group, and then they were transferred down to 100 Group, special duties, and this, in effect, this squadron that used to go around with several wireless operators picking up German radio and [unclear] language. Sometimes they had a German with them and just mucking them up, you know, jamming all the transmissions and that was his job. He did twenty-seven ops and survived. [unclear] two back. There we are. That’s it. But we should have had much more recognition. We should have had that Bomber Command clasp in ‘44, ‘45 long, long ago not just — not just, what’s it? Since I’ve come up here. It’s coming two years ago. It’s two or three years ago. We should have had that. There we are.
PL: Well John, it’s been an absolutely fascinating interview. Thank you so much for your generosity.
JW: I’ve been the luckiest bloke, luckiest bloke to survive. I survived everything. I survived everything even, even in Mosquitos. We were hit over Hamburg with the flak which came through in front, twenty-five thousand feet. It was always a bit of a mystery because very rarely did they get their flak up but we had one hit us and a piece of shrapnel came through the nose of the aircraft and went between — pilot and navigator sat there — between us and thudded in behind, and a bit of Perspex from it flicked my navigator’s eyebrow and, of course, we got a blooming hole in the front and a three hundred mile an hour wind coming in. And I turned and he pulled his mask down and of course, at twenty-five thousand feet, you bleed quite profusely, any — oh God, blooming blood all down here and I remember grabbing him and forcing him to — he pulled his mask off and doing this but it was only a nick. I remember dragging my handkerchief out and stuffing it down and getting him round, and, er, it was alright, and cleaned up a bit of blood spilt, caused two lumps. It was horrible but it was only a nick. That had gone through, missed him and missed me at eye level.
PL: Did you feel more in control what was going to happen to you being in Mosquitos rather than being—
JW: We were?
PL: Being in Mosquitos, did you feel you were more in control?
JW: Oh, absolutely. Mosquitos were marvellous. For a start, they were a two man crew, pilot and navigator or pilot, AI operator sitting. It was two men team. Absolutely. It really was. Whether you was fighter, intruder, Pathfinder, the navigator and the pilot, you worked together one hundred percent. No good pilot was any good without a good navigator, especially on — any plane you had to have a good navigator — but Mosquitos, the two of you were a team and I had a cracking navigator, Canadian, Bill Todd, he was a superb navigator, never failed. He could read H2S radar like — and so it was printed in plain language and that sort of thing. He was — he never took us over. I mean, I’ve got the route cards of many of my ops. We flew near, whenever we were going to Berlin, we flew up north near around Bremen or anything, to wake them up, waje them up, wake them up, down to Berlin. Wherever we went, Magdeburg in the middle, whatever it is, we always flew near, not over [slight laugh] they’d shoot at us, near to — to wake, wake never — Berlin, Berlin they never had any peace, ever. I’ve got copies of, er, from Goebbels’ diaries where he writes, ‘The Mosquitos were here again last night. We never get a good sleep every night’. But anyway, there we are. But the Mosquito was superb. It was a marvellous aeroplane. The film done on the Mosquito, “333, 233 Squadron” an operation where supposedly to a — Mosquito squadron to a heavy water plant in Norway and everything. You see them going off, these well-known film stars, the captain, squadron leader, I think his navigator was only a warrant officer or something, which was extraordinary for a start. I’m sure he was only a flight serg. You see them going up and doing the whole lot, and they come back and the pilot gets out first, oh well, well, you know, well, he comes down before the navi. That’s impossible, that’s a physical impossibility. In a Mosquito the pilot has to get in first, get in it and the navigator comes up and sits alongside him. The entry’s blocked, pull the ladder up, shut the trap. To get out, the navigator has [emphasis] to go first, he just has to and the pilot follows but no, in the film they come back and the pilot gets out, the wonder boy gets out first. Oh, every Mosquito pilot navi is infuriated about that film. They’re infuriated. Physical impossibility or damn near. You have to get the navigator in last and out first. There’s no room. No room. One can’t get past the other. [laugh] That’s infuriating. Oh dear. Any Mossie navigator that’s seen that says, ‘That’s blooming impossible’ [laugh]. Well, chatting to my flight commander he became, he became CO, Wing Commander, what’s his name? Peter MacDermot at Honington, where that film was made. They got these six Mosquitos and that and did that film. I brought it up. He said. But no, no, the star’s got to come out the plane, the great pilot, and it’s the blooming navigator that took him there and that’s it. Rubbish, rubbish. But anyway —
PL: Well, John, is there’s anything else at all that you would like to add?
JW: Well, oh dear me, I could rattle on forever, can’t I? Rattle on forever. No, I’ve been a very lucky chap. I’ve had a great life. I had a super wife, super wife, artist, mother, good looking, prettiest girl, super wife. Sixty-one years, everything. Look at that. She — those are all, my wife did all these. And that one, I always remember that. She did one or two like that in our kitchen, a nice big kitchen, we extended it. And the “Kippers by Candlelight” was the thing.
PL: “Kippers by Candlelight”
JW: It was a bit of fun. She liked doing things like that. And I remember a pal of mine coming in, Robin Lewis, always a bit of a wag, he looked at that and said, ‘Kippers’, he said, ‘don’t they look sexy?’ Do you know, they were known ever since, Audrey’s sexy kippers [laugh]. No reason at all. That’s always Audrey’s painting. It was Audrey’s sexy kippers [laugh].
PL: Well that sounds a very good note to end on, the sexy kippers.
JW: The sexy kippers. Well anything you want you can always give me a ring, anything, anytime. Would you like another cup or tea or biscuit or anything?
PL: I’d love one. Thank you so much.
JW: No. [laugh]
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 John Whitworth
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
AWhitworthJL160622
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
Pam Locker
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
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-06-22
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:21:44 audio recording
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Christine Kavanagh
Vivienne Tincombe
Description
An account of the resource
John Leslie Whitworth was born in Sutton Coldfield. Signed up for the Royal Air Force in 1940, finally being called up for service in 1941, before starting his training at the Initial Training Wing in Torquay, followed by more training at RAF Sywell in Northamptonshire. John was posted to RAF Moreton on the Marsh, which was a feeder station for the Wellington bomber crews, and he tells of meeting a lifelong friend called Brian Hurd, who was his navigator. John reminisces of his overseas posting to Egypt, to 37 Squadron at Abu Suweir, and flying over Gibraltar where he describes his first sighting of flak. John tells of his sadness of the death of his close friend, and also of his crash into the desert, after the Wellington he was piloting lost a propeller, his journey across the desert, and his subsequent rescue. Retells the story of a South African Air Force Boston which crashed into parked aircraft at Abu Suier in August 1942. Tells of his posting to a Wellington Instruction Unit, his training at RAF North Luffenham, and his love of golf. In September 1944, John volunteered to go back on operations, and was assigned to 142 Squadron flying Mosquitos working with the Pathfinder force, before being transferred to 162 Squadron, before finally being posted to ferrying Mosquitos to India. John completed two full tours with Bomber Command and was into his third when the Second World War ended. After the war, John became involved in his brother-in-law’s Engineering Manufacturing business, which he took over when his brother in law died.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Devon
England--Northamptonshire
England--Gloucestershire
England--Rutland
England--Torquay
Egypt
Gibraltar
India
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
1942-08
1944-09
142 Squadron
162 Squadron
37 Squadron
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
Boston
crash
Distinguished Flying Cross
grief
Initial Training Wing
Mosquito
navigator
Pathfinders
RAF Moreton in the Marsh
RAF North Luffenham
RAF Sywell
RAF Torquay
sport
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/155/2175/PWhitworthJ1501.1.jpg
ecf2ac356d93e94f01bedb04764af05c
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
Whitworth, John
J Whitworth
John Leslie Whitworth
J L Whitworth
Description
An account of the resource
17 items. The collection consists of an oral history interview with Flying Officer John L Whitworth (b. 1921), one photocopy, seven pilot’s navigation charts and eight photographs which include seven target photographs. John Whitworth was a pilot and flew Mosquitos with 162 Squadron Pathfinders from RAF Bourn in 1944 and 1945.
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
2016-06-22
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
Whitworth, JL
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
162 PFF SQUADRON BOURN 1944/5
P/O WALKER (RAAF)
P/O HENLEY (RNZ [missing word]
P/O HANRAHAN (RAAF)
F/LT MARSHALL
F/O CRABBE
F/LT WHITWORTH
F/O TULLOCH
F/O FISHER
F/O MORROW
P/O CLARK
F/O BURGESS
F/LT HODGIT
S/L MCDERMOTT
S/LGOLTON
S/L TEDDY
F/Sgt CHAPPEL
F/O BLAND
F/LT SNELLING
F/LT HADEN
F/LT STEWART
162 Squadron Off to BERLIN
Mosiquto
NOTE PILOT [underlined]IN[/underlined] FIRST - [underlined]ALWAYS[underlined]
PILOT [underlined]OUT[/underlined] LAST [underlined]ALWAYS[underlined]
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Aircrew and Mosquito
Description
An account of the resource
Above, aircrew captioned '162 PPF Squadron Bourn 1944/5' and the names of some of those shown. Below, a 162 Squadron Mosquito with an airman.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One annotated b/w photocopy
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PWhitworthJ1501
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--Cambridgeshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1945
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Language
A language of the resource
eng
162 Squadron
aircrew
Mosquito
Pathfinders
pilot
RAF Bourn
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/106/2232/LBriggsDW56124v1.1.pdf
bd80d29b93944ac5a20236df4e418bc8
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, Donald
Donald W Briggs
D W Briggs
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
2017-03-27
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Briggs, DW
Description
An account of the resource
21 items. The collection consists of one oral history interview with flight engineer Donald Ward Briggs (1924 - 2018), his logbook, memoirs and 16 wartime and post war photographs. He completed 62 operations with 156 Squadron Pathfinders flying from RAF Upwood. Post war, Donald Briggs retrained as a pilot flying Meteors and Canberras. He eventually joined the V-Force on Valiants and was the co-pilot for the third British hydrogen bomb test at Malden Island in 1957.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Donald Briggs and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
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/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LBriggsDW56124v1
Title
A name given to the resource
Donald Briggs' log book
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One handwritten booklet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1945
1944-06-11
1944-06-12
1944-06-15
1944-06-16
1944-06-17
1944-06-24
1944-06-27
1944-06-28
1944-07-02
1944-07-07
1944-07-08
1944-07-10
1944-07-12
1944-07-13
1944-07-14
1944-07-18
1944-07-28
1944-07-29
1944-07-30
1944-08-03
1944-08-05
1944-08-07
1944-08-08
1944-08-09
1944-08-10
1944-08-12
1944-08-13
1944-08-15
1944-08-16
1944-08-17
1944-08-18
1944-08-19
1944-08-25
1944-08-26
1944-08-29
1944-08-30
1944-08-31
1944-09-15
1944-09-16
1944-09-17
1944-09-20
1944-09-23
1944-09-25
1944-09-26
1944-09-27
1944-10-05
1944-10-06
1944-10-07
1944-10-14
1944-10-15
1944-11-18
1944-11-28
1944-11-30
1944-12-05
1944-12-06
1944-12-07
1944-12-29
1945-01-02
1945-01-03
1945-01-04
1945-01-05
1945-01-06
1945-01-14
1945-01-15
1945-01-16
1945-01-17
1945-01-28
1945-01-29
1945-02-07
1945-02-08
1945-02-09
1945-02-13
1945-02-14
1945-03-01
1945-03-05
1945-03-06
1945-03-07
1945-03-08
1945-03-09
1945-03-12
1945-03-15
1945-03-16
1945-03-17
1945-03-19
1945-03-20
1945-03-22
1945-03-24
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Atlantic Ocean--English Channel
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Atlantic Ocean--Bay of Biscay
England--Cambridgeshire
France--Bayeux
France--Caen
France--Calais
France--Lens
France--Royan
France--Saint-Lô
Germany--Bochum
Germany--Chemnitz
Germany--Dessau (Dessau)
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Dresden
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Essen
Germany--Goch
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Hanau
Germany--Hannover
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Kleve (North Rhine-Westphalia)
Germany--Koblenz
Germany--Leuna
Germany--Münster in Westfalen
Germany--Neuss
Germany--Osnabrück
Germany--Soest
Germany--Stuttgart
Germany--Zeitz
Netherlands--Eindhoven
Poland--Szczecin
Germany
Netherlands
France
Poland
England--Sussex
Germany--Mannheim
France--Montdidier (Hauts-de-France)
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
France--Cap Gris Nez
France--Nucourt
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
Description
An account of the resource
Donald Briggs served as a flight engineer with 156 Squadron Pathfinders flying Lancasters from RAF Upwood between 27 May 1944 and 31 March 1945. The incomplete log book includes 62 daylight and night time operations to French, German, Dutch and Polish targets: battle fronts, Bayeux, Bois de Cassin, Chemnitz, Coblenz, Caen, Cagny, Calais, Cannantre, Cap Gris Nez (Calais), Disemont, Eindohven, Foret de Nieppe, Fort d’Englos, Harpenerweg, Hemmingstadt, Hildersheim, Lens, Lumbacs, Middel Straete, Miseburg oil refinery, Moerdish bridges, Montdidier, Nucourt, Nurnburg, Pollitz, Royan, Royen, Saint-Lô, St Philbert, Bochum, Chemnitz, Dessau, Dortmund, Dresden, Duisburg, Essen, Goch, Hamburg, Hanau, Hannover, Kiel, Kleve, Koblenz, Leuna, Mannheim, Münster, Neuss, Osnabrück, Renescure, Russleheim, Saarbrucken, Soest, Stuttgart, Szczecin, Vaires near Paris and Zeitz. His pilots on operations were Flight Lieutenant Neal, Wing Commander Bingham-Hall and Flight Lieutenant Williams.
156 Squadron
8 Group
aircrew
bombing
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
bombing of Luftwaffe night-fighter airfields (15 August 1944)
flight engineer
Lancaster
Lancaster Mk 3
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Pathfinders
RAF Upwood
tactical support for Normandy troops
V-1
V-weapon
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/89/2342/ACalvertR151124.2.mp3
94d73ffc9db8c40dca7c8216a827bb55
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
Calvert, Roger
R A Calvert
Description
An account of the resource
Seven items. The collection consists of an oral history interview with Flight Lieutenant Roger Alfred Calvert (b. 1923, 1488619; 152814), his logbook, navigators training course class book and 3 photographs. Roger Calvert was a navigator with 141 Squadron at RAF West Raynham flying Mosquitos on night intruder operations. For most of his operational career his pilot was Flight Lieutenant John Thatcher.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Roger Calvert and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-04-24
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. 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
Calvert, R
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: So, my name's Chris Brockbank and I am in Leeds with Roger Calvert a Mosquito navigator and we're going to talk about his early life, what he did in the RAF and then afterwards. So what's the earliest you remember in your life?
RC: Well I was born in Ripon Yorkshire, I’ve got three brothers and two sisters. I remember very little about the beginning of the war except I remember the war being announced. Um, I was at school then Ripon Grammar School and I was in the sixth form then, more or less ready to, to leave. I'd no idea what I was going to do after I left school. Well I did quite well with High School Certificate and so on and then I was tested and, in [background noises] April 1942 I joined and went down to Padgate. Um I enjoyed being at school one or two of my friends are good footballers and cricketers and I enjoyed those being in the first team. But, it was a bit of a shock going into the forces of course, I hardly left Ripon [laugh] at that age so it was a bit of a- amazing to eventually go to Canada to train and go to Egypt and places like that. So I remember very little about London and Padgate except there was a murderer down there floating about. I don't know if you remember that chap, that murdered several women, and, then I seemed to get lost in the, the movement and the training really. Um, so eventually I went to Canada which is by boat on the Queen Mary. I got on this boat one afternoon, on this ship, sorry the Queen Mary one afternoon I thought oh we'll be off in a couple of hours it looks full to me. They were going on, coming on board all through the night 'till the next day. I think there was about eighteen or twenty thousand on board the Queen Mary. Anyway it was quite safe because evidently it, once it got out into the Atlantic, it used to, only go so long and then turn onto a new course, and then I landed at Moncton and travelled by train across Canada to London Ontario, which was a beautiful city, and there trained as a navigator on Ansons, in the middle of the Great Lakes. And I eventually qualified as a navigator and was commissioned then, I don't know, that presumably due to the results I don’t know and then came home again. Eh, and more or less after I got back to England they wanted navigators to train on two-engined aircraft, with a, lot of systems why [unclear] you picked up incoming German flights into the bomber, eh the bomber stream. So I went on this training, and with the pilot who was training also, which took quite a long time. Eventually I went to OTU [background noises] where, I was lucky because there were very few, very few navigators there, in fact a lot of pilots so it was a bit boastful to say I got the pick of the pilots [laughs] but, that’s where I met John Thatcher who was a wonderful pilot, he'd been on Training Command, he'd done a lot of hours so I got on very well with him. He was ten years older than me but he was a really wonderful chap, wasn't he Margaret. Eh, I used to see him after the war, but we just had confidence in each other somehow and got on very well, so it was a very nice association, I was very lucky to be with him and eventually we transferred to Mosquitos. And [background noise] we did this first trip to France, they give you an easy trip the first one. When I got back I was a sick in the [laughs] in the cockpit and they were a bit frightened that it was this lack of moral fibre, but what had happened was my oxygen mask had come, come off and I hadn’t noticed it and that's why I, why I was taken ill really, the last part of the trip [pause]. I can’t really say much more about John, he was a grand man, you met him Margaret didn’t you several times, he lived at Tring. Whenever we could we always called in to see him and, I remember he was rather funny once. He said 'do you remember that fourteenth trip we did?' You gave me a wrong, you gave me a wrong direction over Hamburg and he'd never forgotten this [laughs]. I'd given him a wrong, a wrong, [background noise] so we had a good laugh about that. That was about the only thing we quarrelled about really [laughs]. Yes it was nice to meet him after the war, but em. Anyway we were very pleased to get on the Mosquitos it would be shortly before the time of the invasion I think. And em we'd done thirty one flights, thirty one operations, eh when I was taken ill on leave and went to the hospital in Bath and eh when I came back to the squadron after a month or so the war was nearly over, and I only did one more flight with a Flying Officer Rhymer [?] we eh, we intruded some airfield in Denmark. I've often wondered why, whether there was some high class Nazis there. Anyway the squadron attacked this aerodrome that was my last trip, that was the thirty second and that was the tour finished I suppose well the war finished, so [pause] I had a very quiet time on operations really although, fortunately John was a very good pilot, I remember the worst trip we had was to a place called Zeiss [?]. I think it was near Leipzig, and we were over the target and one of the engines went and, he blocked it off or whatever the word is and he flew me all the way back to, to England on this one engine, how he did it I don’t know but, we came into this aerodrome in Essex, it had got about a four mile long runway so there's plenty of room there. So I've very little so say about the operations really, we were intruding once or twice aerodromes and so but mostly we were escorting the bomber, the bomber stream and trying to pick up German fighters coming into it. We only met one once [laugh] which was an ME110 which we shot down. That’s about the only thing I remember about picking some — we picked one or two up but we lost them again, so that was a bit of a failure really.
CB: So just picking up on what the activity was, you were trained to intercept other planes, German aircraft in the bomber stream, were you therefore technically night fighters yourselves or were you interdictors so you would do bombing as well. What was the actual role that you had?
RC: We were escort really, yes, only once or twice we did these intruding into enemy aerodromes. I think the last but one flight was Dresden, never forgotten that.
CB: Ok tell us more.
RC: Well the whole city had been bombed by the US and ourselves and, we could see the Russian, the Russian, flashes from the Russian forces quite near Dresden at the time [background noises] so we thought the war must be nearly over but eh, it was a shame to bomb that place but it was, that was the RAF was ordered and we, I think Churchill let us down quite frankly then after his war speech, he never mentioned the RAF, I mean they had to go and they did what they had to do.
CB: What was it about the Dresden raid that really stuck in your mind?
RC: Well it was the firestorm afterwards really, yes.
CB: What was your role then, escorting the bombers?
RC: Um, yes there, yes [pause] and that was about the end of the war wasn't it, just about.
CB: Yes, yeah ok, so what was your feeling about the bombing of Dresden?
RC: Well, we were told — they were told to do it weren’t they?
CB: But at the time, what did you think about it at the time?
RC: I didn’t think about it any more than the normal trips, you know. I mean a friend of mine went to Nuremberg on that awful trip, ninety seven were shot down, and he told me he went there and back without any trouble, which is unbelievable isn’t it? It was a moonlight night and they got in an awful mess they shouldn’t have gone really, but that was Jeff Ward, do you remember Margaret? Mm.
CB: Was he a Mosquito man as well?
RC: No he was on, Lancasters.
CB: Right, going back to the — if we just go to the training bit -
RC: Training yes
CB: So you're trained to use the equipment for detecting, were they to detect other night fighters? So just talk us through, what was the training and what was the equipment, you were on Beaufighters. So what was the equipment supposed to do, how did it work?
RC: Well there was Gee, I can’t remember a lot about it, there was Gee, you could navigate on these pulses coming from, the middle of England.
CB: It was a lattice navigation system.
RC: Erm, yes, and then there was one that would pick up the coast beautifully, I forget what that was called.
CB: You didn’t have H2S on your....
RC: H2S that's it.
CB: Did you have that, you didn’t have that on the Mosquito?
RC: Yes.
CB: Oh you did, right, in the nose?
RC: Yes.
CB: Right okay.
RC: Yes the nose was altered.
CB: Right. What else did you have [pause] how did you detect?
RC: Well I had — I was looking in this box most of the time.
CB: Right.
RC: What were they called, AI I think.
CB: So airborne interception radar, AI yeah, okay.
RC: That’s what I was trained to pick up these aircraft.
CB: So this was a scanning radar was it?
RC: Um yes I suppose so, yes.
CB: So what were you looking for?
RC: Looking for aircraft coming in.
CB: Right, how could you detect them in a way that differentiated them from the bomber stream?
RC: I can’t remember.
CB: Okay, presumably the bombers had IFF so identification friend or foe so that meant that you would know from a signal from those what you were hitting. But where were you in the bomber stream, in relation to the bomber stream, above it, beside it, below it, where were you?
RC: Well we flew out after them because we were a lot faster of course, so um well we had our own — we were given our own routes. Our own plans which tied up with the bomber stream presumably [pause].
CB: So whereabouts did you catch up with them? 'Cos you had — did you fly around a lot or, because you'd have to throttle back to be in line with them?
RC: No we just went there, um.
CB: You just wandered around did you?
RC: No we just went there to the, to the -
CB: Over the target?
RC: Operation, yes.
CB: But you didn’t drop anything.
RC: No, no.
CB: So when you got close to the target did you go above the Lancasters and Halifaxes?
RC: Yes I think so, it's a — I can’t really remember quite honestly.
CB: Or to the side is really what I meant.
RC: Mm. Yes I think we would have been above them [background noises].
CB: But over the target, was it likely that fighters would operate there because of the flak?
RC: Well I think they would try to pick them up before they, before they -
CB: [Interrupted] and after?
RC: Yes.
CB: So you had gone over the target, the bombers are turning, they are in a stream, how are you going back with them, because the fighters are trying to get them then?
RC: No we are not going back with them we are just going back, yes.
CB: Oh you didn’t go back with them?
RC: No, no I think that was impossible really.
CB: So really you're operating on the basis of trying to defend them on the way there but on the way back you're not with them.
RC: No, no.
CB: Is that partly a fuel consideration was it, or?
RC: No I don’t know it was just the way it was done.
CB: Did others come out and take over for the return trip?
RC: No I don’t think so, no.
CB: Right okay, so the one you shot down, what happened there?
RC: I wasn’t shot down, no.
CB: No, no the ME110 that you shot down.
RC: Oh right yes, well we picked this aircraft up over France and um and got right behind it as near as we could and John said 'what do you think it is?' So I thought, ‘well looks like a 110 to me', he said, 'yes so did I' and eh, so anyway we, it wasn’t, it wasn’t weaving at all it was just flying, so anyway I gave it a couple of bursts and again and it went down and that was the last saw of that. But, whether it crashed or not we don’t know.
CB: So your armament was what, so you had four 20 millimetre cannon?
RC: Yes.
CB: And how many machine guns, another four of those?
RC: I’ve forgotten, it was either four or eight, it wouldn’t be eight would it?
CB: I wouldn’t think so.
RC: No four.
CB: It might have been but fairly potent when you got going?
RC: Yes, yes.
CB: What was the effect on the plane when you fired?
RC: [sigh] Well, certainly hit it, it was a big, big, big blow up, big blow up, yes.
CB: Oh it blew up, the 110?
RC: Well it was a conflagration or whatever.
CB: Conflagration.
RC: Conflagration right.
CB: Did you fire, on other occasions did you fire at other planes?
RC: No, no that's why I've been so lucky all my life. I’m lucky as far as we didn’t shoot more down. I mean one of our chaps did about — shot, killed about — he knocked about twelve German aircraft out.
CB: Did he.
RC: I was talking to Margaret the other day, I was just reading a book, this pair shot down about twelve I think it was and eh he got the DFC and two bars. And after the war he, was killed by a lorry running over him and they thought it was suicide because this poor [indistinct] chap, his wife had left him. It was very sad, he was such a nice bloke although he had more or less gone when I — he was going, he was leaving the squadron to some other higher post I think after I joined it, it’s sad isn’t it the war?
CB: It is, yeah. So going to the end of hostilities, in Europe, you’d been in hospital, you had one more trip to Denmark, that was escorting rather than doing any ground attacks?
RC: No, it wasn’t escorting, it was just intruding on this aerodrome.
CB: Which meant what, so when you say intruder what does that mean?
RC: Well we just bombed, actually we used that stuff napalm on the place and um. [pause]
CB: What did you drop that on?
RC: On the, on the aerodrome on the build — hangers and, yes, and I suppose the ancillary buildings as well. I think I had a feeling at the time, it was a queer place to go, I was just wondering whether some high flown Germans were there at the time. I mean why pick on that place? Anyway we did that and eh [interrupt].
CB: Had you done any of those before?
RC: We had one or two, we had one in Holland [?] airfield.
CB: With the same ordnance or the same, material in other words napalm or did you use bombs?
RC: No it wasn’t napalm, no napalm had only come in later on in the war I think.
CB: So you were bombing as well?
RC: Yes.
CB: And what else did you do?
RC: I remember one of them said he hit, there was a fellow going across the aerodrome in a steam roller, one of the Huns, he gave that a quick burst, I said, 'oh well that’s rotten isn't it really' [laughs], oh dear [pause]. No I just had this one flight with another pilot in the end.
CB: So the war came to an end but you still were flying, what did you do after the end of hostilities?
RC: Well I went on various courses and things, I went to a place called Rattlesden and there was a bit of a revolt there, a revolution there by the, by the air force. I think I was, I was the station adjutant to, I was a bit worried at the time, this recruit centre. There some under eh, I think the staff had been treated badly but I, anyway fortunately it was cleared up, you know.
CB: In what way, what was that to do with?
RC: Shall I show you something?
CB: Yeah, but this place was not flying this was not a flying station?
RC: No it was a recruit centre.
CB: So who was misbehaving?
RC: Well it must have been the staff I suppose, I don’t think it would be the recruits.
CB: What were they trying to do, put them through the mill?
RC: Trying to get better, better conditions. Then they went out to [background noise] Egypt I was supposed to be in charge of the base personnel office there [indistinct] in Cairo [hesitation]. Where's my paper?
CB: I'll pause there just for a moment.
CB: Ok we are restarting now, so the war is over and Roger is doing courses, so what was the first course you did after flying?
RC: After the war you mean, yes, well my brother was a chartered accountant and he lent me some books about it. And eh, I got this book on auditing and I found it quite interesting, including the legal cases that had, taken, taken place and eh. So I went on this three year training eh to be a chartered accountant [pause].
CB: And you were an articled clerk were you, so you got paid in that time?
RC: Yes, well I got a grant yes, £170 a year I remember it very well, lived quite nicely on it, £170 a year you wouldn’t believe it would you, so I was pleased to get through that examination or the intermediate and the final, especially the taxation. I don’t know how I got through it but still I did somehow. So, then I was looking for my first position. I think that was at um a job with the National Gas and Oil Engine Company in Lancashire, Ashton-under-Lyme it was the Bush Group, do you remember the Bush Group?
CB: Yeah.
RC: And eh, I was very happy there but eventually we ran into financial troubles with the Group and I managed to get a post in Leeds with a motor distributor, through my brother and I was with them till about 1974, then they ran into financial trouble as well. Not my fault I hope [laughs] no it was, the company was with the, British Leyland and, they had, they had the troubles, that was leading to our redundancy really, very sad. But I suppose their range of motor cars wasn’t as good as some of the Japanese and so on. Then I had a multitude of funny jobs.
CB: Such as?
RC: Well I was really, sort of, I was working through an agency you know, they would find the jobs for me and, eventually I got a post at Castle Howard in Yorkshire as accountant there for, which was very interesting because of the people involved, of course the Howards were the [pause] in charge of the Castle and its various commercial opportunities.
CB: Including TV, didn’t they use it for Brideshead Revisited?
RC: Yes they did, yes, yes that’s right that was after my time though, or was it before, oh it would be before wouldn’t it.
CB: So in the end you decided to hang up your tax book and retire.
MC: Yes.
RC: Yes, yes that’s right yes.
CB: You were an FCA I take it?
RC: Yes.
CB: And when did you have the delightful pleasure of meeting Margaret, how was that?
RC: Well that was at a film at, Moortown Golf Club, I jokingly [laughs] funnily enough I had a speech about a month ago didn’t I, I jokingly said I met Margaret on the 27th of September 1953 at 7 o’clock, they used to have a film about the professional competition at Wentworth didn't they Margaret, that was it, at the club and that’s how I met Margaret at this.
CB: Never looked back.
MC: [laughs]
RC: [laughs] No, no we've had a lot of fun certainly.
CB: And you continued with golf have you, all your life?
RC: Yes, yes.
CB: Did you take it up in the RAF?
RC: Golf?
CB: Yeah.
RC: Well I played at Newcastle, when we were up there but it was just a fun weekend, day off you know, sort of business, excuse me a minute [background noises].
CB: Yes, we are just doing a retake because, Roger found that there was surplus, a, shortage of navigators and he ended up making a choice himself, tell us how that came about and what — what happened?
RC: Well I had met John Thatcher at the OTU and, we got on very well really he was, he was, senior to me he had done a lot of hours flying and eh obviously very competent and eh there were two other prospective, one was a Squadron Leader Morley, I remember him who I could have flown with and this chap Banbury was his navigator and the navigator said to me, having a meal before we went on this trip, he said 'I won’t be coming back tonight, I feel, I feel awful' and I am afraid he didn’t you know, he must have been shot down.
CB: Did he have a premonition, is that what it was?
RC: Yes that’s it, yes.
CB: So there was a choice of three pilots.
RC: Em Yes.
CB: And
RC: Well it seems a bit bombastic to say that doesn't it, but I mean, I didn’t really approach the other two anyhow, they were looking for somebody.
CB: Was John Thatcher a creamy? Is that why he had been on training earlier?
RC: A creamy?
CB: Creamies were the people who were so good at flying they were immediately put onto training new pilots.
RC: Yes, yes.
CB: Was that his route?
RC: It must have been really, I don’t, he never talked about it.
CB: And after, so you were on the raid with this chap who had the premonition, what was your reaction when you got back?
RC: Well I suppose I was only twenty wasn't I, nineteen, hits you very hard doesn’t it?
CB: What was the loss rate like on Mosquitos compared with the heavy bombers?
RC: Oh it wasn't anything like, no [indistinct] was terrible, the chances they had wasn't it in the Lancaster really. I think they only did twenty five if they got through that it was a miracle really. They had one chance in three of getting, was it, I don’t know.
CB: Well they did a, the tour was thirty.
RC: Thirty was it?
CB: What em, what experience did you have of flak because the Lancasters were the main recipients of the flak but you're in the stream so to what extent did you get flak?
RC: No, no, no we could avoid that alright [laughs]. When we were — if we were, like that Danish trip, the flak from the airport [?], choomp, choomp, choomp, it went past you, it was amazing really. You couldn’t believe you got away with it [laughs].
CB: The German Air Force, airfield defence was 20, 20, quadruple 20 millimetre canon wasn’t it, so that’s what you were up against was it? But you didn’t get hit at all.
RC: No we didn’t, no.
CB: Were you in the lead or where were you in the um?
RC: We wouldn’t be in the lead, no. But I remember I went round two or three times and Pilot Officer Rhymer[?] said 'the bombs have gone, what shall we do, shall we go back home?' I said 'yes please' [laughs].
CB: Why did you have to go round three times?
RC: Well I suppose [interrupted]
CB: Before you dropped the canisters was it?
RC: I don’t remember whether it was the first run or the second one he dropped them. One bloke came back with his bombs, he wasn’t very welcome when he got to the station [interruption]. He had some technical failure with the, with the bombing.
CB: They wouldn’t release, did you do a strafing job against the ground, guns?
RC: Yes as far as I remember yes, yes.
CB: Because your fire power was fairly devastating in itself was it?
RC: Wonderful aircraft.
CB: Ok we're stopping again for a moment [background noises].
RC: [indistinct] Line-shooting.
CB: Now we are just going back to one of Roger's experiences when he was ill in the aeroplane because his oxygen mask became detached and it leads to what?
RC: It says here 'spoken by F/O Calvert'.
CB: What's the heading of this?
RC: About line-shooting, on the squadron [?].
CB: Line-shooting, right.
RC: 'Spoken by F/O Calvert' in brackets, ‘having failed to connect his oxygen tube on ops', the only time I get to sleep is when I am on ops witness [?] Flight Lieutenant Bates [laughs], oh dear.
CB: What other ones have you got, so you were branded for life, what others have you got there, line-shoots?
RC: Jock Barriman [?], wonder if there are any other pilots of my vintage still flying [laugh ]. It’s funny here, Willy Rhymer[?], that’s the chap I was flying with, the last one. You could almost hear the tracer sizzling as it went past [laughs].
CB: This is the ground attack job.
RC: Yes, they are listed there [background noises].
CB: Thanks, and just going back again um we are in a situation where operations have finished because the war in Europe has finished, you are then put on some training courses, what were those. Nothing to do with flying?
RC: No, well one was an admin course at eh, Hereford, Credenhill. Then I went on one of them on moral leadership in the Isle of Wight of all places. Then I went on another admin course, I think they were just waiting 'till they were able to get, get, get us moved on out of the forces really. One was at some HQ, I don’t remember that but.
CB: And then you went out to Cairo, why was that and what did you do?
RC: Oh, we went out by rail over France and then across the Mediterranean, in a ship. And I was in Cairo and I was in charge of the base personnel office, which was a bit much at my age, 21 or whatever it was. Anyway we were in charge of moving the RAF personnel round Africa, if they were short of cooks or something like that, we moved a cook across from Cairo when they came in, down there you see.
CB: Whereabouts in Africa would you send people?
RC: Well they were more or less in Kenya and places like that [pause].
CB: So it was a, you were doing postings?
RC: Postings, yes.
CB: What else?
RC: That’s about it really, it was a funny job because you were only working about four or five hours a day.
CB: So did you start early in the morning or how did that work?
RC: Well you worked about eight until two, something like that and then the day was free which was very good because you could go down to Gazera [?] Sporting Club and....
CB: Play golf?
RC: Well you could play golf if you had any clubs but used to, nice to watch the cricket and that sort of thing. It was a lovely place.
CB: Swimming?
RC: Yes um, um.
CB: How long were you there [pause] roughly?
RC: I should think about a couple of months [pause] April to July.
CB: ‘40?
RC: ‘46 [indistinct] year before I left, yes.
CB: So how did you know that you were going to be demobbed?
RC: Well um, I think there was a circular around about it and, [pause] I can’t really remember to be honest.
CB: That’s ok, so where, you were demobbed as soon as you got back to the UK.
RC: Yes.
CB: And that's when you took up your accountancy training?
RC: Well my parents lived in Bath and I was demobbed to Bath and then when the, eh that period was over I had a week or two to find some work. I came up to Leeds, to work with my brother in Leeds, articled.
CB: What had he done in the war?
RC: He was in the Royal Ordnance Company.
CB: He got out quicker, he got out of the army quicker than you.
RC: He was in the south of England and he got about fifteen embarkation leaves before he went on the invasion. And, he was in charge of a beach detachment in — in France, he was lucky too.
CB: OK. We're going to pause for a moment [background noises].
CB: We're talking about LMF because jokingly people had referred to it earlier. Roger what was your understanding and experience of people in that category?
RC: Well I think there was only one fellow as far as I remember who got to such a stage he just couldn’t carry on and um it was difficult for the forces to have sympathy with him in a way but you know he just broke down and, and I don’t know what happened to him, he left the force I think, for medical treatment, but that’s very rare really.
CB: What was his role and rank?
RC: Oh I don’t know, I think he'd be a, I think he'd be a navigator but I'm not sure.
CB: Was he commissioned or was he?
RC: I think he was a sergeant.
CB: Right, and do you know how they dealt with it?
RC: No I don’t, no.
CB: But there was a perception of how it was dealt with what was that?
RC: Well they were probably a bit hard at the time I suppose, I suppose they had to be really, hadn’t they? No, they more or less um nothing [background noises] like being in a Lancaster is it, that must have been awful.
CB: So you got on extremely well with your pilot.
RC: Yes.
CB: John Thatcher, in the squadron what was the general, what was the general [background noises] em attitude?
RC: Can we -
CB: I'll stop. We're restarting now because we've been talking about a lot of things and in this case we're just going back to the kill that Roger did with John, his pilot, um on that particular evening. So is it a summer time event.
RC: Well, I've got the minutes.
CB: Oh ok.
RC: I’ve got the, turn it off.
CB: So what we're talking about is how this particular combat mission worked, so you're in the bomber stream and then what?
RC: I just picked up this AI —
CB: On your radar —
RC: Yes and we turned and followed, followed it behind, underneath, for a while until we'd identified the aircraft, John said it was an M110 and I thought it was too, so he gave it a burst or two bursts —
CB: At what range would you normally expect to be opening fire?
RC: I don’t know but it'd be a few hundred, couple of hundred yards was it, I don’t know, I can’t remember, probably says in the record there.
CB: Yeah, ok, and um so, why were there two bursts were they fairly quick succession or was it that the first one didn’t work.
RC: No I, I think they both worked yes, yes.
CB: And what happened to the aircraft?
RC: It just went down, it disappeared, we didn’t see it crash so we couldn’t really claim it as a, had to claim it as, damaged, yes.
CB: Did it blow up?
RC: No not that I, no it was just burning as it went down.
CB: Right, and then what did you do, keep going or turn away, or what did you do?
RC: We turned away presumably, yes. It’s so long ago I can’t remember.
CB: Yeah, of course, that’s okay, now going back to your original training, how did the training work when you were in Canada? So you come out as a raw navigator, trainee. What did they do there was ground school and flying so how did that work?
RC: Well we were in the middle of the big lakes and we went out on these daily trips as far as I remember, probably two of us went, two trainees but we gave the more or less directions obviously in training for the round trip and we would [voice fades away] [interrupted].
CB: So you would have ground school before you started flying would you?
RC: Yes, yes.
CB: What did that entail?
RC: Sigh [long pause] I suppose we had to plan the trip [laugh] and, now I am lost.
CB: What I meant was that they teach you how to navigate so how do they teach you how to navigate, because it's more than just drawing a line isn’t it?
RC: Em, well of course I picked up a lot at Torquay at the initial training wing at Torquay really about navigation [interruption].
CB: OK, so how did that work?
RC: It was just putting it into action wasn’t it.
CB: Oh I see right.
RC: You know, in flight mm, mm.
CB: So how often did you, 'cause you were there for several months, so there must have been a lot to do?
RC: Yes, daily, it'd be daily I suppose.
CB: How long were the flights?
RC: [long pause] Looks as if it was about three hours, up to three hours.
CB: Would they, yeah?
RC: Yes, yes.
CB: Shared between the two of you on the same aeroplane?
RC: Pin pointing, astro-compass fixes and WV’s, what’s that? [pause]
CB: That’s using the sextant.
RC: Yes.
CB: How did you get on with that?
RC: We never used it with Gee [interruption].
CB: Ah.
RC: Never used it. Familiarisation flights, then we got onto nights eventually after a couple of months we started flying at night, [long pause].
CB: Ok, so shall we just go back to when you did the initial training so the ground school is what you were saying was at Torquay is that right?
RC: Yes, yes.
CB: So that's where you learned the rudiments of navigation.
RC: That’s right, yes.
CB: How did they do that?
RC: [long pause] I can’t remember, I know it’s terrible isn’t it.
CB: That’s okay, it doesn’t matter.
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 Roger Calvert
Description
An account of the resource
Roger Calvert grew up in Ripon. He joined the Royal Air Force in April 1942 and completed navigation training in Canada. On return to Great Britain, he met up with his pilot, John Thatcher and they completed 31 operations in Mosquitos with 141 Squadron. He discusses use of Gee and H2S, operations including Dresden, escorting the bomber stream, shooting down a Messerschmitt Bf 110 and lack of moral fibre. He became the adjutant at RAF Rattlesden and served briefly in Cairo before being demobilised. After the war, he became an accountant.
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
2015-11-24
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Hugh Donnelly
Janet McGreevy
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:52:06 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
ACalvertR151124
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Canada
Germany
England--Suffolk
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
141 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
bombing of Nuremberg (30 / 31 March 1944)
Gee
H2S
lack of moral fibre
Me 110
Mosquito
navigator
Pathfinders
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/183/2369/MWoodC1451225-160325-05.2.jpg
3f2a900976695fb5f9441c2b8ba19767
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
Flight Sergeant Colin Wood's Award of Path Finder Force Badge
Description
An account of the resource
A certificate awarding Flight Sergeant Colin Wood the Path Finder Force Badge.
This item was provided, in digital form, by a third-party using technical specifications and operational protocols that may differ from those used by the IBCC Digital Archive.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1945-05-20
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One printed certificate
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Service material
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MWoodC1451225-160325-05
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
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
Pathfinders
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/183/2374/PWoodC1605.2.jpg
09247a2551692e7498f639e90664914c
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
Description
An account of the resource
Head and shoulders of pilot Andy Anderson, Royal Australian Air Force.
Additional information about this item has been kindly provided by the donor.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One b/w photograph
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PWoodC1605
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
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1945-04
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1945-04
aircrew
Pathfinders
pilot
-
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/187/2452/SMarshallS1594781v10014.2.jpg
21dc29d13a77382b205e5e9a726a727a
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/187/2452/SMarshallS1594781v10015.2.jpg
2b81a35b95f68a4c54ace36811c370c7
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
HE FLEW WITH THE R.A.F. TO ULM
EX-PILOT AMAZED BY OUR NEW BOMBING TECHNIQUE
Three years after he had made his last raid on the Reich, an ex-R.A.F. pilot flew as a special representative of the “ News of the World “ with Bomber Command Lancasters which raided Ulm, in southern Germany, last week. Here is his fascinating description of the amazing development in the R.A.F.’s technique of bombing.
Over the target there was a layer of thin white cloud. As we approached hundreds and hundreds of flares began to light up the target area, like candles over a huge iced Christmas cake.
“Quiet, boys! “called the Canadian bomb-aimer over the intercom. “We shan’t hear the master-bomber.” A second or two later we heard “the voice” directing the attack from another Lancaster.
“Bomb on the sky-markers, bomb on the sky-markers!” he said, and at that moment dozens of green, red and red-green lights burst out over the target.
“What’s the time ?” asked the pilot tensely. “Just on our bombi [missing] “ replied the bomb-aim [missing] ahead !”
[missing] we let loose our [missing] and hundreds [missing] he city of Ulm. [missing] mewards, with [missing] es in our air- [missing] great sheets of [missing] e, white cloud [missing] wed by palls of [missing] ging up through it.
[missing] BEAUTIFUL
Six or seven thousand feet below [missing] are the Lancasters of the Pathfinder Force, like black specks [missing] tlined against the blazing [missing] uldron.
It is the most grim, the most terrible, the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life.
This, remember, was my first raid for three years. I was, alas! invalided out of the service in 1942.
I was able to witness the vast changes which have revolutionised the whole technique of bombing. I was amazed.
For one thing we should never have gone out on a night like this in the old days. There would have been too much cloud.
But now the Pathfinder Force can pick out the target through ten-tenths cloud as a result of their secret navigational aids known in the R.A.F. as “gen-boxes,” and crews can fly to their targets over thick cloud without fear of getting lost.
Again, in the old days we used to have to find the target ourselves with only a flare or two dropped by other aircraft to help us.
NO STOOGING NOW
You would stooge around for several minutes in extreme tension, drop a flare yourself – and hope that you had lighted up the target.
But to-day all that has changed. The target is visible for miles ahead.
Then again our attacks were individual. We had a rough bombing time. But that was all.
Now every crew bombs on the minute, and the whole raid itself is only a matter of a few minutes, thus swamping the ground defences.
When I arrived at the squadron’s station the crews were just landing after a raid on the synthetic oil plant at Ludwigshafen.
Most crews are reticent about their experiences, even if they have been tough They [sic] are the elite.
A few tend the other way, not because they want to impress you with their courage, but because they want desperately to give vent to the anxiety, the tension of mind, which they have endured.
Others, again, have a fine sense of humour.
“See any fighters ?” said the Intelligence Officer to a big blond Canadian pilot-officer in the interrogation room.
“Oh, yeah,” said the Canadian with a smile.
“Did you get a shot at him?”
“You bet. My crew’s kin’a got the aggressive spirit, I guess.”
Whereupon the whole crew laughs gaily.
Many pilots of this particular squadron have long operational records, such as the squadron C.O., Wing-Comdr. J.R. St. John, D.F.C. and bar. He has done 56 trips.
“I used to know him as a flight-lieutenant,” said one of the other pilots. “He used to come back with his aircraft like a pepper-pot.”
But there is one chap who has done no fewer than 91 trips. He is a wireless-operator, Pilot-Officer H.A. Jones, of London.
Shy, retiring, he attributes everything to luck.
He wants to complete his hundredth. He must have the heart of a lion.
MEET THE SKIPPER
I was soon introduced to the skipper of the Lancaster in which I was to fly to Ulm – Flight-Lieut. J.E. Holland, of Croydon.
Although he is only on his eleventh trip, he is a very experienced pilot, having flown for a thousand or more hours in Training Command.
I asked him for how much his long experience as a pilot would count.
“About twenty-five per cent,” he replied. “There is always the barrage. You can’t avoid that. And the pilot can’t look out everywhere. It’s up to the crew to warn me about fighters. Fortunately, I’ve got a damned good crew.”
After signing a “blood chit” – a form absolving the R.A.F. from any responsibility for my life – I practised dinghy drill and parachute escape drill with the crew.
The familiar whiff of aircraft oil, the sight of the huge open flying-field, and the being with my pals again made me feel very happy.
Our target was the famous Magirus works at Ulm, where fire-fighting equipment, armoured vehicles and jet-propelled aircraft are manufactured.
We were told that other forces of bombers would be attacking different parts of Germany, including a “spoof” force on Frankfurt to bamboozle the enemy.
The C.O. made a little speech about the danger of intruders waiting in Northern Germany to pick us off on the way back; somebody began pointing to concentrations of heavy flak on a map; then there was somebody else saying something about the danger of icing…. I wondered how we could possibly get back at all.
BETWEEN THE CLOUDS
We went out to the aircraft. It was a beautiful evening. Owing to the risk of icing at higher levels we flew low between layers and layers of drifting cloud tinged red and purple and orange by the setting sun.
Around us, Above us, and below us there were clusters of Lancasters. When one approached too close the little flight engineer would call over the intercom: “Engineer to Skipper, corkscrew right!” Immediately we would weave and turn away.
From time to time we would enter a white darkness. I wondered how other aircraft flying through the same patch of cloud would distinguish our lights.
But, above all, I wondered what would happen when we switched off our lights over enemy territory. I tried to dismiss such fears from my mind.
As we passed over the British Coast the engineer, tapping me on the shoulder, blew England a sweet kiss.
Over France the towns were illuminated like peace-time. In the old days we should have had to fly this part of the trip over hostile territory.
That made a big difference to my fears.
Presently the navigator told us that it was just an hour to the target. The skipper turned out the lights on the wing-tips.
We flew on in silence, climbing slowly to our bombing height. Every now and again we would weave slightly to avoid a suspicious-looking aircraft.
That, together with the smell of stale oxygen, made me slightly sick.
HIT, BUT O.K.
Now it is only half an hour to the target. I look out of the perspex window.
Below me I can see the flash of guns. We must be crossing the front line.
I can also see bits of red-hot metal flying about.
Underneath I hear faintly a sort of whoof-whoof sound. The pilot turns to me. I give him the thumbs-up sign. Yes, I’m O.K.
And then, all of a sudden, there is a whizz….I am not sure what is happening.
Have I been wounded? No, it must be nerves. Fearful of alarming the crew I say nothing.
Then there is another crash, and I notice there are two large holes in the perspex window.
Myself (anxiously): Something’s happening….
Skipper: Yes, what the hell is it?
Myself: I don’t know quite; must be a little flak, I think.
Skipper: Are you O.K.?
Myself: Yes, thanks. O.K.
And then ahead of us we at last see the target….
After three days with the squadron I feel I have mixed with the greatest aristocracy in the world – the aristocracy of courage, sacrifice, and devotion to duty.
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
He flew with the R.A.F. to Ulm. Ex-pilot amazed by our new bombing technique
Description
An account of the resource
An ex-RAF pilot describes a bombing operation to Ulm in Southern Germany, He hadn't flown for three years and he is amazed at the technical improvements in hitting the targets using the Pathfinder force. He mentions the squadron CO, Wing-Comdr J R St John, DFC and Bar, and his 56 operations. Also a wireless operator Pilot Officer HA Jones with 91 operations. The captain of the Lancaster that the journalist flew in was Flight-Lieut. J E Holland. There is a photograph of four airmen captioned ' L to R "Nobby" Clark, Lou Morgan, "Russ" Johnstone, Jack Round'. The two items are captioned ' Dec 17 1944 with crew from 103 Sqdn'.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Newspaper cutting and a b/w photograph on two album pages
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SMarshallS1594781v10014, SMarshallS1594781v10015
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Air Force. Training Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Germany--Ulm
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1944-12-17
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
News of the World
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.
1944-12-17
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Govert J. van Lienden
103 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
Lancaster
Master Bomber
Pathfinders
target indicator
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/202/3337/PBartonER1701.2.jpg
071666ab6479ce7a37ce4cb7127bc494
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/202/3337/ABartonER170121.2.mp3
3cddedabe14a45c9452ae83e436c2bba
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
Barton, Eric Reginald
Eric Reginald Barton
Flying Officer Eric Reginald Barton DFC LdH
Eric Barton DFC
Eric Barton
Eric R Barton
E R Barton
Description
An account of the resource
One interview with Eric Reginald Barton DFC (423589 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
2017-01-21
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Barton, ER
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
BJ: Ok. It’s Barry Jackson continuing the interview with Eric Barton. Eric, we spoke before about your training and, and where you came from and all that sort of stuff. When you were flying different types of aircraft were there the good, the bad, what was the good things about the good aeroplanes and what was the bad things and was there anything that you thought was, that you remember about the different types of aeroplanes?
EB: Yes Barry. Well first up of course was the Tiger Moth and mastering the art of flying and I can recall nearly getting scrubbed as a pilot because I used to land about twenty feet up high and the CFI said where do you look and I said straight ahead and he said that’s wrong look out to the side you’ll see exactly where you are at forty-five degrees. And I did a first one it was a greaser, a three pointer and he said OK you’re off, away you go. And I remember that all throughout my flying years that no matter where, what sort of aircraft, if you looked out to the side you’d see exactly where you were and I was able to do, what we call then, three pointers. Just as a side comes to my mind, we had a thing with the crew my rear gunner used to come up on the intercom after we’d like come back from a raid and he’d say we’d land back at base and he’d say excuse me skipper but tell me have we landed and I [laughs]
BJ: Showing off now [laughs]
EB: That got to be a real line shoot you know. So —
BJ: Yes. Yes.
EB: Never, never forgotten that.
BJ: And what about —
EB: We, going from the little Tiger to a war plane type situation like with the Anson was the next one. Which was a twin engine, Canadian Ansons. Finally, when we went to Canada in Macleod and Alberto which was we went through winter and summer but the early twin engines, that our first twin engine aircraft the old Ansons was a wind up under carriage so it was about, I don’t know about sixty or seventy winds of the crank handle to wind the wheels up and sixty or seventy to put them down. And, of course, when you are doing circuits and bumps you were supposed to take off, flying the wheels up do your circuit and wind your wheels down to land. Well, being Aussies we didn’t take too kindly to all that bull, bull dust so we would give her a couple of turns and the wheels were still there. Half way through our training they, they replaced those aircrafts with the, the Canadian built Ansons which I see had Jacobs L6 motors and they were hydraulic and that was, they were then constant speed propellers, the early ones were fixed speed which entails a different way of flying. Constant prop and hydraulic landing so that was our, our thing to a, a good war type aeroplane. From Ansons we went to Oxfords and then we did our final training as far as twins are concerns then a little bit more into Wellingtons. Wellington was of course and ex, early bomber in the early RAF days that was a very good bomber and very, very good aircraft to fly. A beautiful aircraft to fly. From there we went, we went, we went to, to OTU. That’s where we crewed up. You’ve probably have heard stories about how you crewed up. Very briefly you were — pilot would be told OK you go and select your crew and go and get yourself a cup of coffee or something I don’t think it was a lager or beer. Go to this big hanger and there was milling around a lot of chaps, find yourself a navigator a wireless operator, bomb aimers and so on and so forth. The first crewing up situation was the pilot, would be select your navigator, your wireless operator and later on, further you would select your bomb aimer and your air gunners. The air gunners were the, were the last to be selected. At, at the point of first selection you were put in with New Zealanders, Aussies, Canadians, South, South Africans, all the, the British Empire chaps. They were the ones that were that supplied the pilot, navigator, wireless op, bomb aimer, if you like, the highly technical like people. The gunners were all British, RAF they were. There was no gunners from the Empire outside. So [clears throat] I was fortunate, I think, to get together a bunch of fellows that all filled in together. The thing that comes to my mind just now I’m thinking, when you first made your selection as a pilot you started to be accepting some responsibly. Up until that time I was just a bit of a wild boy I, I was living for myself doing whatever the hell I wanted to do and it was lovely flying airplanes and so on and so forth. When I got to get a crew I thought, I remember thinking to myself, my god I’m going to be responsible for these fellows’ lives for the next what, however long we live.
BJ: And how old were you then?
EB: I was then just turning nineteen
BJ: Right.
EB: And I’d never accepted any responsibility for anything.
BJ: Yes.
EB: And it was when. I can still remember the first time I sat in a Lancaster ready to go I thought this is it, this is where the whole thing starts from now.
BJ: Big responsibility?
EB: Yes. There by, their lives are in my hands.
BJ: Yes. Can I ask you —
EB: Banff in Scotland. There were two Banff I was at actually one was Banff, Calgary, Alberto which was up in the Rockies and the other Banff was in Scotland which was the Northern most part of —
BJ: Was probably just as cold [laughs]
EB: Lands End, Lands End to John O’Groats. But anyway, we were at Banff in Scotland and we were doing a night flying exercise at the end of my training there. We did start to do a cross countries we came back in with I think two, two crew, a navigator and myself. I can’t remember if it was more. Anyway, we came in and we put the thing down a perfect three pointer on the runway but the Oxford had a, sort of a nose, it’s three pointer was the wheel in the front and two wheels under the wing so it was a tricycle sort of under carriage. We landed and the front tyre blew out and with the result that it ended up on its nose and I can remember sitting, the Oxford has a plexiglass nose you can look through it from the pilot seat. You look between your legs and down through the instrument panel you see the runway and I can remember flying and hearing next to you and I’m on the runway and I can see sparks and I thought what a pretty sight.
BJ: [laughs]
EB: Here’s, here’s two wheels and I’m sliding along on the thing on the runway until it finally came to a halt. Fortunately, it didn’t go off to one side and stick it’s nose in and turn ourselves upside down but we’re still strapped in and I thought now, what do I do now. How the hell do I get out of this jolly thing? First time I’d had a really good prang in an aircraft and I thought perhaps I better get out of this quick smart as there’s bloody petrol and all that which I did. And later on, I got castigated from my mates who were sent flying around and around and around in circles until they got Barton off the end of the bloody runway to make room. Cause there was only one runway [laughs]. So that was that. Now then we went to Stirlings and throughout [phone ringing] now you know you are going to ops and how good a pilot I am I’m still a pilot and flying and [long pause]. The Stirling was a very difficult thing to taxi and take off. It had breaks and a, and the, the steering wheel had clamps which is how you steered it. Taxi wise it was absolutely terrible. Very difficult but once you got it up in the air it was, it was – no we were talking about the Stirling actually and its way of taxiing but once you got it up in the air it was a beautiful aircraft
BJ: Yep.
EB: But we didn’t do too much, too many hours in the Wellington but that was my first four engine aircraft and I can see in my log book that we only did about a month in training of a four engine then we went straight onto Lancs because they needed pilots very quick smart.
BJ: Yes.
EB: So, we didn’t get too much training as far as going from twin engines to four engines. The, the Stirling had huge [unclear] legs and you could drop, drop it in from a great height so it didn’t matter very much.
BJ: Yes.
EB: But going from twins to four engines wasn’t to my mind, wasn’t as difficult as I thought it might be. You had to have a flight engineer. Be aware that the Aussie RAF and I think most of the RAF we didn’t have second pilots. We had a pilot and we had a flight engineer. The engineer was responsible for checking your mechanics of, of the thing, how much fuel you got and motors were ticking over alright, etcetera, etcetera. So [pause] going from twins to four engines taxiing wise you, you used your two outer motors because that was, so to enable it to be manoeuvred easily rather than the inner motors. So, you’d land with four engines, get off the runway with four engines and shut, not shut down but idle the inners and use the outers for steering and so forth. Very quick. The important thing was you had to manoeuvre and get yourself off the runway very quickly because you had mates coming in behind you. Some needed urgently to land, pretty much I, I was never in a bind or a problem in landing. Two or three times I had to land on three motors, couple of times I ended up with two motors which is something that is very, very difficult to do. Talking about three motors, the [laughs] I’m trying to remember which motor was the worst. If you lost an inner it wasn’t too bad, losing an outer was bad enough. I’m sorry but I forget which ones had the hydraulics and which ones didn’t. The inners had hydraulics to them I think, some of the outers had [pause] dynamos charging, charging your batteries, charging things. The, an occasion I can recall we lost one motor we were hit by flak on one motor and it burst into flames and I said to the flight engineer, a fellow of the, the port outer and it’s on fire, further put it outer and pull the tip. Which is pull the fire extinguisher. In his panic, and we were over, we were under, under attack from various sources, in his panic he fell at the port inner but when I told him to pull the tip on the port inner, the fire extinguisher, he pulled the wrong one, so the fire extinguisher went off on the starboard inner, so with the result that we ended up with two motors instead of three. Fortunately, they were on either side.
BJ: Yes.
EB: Rather than two on one side. We were able to fly, just to maintain height and things with two motors. From memory I think we were pretty close to the target, but I can’t remember where the target was but if I look in here I can find where the target was, but we were able to get to the target on two motors and get rid of the bombs and then gradually come home. I don’t whether we’ve touched on one of the raids I did on Skagerrak in Norway. Did we do that? Did we touch on that one?
BJ: No.
EB: When you, when you done your briefing and all the rest of it and all the crews are all clued up and ready to go. We probably, mostly we did night time trips and usually we’d do our briefing early, sometimes it was put back a little bit so we’d end up at the pub and we’d have quite a, I reckon I used to fly better when I had a few beers in, pretty damned happy than when I didn’t. Traditional thing is as you know is to piddle on the tyre, as you kick the tyre and piddle on that’s for luck. Everybody climbs on board so by enlarge you, you [unclear] on board personally and a fair amount of liquid inside [laughs]. A pilot cannot, he has a parachute which he sits on, he can’t easily leave the stick but operations, the reason is the pilot, you kept, you did, the Lancaster does have an automatic pilot but the automatic pilot is hydraulic so any pilot worth his salt never ever left it or engaged the automatic pilot because it was a) too hard to get rid of the jolly thing if you wanted to cancel it out and b) by the time you sorted it out if somebody was attacking you and had a good go at you before so you always flew with your hands on and you [phone ringing] always sat. So, on one occasion I can recall having a need to do a whizzer in fifteen, sixteen thousand feet and icy conditions and I had an ability that I adopted through my pilots window just to slide it back a bit. They were sliding windows, we call them windows and I used to be able to in those days being much younger, quite easy to get the proverbial, necessary things organised and I’d let the whiz go just, must beside the venturi and out, the liquid would be sucked out quite easily.
BJ: [laughs]
EB: So, we’re flying along in icy conditions in a very nice clear lovely night and the mid upper gunner came up and he said skipper, skipper please get down quickly, get down we’re icing up, we’re icing up and I looked out my, my cockpit, my window and I said what’s wrong Jordy you’re crazy man, there’s nothing wrong it’s beautiful up here. Oh, my cockpit’s all covered in ice, I’m iced, I’m iced up I said oh my god I’m sorry mate I just let, let go. He said I’m all covered in, in brown ice, oh my god. Oh, I said I had to let it go. Oh, you dirty rotten nasty skipper, you’ve [laughs]. That was that sort of a situation
BJ: [laughing]
EB: As I say a couple of times we lost loaders we got shot at a few times. The three main things. The three main areas of, shall we say, activity that you were very aware of. One was searchlights. We were routed to go zig zag routes towards the target never in a straight line for the reason that a) the, the in the wisdom the bosses had planned out that the track to be taken to dodge searchlight, known searchlight stations, known pockets of searchlights, anti-aircraft guns, fighter aerodromes and so forth. So, you had to zig zag right a sort of a zig zag situation and, and [pause]. So, yes, the three main things were searchlights. Now there’s two types of searchlights, the blue searchlight and the normal white searchlight. You got caught with a searchlight it’d shine in your eyes and most uncomfortable you couldn’t see instruments and so on and so forth so, you’d immediately do a zig zag or take evasive action to get out of the, the white of the searchlight. Now if you were caught with a blue searchlight however, that’s the master searchlight and if you got caught with that, which is, they are all electronically controlled and he fixed onto you it was very, very difficult to get away from him but more importantly he controlled probably eight to ten other searchlights so the key searchlight the blue one. So, if ever you got caught in a blue one you could start counting where, where you might be or where you might not be. To get a searchlight whether blue or white, evasive action could be called for importantly and a Lanc had a, a very nice aircraft to fly in in all respects and it was easy to, to do evasive action. I’m trying to think of evasive action you used to just about every facet of your, your hands, your ability, your feet, your rudders, ailerons, throttles, pull the throttles up, stall the aircraft pretty near. Do everything but stick it on its back. Some people got stuck on their back and that was very difficult with a loaded aircraft. I can recall a guy in one, one of our aircraft, XYG, it had, had a bad back door a crook lock on the back door and they were trying to fix it but eventually they did but on this occasion they didn’t and so I said to wireless op, I said Johnny, go down and shut the jolly back door and so he went down to shut the back door and as soon as he did we got caught in the searchlight and I remember taking evasive action [clears throat] and half way through that there was an almighty scream on the intercom and Johnny said what the bloody hell are you doing I’m, I;, shutting the back door and next minute half I’m out of the aircraft and the next minute I’m back in again oh Jesus Johnny I’m sorry mate I forgot you were down there, so that felt, was not accepted very well either but anyway. So, the searchlights are the other thing, fighters were always around. I had pretty good gunners we used to do a lot of training, air gunnery training though at the attack from above or behind and often you, you knew when you were going to get attacked, my other mates would let you know they would see you in a, in a stream. You would sometimes still see your mates from one side or the other so we kept, kept lookout for each other but the worst fighter, and I’ll talk about a raid we did which was [pause] in a moment, but the worst fighters was called the Schlarge[?] fighter which is a Messerschmitt, or [unclear] or one of those twin engine things with a, a vertical firing cannon, gun. So, he would fly under your belly and pull his trigger firing straight upwards and it was very, very difficult to get out of those they were responsible for many, many losses of our mates. If you didn’t know you had a fighter under your belly you were pretty near had it.
BJ: You were relying on your crew to spot it weren’t you?
EB: Yes, and more importantly of course the, they gunners were the ones and the bomb aimer when the bomb aimer is also the front gunner and he was also a gunner to look down.
BJ: Yes.
EB: So, he was pretty near the only one that would, could spot a fighter under your belly. Of course, the mid upper obviously can’t and the rear gunner can’t they were looking out for aircraft attacking from either side anyway.
BJ: Yeah, yeah.
EB: Shall we, shall we talk about, one raid which was, was quite important and I was chosen, myself and two other aircraft to lay mines in the Skagerrak in Norway in the Norwegian Fjords. A special very heavy parachute mines to trap the, the two German battleships, the Scharnhorst, the Gneisenau and also the Emden later but the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were in dock, they were in, they were our target. The idea was they’d send three of us to Skagerrak in Norway which are in the Fjords where these battleships, German battleships would hide and rest at night. They would rest rather. They would come out of the Fjords into the Atlantic and pounce on the, on the convoys coming from the States full of aircraft and, and supplies and these two battleships would wreak havoc very badly to the, the [pause] supply ships, shall we call them. So, we were sent to Lossiemouth north of Scotland. My aircraft was a newly issued, I’d bent the other one [laughs] and they gave us another new one and she had beautiful motors. She had a, a, the Lancaster Merlins Mark 12, Mark 14’s.
BJ: Wow.
EB: Packard Merlins not Rolls Royce. No sorry Rolls Royce Merlins the previous one was a Packard the American Merlin but the Rolls Royce Merlin was a much better Lancaster. There was three of us we were recruited to go across to the Skagerrak and lay two mines. We had very good navigators who were trained to be Pathfinder navigators. We did some raids but not many we weren’t proper Pathfinders we were attached to go on some of their raids. So, our navigator was pretty good, and we were to fly at two hundred feet from Lossiemouth across the North Sea to the Skagerrak, lay our mines exactly latitude and longitude where they said they were because it had to be exactly, because the British Navy had to know exactly where the mines were.
BJ: Um.
EB: So here we go, night time, they fitted us with lay lights, twin lights similar to the technology of the Dambusters. Two hundred feet, black, pitch black, no lights no nothing starring down your, your front nose because your altimeter was no good to fly at two hundred, two hundred and fifty feet across. Four and a half hours, I think it was about an eight-hour trip there and back, about four hours across the North Sea. It wasn’t too bad going across but later on, I’ll come back to it, it started to get a bit blowy and bumpy but we got to the coast, up, up to three thousand, four thousand feet over the, the mountains, the ridge, down to about three thousand, lay your mines exactly where they were and get rid of them and climb up, out and, and off ideally straight back home at full pelt. But we did lay the mines and all the rest of it, however what we didn’t know was that it was near a German fighter base just over the other hill. We got hit with one fighter, it got one of our motors just as we got to the top of the ridge so it wasn’t too bad we were able to come down on the three. The Lanc can climb on three.
BJ: Right.
EB: Which we, we basically did pretty much but anyway we got down onto the thing so I thought oh well, ok. Now I was planning on going back home at about five or six thousand feet, you know just literally a quick thing back home. But I thought now hang on this thing is a Schräge fighter which is the first time I’d been attacked by a Schräge fighter well if that bugger is going to have another go at us we better get down on the Sea again so it can’t get under our belly, so we did. Well that was alright until we got about half way across, not far, not too far away from home, and the other motor packed up because the, the wind had blown up and the water had, had we’d got hit by the spurt or something and had buggered up the carburettor. So, we ended up with two motors. And so, I said to the fellas, well we’ve only got two I don’t know whether, we can, we got, you got two or three chances what should we do. We could throw out, we could ditch it but not too good at ditching a Lanc or an aircraft. We could be successful or we could not. We could, it’s too low to jump out with a parachute, so that’s, that’s out. The only other thing is I’ll try to make and go for base should you join me I’ll take the aircraft back, yes, they say, they all said yes, yes, yes. So, we threw, throw everything out and anyway cut a long story we did and we got back home quite safely on two motors. We landed at the big drome, I think it was called Manston or something, where you can just put any sort of an aircraft down and it’ll, it’ll got plenty of room to land. So that was showing you what fighters can do and what a good Lanc can do.
BJ: Yeah. OK Eric, one last question. How do you think Bomber Command and the sacrifices of the men who served in it should be remembered by future generations?
EB: Um, Barry that’s a very good, a very good question and I can just answer that in a, in a couple of little fashions. One we know today and some of the, our, our people, the Vets, who are, we’re still alive we feel very, very bad, very disappointed that the British Government that the British didn’t remember Bomber Command. You’ll know from your history that there was never a Bomber Command medal struck whereas there were for other services. After the war because of our, our ability to wage a very good war, we wiped out a lot of targets and that was necessary. I didn’t touch too much on the Dresden raid, but we did the Dresden raid and I saw the, that devastation so there is, hasn’t been a proper memorial until now. I think it is very, very important that a, a, a solid memorial is, is struck and, and erected, shall we say, a, a physical thing that children, grandchildren, great grandchildren and generations can look to and say well what, I, I understand my grandfather, my heritage goes to a man who served in Bomber Command and he achieved certain things and he and he’s, a lot of his mates gave their lives for safety of a country that we now have. If it wasn’t for the sacrifices that, that our people made we wouldn’t have the country we’ve got. Now we talk about Bomber Command. Bomber Command waged a war which was very successful. We carried out our duties, our duties very successfully. Its been written up in history how effective it was. I’m not forgetting of course there are a lot of fellows in the Navy and lots of fellows in the Army who did likewise sacrifices, but for the fifty-five thousand people in Bomber Command that didn’t come back, their contribution far exceeds the blood, sweat and tears, shall we say. So, they gave to wage the war and so I, I think it’s terribly important that we have a physical memorial and that once a year is recognised and there’s a dedication carried out in, in any, every little part of Australia in particular and other countries that I think the Australians we do it very well compared to a lot of other countries. So, I think that’s terribly important too.
BJ: Well done.
EB: Is that sufficient?
BJ: Yeah, no that’s good.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ABartonER170121
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Eric Reginald Barton
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
00:38:52 audio recording
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Barry Jackson
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-01-21
Description
An account of the resource
Flying Officer Eric Barton flew operations with Bomber Command. Eric Barton talks about the various aircraft he flew in, and recalls an incident at Banff in Scotland where following a night exercise his tyre blew out on landing. He gives an account of an operation to at Skagerrak in Norway where they were sent from Lossiemouth to drop mines on the German battleships; Scharnhorst and Gneisenau and the return journey where they ended up flying back on two engines. He talks about the losses of Bomber Command and how he feels they should be remembered.
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
Canada
Great Britain
Norway
Atlantic Ocean--Skagerrak
Scotland--Moray
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Tracy Johnson
aircrew
Anson
bombing
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
crewing up
Gneisenau
Lancaster
memorial
mine laying
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
Pathfinders
perception of bombing war
pilot
RAF Lossiemouth
sanitation
Scharnhorst
Stirling
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/211/3350/ABirchM150811.1.mp3
822228d299830315ec5ea07056aa17ac
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
Birch, Marjorie
Marjorie Birch
M Birch
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with Marjorie Birch (b.1924).
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-08-11
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
Birch, M
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
TJ: This is Tina James I am here in *** Waddington with retired GP Dr Marjorie Birch and she is going to tell us a bit about here experiences in wartime London. So Marjorie can you tell what year you were born.
MB: Yes I was born on the outskirts of London on, in the 29th of June 1924 so I am ninety one now so I can’t complain I haven’t had a good run.
TJ: So your father was he involved in the First World War?
MB: Yes he was in the Royal Flying Corps and a lot of my uncles were in the Army and one or two of them were injured but very lucky no one was killed so you know a fairly big family (interrupted)
TJ: Did they used to talk about their experiences?
MB: No.
TJ: Not even your Father.
MB: No not much at all no. I don’t know why we didn’t question them at the time, I mean looking back I ask why didn’t I question them, you know. No I think in the First World War a lot of them were you know, pretty well upset about everything they say and were not very keen to talk about it were they. No they didn’t, no.
TJ: So where did you grow up?
MB: Well we moved when I was quite small to a place called Bexley Heath which is in Kent and they built eh a lot of new houses. You know we had a spell in Lincoln where a lot of the villages you know building,a lot of building going on. It was a semi detached house with a garage sounds although it was small but the rooms were quite large and we had quite a big garden. Mind you the soil was awful, my Father had a lot of trouble to grow anything much at all. Em anyway we moved there in the thirties I think I would be about, oh I had a Sister who was em, eh how many, emmm, eighteen months younger than me, I have to think. We were pretty close but that’s all we were.
TJ: Just the two of you.
MB: Yes, and my Father was in the Civil Service and he worked in County Hall on Westminster Bridge. Its still there in various departments and ended up by being in charge of the whole of the Fire Force during the War. So when the Fire Fighters were having a terrible time, he was in charge. Anyway em, so we moved to Bexley Heath and we went to em, first of all eh Eirwith Grammar School which I don’t think I don’t know if it is still there,it is probably a Comprehensive now. Because our rent paying area, that was where you went to Grammar School and so em, but it was a mixed Grammar School and after a couple of years they decided to make it just boys only. We were transferred to Dartford Grammar School which was a girls Grammar School. The boys, there was a boys Grammar School incidentally [unreadable] just in passing, not at the time I was there. So then we were there after the war started and because we were in an area where they bombed, the bombers used to come up the, up the Thames to bomb London and we could see them and hear them. Em because they thought we were in a dangerous area we were offered evacuation and em so my Father said yes you can go but you must have a billet together, he wouldn’t have us separated. So I remember, it would have been in 1940, in the summer I think it was June, going to Waterloo Station and I have never seen anything like it, there was just children. The whole station was full of children, varying from little ones with their Mothers eh to, I was then eh sixteen, yes I was doing my [unreadable], The little ones had labels round their necks as you probably know, and trains coming in and filling up and going out. We didn’t know where we were going, we had two teachers with us.There would be about thirty of us to start with and a couple of teachers, we had to take something to eat and drink. Anyway we’d pack on the train and nobody knew where we were going, sounds absolutely amazing, but somewhere to the south. We ended up in Exeter which is a very nice town of course. When you go all day in the train, it was very slow, it took us all day, I think we left about seven O’clock in the morning. Everybody was absolutely fed up, you know, tired and hot, it was a hot day. So the next thing you, you know, we were met by a couple of people who were in charge of finding billets and they got the numbers that were coming, presumably. And we were herded onto the platform and we had to go round with these people and the teachers, going round Exeter dropping off children. You were more or less lined up and they came, and the people who said they would have evacuees came along and chose. Needless to say my Sister and I were the last because most of them expected young children, I think they were a bit taken aback because we were as old as we were. Anyway eh finally we ended up with a Welsh couple in their middle age I would say, who hadn’t any children. They were very nice eh and in Countess Weir which is outside Exeter a very pleasant place to live. Well as I say they were very nice, we, we have always been shown to do a bit of cooking and stuff so we helped out when we could. She had her own ways, they were Welsh and she was lovely really. Anyway em there was er there was going to be, it would be at the cricket ground in Exeter, the Ashes you know were going on at that time and there was a match being played in Exeter. So the husband said to us “do you like cricket?” I was very keen on cricket, we didn’t play it as school, but, you know I liked, I liked it because some friends always took me to the cricket when we lived in Bexley Heath. Anyway so off we go and we walked down the new bi pass to wherever the ground was and at that time there was a large convoy of Americans coming. I thought I don’t know about the dates but they were definitely Americans. And em they were non stop, there were lorries there were cars, jeeps, everything. And you know what they are like, they were all whistling and so what, I was sixteen. This upset the host of house because he weren’t used to having any children or anybody like that. So they approached the teacher and said we were much older that expected and he was embarrassed and so we had to be found another, another billet. This time it was with eh, eh a young woman who was married to a chap in the Army, he must have been very young, she had a two year old child so she was very nice as well, so we used to help her as much as possible. But the child I am afraid, well you can understand it because the husband had been posted missing and she didn’t know if he was dead or alive or whatever. And she slept in her mother’s bed and I say she was about two and half and her Mother was still breast feeding her plus an ordinary diet, in other words the child did as she liked. Well we had a nice bedroom during the day, we had our books and stuff in the bedroom, during the day she allow, she couldn’t lock the door. She was in our bedroom pulling all the books, some of text books were school books tearing out some of the pages, I mean. We would say “well look we will try and put everything out of her reach.” But it was absolutely hopeless, but were there, I think we were there a year or two, a year and a half perhaps, oh now we couldn’t have been because, no I meant months, we were there about three or four months and in the end it got so difficult that we said to the Teacher, we said to her you know “we would like to help you,” because she needed the money, “but we really, we can’t do this these books aren’t ours” Anyway what ever we did it didn’t work. So we were found another billet and this was a couple who lived in Countess Weir in an old monastery, it was absolutely fantastic, divided into two houses and it was right by the river and eh, the husband worked for the gas board and the wife was quite a bit older than him and her Sister and she owned a local paper, you know eh, I don’t know what it was called I can’t remember. Anyway she was a fantastic cook. So we were there for the rest of the time we were evacuated and eh and she eh taught me quite a lot of cooking things which was very nice. And eh, we came back in 1941 because we went down in 1940, came back in ’41. By which time my eh, we’d moved from Bexley Heath down to a small village outside Maidstone. Well it was a small holding, very nice, lots of fruit growing. We had ducks and geese and everything down there, it was really lovely. My Father obviously had to travel up to London everyday. Anyway we moved there so we had to go to Maidstone Grammar School, so I was going there for my higher schools as it was called, in other words A levels because of course I was em applying for University. So we had, so when I got my A levels I applied to all the Medical, I wanted to do Medicine at Top Woman. In those days there were three which were all Women and didn’t take any men. There were Guys, not Guys, Kings and UCH which took half a dozen, so I applied for them all.
MB: What did you parents think about you going into Medicine?
TJ: Well my Father, who was quite strict, he said “girls want to do Careers that are paid the same as men not less.” So he said “you’ve got a choice of Medicine, Dentistry, Accountancy and Law so you had better choose.” In those days it was strange, you know we used to accept things like that. Anyway I had always been quite interested in medicine and had my appendix out when I was thirteen at eh, eh oh dear, one of the London hospitals, it will come to me. I was very impressed and I liked, I liked this and I thought yes I like this, this is good. Eh and my Sister was absolutely bonkers about animals so she wanted to be a Vet. So we both had to take our A levels obviously to get into University. When I was talking about applying for Medical School I heard afterwards that UCH and Kings who were mostly men and half a dozen women. Oh with our application form, when we submitted our application form we had to send in a photograph. Apparently the Consultants looked at the photograph, chose the prettiest girls and that was that.[laugh] Anyway that was the story that went round and naturally I didn’t get in, but I got a place at Royal Free. In my days it was known as the Royal Free for freaks and frumps. I can tell you it wasn’t freaks and frumps in my year there were some goers I can tell you. I mean in London apart from all the other things there was a very ongoing social life, because they had all the Foreign Embassies with all the Troops around and we used to get invitations to all sorts of things, it was quite interesting. Anyway eh so there we were, I went up to the Royal Free, must get this right. I went up in nineteen forty, forty one, forty two, I went up in forty three. I went up in forty three that’s right and em, so em and when you went you had a list of University Properties in London where you could get digs, you know. So I got a room, you only got a room, I mean there was nothing specific like the modern Universities, it was a case of going in where you could get anywhere. Anyway I was in a house with three stories in a place called Argyle Square in a place opposite Kings Cross Station. Well one side of the Square was in the Square, one side was the local red light area, [laugh] they got several houses there. I remember looking out of the window one day, oh I was right on the top floor and I, and I am, the other girl [unreadable] was in the other room and we became great friends. We were friends all the time we were at University. Anyway I remember looking out of the window one day and I could see the prostitutes talking to the American soldiers. I mean you really saw life in the raw. Anyway that was just in passing so, we were in these digs, it was run by a very old New Zealand lady who apparently had been in the New Zealand Hockey Team and she had come over on a tour, this was before the war and eh, met her husband who was in the Navy and em,em he was killed and she was old so it must have been em just before the war and em, she was in charge of the rooms.She had a room right down on the bottom, there were two rooms on the top and three, then another three and another three and the old ladies room right at the bottom. For all these people we had one toilet, we had a bath which was actually in the conservatory at the back of the house, so from my window I could see in [laugh] you see. The whole setup was frightful really but we did have a bathroom em in the premises in, at the Medical School. Now I must explain, the Medical School attached to the Royal Free was called the London School of Medicine and it was in Hunter Street.That is where you had to do your second MB, which is the second lot of exams you took before you before you went into the, into the Hospital and into the Wards. Its quite different now we did Anatomy and Physiology, we had a really thorough grounding. And by what I, I have spoken to the Medical Students at the modern day, you know at the moment and frankly I am not impressed with their training at all, its entirely different. I don’t think they are getting the grounding we had. Anyway, so this took two years, you really had to get down to it, you didn’t have time to have a social life at all, it was really hard slog. Anyway we knew we were there to work, anyway this particular friend of mine lived at Orpington and she used to go home at the weekends, you know it was nice of here to get out of the digs really. I know every Saturday morning eh I used to go down to the local, they called it eh the British restaurant, they had these British restaurants in London where for a shilling, I think it was a shilling, you could have a jolly good lunch. You know rationing was so tight and we had to, you did get a lunch and at the Medical School and em, we had no facility, we just had a gas ring you know to heat up water, so know things were pretty primitive. Anyway I used to go down and get a good lunch at the British restaurant. Anyway one day I was sitting there and a piece of pudding came flying through the air and hit me in the face and there was this old boy saying “bloody rubbish, bloody rubbish,” he was saying because it was the pudding and the food was pretty awful. He was so upset with his pudding he just threw it across the room, unfortunately I was sitting in the wrong place. Anyway that happened.
Anyway you want to hear about the bombing. As soon as we got there the worst of the Blitz was more or less over because we were there in, what did I say, forty three we went didn’t we, yes. Well they had a Blitz, the Blitz was the year before really. But they were still bombing and everytime the siren went, wherever we were, if we were in our digs this old lady used to shout up the stairs “Come down” she was, she wanted us all to come down and go down in the cellar, there wasn’t anywhere else.We got so fed up every night going up and down, when it, the siren went, we just didn’t bother, ‘cause really. I mean we could hear the bombs dropping, we were very lucky, we didn’t actually all that near. But in the morning when we walked round to the Medical School, you could see houses that had been bombed. I mean this is, and the strange thing is people were going to work in their normal way with their cases and so on. After that nights bombing, stepping over the rubbish and just going to work as you would on any other day. People would say why? Well that was all they knew, they got their jobs and they just wanted life to be as normal as possible. And if you happened to have a hit and you were in the house, well hard luck. A lot of people used to go down to the Tube Station which was just down the road from our digs, I, I only went there once, well I didn’t, I went in the Tube early and all these people were lying on the platform rolled in blankets and so forth, it was absolutely crowd. I mean the underground trains were running as normal and all these people on the platforms, it was very difficult to get on the train without treading on someone. Anyway they went in every night and stayed in there, it was so stuffy, so smelly you can understand what I mean. Anyway that’s what used to happen, other people had their shelters, but in London you see there were only yards at the back of the houses. We didn’t have any eh kind of shelter at all. I mean in the suburbs and that they had their Anderson Shelter and their all, you know, but we just didn’t have anything like that. At the Medical School there was nothing there, if there was a raid on we just used to carry on, I mean it sounds ridiculous but we did and we were very lucky. Until, I am going to think if I, there was one little incident em, after one raid eh, some young girl was found in the street, you know, dead. They collected people after a bombing raid to see if people were there, needed attention, if they were dead. So they were taken to the mortuary and they were all free, those that were near and this young girl attracted the attention of the man in the mortuary who’s job it was to take the clothes of all you know eh the dead bodies. He thought, why has she got her knickers on inside out because girls don’t put their knickers on inside out. They were very careful when the PM came and they found that someone had been trying to abort her, you see, she was pregnant and they found that she was damaged. That is obviously why she had died, not from the bombing. Anyway the Police had been trying to find a professional abortionist who they knew had been working in the area. Because they had the address of where this young girl’s body was found,they actually caught this chap because obviously she had died when when he tried to abort her and put her, put her out on the street after the bombing raid. And they caught him, that was just a passing, you know.
TJ: That was very interesting.
MB: Yes these sort of things happened.
TJ: I bet he never thought that he would get caught, if her knickers had been on the right way out.
MB: They did PMs on, but after a bombing raid, the standards I don’t know or comment on that. They didn’t expect to have a gynaecological examination. That attracted a do, so little things like that. Anyway I was just trying to think if there was anymore em. But what I was saying, the ordinary bombs were dropping and what I was going to, I have forgotten to say when my Sister and I were in Exeter, my own house, before we moved to Bexley Heath had an incendiary bomb on it, and my Mother picked it up, well she tried to wrap it in a rug, it was in one of the bedrooms and throw it out the window. She burned her hands and arms really quite badly. That was a brave but rather a silly thing to do I suppose. But some of those incendiary bombs, I don’t know what dates it was, if you approached them, I mean they were burning, they would blow up. She was lucky it wasn’t one of those. Anyway that was in passing, you know well. Oh I forgot to say, I’m sorry about this, while we were er, in Exeter well er one night there was a tremendous bang and er, a landmine had dropped, they had tried to hit the barracks in Exeter. It had landed very near to where we were in digs, that was what, that was when they young[unreadable] what it was. So that was very unpleasant and also one night we saw this glow in the distance and that was the night that they bombed Plymouth. Plymouth had a terrible night and day when they were bombed. We did see the light from Plymouth and that’s I don’t know how many miles from Exeter but anyway we could see it. We knew something was going on, but that was in passing. So where have we got to.
TJ: You were doing your anatomy and physiology.
MB: That’s right, so there we were in the middle of a … can’t say it, anatomy and physiology, we were having a physiology lecture. We had a lecturer in physiology, nobody liked her she really was a rather unpleasant woman and she used to swear at us. I mean in those days it was terrible having someone swear at you. We were young ladies we weren’t used to, well you know what I mean. Then see everybody disliked her. Anyway in the middle of her lecture there was a God Almighty bang. A rocket had landed on a Presbyterian, I think it was Presbyterian church right next to the Medical School. Our anatomy department was demolished, we were very lucky there was only one student in there, of course she was killed, the rest of the College we were ok. Well the ceiling didn’t come down but the rest of the ceiling on us, well we were standing there and my first thought was, well my Father at County Hall probably had heard that it had got pretty near the Medical School, or on the Medical School because of the Anatomy part. So I thought I had better go, dash down to Kings Cross to get a taxi to let him know. In those days we didn’t have phones or anything like that, so I had better go and see him to tell I were alright. Anyway as I went up to the [pause] oh, well to get my coat, into the cloakroom there was this unpleasant Lecturer, quite a bit of plaster had come down on her head and she was bleeding quite profusely from the scalp. She said to me “oh Miss Hurst, Miss Hurst” oh I had forgotten to say eh, my pre marriage name, my name was Hurst, so when I married I became Birch. We haven’t got there yet, sorry. Anyway “oh help me help me” so I thought poor old girl. So ran the tap in basin and put her head down to clear all the blood to see what was going on, she got a lot of little cuts and abrasion but nothing serious, so I rather enjoyed putting her head under the tap and clearing it all of. Anyway then I found a towel somewhere and wrapped it in the towel. I said “I must go you must see, you know check if everything is all right” presumably she did. Anyway I did go down to Kings Cross and got a taxi. It sounds ridiculous, I mean life went on whatever and you know people can’t understand that, but it did. Anyway I get a taxi to County Hall and go into my em Fathers Office and his Secretary was sitting and she said “Oh my dear whatever is the matter?” I hadn’t looked in the mirror but I had got plaster in my hair, I had got a bigger, one or two, nothing much, I was absolutely filthy. [laugh] Oh I said we had a V2 on the Anatomy Department. “Oh my dear” she said, I said “I’d better see my Father” “Oh yes go in.” Do you know what my Father said “you are in a mess why did you come like that?” I thought so much for caring what had happened to his Daughter, obviously he hadn’t heard. Anyway his Secretary was lovely, she took me into the cloakroom and cleaned me up as well as she could do, So that was that, so anyway,so we, we lost our Anatomy Department so we couldn’t function anymore so we were sent down to Guys. Now Guys was male only you see, no women and what a fuss. We thoroughly enjoyed it and so did the male students but the Consultants were saying, one old boy I can’t remember if he was a Surgeon or what he was “we have never had women walking out ward bababababa.” We always thought it was a great joke. Anyway you never had, these ah, anyway this Lecturer who we all disliked, because we all came down to Guys. She stayed at Guys for the rest of her, and apparently she mellowed, everybody said she was a different women when she went down, stayed in Guys and did,lectured at Guys.
TJ: Perhaps it was the plaster falling on her head.
MB: Eh It was the male surroundings, that was what I heard in passing, so there we were at Guys and eh we were very, very lucky when you think about it. If they hadn’t stopped the Rockets London would have really suffered, I mean they were dreadful, there was no warning it was just this terrible bang. Oh I forgot to tell you I did an edited course in Anatomy because I hated it and I wasn’t doing very well. So in the first two years we had a holiday, we had a holiday in the summer, before we started Clinical because when you started Clinical you did three months of ENT, three months of skins, three months of every department of Medicine you did three months because that’s when you were learning about it. Anyway well, before I started that, where did I get to. I know, I was doing this extra course in Anatomy because I had not been doing very well in our Anatomy exams. So what I did, we were living in a, I used to catch the train from where we lived to London Bridge and then catch the bus to the Royal Free [possibly means Guys] in Gravesend Road. One day we were sitting there and we were coming into London Bridge, there were two other people in the Compartment on the other side. I looked out of the window and there was this Buzz Bomb you know the V1 travelling exactly parallel to the train. I knew as we approached London Bridge the track curved round. I thought my God that is going to cross straight over the line, you know as we come into London Bridge. And I never knew, I knew what people knew by paralysed with fright I couldn’t speak. I was trying to tell the people “look, look” and you couldn’t hear it because of the noise of the train, the trains, the trains made a lot of noise. It was about as far, I am not very good a measuring, as my fence.” can you see my fence?” about as close as that.
TJ: That’s about twenty feet.
MB: That’s where it was, it was very close and I thought “Oh my God” and I just sat there paralysed with fright and these two completely unaware. Suddenly if I had, had a camera, we didn’t have anything like that in the War. It turned on its side, went down, blew up a couple of houses. The train swayed really badly and I thought it was going to come off the rails, swayed from side to side because of the blast and stayed on the rails and carried on. And when I got to London Bridge I couldn’t get out. My knees were going clickty, clicky, I couldn’t tell the other people what they’d missed,they’d no idea, completely oblivious of all this drama. So when I got to Guys a friend said “God you look awful are you all right?” Well I said “Oh deary Oh me” If fait hadn’t have turned the damn thing there it could easily have done it on the line and blown us all to bits. Sorry about that I am a bit out of. So where have we got to, oh yes the V2 and going to Guys. Well it was ok down at Guys we had quite a good time and then eh. From there eh doing the Clinical it didn’t have enough things going on in the Hospital, we had Emergency Hospitals in those days. We had to go, my friend and I down to Letchworth, because we had to do three months ENT at an Emergency Hospital and three months skins and three months something else. So we went down there and we had digs in Letworth and em so we got away from the bombing. And eh that was ok and we were alright and we had nice digs with a local shopkeeper. So we were a alright and we always had plenty of butter and stuff like that and we were always short of food and we did alright. When we were there we eh, we used to get invites from the local RAF stations and eh we had an invitation, for the dances I mean. And I went to one dance, oh eh we went to one at the Emergency Hospital and the RAF Crew would come you see. Snobs we only sent invitations to the Officers Mess. Anyway em and that is how I met my Husband, he was one of the Aircrew, he was a Navigator in Bomber Command at that time and eh and that’s how I met him. And eh, so this would have been about nineteen forty five I would think. I must tell you, on D Day I happened to be in Kent at home for some reason and I saw the planes pulling all these gliders on their way to France. I have never seen such a sight in all my life and I thought to myself “these poor men, sitting there in those gliders, waiting for them to crash” They are supposed to land gently but you know what I mean, that is absolutely terrific. I mean how brave were they, I am not saying anybody else wasn’t but that was really [interrupted]
TJ: And there was a lot of them?
MB: There were a lot, the whole sky was absolutely full of them, so that, that was interesting, I, I never forget that, but I felt so, it really struck me then, I mean. Oh and the other thing, I forgot to tell you in the thirties, this is going back a bit. The Zeppelin the R101 was being built at I think it was Bovington or Cardington one of the places in, in Hertfordshire where they were experimenting with Zeppelins, this was in the thirties. This R101 was going over to France, so we had a, it came right over our house. What amazed me it travel it travelled really low, you could see the little, I think its called the basket and the people in it. And you know and it and you know it was going so slow and the old propeller was going like mad. I thought we if they are shooting at it, they couldn’t miss it. Anyway they weren’t , the War hadn’t started. Apparently that night, I don’t know how long after that it crashed in France and they were all killed. I don’t know how many people were in. I always remember that as a child, that would have been about nineteen thirty six, not quite sure. You know sorry I ought to put things in no I.
TJ: No it doesn’t matter, so lets go back to D Day did you get news on what was going on day to day?
MB: Well, it was very difficult ‘cause we were at, what forty four em, no I must have been at home so we didn’t. Well you got the news, the Radio news and they said they announced I can’t eh, I can’t tell you how it was, how it was put because obviously they have got recordings of what they em of what they were saying on the Radio. But they did tell you that em, didn’t give you any details I don’t suppose they knew very much at first.
TJ: But you did know there had been an Invasion.
MB: Yes, we knew it was on. I knew when I saw the gliders I knew you see. I think the Government were trying to keep it very secret when they were preparing all these thing. But I mean, I don’t know how many of these gliders landed successfully without them being killed. It was a sight as I say I shall never forget. Yes eh I am just trying to put things into chronicological order, it’s a bit difficult. Sorry where did we get to? Oh yes we were in digs in Letchworth and then we came back to the Free to continue our Clinical, because you had to do every part of Medicine and then you took your Finals and that was that. Then you took your house jobs and everything else. So came back to Guys and I was feeling really rotten, you couldn’t put your finger on it but anyway in the end they found I had a Pleural Effusion. Eh I hadn’t had a cough or anything like that. Anyway in those days anything in the lungs like that must be Tubercular because there was a lot of tuberculosis around at that time and after the War and eh, all my X rays were clear but no “you must take a year they did in these days, they’d take a specimen of the pleural effusion of you lung and inject it into a guinea pig because guinea pigs were very sensitive to the, to the tubical bug and I knew a lass in the path lab and she let, said to me “your guinea pigs very healthy” so I didn’t have TB but they wouldn’t accept they said “you must take a year off” so I went down and stayed in my Parents house at, near Maidstone for a year. So I lost all that, all the friends because you are together for about five years and you become like a club, you know. Everybody knows everybody else and its really nice because you feel part of a group, we stayed together. Well,of course when I had to take it out, I missed everybody especially my particular friend. ‘Cause they were a year ahead, so they qualified a year before me. I qualified in 1949 finally and, but I was married in 1946 which as a Student was very unusual in those days, because when my Husband came out of the, when he was demobbed we managed to get or find a flat in London in Balm. Well finding a flat in London after the war was like gold dust. Anyway we decided we would get married because we got a flat. In those days you didn’t live together, so we got married in a[laugh] in eh eh Wandsworth Registry Office. We queued up at quarter to nine in the morning and there were marriages going on twenty minutes each. Next one please, next one please, next one please[ laugh]. My Father had strongly disapproved of my Husband to be because he didn’t have enough money according to him. He didn’t come to the wedding my Mother came and my Aunt and Uncle from Orpington were wonderful, they really helped me because my Mother would have to come up by train because she was, were living near Maidstone then. Anyway she brought some of the things she managed to get from the country as far as food and everyone,well there was Bills particular friend my Husbands particular, my particular friend from Guys, my Aunt and Uncle, my Sister and my Mother. Oh no of course not I’d forgotten, my Husbands Parents she didn’t approve either so they weren’t going to come either. I was a sickly girl from the south because they lived in. Oh I must tell you this, when we were engaged, we were engaged in the year before, nineteen forty five my husband to be said eh “you must come up and meet my parents” they lived outside, in a village outside Halifax in Yorkshire. So I brought some photographs of my Family so they could see. So there was one of my Sister and myself, gave it to my Mother in Law to be and she said “is that your Sister” and I said “yes” “she’s very pretty isn’t she” I said “yes” then there was a long pause and she said “you are not a bit alike are you?” [laughs] So that was how we started a glorious friendship. Anyway because they were Yorkshire they were both overweight both eh his Father and Mother. But my Husband was tall, quite different, I mean there were some tall people apparently in his Fathers family but his parents were rather dumpy and overweight. Eh when they saw me they did not approve, I was a sickly girl from the south, I was rather slim, in fact I have always been a bit thin. So anyway that started and over the years, oh I won’t tell you about when we got married, you wouldn’t want to hear all that. ‘cause we went up and lived in Yorkshire. My Husband did some of his house jobs in Bradford Royal Infirmary and I did a Casualty job there and Philippa our first child was born. You don’t want to hear all that but eh I just remembered about my Mother in Law.
TJ: So was your Husband had he started his Medical Training before the War.
MB: No when he came out he said eh Aircrew could get grants for University ‘cause he didn’t really want to go back into the Civil Service he only done a year anyway. They offered him his old job which actually was in London but he said “no I am going to do Medicine” I said “are you sure?” because by then I was half, I was doing my Clinical by then. When we were married I was still doing my Clinical but we got this flat in London and he got eh what? I got a small grant from the Grammar School, they did have grants for going to University. So I got a small grant given the condition that my Father paid the same amount. I don’t think it was very much, anyway he agreed to it. So anyway that was how I got, how we got the money and then he said “I am going to apply for a grant, I tell you because I am going to do Medicine” I said “are you sure.” So he applied on the grounds of outstanding em oh eh outstanding bravery or something like that because he was given the DF eh DFC no DFM because when they were awarded they were still not eh em that hadn’t been given their Commission, that was it, when the appoint. But the Canadians, Australians and all the others who were in his Crew, they were all given Commissions straight away so they were all given the DFC. But because the English, there was Bill and the Rear Gunner who was English, because they were English they weren’t give their Commissions, till six months after, so they lost out on that, which is typical really isn’t it? Anyway er where did we get to?
TJ: He started to do Medicine.
MB: Yes so eh he applied for a grant, they said no he didn’t , he didn’t qualify. So my Father said to him because we were living with my Parents then em em, “well go and see your MP” So we went up to Halifax to see the MP there and he said I, “I’ll see what I can do, because you were decorated you are entitled to a grant” Anyway he did and he was given a grant, we were fine then. So we had a small grant, I think we paid eighteen shillings a week for our flat and we had an income of three pounds a week which we thought was really jolly good. So then he applied for Medical Schools and because he had been in the RAF he was accepted for all, for all the the you know London Hospitals. When he went for an interview to Guys there was a Surgeon there called Tony Bear who has written a book, very ancient now and he said to Bill “ do you play rugby boy” he said “yes I played rugby at school and I played rugby for the RAF” “right he said your in” [laughs] So I am not saying he got in at the others that was Guys because . he went to Barts, St Marys and all others and I tell you he was accepted for them all so he had a choice. He decided to go to Guys and eh he did play rugby all the time he was there. But I got fed up when Phillipa was born in nineteen fifty and eh I got fed up with him coming home every Saturday night in an Ambulance because he was always injuring himself. [laugh] I said “now you’ve got a family you have jolly well got to stop playing rugby, you know” He loved his rugby so that was it. Anyway he, he was in Bomber Command as a Navigator and he was offered a place in the Pathfinder Force as he always said “the em, the em Navigators in the Pathfinder Force were the crème de la crème” We were, I was offered this you know, offered this place in the Pathfinders so he took it. He was in Mosquitoes, he was in 109 Squadron which was one of the Pathfinder Force, eh Squadrons. Em and eh they had the very modern radar called Oboe which actually, what they did was lead the whole Bomber Group in, into the Target and drop flares at right on the Target. Because this Oboe absolutely pin pointed the absolute, say you were bombing a factory, and pin pointed that factory. The idea was to stop killing eh civilians if they could. So they would drop flares and the main Bomber Force would come behind them and drop the Bombs hopefully on the factory or whatever, whatever the Target was. So that was quite interesting and eh in the Mosquito they had a Pilot and a Navigator, not like the Lancaster which he was in which I think they had eight in the Crew. Anyway so eh I only saw the Mosquito once when they were celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Pathfinder Force and they, there was a little seat, two little seats and I said to my Husband, how did you fit in, because he is tall with long legs. He said, I had a small Pilot [laugh]. He was a New Zealander. Anyway so that the War, when he demobbed, he was still on Mosquitoes. Oh and he was on the raids that took part to, to Holland Manna it was called.
TJ: Operation Manna.
MB: That’s right he was on that quite a long time, well for the whole time it was going. That was his last presumably, Operational time. So that was, that was interesting yeah em yeah em I don’t, I do think of odd things I can tell you about, but its.
TJ: I am wondering what did your Sister do, did she become a vet?
MB: Oh well first of all she didn’t manage her A Levels, she was a practical girl. I mean she wasn’t so good on the academic so that disappointed her. So what she did, she got a place at em, eh, oh it’s a College off Nottingham University, Agricultural College, its got a name, anyway she got accepted for that and done a degree in Dairying instead. ’cause she hadn’t got the appropriate A levels to be a vet. She would have been a jolly good vet but there you are. She didn’t have the academic you know. Anyway that’s what she did and when she was at Nottingham University she met her Husband who got a degree in agriculture. And they went out to Tasmania eventually with their six children and I always remember when they emigrated. We were all in a hotel the night before they sailed, because in those days you went by ship. And someone said “I see you are going to Tasmania, are you going to populate it then?”[laugh] and actually she’s go she has Grand Children and Great Grandchildren out in Tasmania so you can say they put their share in populating Tasmania yeah. So that was right and she is still there and she rings me up and we are both staggering on She is only a year, eighteen months younger than me.
TJ: What is she now eighty nine.
MB: Yeah she had her ninetieth this Christmas and she wanted me to go out, she was having a jolly big party out there, so, I couldn’t face the flying there, its such a long way.
TJ: And what about your special friend from Guys, did you keep in touch with her?
MB: She married when she was on an anaesthetic course she met a Rhodesian who had been in the War and and married and she went out to Rhodesia. And then when all the trouble started they moved to South Africa. And then from South Africa they moved back here, so I, and they live near Malvern so Bill and I went to see them when they first moved in and they came to stay with us. So it was lovely to see, to see her again. And she is still living, her Husbands died and eh Bill died in nineteen, no in two thousand and two and her husband died about the same time. And we keep saying we are going to get together and we don’t, she said to meet her in London. I don’t think in my present state, I am gradually loosing my sight, that I would be able to manage London, not on my own, you know I would have to go with somebody. And eh so I don’t know wither I shall see her again or not, we keep in touch. And I was going to ring her up and verify some of the [unreadable] [laughs]
TJ: You did some, obviously you did your House Jobs.When did you decide to go into GP work?
MB: Well when were, when we were married we, we were in London first and then we moved to, Bill decided to go into Public Health instead of going into General Practice. In those days they had a Medical Officer of Health, well he, he got a job as a deputy in Watford and soon got another job in Lindsey. And he was going for interviews all the time we were living in London then. And em he came home one day and said “I’ve got job in” he’d been for interview because I lost count where he’d been. He’d been to Devon and Cornwall and various these things. I said “yes I’d quite like to live in [unreadable]. Anyway he said “I’ve got a job in Lindsey” I said “where the devil is Lindsey I’ve never heard of it” [laugh]. And he was a, Medical, Medical Officer of Health in Lindsey and then the Medical Officer at Kesteven was going, so he got and that’s what, that was his job and eh.
TJ: And that’s when you went into GP work?
MB: Oh yes, and then we moved up to Lincoln, that’s what I was thinking. We moved up to Lincoln, we moved up to Lincoln in nineteen sixty and we lived in Heighington for thirteen years and then we moved to Waddington, and then em what was I going to say. As soon as I came to Lincoln I had been casualtying for a while from eh just daily, not a, not a resident in the eh eh.
TJ: Lincoln County.
MB: Yes, Lincoln County, so eh I did that a couple of times a week that was all. Because the children were still, oh we had four children and, and we had, you know trying to do, to do everything was difficult. But I did do some General Practice and in the end I went into a Practise with three other men down at St Catherine’s and em, but I was only part time there. And em so em what, no I hope to get this right, yes and then em no I was working full time for about eleven years and then, then I argh when I left there after I worked for eleven years and I worked part time, doing surgeries basically for other practices. So I didn’t do a lot of General Practice because it was a bit difficult with four children. We got them going to school and going to University and all that, you know.
TJ: Did you ever, going back to the War years again, did you ever do any casualty work in London?
MB: No not in London no.
TJ: You didn’t have to deal with Bomb Victims?
MB: Not people who had been damaged in bombs, well you, it would be routine when you were on, wouldn’t it? You were on in the morning and you would get the aftermath of what had happened in the night. No I didn’t not in London.
TJ: It was a good job then really.
MB: Mm well I qualified in, what did I say forty.
TJ: Forty nine Mm.
MB: So em, and then we moved up here you see, no we moved to Hemel Hemstead first then we moved up here in nineteen sixty. So when you think I, I haven’t done a great deal of work really but em I say it wasn’t very easy with the four children. So anyway.
TJ: So you are going to be invited to the official opening of the Spire in October.
MB: Yeah that will be nice and Phillipa my daughter, the oldest one is coming with me so yes that will be very nice. But I mean we belong to the 109 Squadron Association and we used to go to Bedford. They had a weekend in Bedford every year where everybody used to get together. That was very nice but it is still around a bit it’s a, they don’t go, well I think they do go to Bedford. It is very difficult because everybody is gradually dying off you see. Em, I don’t go anymore but yes they were very nice weekends. Oh and the other thing we used to do was go to the Pathfinder Ball, they had it near Christmas every year in London. Be either the Dorchester or somewhere with the RAF Dance Band and we would have a weekend in the RAF Club and that was really enjoyable, we really liked that. You know because we used to enjoy ballroom dancing. Bill was a good ballroom dancer because he had had lessons, when he went to London in the Civil Service he went to Madam So and Sos Dance School to learn how to ballroom dance properly. He was a good dancer I just had to follow him really. So eh, no they were lovely weekends those Pathfinder Balls and em as I say you had everything, the RAF Band. And eh we used to know a lot of eh the Squadron people in the Association. I’ve lost touch now, they still send me the little magazine they have, because they, they have a meeting at the ex, oh he has died now. The CO of the Squadron in his home, you know in eh, its Hertfordshire or somewhere like that, I don’t know, I’ve never been. They try and get together you know, some of them.
TJ: Well thank you very much for sharing your thoughts with us.
MB: Well I don’t think it was that interesting really.
TJ It is was fascinating.
MB: Do you think?
TJ: Yes absolutely fascinating. I’ll just add, I don’t think I put it at the beginning it’s the 11th of August 2015. Well thank you Marjorie very much.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ABirchM150811
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Dr Marjorie Birch
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
01:07:26 audio recording
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Pending OH summary. Allocated T Holmes
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Tina James
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-08-11
Description
An account of the resource
Dr Marjorie Birch was born and grew up in London. She was evacuated with her younger sister when war was declared. She later trained as a medical student in London. She describes her accommodation opposite Kings Cross Station and the bombing. She married a navigator with the Pathfinders in 1946, before moving to Lincolnshire.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Kent
England--Lincolnshire
England--London
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
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
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Hugh Donnelly
109 Squadron
bombing
evacuation
fear
home front
incendiary device
love and romance
Mosquito
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Oboe
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Pathfinders
shelter
V-1
V-2
V-weapon
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/215/3355/ABrownE160314.1.mp3
4fd76aed8c310e6b2fefa29f02007102
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
Brown, Eric and Phyllis
Eric and Phyllis Brown
Eric Brown
Phyllis Brown
E Brown
P Brown
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with Eric Brown (1591325 Royal Air Force) and his wife Phyllis.
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
2016-03-14
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Brown, E-P
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AH: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre the interviewer is Anna Hoyles the interviewee is Eric Brown the interview is taking place in Mr. Brown’s home in Holton-le-Clay on 14th March 2016.
EB: I originally started er learning before I er
AH: Can you speak up a bit more?
EB: Yes well I could I suppose yes, I used to work with this accountant and er war was coming obviously and so by this time I was about sixteen seventeen rather and decided that I would join up with the rest and so I went off volunteered to er go I wanted to go with aircraft and I was accepted to go and I suppose I was about two years or a little bit less than that at I had to choose what I wanted to do and er being that bit older of course I wanted to be into something and eventually I got into that and er you then had five choices with regard the aircraft and what you were going to do and er so I became the man who sat at the [laughs] [unclear] and er I was responsible for all the feed for drinking for no drinking feeling [unclear] and checking all when you had every so many hours you had so many checks on that and er you were responsible for the seven of us that’s er what you tell you what we were going to do now everything was all was different er and er we used to go what we were given to do er and that’s about about hundred in that altogether and er we got close to Germany as it was then and of course that is when the danger came out and er you sometimes I’ve known we’ve had gone off home leaving about seven or eight men all shot down and there were an awful lot shot down the Germans used to you know pick you up and that was it and er you got there but what we could do we could get a bit lower and be be hoping somebody would come along and hit it and er we’d be all right by night and so I did an awful lot of flights there for for [unclear] haven’t got any yes these it’s what the award was eventually we were afforded one of those but er it was an awful thing though our own men your own men friends those you lived with getting shot down, its funny now I don’t know whether you read in the paper in Lincoln they are building a big thing er for all the men who didn’t come home and funnily that one night er I was talking to him before it was his turn to go off and er that was it we didn’t see any more of him and er we had an awful lot though and er but you you had a job you did the job and er that’s why we had the chap with the guns [unclear] two guns we had two men who were older than us I mean I was about thirty thirty odd then and they decided they wanted to go on this particular way and er it was nice because you took different people with you at night but er so we we just had me it was my job to look after the [unclear] in front we had four we haven’t got four there have we?
AH: No
EB: See but er yes four knives off you went er petrol just right and we never got too much or little of anything [laughs] you always had something which was [unclear] but the worst part as I’m was concerned was as you came to the prison to the arrived there er and if your guns were fire guns were fired and Germans were sent to what we could send to us over there and you had to make your way back home and hope are we going to be lucky, I do remember one night they had the Germans used to have these special things that came out when it got dark and er we decided one night we got stuck down there and we had to get back up but we couldn’t for a while but er you had to look after yourself once you got to France France you were all right that was the best bit but we did lose an awful lot I mean it was nothing to lose nothing to miss rather other than to er perhaps ten or eleven one night and er so you were you used to have your food when you got back home if there was any left or if you didn’t felt like eating you ate it but er I mean it there was something about it all the time you was were as one you know you didn’t pick on anybody or get anybody all wanted friends all doing the same job on er we went from up North to Norway er down to er France and that’s how it was at night keep going and er fires fires from the Germans they sent hell of a lot and er you just hoping you hoping do what we can and er once you got on that situation then you had to look after it and hopefully get back again. How you doing?
AH: Good. What planes were you in?
EB: What?
AH: What planes?
EB: Er I’ll show you it, we got one?
PB: That’s the Lancaster
EB: The Lancaster it’s the one that everybody is talking about now.
AH: Yes
EB: That’s that’s the one you had that that’s it there
AH: Yes
EB: That was at Lincoln.
AH: Oh yes, and what were they like to fly in?
EB: What were they like?
PB: Noisy.
EB: Very good very good wonderful aircraft best of
PB: Noisy [?]
EB: Yes excellent, the most Stirling’s they were they were dangerous [laughs] we didn’t get on very well on them but [unclear] you managed just about some nights if we got hit but er you got there all right you had a meal when you got home and then you ready for the next day again start again that’s how it went six or seven nights you would be on things like that doing that.
AH: How did you feel when you were doing it?
EB: Well it was all number one you know it was look after number one, I being the the pilot was there I was the second my responsibility that we had four engines to go with and four to get home with and er.
PB: That’s him in his flying gear have you seen it?
AH: Very nice.
EB: So we had a chap sat at the end of the aircraft he was the gunner we had a man mate half way up this thing another friend another gunner and er you had two men who that’s the hold but they were from Australia and er their job was to sit in get covered up and when you got to Germany and stop all the things that we get coming at us so then we got to me I was responsible for four engines and er the pilot was very good er er but er I went going sidelines to that some years after the war I joined the Police force and I was walking home one night and er a young somebody an ex friend stopped me and he said ‘oh you know Chick Arnott don’t you?’ I said ‘yeah’ ‘oh’ he said ‘he’s got a factory in Germany’ not Germany oh where he lived.
PB: Australia, Australia.
EB: Mmm and er and I got a letter from him and two or three years after I got another letter and er I then thought of going over to to Australia but er I didn’t I kept in the air force and er got home one night he came with this girl a friend of his wife er had come back over to Australia and er she came to tell us that he had been killed he er he used to drive a car I know he was a bit mad when he was driving cars he did have one of his own er and er that was his end yes weird thing he did all that and er [unclear] and er he got killed.
AH: What was he called do you remember?
EB: Now then now Arnott yes have we got anything of him?
PB: Arnott yes what did they call him?
EB: Chick, Chick.
PB: Yes Chick Arnott.
EB: Chick Arnott his friend he was, but we were fourteen not fourteen we were lads really er five of us were lads and the balance were fifty they being the Australians they were desperate to get there mind you and er that’s what happened to him [takes a puff of something] certainly when you look back its.
PB: Have a little drink.
EB: Me throats not very good.
PB: Have a little drink.
EB: That was me a willing worker [laughs] with [unclear] I don’t know why they did that because
PB: Have a drink.
EB: You know I was doing that on aircraft all the time.
AH: So you were demobbed in 47?
EB: Would be about then yes.
PB: Was it 47 you were demobbed in yeah?
EB: Yes I joined the Police force.
PB: Cos’ we were married in 47.
EB: Yes.
AH: Were you part of Operation Manna?
EB: In what way?
AH: Did you fly to Holland?
EB: Er no I don’t think so.
AH: You flew to Norway?
EB: Yes there one night er didn’t do that much but I did definitely a trip there it wasI remember now because we didn’t hit what we wanted to hit ‘cos you couldn’t see where you were actually going to and er this clever dick he decided that he couldn’t see anything but he’d find something ‘cos he came down to the ships and when he got there he got shot down.
PB: Your voice clear your throat just take a bit.
EB: That er that was the end of that one. It was always nice to see a German[laughs] but er.
AH: Were you in the same squadron all the time?
EB: Yes yes once we got that squadron that was it that we stayed but of course then the Australians went home and er we that was me when I got home that was it, this thing says here assesses you how good you could be ‘I am a keen and willing willing circa[?] a keen and willing circa[?] with intelligent appre apprehension of technical matters’ [laughs].
AH: Is that true?
EB: Yes it was it had to be I had to be but er my [unclear] to keep four girls not four four types of tanks of water of petrol I did funnily come across one night and er I don’t know how it happened but we got ourselves caught out as when people were coming in but er for some reason we got out of it we had one or two sticks but er that’s life in’t it.
AH: Was it frightening?
EB: No in a way because you were too busy too busy you didn’t know who was who what was coming at you but er I never knew anyone didn’t know anybody who [unclear] that got about it as I say we had that much to do compared to the work we did we got home after that but the [unclear] over France we started losing petrol but we did manage to get home so and er when there’s a thousand aircraft a night all coming home to have something to eat and er it was there the skies were it was just there and er once you left where you were starting from that was it you didn’t see anybody until you got to where you when actually you got to the target then it was hell let loose it was all these red things all these things going out and er you just hoped they’d miss you as soon as you can get lower the better. Did I tell you that’s my Police medal you found this here, that’s a foreigner I don’t know who that is I put Norway for that but I don’t know why?
AH: No it’s the EU? Paris.
EB: Is it.
AH: Where were you based?
EB: ER Coningsby did you know Coningsby? Lovely aircraft lovely place to be at it very good there wasn’t far to carry the goods anyway er get over the water get yourself hidden away and er we thought Lincoln was a shocking place to be all aeroplanes [laughs] didn’t have many people up north doing things like that but er where we were based generally it was the place where it all happened really did I don’t know, you didn’t didn’t have old men none at all but I stopped from that after the war and er became a policeman and er that place we went there for.
PB: That which is Chick Arnott on here look?
EB: What he’s the boss.
PB: That’s Chick
EB: That’s Chick
PB: That was the one that got killed in the accident and that’s Eric again this end you see.
EB: He was very he used to stutter a lot I think his father was something to do with car money rather er.
AH: What was he called?
EB: I can’t I’ve got five damn things all written down here look that’s it that’s Ken,
PB: Ken navigator, that’s Dave
EB: That’s Dave they were all over thirty, er that was me, Chuck
PB: Chuck, Chick.
EB: And that was the other Australian he er I think he used to do [unclear] at night earn his money that way but er he used to like his money and he used to like his water water as well.
AH: Did you always fly with the same crew?
EB: Yes, yeah I think I only knew of one and that’s I did work with somebody work with somebody else because there was no reason for not using it we were there together, yes I written there the Pathfinder Badge.
AH: Were you a Pathfinder?
EB: Yeah, yes that’s when it all started again really but er that’s what we used to do keep it low get in deep problems and then er come back home.
AH: Were you always a Pathfinder?
EB: Yeah, yeah.
AH: What were you doing in 47?
EB: Er
AH: When you were in 57 Squadron?
EB: No we didn’t do a 57 I don’t think.
AH: Is there anything in?
PB: 47 look here you’ve got something down here for 47.
AH: Oh your log book.
EB: 447 in’t it [pause]. That’s after the war that.
PB: No that’s 43 Eric.
EB: Mmm training some people [coughs] you didn’t talk much when you were flying the two gunners were too occupied doing what they were doing and er the same thing went for us really, er four things the guns, the petrol so that was my job the pilot was looking where he was going and it just left the two men who when we got there they started and er did what we could.
AH: Did it take a long time to train?
EB: What direction?
AH: Before you before you took part.
EB: How that happened I remember that well I joined this thing as it was this thing at the time and I think I was sent off to a place north of er before you got to Scotland anyway and er I got what we had as kids to me I what we had as a kid so I got a week in this place er I had to stop there as I was sweating or something and er I nearly lost my place and er as a boring when you were training people you couldn’t there was an awful lot involved typical of what they did they used to pick people out at night er for you for going out there to watch to guard it really this was in Wales where we’d been trained and so you used to be given you gun and off you went and you sat on that thing for about three hours and all you could have after that was a break you were six weeks before six hours six hours before you could get back and shut your eyes [laughs] so those who didn’t do that we sat up peeling a potato every night same thing same potato and er we were training nearly a year and er.
AH: What did you do before the war?
EB: Accountant.
PB: You were in the office weren’t you.
EB: Yeah, because it was war then wasn’t it they were [unclear]
AH: Did you have family in Grimsby when it was bombed?
EB: You what love?
PB: Yeah.
EB: Yeah.
PB: Yes your mum and dad lived in Grimsby.
EB: Er yes ‘cos my father was a policeman er one sister works in the
PB: Joyce went in the army.
EB: She joined the army, the next one up
PB: Gladys
EB: She worked on er
PB: Ammunitions munitions
EB: And the eldest I don’t know what happened to her
PB: She still
EB: Oh she had a baby didn’t she?
PB: Yes that’s right yes she got married
EB: Marilyn yes that’s right that we had there [going through papers]
PB: It will be here somewhere look when you went on these here trips then where you bombed
EB: All these look you see.
PB: You dropped bombs
EB: [unclear]
AH: Hamburg?
EB: Yep
PB: Here you are look told you in 1945 45 it’s all the trips that you went on.
EB: Yeah Karlsburg, Dortmund.
PB: That’s a German isn’t it.
EB: Yes [unclear] quite a few quite a few trips.
AH: Do you remember any of them in particularly?
EB: No I don’t think I do really there’s all them look.
AH: Karlsruhe?
EB: Wartsburg [unclear] send things
AH: Was that a big raid Wartsburg?
EB: Yeah twenty storage tanks destroyed Tansburg [?] er
PB: What’s this one here look here where you drop flares
EB: Where you drop those flares so you can see what you are doing.
PB: Oh you dropped flares there you did yes.
EB: I think we’ve told you all
AH: Is this from a log book?
PB: Yes but he had but he’s given his grandson it cos it was all down there you see all of his trips want ityou gave Matthew it didn’t you.
EB: Yes well it’s no good to me er it’s worth a bit £2 a time it was a lot of money in those days.
AH: Was your father in the First World War?
PB: Yes he was in the army.
EB: Yes he was.
PB: In the army.
EB: Yeah I now but what about it there’s something about it er I’ve got a photograph of sometime.
PB: Was in the Police Army was in the Police when he was in the Army?
EB: No I don’t think he was.
PB: No
EB: No one time if a man was a coward or wouldn’t fly wasn’t going they had to shoot him.
PB: They did what?
EB: They had to shoot the chap who wouldn’t go they shoot them in France yes.
AH: What was your father called?
PB: William.
EB: William yes, what did they call my mother?
PB: Eh?
EB: What did they call my mother?
PB: Lillian Lily
EB: Lily that’s it yeah aye there were five of us ‘cos my father’s my er grandfather he had the bakehouse but he didn’t go into it because he had five of us to look after and that was what he used to do.
PB: Your mum.
AH: So the baker was your mother’s father?
EB: Yes and how they got together was the fact that my father used to look out for her when he was on the beat and he could see there was my mother cleaning up that’s how they got married grandfather [unclear] but yes he did.
AH: What was your grandfather called?
EB: That’s one thing
PB: Basil, called him Basil?
EB: Yes that’s right called him Basil, it was a lovely house he had and er once a year when we were kids and grandfather had a nice car and er we used to take probably my father did it take us down to my grandfather’s house and off we used to go for a week [laughs] and that was it.
AH: Where was his house?
PB: In the country where wasn it?
EB: Do you know Grimsby at all?
AH: A little bit.
EB: ‘Cos it’s it you were coming out as going to Louth
PB: Grasby, Grasby?
EB: No the other way
PB: Some pond.
EB: Oh no we went there last week last when that had that to do with something oh your eye the eye thing a place they used to do eyes.
PB: Oh yes
EB: And that was it Scartho.
PB: Yes in the bungalow but then your other one where they did the pond that old pond where you used to go visit them.
EB: Yes Kild at er [?], what was it now there we had something there but I never take it or tell it Kild [?]
PB: I can’t remember
EB: and er that was the place they lived in was very nice they lived ad er you could have one in my father my sister doing my mother doing all the work.
AH: And how did you meet?
PB: How did we meet? Well you see when he was at Coningsby at night the buses used to go into Boston and I lived in Boston at the time and we used to go to the dance hall called the Gliderdrome and these bus loads of airmen used to come to this and I met him there you see.
AH: When was that?
PB: That was in 1945 it would be wouldn’t it when you was in the air force?
EB: Yes It was before then.
PB: Was it before then?
EB: Yes yes.
PB: He used to come from Coningsby on the bus didn’t you?
EB: Yes.
PB: To the Gliderdrome
EB: Mmm
PB: Then we used to have a dance then you used to go off on the bus didn’t you?
EB: Yes.
PB: Then I used to go home walk home well with my sisters ‘cos it was dark then there wasn’t no lights in the streets.
EB: But by that time we’d stopped bombing we weren’t doing bombing.
PB: Oh no.
EB: So that’s how it was.
AH: What did you do?
PB: What did I do?
AH: Yes
PB: Well you see I left school when I was fourteen then and then I worked in a little shop where I used to be get the breakfast ready and the farmers used to come in and it was at the end of at Boston at the cattle market want it where the farmers used to come and they used to come for the breakfast and some people used to stop overnight and then er I wasn’t there very long though and this baker used to come in and he said ‘I could find you a job’ and it was where I lived near where I lived so of course I went there but it was from six o’clock in the morning till six at night I used to go in a morning first off to get the bread done in the tins then they used to bake it and whilst it was baking I used to go home for my breakfast then I went back and then the bread was more or less ready used to get it out fill the van go on a bread round and then er come back again to the shop then we used to go for our dinner I were always late and then in the afternoon we used to make cakes and pastries yes it was hard hard work but er you know I well I don’t think I even got paid much for it it was only five shillings a week I used to remember buying a bar of Cadburys chocolate for a treat out of my five shillings [laughs] so it could only have been sixpence perhaps or two and half pence then wouldn’t it then [laughs] oh dear then I did that then I left and went to the cleaners didn’t I.
EB: Mmm.
PB: And then I got married while I was there didn’t I?
EB: Yes.
PB: And you what did you do then?
EB: Still flying.
PB: When you came out of the air force.
EB: Still flying.
PB: Yes you were still flying yes but then when we got married you wasn’t.
EB: I got married.
PB: You got a job at Leicester didn’t you?
EB: That’s right but it wasn’t very long.
PB: No it wasn’t very long no.
EB: Yes that’s right it was with the er thinking of [unclear].
PB: ‘Cos Gladys lived there at the time at Leicester didn’t she?
EB: Yes that’s right she did yes, I had a job there anyway that was.
PB: It was an office job want it duck?
EB: Yes it was yes well they were all I mean there was me eighteen nineteen twenty the rest of them were fifty they’d all not gone you see yes.
PB: And then you came out that job at Leicester and you applied for the to get on the Borough Police at Boston ‘cos I lived with me mum we lived with me mum then didn’t we after we got married you got on the Police Force at Boston and you wasn’t we wasn’t there long and you put in to go to Grimsby didn’t you?
EB: Yeah.
PB: And then it was the chief constable there and he said ‘come on Eric come that afternoon I’ve got you a football shirt ready you playing football that night’ weren’t you.
EB: The good old days.
AH: What was it like to leave the RAF?
EB: I was sorry to leave it but at the same time it was different you know I had a job to get involved in that whereas you could do some something totally different but you had those sort of people who did that but to me I wanted to be off er you were [?] within two days you would be off you quoted this number and off you went and that was it.
PB: What while you was in the forces?
EB: Mmm.
PB: Yeah well it was a routine want it you was in.
EB: Oh yeah yeah they gradually took everybody out that was it.
PB: Pardon
EB: They gradually took everybody out.
PB: Mmm.
AH: And you had children?
PB: Pardon.
AH: And you had children?
PB: We do have yes two daughters yes one’s sixty six now and the other one is sixty. [Laughs]. Mmm
EB: Yes.
PB: Well we shared a house didn’t we while you were in the police force.
EB: Well it was a police house wasn’t it.
PB: No at first we lived with Joyce we shared a house didn’t we we shared a house we had half of it we had the back half of the house we shared a council house they did in those days you see because I was having my our first daughter and Joyce she’d got one little boy she was having her second child so of course she went in the home and the day she came out I went in in January and then of course I didn’t have the baby until March did I, mmm but then we ‘cos you used to come yes you used to come and see me.
EB: Yes
PB: ‘Cos you see it was past the home want it where you lived Nunsthorpe and from there we got the police house in Winchcombe Avenue didn’t we?
EB: Yes.
PB: It was a new one it was a lovely house wasn’t it?
EB: Oh yeah yeah.
PB: But you used to go to work on your bike from there didn’t you?
EB: Yeah yeah [unclear] that’s one end of the thing used to have to go there ready for playing ready for when they were doing it all you started something there and you had to work your way right across there [laughs] and then when it was home that’s when you got out again they had these little places iron boxes and er you used to take your packed lunch with you and er do that.
PB: What those the police boxes you used to go to?
EB: Yes yes mmm.
AH: And was this where was this?
PB: This in this was was in Grimsby wasn’t it?
EB: Yep as it was then whether it’s
PB: It was Grimsby yeah
EB: I don’t know.
PB: Well was it Bradley Cross Roads?
EB: Yeah no it was whether it’s there still it might have something going for it I don’t know.
AH: What was it like being a policeman in Grimsby?
EB: It was funny because with it being a fishing town it was all fishermen there was an awful lot at night to get them on the docks get home or not be all drunk up and er and it was no good at all but er it carried on for quite a while and er we er one or two of us for some reason managed to get ourselves one step up and er from there on of course I went through finished up being a chief inspector I was quite but the boss there in where was Grimsby he was he used to go out he had this car this posh car and he’d go out everynight looking for police looking for policemen [laughs] er he was very unpopular his wife was working in a pub and he finished up later and er I never knew what happened to him but he didn’t do any work that was a fact.
AH: And how did you feel about the way Bomber Command were treated after the war?
EB: Well it er I mean it was terrible in some places I mean we’d got nearly nine hundred policemen to be shot down ‘cos they were and it was terrible but er again you had to look after yourself and er you had a job to do you had to go and you had to get back and the funny thing was though you didn’t see any aeroplanes they were about but you didn’t see them and er that was how it was mmm do you want to be a policewoman then?
PB: A bit different now to what it was when you was on the force in’t it now don’t think you would have coped with it as it is now well you would.
EB: I was an inspector want I.
PB: Well an inspector that’s right yes well you used to do the courts didn’t you.
EB: I was
PB: You still still
EB: Still
PB: You were at Grimsby though
EB: Oh yes I used to go to court every two weeks seven days a week and then.
PB: You used to do the courts at Brigg.
EB: Yes that was every Friday.
PB: On a Friday Friday was it ah.
EB: That was like for country people er and then I finished there of course then it all collapsed didn’t it stopped doing it.
PB: Yes that’s right.
AH: What was it like being in Boston during the war?
PB: Ooh well it was queer really I can’t imagine now what it was like I mean everybody knew everybody else didn’t they?
EB: Oh yes.
PB: I mean you could always go out and meet somebody you knew I mean even your next door neighbour they were all sort of friends together wand it you never got stuck going out on your own because they was always somebody to go with want there?
EB: Yes.
PB: It was a busy little place nice though want it?
EB: Oh yes.
PB: It was a nice place though really.
EB: Not now.
PB: To what it is now it’s all these Polish people can we say that?
EB: Well it’s the truth in’t it.
PB: Well I mean my sister she died a year ago but I mean she used to say she lived just outside Boston and I am pleased she did ‘cos she said going into town it was just horrendous mmm.
AH: Was it bombed badly?
PB: No not really was it?
EB: No.
PB: There want much bombing was there I don’t think.
EB: No.
PB: Want.
EB: No no you didn’t get any.
PB: We didn’t get much at all I mean used to know when they went out on a raid because they used to go over our house and then I used to ring the next day to see if he’d got back [laughs] but we want on the phone at home we used to have to go round onto the main road and find a phone box [laughs].
AH: What was it like hearing them go over was it frightening or was it?
PB: Oh yes ‘cos we used to think well they’ve gone are they going to come back that’s it I can always remember we used to go out of the house and stand in the back yard and see all these planes go over and they seemed to be so low you know they didn’t seem to be high up you know you could sort of see them so plain it was queer really want it.
EB: They used to land a lot of stuff in didn’t they they used to land a lot of.
PB: Oh yes.
EB: They used to land a lot the
PB: Oh yes.
EB: The smaller things not the big fish the little fish didn’t they.
PB: Are you talking about the fisherman.
EB: Yes altogether though weren’t there.
PB: Oh yes Boston yes the fisherman used to be there the same then oh yes you used to go on a Friday and get a big bag of prawns for sixpence [laughs].
AH: What was it like when it when the war started and suddenly all these planes came and?
PB: Well you see when I when the war started I was at school and we used to well when where we lived was in Frampton Place and I used to go to school at Sandland School and it was er we used to have a gas mask you see a little boxes with a gas mask on and we used to walk to the school with the box on and we often used to have air raid practices about every other raid used to go out and one thing and another and er it was funny really want it?
EB: Oh yeah.
PB: I mean you always used to be together you know you’d never sort of be on your own I mean there was a big family of us though there was six seven of us six girls and one boy and then there’s mum and dad you see and er all the neighbours knew everybody else didn’t they?
EB: Oh yeah yeah.
PB: But er yeah yeah there were a lot of nice people in Boston in our time want there?
EB: Mmm, different now in’t it.
PB: Different now yes it is.
AH: I’m just going to put it on pause while I look at the paper.
PB: Pardon, the air force ‘cos you brought me that bag and those oranges straight off the trees.
EB: No Italy.
PB: Italy that yes.
EB: Nice there.
PB: ‘Cos you did some trips would you fetch them home?
EB: Yes the idea was that everybody would get the lads home but it didn’t work it didn’t work like that but er a lot of them we couldn’t find anybody there it was all afternoons in Italy we didn’t go far er but er we didn’t get home we did about four of those trips they were handy for us ‘cos you could buy bits and bobs.
PB: Well it was a rest it was a change want it for you to do that.
EB: Oh yeah yeah.
AH: When was that do you know?
EB: Oh soon after the war finished the idea was to get them back and
PB: Was it soon after the war?
EB: Mmm.
PB: Just at the beginning?
EB: Yeah no there didn’t have that many we were talking about the war of course.
PB: Yes,
EB: I mean and that was war and we weren’t we were getting to there to get and bring it home so we so they must have been poor [unclear].
PB: [Unclear]
EB: They were not very keen of doing anything they were idle ‘cos I don’t remember seeing us [unclear] from there but we did bring them home and that was it nice.
PB: ‘Cos you brought me that basket back didn’t you?
EB: Yeah.
PB: And that leather handbag and you always used to bring some nice oranges want there and that was a treat then to get nice oranges from Italy want it?
EB: Yeah.
AH: So did you fly did you stay out there?
EB: No no only well you you [unclear] lots of people for people going back home so we had to wait for them to go and then it was out turn sort of thing so we didn’t go in a hurry but it was nice you could look at all the stuff that was there it was very nice er there was no war by the look of it we never I don’t think we had a war and I did that.
PB: Do you want a drink or anything?
AH: Could I have a small water please, thank you. Did you speak to the Italians when you were out there?
PB: Did you speak what?
AH: Did he speak to the Italians?
PB: Did you speak to the Italians I don’t think you did did you?
EB: I don’t think so now but er we were so wrapped up in taking [unclear background noise] ‘cos I mean it was nice but it was a shame to do any damage really.
PB: I’ll have to make myself a drink. [Pause while making a drink]. Do you want me to make you a drink?
EB: Aye [kettle boiling in background] I think the eldest was about well in the forties er the third one he was quite well liked [unclear] beyond us all yet he married a girl in [unclear] and went to Australia and the other one there was one there he had a wonder job again it was in the heat and the only one was he was used to doing things like flying to Australia he did and er and then there was the pilot of course he killed himself eventually in his car, he er [unclear] he went home back to help his father in the business which he did and er two or three years later phone rang [unclear] and a girl not a girl anyway we stopped and he said ‘oh I’ve got something to tell you’ I said ‘what’s that?’ he said ‘[unclear] oh I said ‘that’s all right then’ you know he didn’t like it but he would do it and er after two years later one of the colleagues I was working with er came to me and he I was on my way home and he knew me and he said ‘do you know a man who went to Australia with you’ I said ‘oh yes I write to him but I haven’t seen him lately’ he said ‘oh you won’t he’s dead’ that was the father that was the son of the father and er he’s gone too fast and that was the end of the car.
AH: And then you went to Givenea[?] ?
EB: Mmm Givenea [?]yes
AH: I don’t know how to pronounce it? Do you remember that?
EB: I remember part of it yes but er I don’t remember going there, when that fourth down
AH: Yes
EB: Two or three times open the door and that was [unclear] another one mmm tells you the hours spent there we weren’t very long there oh we got recalled look.
AH: Oh yes.
EB: We had to go back one here for nine hours that was mine laying.
AH: Was there a big difference between being a pathfinder and mine laying?
EB: Er yes because we did everything for their benefit you know wasn’t case of going together it was our job to go out do this do that and bring it back again so they so that was the that was the er that what it was all about before we started that you used to have odd cars [unclear] and what we are going to do and then they brought out this and er they also brought out what was the [unclear] it was hell of a way different.
AH: You flew to Kattegat?
EB: Yes
AH: German cruises?
EB: Yes Urst Dam, Leipburgen [?], Dusseldorf that was a reasonable place.
AH: That was a big raid?
EB: Mmm it mean’t going a long way ten hours look you see that’s what it took us.
AH: Oh Trantaine[?] submarine pens.
EB: Mmm.
AH: Do you remember that?
EB: No I don’t any of those nine hours Germany, German Navy there having a good game there.
AH: Oh you got hit by a shell?
EB: Yeah yeah now this could be the I remember we were hit with something er it was a shell want it.
AH: And your wing caught fire?
EB: Mmm.
PB: Yes that’s right.
EB: Yes that was when we were coming out of target and er the fire was on the it was on then er [unclear] that way I suppose.
AH: At Germany Giessen.
PB: Germany.
EB: Course some of these days it was all Germany [laughs].
AH: Was that frightening when you got hit?
EB: Yeah I was with one night one had hit me and er why we went out we’ll never know [laughs] it shouldn’t have gone out it was luck.
AH: But the fire went out?
EB: Yep.
AH: And you went home to your normal base?
EB: Yeah yeah well the odd times you would go to some er to south of London actually only if there was a fire or anything we generally we got home as and when we wanted to but we did have we did have means of doing it if you couldn’t get the other way and we used to have these places just one lot of aerodromes and things and you used to go down onto these we managed to get down there.
AH: Did you that?
EB: Odd times just odd times and I remember one night we er we were far from landing er we stuck out in Scotland out in fog so we came out in this hotel posh hotel and er these seven people fed us all and that was very nice of them and then fog went dash home start again next week used to set about twelve or fourteen aeroplanes at a time in one lot mmm.
AH: Is there anything else you can think of?
EB: I was just thinking I can’t let’s right we did I remember we had one er there was six men going to Italy er and when I say six one there was another one but he was [laughs] funny crew and while he ever got on it I’ll never know and he got out to Italy and he got shot down coming home and they were all they were all er [unclear] did business apart from this fool who we had he had hair down here somewhere.
AH: How come he got shot down wasn’t the war over?
EB: Well they used to follow you but er they the Germans used to hide away and of course they’d been in and out to get the right place and er that was it and there was hell of a lot shot down normally but er it wasn’t too bad in Italy they didn’t try too much there but er Germans were just terrible. That’s the medal but they wanted a special thing so I could put all the er things there Canwick Hill at Lincoln.
AH: At the memorial?
EB: Yeah there’s another one now.
PB: That’s the same one in’t it.
EB: Similar no it’s not I er I haven’t got that one but er they built them there was no end [unclear] South of Lincoln wasn’t it?
PB: Yeah but then but wasn’t it London as well Sandra took those photographs for you, London?
EB: Yes.
PB: What was that there?
EB: You catch the odd one.
PB: Well they’ve built that now haven’t they?
AH: I think so I haven’t seen it.
EB: Want the money expensive.
AH: How do you feel about the Memorial?
EB: That’d be the one wouldn’t it.
PB: This is the one that they are building now Eric they want some more money for it.
EB: Yes.
AH: Are you pleased they built it?
EB: To me it seems an awful lot you know [telephone ringing] seems a lot of money.
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
ABrownE160314
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Eric Brown
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
01:09:40 audio recording
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Anna Hoyles
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-03-14
Description
An account of the resource
Eric left school at 14 and worked in a bakery and then in accountancy. Aged 17 he volunteered for aircrew and trained as a flight engineer. He became a pathfinder and carried out operations to Hamburg, Karlsruhe, and Dortmund, flying from RAF Coningsby. We was with 106, 97 and 57 Squadrons. After the war he joined the police force, rising to the rank of inspector.
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
Germany
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Dortmund
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Jackie Simpson
Terry Holmes
106 Squadron
57 Squadron
97 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
flight engineer
Lancaster
Pathfinders
RAF Coningsby
Stirling
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/220/3360/PCalmanJG1605.1.jpg
fc5e694a8db58d59cb334a757eeada88
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/220/3360/ACalmanJG160915.2.mp3
b3127dd21bfb824f5342e20bb728eb42
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
Calman, James
James Calman
J Calman
Description
An account of the resource
Three items. Collection concerns John Calman (1922 - 2017, 412900 Royal Australian Air Force) and contains an oral history interview and two photographs.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by John Calman 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
2016-09-15
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. 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
Calman, JG
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
JM: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Jean MaCartney and the interviewee is James, or Jim Calman. The interview is taking place at Mr Calman’s home here in Arncliffe on the 15th of September 2016. Okay, Jim let’s start at the beginning. Julie mentioned that you were born in 1922, um let’s just find out a little bit about your family.
JC: Well, I was one of five children —
JM: One of five children right —
JC: I was born in New Zealand —
JM: Oh, okay.
JC: And my mother was New Zealand and my father was Australian.
JM: Ah, ha.
JC: And er, he went to New Zealand and married her and had five children, I was one of them, the youngest. Er —
JM: Ah ha. When did you come to Australia?
JC: I was five years old, yeah, I was five years old —
JM: Mm hmm.
JC: What year would that be? 1927, 27, yes.
JM: And did you come to Sydney or New South Wales?
JC: Yes, came to Sydney. And we lived in Waller [?] Street, Kingsford. Um, I don’t know what else to say what er —
JM: That’s all right. You were there, and that’s where you enlisted, from was it?
JC: What’s that?
JM: Was that were you enlisted, joined up from?
JC: No, I joined, enlisted in err, Woolloomooloo, Woolloomooloo, under the Empire Air Training Scheme.
JM: Right.
JC: Menzies started it, the Empire Air Training Scheme, and that was in August 1941.
JM: Right.
JC: And I was discharged in April 1946. I had four years and eight months service and I was in England for three and a half years and I was er — when we arrived in England at a personnel reception centre called Bournemouth, they assembled us all in a big room and asked us what we wanted to do. And, I, I was an above average pilot and, and I wanted to go on to single engines, on the Spitfires, they were the gunners of the day and I said I wanted to go on the single engines and they put, sent me to a single engine aerodrome, as a, as a trainee to learn to be a pilot instructor and they left me there all the war, until the last six months, when they posted me to a squadron, 106 Squadron at Metheringham, to, to, do my Operational Training Unit and, and, get trained for combat duty. There you are.
JC: Let’s just back track a little bit there, um, you were — where, did you do some initial training in Australia before you went to —
JM: Yes, yes, I got my wings —
JC: You got your wings —
JM: Yes, at Service Flying Training School, at Bundaberg, number eight SFTS. I was an above average pilot there, and that’s why I wanted to go, you know, to get on to single engines, I fancied myself and I had Spitfires in mind, because they were the go at that time, but, but—
JM: Just interrupting you there, just a minute, just to back track a little bit further, you — was it the thought of the Spitfire what made you want to join the air force instead of say, the army or the navy?
JC: I wasn’t aware of it at that time, I don’t think, of the Spitfire. I wasn’t aware of it.
JM: What led you the air force other than say the army or the navy?
JC: I went, I went down to Woolloomooloo to join the navy. but they wouldn’t accept me, they weren’t recruiting.
JM: [laughs]
JC: So, so I bailed out and got into the Empire Air Training Scheme, and they sent me to Summers {?} Initial Training School and then they sent me to Elementary Flying Training School, on Tiger Moths at Mascot Aerodrome and then they sent me to Bundaberg, on Ansons to my service flying training, and I got my wings there, and I was above average and that gave me the desire to get with the select bomber crews, you know, because I was above average and err, they were forming the Pathfinder force. You’ve heard of the Pathfinder force?
JM: I certainly have.
JC: They would lead the bombers to the targets. What was happening, is the bombers were going in and, and they would see the target there and they would drop their bombs a little bit short to get home, out safely, and then the next one would see their fires from the bombs and they would drop theirs, and they kept getting shorter and shorter and they didn’t get to the targets. So, they introduced a scheme where you had to photograph the target when you dropped your bombs to, to prove that you went there, instead of just flying up and down the North Sea and spending petrol and time, you know?
Err, so that was err —
JM: So, when you were in the Spitfire pilot training —
JC: No, no, I was, I, I, they didn’t send me to Spitfires.
JM: Oh, okay, sorry.
JC: They sent me to Tiger Moths, to teach me to be a pilot instructor.
JM: Right.
JC: Then they left me there for three and a half years. And I spent a lot of hours there. {Stutters}, what happened was, they were sending air crew to Canada for, for elementary training, er, and, a lot of them were getting scrubbed, they weren’t good enough to be pilots, and to save the expense, they stopped that method of sending them to Canada, they started what they call a grading scheme. That meant that every member of air crew got eight hours flying, to see if they had pilot ability, and that’s where they sent me, and I was there all the war until the last six months.
JM: And where, which —
JC: Southam, Southam and Anstey. I don’t know if you know them.
JM: Um, they’re not ringing any bells with me at the moment, but that doesn’t matter.
JC: And, and I did most of my time at Perth, up in Scotland.
JM: I know Perth.
JC: You know Perth?
JM: Yes, yes.
JC: It was a lovely aerodrome. It was beautiful food, lovely food.
JM: Yeah, yeah.
JC: And um –
JM: You would have had a nice time up in Perth.
JC: Yes, I did. Yes, the girls were good, and I was young, and in uniform {laughs}.
JM: That’s exactly right.
JC: So, they just left me there, right up until the last six months of the war and then they sent me to 106 Squadron at Metheringham, and, and because I was an above average pilot, they would train me to, to, become a Pathfinder. Metheringham were training Pathfinders, so training crews to be Pathfinders, because they were the pick of the crew. You know? And err, I just stayed there until the last six months, when they posted me to 106 Squadron Metheringham. They sent me to Bruntingthorpe, which was an Operational Training Unit, and then they sent me to, that was on Wellingtons. And then they sent me to do a course at Swinderby on Short Stirlings. That was what they called the heavy conversions. Four engines, instead of two in the Wellington. And then they sent me to a place called Syerston, which was a Lancaster finishing school. I did twelve hours there, err, to get doctrined to the Lancaster, and then they sent me to Metheringham, operations. Now I only did three operations, because my navigator was a barrister in real life and he was engaged a lot of time in defending aircraftmen who were involved in misdemeanours. He was defending them, and he wasn’t available as our navigator, to join the crew, and we just sat by and we only did three trips and we should have done seven, or eight, or nine. You know? So, so, that’s the story.
JM: And of those three trips, that was over Germany or France?
JC: Yeah, Germany and France. One of them was a place called, [?} Rheinau, where the Germans were on that side of the Rhine river and the allies were on this side and they were fighting each other across the river. And that was me first trip. And, what happened there as that they were fighting so close together, they didn’t use any flares, they kept it all in darkness, so they wouldn’t expose each other, and when I did, err, my next trip, we used flares and it lit everything up and as a result I kept holding back, thinking I was too close to the target and, um, eventually they called the raid off. The Pathfinders called the raid off and I still had me bombs on board. I thought, I’m not taking these home, so I dropped them after the raid was called off, because I was so close with the flares, that I wasn’t used to it, and that’s it. And then then next trip we went up to the err, Oslofjords up in Norway where the Germans were refuelling submarines, and we dropped our bombs there at sixteen thousand feet. That was in Tonsberg, Oslofjords in Norway. And I applied for the Atlantic Star, a campaign medal, because that was in the Atlantic Ocean, and they knocked me back. Have we still got the record of that Elizabeth [?}
Other: Keep talking about what you did, and your trips and we will continue….
JC: We’ve still got that? That’s good. And the third trip was a place called Lutzkendorf [?} or something. Did you tell the lady about my er, log books getting burned?
Other: Yes.
JC: I had two. I was doing that much flying at this grading school, teaching air crew to be pilots that I filled up my first log book and was well into the second one. I had a business at Tempe, I come in one morning and me workshop was a place of ashes. I don’t know what caused the fire, whether it was spontaneous combustion. I had a lot of paint and thinners there you know, or whether someone purposely lit it. I never found out. But I lost everything —
JM: You lost everything.
JC: Yeah, yeah. Me log books, and me wife’s sewing machine, and all my personal possessions, and I just haven’t got me log books.
JM: Very frustrating. Especially as you did so much flying. Those logs you get a lot of detail, there’s a lot of pages in those log books.
JC: I was well into the second one.
JM: Well you certainly did a lot of flying.
JC: I was flying about eight hours a day teaching —
JC: Yeah.
JM: Teaching air crew to be pilots, yeah. They adopted a grading scheme, I think I mentioned it, where every air crew got a chance to fly eighty hours, instead of going all the way to Canada and getting scrubbed and wasting all that money.
JM: Did you meet any um, air crew that um, that, what shall we say, went on to become famous, or notable, were you every aware of any —
JC: No, all my crew were English except the navigator —
JM: Right.
JC: And I had no contact with them after the war. The wireless operator came out and he looked up the phone book and he Calman isn’t a very common name, and he struck it, and he rang up a cousin of mine who was called Calman and he said ‘try this number and you’ll probably get him’ and he rang me up and he said ‘this is Des Bibby, your wireless operator’ and he came out to visit me, and we had a few outings, we went to South Sydney Juniors for lunch and, you know, we had a reconciliation. It was very nice. I don’t know whether he got the Atlantic Star for going to Tonsberg in Norway. Do you think he might of?
JM: I have, you know, I have no idea, I would have to look that through. But no, that was, so um, — other flights that you did besides — we did two, we didn’t do the third one, what was your third one?
JC: It was to Lutzkendorf [?}
JM: Oh, Lutzkendorf [?} my apologies.
JC: That was where we stayed over the target, the raid was called off.
JM: Yes. that’s right, my apologies, yes. Now that, um, with events after the war, you didn’t — were like a lot of other Australians that you were the only one or two members of the crews, so that when you all came back you really didn’t have an association or a —
JC: No.
JM: Or a squadron to relate to.
JC: No, I only saw Bibby the wireless operator because he came out as I just told you,
JM: Mmm, so you didn’t maintain, you didn’t hear from any other Australians when you, from all the other pilots that went through, you said they were all English, you didn’t have any Australians or any other overseas crew, urm, that were doing training, that, that you were doing?
JC: I wasn’t aware of them. —
JM: Were they all English?
JC: I was at Perth for about three years, or two and a half years. Yeah.
JM: Well that’s urm, means that you had quite a different experience to quite a lot of other people.
JC: I did yeah. Yes, yes. I think the fact that my navigator was engaged with legal duties kept me alive. We weren’t doing the —
[Someone enters the room.]
JC: She’s there for sing along. Don’t want to sing along.
JM: So, so your navigator was he was an Australian, did you ever —
JC: He got killed. He hit a tree, and he got — my carer David Levenham [?} traced him through and found out that he, he, drove into a tree and got killed. We were trying to track him down, you know, and that was the result we got.
JM: How, that was what, how long —
JC: After the war, yes.
JM: What, he had been back to Australia and —
JC: Yes. Yes, he was resuming his duties as a barrister.
JM: So, let me think, you were um, twenty-two, so forty-two, twenty-two, so you were twenty-two, twenty-three when you were —
JC: I was twenty-four when I got discharged, yes. So, had those experiences when I was twenty-one, twenty-two. I had my twenty-first birthday in England at Bournmouth.
JM: How — did you go by ship, did you?
JC: Yes.
JM: So {indistinct}
JC: Yes, we went via the Suez Canal —
JM: The Suez Canal.
JC: No, we went around the Cape, the Cape, yeah. To Durban, we went to Durban and then to Capetown, and then up to Freetown, near Casablanca —
JM: Yeah —
JC: And then on to England by boat.
JM: By boat, yes. That would have been a nice experience —
JC: Yes.
JM: A bit of a holiday, in a way.
JC: Took a couple of months to do I think.
JM: Yeah, yeah. So, what about the return journey. Was that similar?
JC: We came back through the Suez Canal and we went to Bombay.
JM: Right.
JC: And er, and er, Freemantle and then they sent us up by train from Melbourne. And I met me parents met me off the train. That was in forty-six.
JM: And that would have been, you would have been happy to be home again.
JC: Yes, yes. I was, yeah. I didn’t know quite what to do with me self, having been in the Air Force for so long, and all the decisions were made for me.
JM: Yeah. So, what –
JC: What I should have done, I had all this flying experience as instructor, I should have gone out to Mascot, to Bankstown, where they had flying schools, and I should have employed by one of them as a pilot instructor, because I was very good at it.
JM: And you didn’t — maybe you felt that you could have done that, but what did you do instead?
JC: I got, got into the car business. I had a thing about MG’s, sports cars, and started a sports car yard and I had that for quite a while until the fire burnt the bloody place down.
JM: That’s very, very, very sad, very sad. Do you want to —
Other: You mentioned that you were sick of being in the planes, once you got back from the Air Force.
JC: Well, I didn’t enjoy flying much. You had oxygen at about fifteen thousand feet, you had this on and you had earphones. And you know, it was a bit uncomfortable. It wasn’t like a ride in a Sunday afternoon motor car.
JM: No, it was very, I mean, you only have to have a look at a lot of the pictures, to see with them, they had the big um —
JC: {Someone else comes into the room}. Thank you love.
JM: Jackets, and the big boots —
JC: Yeah, err, yeah. Jilly’s {?} got it there, haven’t you?
JM: The gear that you had that was needed to sort of —
JC: To keep warm —
JM: To keep warm, that’s right, very different situation.
JC: We had special flying boots —
JM: That’s right —
JC: They had a zipper there, so if you got into enemy territory, you just undid the zipper and they became ordinary shoes, so the Germans wouldn’t know who you were. Yeah.
JM: Right.
JC: Escape boots they called them.
JM: Well, fortunately, you didn’t have to —
JC: No, I did not.
JM: [?]
JC: I think due to the navigator being engaged with his legal duties, we didn’t do as many operations as we should have, that kept me alive, I think [laughs].
JM: Well, that’s the other side of it, because there was an enormous amount of loss of life —
JC: Oh, wasn’t there. Fifty percent wasn’t it?
JM: Injury and all the rest of it. In fact, the Australians ended up, some of the highest —
JC: Yes —
JM: Proportionally was the highest rate of injury and death.
JC: I used to go to London on leave, and I’d see aircrew with no nose, just two nostrils, like a pig, been burnt by fire. Bloody terrible.
JM: So, when, when you, how did — how many times would you have gone to London?
JC: Oh, quite a while. I was in favour of, of the manager of the Strand Palace Hotel, and where ordinary people were restricted to five days there because of the congestion, he let me stay on, you know, and er, and the girls used to come down from Nottingham and Doncaster, where they worked in factories and they’d leave in five days and new batch would come in you know. It was very convenient [laughs].
JM: So, the manager of the Strand Hotel was, became a good friend?
JC: Yes, he did, I forget his name, but he gave me privileges there yeah.
JM: Did you keep any contact with him after the war?
JC: No, no I did not, I did not. I was a lousy letter writer. My mum had to write to Fairburn, the minister for air, to find out if I was still alive, because I didn’t correspond with her. I was just bad at letter writing. I er. Just didn’t have any desire to do it.
JM: Oh, well. Each, each person has their own little —
JC: {laughs} and idiosyncrasies {laughs}
JM: And interests, and interest, that, that, err. So, how did you find London, did you have lots to do, when you — did you have any official—
JC: I used to go to the show, you know, err, they had the ‘Dancing Year’ on, I forget the actor that was in it. And they had the Windmill Theatre which never closed. You had the girls that were naked on stage. They were allowed to be naked if they didn’t move, you know. And we used to get in there and jump across the seats to get the front row view [laughs]. The Windmill Theatre.
JM: Many —
JC: Have you heard of it?
JM: I have heard of it. Many happy times, I think probably, were spent, by many service men that were there —
JC: Yeah.
JM: I’m sure. And what other sights did you used to —
JC: Well, well er, they used to take Australian air crew to visit people you know. To accommodate them in their homes, and I was sent to a place called Lyme Regis, near Cornwall to a Doctor Cook’s residence. He used to go out doing his daily chores, and he would come back with something good like a chicken or a pheasant, you know, it was very good there, I was there for about a fortnight, yes. Lyme Regis was the name of the place. South of England, near Cornwall yeah.
JM: Very good. That would have shown you a bit of country life.
JC: Yes, and I also, also put me uniform in dock and went to Ireland for five days, as a civilian, because they were neutral, as you know, and you weren’t allowed to be in uniform in Ireland. And er, I went over there, and I, I met quite, few people, one particular fellow, Bill Willis, was his name, he was, he stayed there after the first world war, and er, he opened a restaurant called the Green Rooster, and I went in there one day to have something to eat, and he came up and he said, ‘there’s a smell of Australians about here’, he recognised my Australian accent and he made a friend of me. He took me home to his place, and taught me to drink Irish Whiskey and he, he took me to Beldoyle race course, where the held the Irish sweepstakes, you know. He befriended me very much did Bill Willis. Yeah. I haven’t seen him. I didn’t contact him, no.
JM: Well, that’s a bit of a variety of experiences.
JC: Yeah, they used to burn peat there to keep warm. In winter, peat, P E A T.
JM: That’s right. Absolutely. What other sorts of places did you go to?
JC: Mostly London. Mostly London.
JM: Mostly London. Always staying at the Strand?
JC: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Always stayed at the Strand cos’ I was okay with this manager. He used to play golf, and I was a golfer, and err, you know, we got on well together.
JM: So, did you have a few rounds somewhere?
JC: Er, I think so. I can’t remember, vaguely. There used to be a place called Chingwood, Chinkwood, and I used to go out there and practice, you know, practice. You weren’t allowed, er, there were wheat fields, besides the course, and er, they wanted them protected, you weren’t allowed to go in there, but I used to jump the bloody fence and go in there and find balls, golf balls, yeah. Chingwood, yeah.
JM: I’m sure there would have been a few balls in the —
JC- Yeah, yeah —
JM: Wheat paddock.
JC: You weren’t allowed to go in there.
JM: Alright, interesting. Perhaps we stop a minute, while you have your cup of coffee there.
JC: Are you going to have something?
JM: No, I’m fine, fine. {recording ceases], Okay, so we’ll pick up now —
JC: Well, I was a flying instructor, a pilot instructor at Southam, Southam, in Warwickshire and I was teaching er, air crew to be pilots, and on this occasion, I was a bit bored, you know, taking off and landing, and I lost a bit of concentration, and the aircraft took off and it didn’t get airborne, instead of the air flow going around the wings, it was all jumbled and they called it an incipient spin off the deck and the bloody thing landed, and the exhaust pipe was a long one and it was red hot, being an exhaust pipe and the plane caught on fire. The pupil and I scrambled out of it with a few blisters through the heat, and that was the only injury that we had, and er, the bloody aircraft was damaged, completely burnt out.
JM: I was going to say —
JC: Er, I got bored, and lost concentration. I shouldn’t have done it, I was responsible, I was the instructor and he was the pupil, and he agreed to keep flying with me after all, you know, he might have said ‘I don’t want to go with him anymore’, but he agreed to keep flying with me. That’s the story, is that the one you want?
JM: Uh huh. Good, that’s very good.
JC: I think I was very lucky to, to, not to get hurt, you know, with the aircraft catching on fire.
JM: Yes, indeed. And what, um, — when you came back to Australia and you err, um, had your MG’s and all the rest of it, where you selling them or?
JC: Yes, I had a car yard, MG’s and Austin Healeys, all sports cars, Jaguars, yeah.
JM: How, how long did you have that?
JC: For about five years I think? Yes.
JM: And after that?
JC: Well then, then, I, I, moved up the road a bit, that was at 600 Prince’s Highway. I had another car yard, just up the road at 614. The Good Guys have bought the land now, and they’re going to start a store there although I see they’re going to be taken over the Good Guys, by err, someone else.
JM: [?] hi fi.
JC: Yeah, hi fi, yeah. Err, what am I getting at?
Other: So, what did you do after the car yard?
JM: So, you had the second car yard. How long did you have the second car yard for?
JC: About four years, five years. I built a shed there. I built a great big workshop. Forty feet by twenty feet. I built it meself.
JM: Goodness.
JC: And I rented it from the council for twenty dollars a week, and I was there there until the fire came and destroyed it all.
JM: And what, what did you do after that?
JC: I, I went to TAFE and I did a course on spray painting and panel beating. And, er, I was pretty good there, they made me a part time instructor, on er, colour matching, and spray painting. I forget his name now, the boss man that got me the job, Jim, Jim Devlin, that was his name, Devlin. He was the boss of the spray painting joint, and I was casual instructor there, you know. Yeah.
JM: How long did you do that for?
JC: Er [pause], was that, er, did I, just escapes me at the minute, escapes me. I think I did that until I got called up from pilot instructing to operational training. I think, yeah.
JM: Right, so um, you mentioned, when we weren’t recording there, about your great interest in golf, when did you start playing golf?
JC: When I was ten I was a caddy.
JM: Ten?
JC: Yes, I was a caddy. Yes, I used to caddy at the Australian Golf Club.
JM: Oh, okay.
JC: We used to get forty er, four shillings a round we used to get four shillings a round. Two shillings, they’d give you a ticket, a caddy’s ticket for two shillings, and then you’d get a tip off the, off the golfer you were caddying for, for another two shillings, you used to get four shillings. And I used to do four rounds at the weekend, and I’d get sixteen shillings, and I’d help me mother, you know, with it, with her problems, her financial problems, and I was self-dependant, you know.
JM: That was sixteen shillings for a weekends work, would have been very good money.
JC: Yes, it was, yeah, it was yeah. And you’d find the odd golf ball, and you’d probably get a shilling for that, yeah, [laughs].
JM: How long, did you keep that up all the way through until you went off to the war, or did you only do that for a, until —
JC: I, I got a job, I got a job, at er, at er, Johnson and Johnson.
JM: Oh yes.
JC: Out at Botany. They gave me a job there in the speciality department where they used to make band aids. and cotton wool and all that stuff that Johnson and Johnson made, and I left from there to the war, that’s right. They gave me a send-off there. And then I, I went to er, and then I went to Bruntingthorpe on Wellingtons, and then I carried on my, my, war service, to Heavy Conversion Unit, on Short Stirlings,, they had four engines. We picked up our navigator there, we didn’t have a navigator until we got there. And, er we picked him up, he used to be helpful. He used to help you take the aircraft off you know. You used to have four throttles in the Lancaster. They had them like that, and you’d steer, you’d steer the aircraft by, by the throttles. If you wanted to go that way, you’d give it a bit of that throttle you see, and if you wanted to go that way, you give it a bit of that throttle, until, you’d be kicking the rudders all the time to get speed up, and after a while the rudders became effective, and then you didn’t have to steer it by the throttles any more, you steered it by the rudder, to keep it straight, and the —
JM: That’s a lot of coordination of hands and feet —
JC: Yeah.
JM: No wonder you’re good at golf.
JC: That’s right, yeah. I did a coordination test, when I was at er, Initial Training School. They put you in a seat, a cockpit seat and they gave you a green light, and they had a red light, and they used to move the light about and you used to have to chase it with the green light, to test your coordination. I did that at OTU and I think that helped me be categorised as a pilot. That was a great thing, you know. They could have made me a rear gunner or a ruddy, mid upper gunner. I wouldn’t have liked that at all. And er, and, they made me a pilot and I went to Mascot then, because it was close to home, I lived at Paddington at the time. Yeah.
JM: That means that you had a lot of different experiences, what with one thing and another.
JC: Yeah, yeah. I was lucky to escape the fire without getting burnt.
JM: Yes, and I guess probably, I guess when you were at 106 Squadron, you there would have been a fair few crews that went away and never came back to, even though you only did three actual flights yourself —
JC: Combat flights, yeah, I did many other flights, training flights on Lancasters.
JM: Yes, that’s right yes, but um —
JC: Three combatant flights —
JM: In the six months that you were there though, there would have been crews that went off and didn’t —
JC: Come back. Yeah, there were, yeah.
JM: And did you meet any other Australians there, not on your own crew, but did you have much contact with any other um —
JC: Er, no, I was never much of a socialiser. I don’t think so no.
JM: No, that’s okay. That’s fine.
JC: We had a runway there, err, called the err, Drem. It was powered by petrol. They used to burn petrol to warm up the air and lift off the fog. Drem, Drem.
JM: I heard about that. It was a very foggy place apparently.
JC: We had that at Metheringham. I got to know the bloke that controlled the petrol that burnt it. And I had a little motor car, a little er, eight horse power Ford, and I used to get petrol off him you know.
JM: Right.
JC: Because you weren’t allowed to have petrol then. You’d be driving along the street and the authorities would pull you up and they would put a litmus test in your tank to test if you were using government petrol or, or, or your own, you know, and you had to be aware of that.
JM: And, what, what happened if they didn’t like what they found?
JC: Well, well, they never found that with me, because I, I had this petrol that I got off the bloke that ran the Drem. Er, flight path.
JM: You didn’t have any problems, that was good, but er, having the car would have made life —
JC: Yeah, we used to go everywhere in that car.
JM: Yeah.
JC: When we became redundant because the boats were loaded with bringing home prisoners of war, and they got the priority for the shipping space, and we were made redundant for about three months. I was hanging around er, England, you know, until about April, after the war, and in that time, I managed to go around and visit all the good golf courses, Carnoustie, and Gleneagles and St Andrews, in this little Ford motor car.
JM: Did you actually play?
JC: I met a New Zealand navigator and he went with me. We went as a twosome, you know. He used to play golf also, yeah.
JM: And did you play any of those courses?
JC: Yeah. I played, yes, St Andrews, Gleneagles, Carnoustie, Rosemount, yeah, all those good courses.
JM: So, did you manage to get some sticks, or did you just hire the sticks at the clubs when you were playing?
JC: Er, I think I had a set of sticks. Henry Cotton, have you heard of Henry Cotton?
JM: A long time ago.
JC: Yeah, yeah, I think I had a set of those, and er, yeah. Oh, I played at Hoylake, Hoylake, that’s Royal Liverpool, that’s quite and, oh, and Waltham Heath, that’s an A grade course there, yeah. All the time we were redundant waiting for the prisoners of war to get out of the way so that we’d get a ship to come home, yeah.
JM: Well, er, that was a big bonus for you.
JC: Yeah. It was, it was, yeah.
JM: And of courses those courses are very different to playing back here.
JC: Yes, they are, they have beautiful, natural grass.
JM: Yes, indeed. That’s er a terrific um set of memories that you’ve got that we’ve been able to have the —
JC: You’d think they will be able to recognise my pilot instruction time for three years and hundreds of flying hours and give me an award do you think?
JM: I’m not completely across all of the requirements so I can’t really comment,
JC: Well, the AFC the Air Force Cross is an administrative award, it’s not a combat award. It’s not like the
DFC, the distinguished flying cross, it’s for administration, for non-combat activity that’s what I —
JM: I’m sorry, I’m not across that, but I can certainly make some enquiries, and see, what, there are others who are more familiar with that sort of stuff that can point us in the right direction in that regard.
JC: Okay, yeah. Good, thank you love.
JM: [Talking to someone else in the room}. Before I go, to get that medal.
JC: It’s a decoration, its not a campaign medal, the AFC, it’s a decoration.
JM: Well, I will talk to certain people, that we can um, um, see what we can find out.
JC: Okay, right oh, love.
JM: As I say, I’m sorry —
JC: Because I was three years instructing, you know, they ought to give me some recognition for that I think.
JC: That’s a long time to be, there must have been an awful lot of pilots that would have gone through
your —
JC: Yeah.
JM: Your instructions —
JC: That’s right yes. I filled almost a second log book.
JM: Right, that’s exactly right so err, we can err, I’ll, as I say I’ll speak to some people who I know will know more about that sort of thing than I certainly do.
JC: Right, okay, thank you.
JM: Is there any other areas that come to mind that we haven’t come across, that, that we haven’t covered that you wanted to mention?
JC: Er.
JM: I guess not having had any real contact with any real service personnel you probably um, probably haven’t talked a lot in the past about your time —
JC: No, even on Anzac Day. I used to go there and march with the Pathfinders, because I was trained to support the Pathfinders, to mark that targets and I had an affiliation with them, I thought, and I er, I only marched a couple of times. We used to have a reunion at the err, at the Imperial Services Club. It was taken over by er that club, err, the Royal Automobile Club yeah.
JM: Yes.
JC: I was a member there yes.
Other: Now Dad goes to {?} and marches there. You know [?}. I would love him to meet up with someone else who is doing similar but there doesn’t seem to be anybody —
JM: No, but on the er in the broader picture there is Bomber Command, especially with Pathfinder and sort of 106. 106 is part and parcel of Bomber Command.
JC: Yes.
JM: So that overall Bomber Command is that overarching link there.
JC: Yeah.
Other: And do they have gatherings?
JM: Yes, they do, Annette is the lady you spoke to. She is the secretary of the group.
Other: I would love to know if there was a function I could take him to.
JM: There will be something coming up.
Other: Yeah.
JM: Well, indeed. As I said, I will certainly mention —
Other: Yeah, okay.
JM: Well, I think we have covered a lot of ground. Thank you very much for your time Jim.
JC: You have been very patient Jenny,
JM: No, not at all. We are very happy to get your memories.
JC: I hope I’ve made the picture clear.
JM: Absolutely, your level of recall of detail has been very impressive.
JC: Good.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ACalmanJG160915
PCalmanJG1605
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with James Calman
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
00:47:04 audio recording
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
2016-09-15
Description
An account of the resource
Jim was born in New Zealand but grew up in Australia. He enlisted in Woolloomooloo under the Empire Air Training Scheme. He was sent to the Initial Training School in Somers and then went to the Elementary Flying Training School on Tiger Moths at the Mascot aerodrome. Jim then went on to the Service Flying Training School on Ansons at Bundaberg and became a pilot.
Jim arrived at a personnel reception centre in Bournemouth. He was sent to become a pilot instructor at a single engine aerodrome on Tiger Moths. They had started a grading scheme for pilots who would do 80 flying hours, as an alternative to going to Canada. He spent time in Southam, Ansty and Perth. They wanted to train crews to become Pathfinders. Jim was sent to RAF Bruntingthorpe, an Operational Training Unit, on Wellingtons, followed by a heavy conversion course at RAF Swinderby on Stirlings. He went to the Lancaster Finishing School at RAF Syerston. For the last six months, Jim was posted to 106 Squadron at RAF Metheringham to train as a Pathfinder pilot. He did operations to Rheinau; Tønsberg, Oslofjord; and, Lutzkendorf. Jim describes how and where he spent his leave and discusses the Drem Lighting System at RAF Metheringham.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Australia
Great Britain
England--Leicestershire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Nottinghamshire
Germany--Mannheim
Norway--Tønsberg
Atlantic Ocean--Oslofjorden
Germany--Halle an der Saale
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Jan Hargrave
Sally Coulter
106 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
bombing
entertainment
Lancaster
Pathfinders
pilot
RAF Metheringham
RAF Swinderby
RAF Syerston
Stirling
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/117/3379/PCookKHH1601.1.jpg
14944c26aa827cd2423b233d4d2ac572
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/117/3379/ACookKHH160725.2.mp3
199eff75afa2921f7b1278169d2c5ec3
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Cook, Kenneth
Kenneth Cook
Kenneth H Cook
Ken Cook
K H Cook
K Cook
Description
An account of the resource
Two oral history interviews with Wing Commander Kenneth Howell Cook DFC (b. 1923, 151017 Royal Air Force). Kenneth Cook flew 45 operations with 97 Squadron, Pathfinders.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-08-04
2016-07-25
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
Cook, KHH
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
PJ: Right. Interviewers Peter Jones and Sandra Jones. Name of the interviewee Wing Commander, Wing Commander Kenneth Cook DFC. Attending with him is his son Jonathan Cook. The date is the 25th of the 7th 2016 and it’s just 5 o’clock pm. The place is Chadlington, Oxfordshire. Thank you, Ken for agreeing to be interviewed for the IBCC. Ken, tell me about what you did before the war?
KC: Okay. Well I attended grammar school at -
JC: Marling.
KC: Marling Grammar School near Stroud in Gloucestershire and I was one of the first to join the Air Training Corps Squadron that was set up in Stroud, number 1329 Squadron and that helped to focus my attention on joining the Royal Air Force and while I waited until I was old enough to apply and a couple of years later I found myself on the train going from Stroud up to Paddington with an appointment to go to Lords Cricket Ground to be a part of what turned out to be over five thousand budding air crew that were joining the RAF on the same day that I was and after a few weeks staying in local accommodation in that area I was then posted up to Scarborough to the ITW [name number?]. That was at Scarborough Grammar School. So I did my ITW and then I was posted up, back up to the north west of England to wait for a boat because I was going across to America to learn to fly in America as a pilot and going across the Atlantic we were chased by a U-boat which gave us a bit of a turn and we got away from it and got to the other side alright and then got on a train that took us three days to go along through Canada right down through the centre of America to Georgia. And so my opening days were down there in very high temperatures erm which I enjoyed very much and we were flying an aircraft called a Stearman, the biplane, and I’d gone solo but they decided that I and one or two others needed a lot more time than they could afford so they asked me to go back to Canada to carry on my training there which I did but when I got to Canada I was told the pilot training schools were all totally full so I’d have to hang around. So they then asked me if I wanted to be an air gunner and I said no. And they made me hang around a bit longer and then eventually they said, ‘We’re opening up a new air crew job called an air bomber. Would you be interested in that?’ And I said, ‘Yes.’ I’d have a go at that and so I went on through a couple of courses spread over three or four months and I came out as the two guys that, I was commissioned as a young pilot officer off the course. There was two of us commissioned. I was one of them and so I came back home having gone out as an erk I came back to England as a pilot officer. Then having got back to England I found myself, believe it or not, posted to, what’s that airfield near High Wycombe, the grass over?
JC: Booker.
KC: Booker. Booker airfield, to fly Tiger Moths and so I carried on. Started my pilot training or continued my pilot training there and I’m lost now from where I go from there.
JC: Do you want to stop for a second Dad? Shall we stop for a sec? Can we just stop for a sec?
KC: Hmmn?
JC: Do you want to stop for a little break?
KC: Yeah.
JC: For a second.
KC: Yeah.
JC: So you -
[Pause]
SJ: Okay.
KC: So I was posted to the northwest England to fly. Can you stop it for a minute? I can’t think.
[Pause]
JC: Botha?
KC: Botha, yeah.
JC: Botha.
KC: Yeah. That was it.
JC: Yeah.
KC: Up there in Scotland. In the northwest. And then on to er what was I saying? Which one the -
JC?: Cottesmore.
KC: Cottesmore. That was the Wellingtons. Starting to learn night bombing and all that techniques. And from there I was posted to -
JC: Winthorpe.
KC: Winthorpe, was it? Yes.
JC: Heavy Conversation Unit.
KC: Yeah. HCU.
JC: Yeah.
KC: And then -
JC: And then Bardney after that for five [weeks?]
KC: And then to 9 Squadron at Bardney.
JC: Yeah.
KC: On Lancasters, yeah. Yeah. I did ten ops with 9 Squadron and a crew there and then we were invited to join them, they had just set up the Pathfinder force in Bomber Command and we were recommended as a crew that could join the Pathfinder force which I went on a course at Bourne in Cambridgeshire and then graduated on, as a Pathfinder crew in Lancasters [pause] and I did another thirty five ops with a Pathfinder crew. Altogether, I did forty five ops and I came out of that. Just after finishing ops I got awarded the DFC. And where did I go after ops?
JC: You went off to, where did you go then? You went off to Fiskerton didn’t you? To be the station radar nav officer. Was that right?
KC: Yes, I did. I was posted to RAF Fiskerton near Lincoln.
JC: Yeah.
KC: Having, I completed altogether forty five ops so I was now screened from any more ops but I then flew at Fiskerton. There were two Lancaster squadrons there and my job was to, as new crews came in from training I had to fly with each new crew to check them out, that they, that their navigators could operate the radar properly before they were allowed to go on ops. That was hairy because some of the pilots were new and they couldn’t land the Lancaster at night and we used to do what we called a few, what we called a few cannon balls going down the runway at night. Anyway, went through that period. The squadron then moved from, they closed the airfield and moved us to Fulbeck and so I went along although I was on the station and not with the squadrons I was instructed by Group Headquarters to go with them to Syerston on the Fosse Way and I stayed with them for about two years at Syerston flying with new crews when they came in. Checking them out on the radar and so on. Then what happened after Syerston?
JC: Okay. So you were getting ready for the Tiger Force. Is that right?
KC: Um.
JC: You went to back to the, posted back to Coningsby. Station radar nav officer.
KC: Yeah.
JC: And you were part of the build-up for the Tiger Force when you were due to head out to the Far East weren’t you?
KC: They were going, they were going out there. Yeah.
JC: Yes but obviously it was cancelled because the Japanese surrendered. Didn’t they?
KC: Yeah. That’s it.
JC: Okay.
KC: [?]
JC: So that took you to the end of the war. Right?
KC: Yeah.
JC: And so what was your first posting post war was at HQ1 Group at Bawtry.
KC: Bawtry yes. I was the group radar nav, group navigation officer.
JC: Yeah.
KC: At headquarters of 1 Group at Bawtry.
JC: Yeah.
KC: Yeah.
JC: And then in 194 –
KC: I was a wingco then.
JC: That’s, okay, well you were then offered a permanent commission in, that was 1948.
KC: Yeah.
JC: You were offered permanent commission?
KC: Yeah.
JC: Yes.
KC: Yeah.
JC: And then you went on to Thirsk. Okay.
KC: Well, ‘cause I went to Topcliffe.
JC: Yes.
KC: ‘Cause that was, had been set up to, to train all wartime people like me in to being proper peacetime navigators [laughs].
JC: That’s right.
KC: And I was one of them. How to use Astro and all that stuff and to navigate the aeroplanes.
JC: What’s Astro?
KC: Astro and also with the radar, of course. All the latest stuff.
JC: Okay.
KC: Yeah. What happened after Topcliffe?
JC: And then you went to a conversion course on night all weather fighters and you then moved to Coltishall flying in Mosquitos.
KC: Yeah. I had to go on to learn the latest air borne radar for night fighter navigator radar people and then I was posted to Coltishall.
JC: That’s it.
KC: Where there was a night fighter squadron and I joined the squadron. I can’t remember how long. About a year or more and then I was posted – when? I took command.
JC: That squadron, that squadron converted didn’t it? To –
KC: To Javelins.
JC: That’s, no, to Meteors I think it was.
KC: Meteor night fighters. That’s right.
JC: That’s right. Yeah.
KC: Yeah. From Mosquito to Meteor night fighters.
JC: Yes.
KC: When did I take command?
JC: You, so that was, I don’t know when you took command but in 1953 you were group navigation officer at that point and in 1956/57 you went to West Malling didn’t you? And you were appointed as a flight commander. Is that right?
KC: Yeah.
JC: Which was unusual for a navigator wasn’t it?
KC: I was one of the first navigators to be a -
JC: Yes.
KC: A flight commander.
JC: Yes. Okay. And then in 1957 you went to 153 in West Malling.
KC: Yeah.
JC: And you were appointed commanding officer there.
KC: Yeah.
JC: And given the rank of Wing Commander at that point.
KC: Yeah.
JC: Yeah. And the aircraft you moved to then were Meteor.
KC: Meteor and, and yeah Meteor night fighters.
JC: That’s right.
KC: Yeah.
JC: They were 12s and 14s I think.
KC: Yeah.
JC: Were they?
KC: Yeah. Mark 12s and Mark 14s. Yeah.
JC: And later you converted to another aircraft.
KC: Yeah. Javelin.
JC: That’s right.
KC: Yeah.
JC: That’s right. Okay.
KC: Javelin. Night, all weather fighters.
JC: Okay. And then after that you were posted, you had an opportunity to improve your, your shocking education.
KC: Yeah. They sent me to the Staff College.
JC: That’s right.
KC: I went to the RAF Staff College for a year and they were obviously teaching me to read and write again you know.
JC: That’s right.
KC: I was at Bracknell in Berkshire.
JC: Okay.
KC: Yeah.
JC: Do you want to take another quick break? Just take a quick break dad?
KC: Yeah. Shall we do that? Yeah.
[Pause]
JC: So where did you go? You went off to the Middle East.
KC: Yeah. I went to Iran.
JC: No. No.
KC: No.
JC: That was post air force. You went to somewhere else. You went to Aden didn’t you?
KC: Oh I went to Aden, yes.
JC: That’s right.
KC: In the Middle East. Aden. And I used to have to tramp up in to the Persian Gulf from Aden.
JC: Yes.
KC: Visiting the air force bases and that all along the Gulf.
JC: Yes.
KC: And I was out there about two years wasn’t I?
JC: That’s right.
KC: Yeah.
JC: Until 1963.
KC: Yeah.
JC: And then you were posted back to a training command I think. Is that right? For a couple of years. And then you moved on to Signals Command at Medmenham near Marlow.
KC: Yeah, it was, it was, was it a Group Headquarters or a Command Headquarters?
JC: It was, it was HQ Signals Command it says.
KC: Oh the Command Headquarters then.
JC: Yes.
KC: As a staff officer I was there.
JC: Yeah. And what was your role there?
KC: Signals Command, Medmenham.
JC: Is it related to personnel? Wasn’t it? It says here you were a senior personnel staff officer.
KC: Yeah.
JC: Okay.
KC: Yeah. I think I was involved, yeah, in staffing matters there.
JC: That’s right.
KC: Yeah.
JC: Yes you were. And then you took retirement in January 1968.
KC: Yeah.
JC: And then started your civilian career.
KC: Yeah.
JC: Yes.
KC: Yeah
JC: So is that as far as you want to take it? There we go. That’s that bit. Now, shall we start again and I’ll, I’ll ask you some questions around this different things that you just want to give me there as well.
SJ: Those.
JC: Okay alright. So dad, so going back to so when were you, first of all just give your birthdate, dad. When you were born.
KC: 9th of April 1923.
JC: 1923. Okay and where were you born?
KC: Randwick.
JC: Randwick in Gloucestershire.
KC: Near Stroud.
JC: Yeah. Near Stroud in Gloucestershire.
KC: Yeah.
JC: And just kind of describe what sort of a place Randwick was back in those, those days?
KC: Well, Randwick was a small Cotswold village. Everybody knew everybody.
JC: Yeah.
KC: I went to Randwick village school.
JC: How many kids were there in that school? Roughly. Can you remember?
KC: There was about a hundred and fifty altogether.
JC: Was there? Okay.
KC: There were about three or, yeah, three classes total.
JC: Yeah.
KC: In the school.
JC: Okay.
KC: And I passed the eleven plus.
JC: And you also had, did some things in the village as well didn’t you? Weren’t you sort of active in the choir as I remember? Is that right?
KC: I was in the church choir.
JC: Yes.
KC: Yeah. The C of E church choir.
JC: Yeah.
KC: I became the head choir boy ‘cause I was the guy that would always get pushed in the back by the choir master saying, ‘Sing up Ken.’
JC: Fantastic. Okay. Alright. And so then you went, you passed your exam and went to Randwick School and where was Randwick School?
KC: Well it -
JC: Sorry not Randwick School. You went to Marling School.
KC: Marling. Marling School.
JC: And where was Marling School?
KC: Marling School was on the outskirts of Stroud.
JC: Which was how far away from -
KC: About four miles.
JC: Right.
KC: I used to cycle there on a bike every morning.
JC: Right. Okay.
KC: Yeah.
JC: And so you stayed there for a number of years until you were what? About sixteen were you?
KC: Yeah sixteen.
JC: Yeah. And then you left the -
KC: I then, I got a job with a company called Erinoid. It was in the early days when plastics were first being made in this country.
JC: Yes.
KC: And Erinoid were one of the early companies and I was invited to join their lab, their laboratory.
JC: Right.
KC: Where all the experiments was being done on the latest type of plastics.
JC: And so -
KC: I was an office boy if you like.
JC: Right.
KC: But in fact they made me look at everything that was going on with a view to picking it up.
JC: Right.
KC: Yeah.
JC: So you were almost like an apprentice there?
KC: An apprentice. Yes.
JC: That’s what you were kind of doing.
KC: Yes.
JC: Doing. Okay. And, and so you did that job. So we were now in 1939 so there would have, that would have been presumably you were working there at the outbreak of the war. Were you?
KC: Yes I was. Yeah.
JC: Right. Okay.
KC: Yeah.
JC: And what was, how did you feel about the outbreak of the war? What was, you know your initial thinking?
KC: Well one of the first things I did was to join the Air Training Corps in Stroud.
JC: Right okay.
KC: And from there -
JC: And what made you join that as opposed to joining the army or the navy? What was it about the Air Training Corps?
KC: It was about flying and I wanted to learn to fly.
JC: Right.
KC: Yeah.
JC: It seemed like a better option. Did it? Fair enough.
KC: Yeah.
JC: Fair enough. Okay. So you got to the age, I guess, of eighteen where you could potentially signup.
KC: Yeah.
JC: So were you conscripted or did you volunteer?
KC: I volunteered.
JC: You volunteered.
KC: Yeah.
JC: And where did you go to volunteer? At somewhere -
KC: I went to Weston Super Mare.
JC: Did you? Right.
KC: Yeah.
JC: Why did you have to go down there ‘cause that’s a bit of a way from Stroud?
KC: That was the sort of a holding centre.
JC: Right.
KC: Where you went down there and you’d find you were there with all sorts of guys and so on.
JC: Right I bet. Did any, did you go down there with anybody. Any friends go with you? Or?
KC: No.
JC: No you went off on your own did you?
KC: On my own. Yeah.
JC: And did you have to do anything before you went down there? Was there anything more local in Stroud that you had to do to -?
KC: Only that I was now an active member of the Air Training Corps in Stroud.
JC: So it was the Air Training Corps that helped you -
KC: That helped me.
JC: Yeah.
KC: Very much. Yeah.
JC: I see.
KC: Yeah.
JC: Okay. And so what happened when you went to Weston Super Mare? What happened when you went down there?
KC: Oh crikey. What happened at Weston Super Mare? I think we were, we were every day marched out on to the top of the cliffs.
JC: Yes.
KC: And made to parade up and down doing all sorts of, learning to drill, you know -
JC: Right.
KC: All the drill stuff.
JC: That’s where your drill stuff happened?
KC: Yes.
JC: Right. Okay. Good. And, and of course you had your mum and dad were back at home.
KC: Yes.
JC: What was their reaction to your having signed up and volunteered? Do you remember?
KC: My dad was almost, sort of well, ‘I expected you to do something like that Ken.’
JC: Right.
KC: Sort of thing, you know.
JC: Yes.
KC: My mum said, ‘I don’t want you to go.’
JC: No. I bet.
KC: 'I don’t want you to go.’
JC: As mums do.
KC: But I did. But I used to, you know come home on breaks and -
JC: Yes.
KC: See them.
JC: And you had, you had several older brothers and a sister. What were they doing during all of this?
KC: Yeah. Harry was the eld– , well Mabel was the eldest wasn’t she?
JC: Your sister. Yes.
KC: Yeah.
JC: That’s right.
KC: And she’s the one who kept, if you like, the family running.
JC: Right.
KC: Although she lived a few miles away.
JC: Yeah.
KC: She kept an eye on my mum and dad.
JC: Yeah.
KC: And really kept the family running -
JC: Yeah.
KC: Smoothly. And I had brothers like Harry.
JC: Yes.
KC: He was –
JC: Did he sign up for any, any of the services?
KC: Sorry?
JC: Did he sign up for any of the services? Or was he a bit, he was a bit older wasn’t he?
KC: A bit older. Yeah. Walter. Walter did.
JC: Yes.
KC: Yes. He did.
JC: What did he sign up for? Did he sign up for, was one of them merchant navy? I can’t quite remember what he was.
KC: It was something like that.
JC: Yeah.
KC: I think it was. Yes.
JC: Yes.
KC: Merchant navy. Yeah.
JC: Yes.
KC: Yeah.
JC: What about your nearest brother?
KC: Charlie.
JC: Charlie. What did he do?
KC: Well Charlie was in a reserved occupation ‘cause he worked for Newman Henders and he was a draughtsman.
JC: Right.
KC: And they were working on munitions and stuff.
JC: Oh right.
KC: And so he was screened. They wouldn’t let him go.
JC: Right.
KC: He had to get on with the war stuff that he was working on.
JC: Fine. Okay.
KC: On drawing boards and things.
JC: Okay. Alright. So -
KC: Yeah.
JC: So that’s what the family were doing and what they were thinking and you were off at Weston Super Mare and coming home at weekend, occasional weekends and things like that were you?
KC: Yeah. Yeah.
JC: Okay. And how, and so you did that for a bit and then you said before that you had to go up to, to Lord’s to kind of muster up there did you? Is that, is that right?
KC: Yeah. Yeah. Yes. I had to report to Lord’s.
JC: Yes.
KC: ‘Cause I wanted to fly aircrew.
JC: Yes. So that was where aircrew were sent.
KC: Aircrew. We all, literally I was absolutely shattered. Walked into the Lord’s Cricket Ground ‘cause I’d never been, even to London like that in my life.
JC: Right.
KC: And walked in and there with thousands -
JC: Yes.
KC: Guys like me and -
JC: And what was -
KC: We were there. They took over the expensive housing from, I’m not anti-Jews but a certain part near there a lot of Jew families, rich Jew families.
JC: That was St John’s Wood wasn’t it? Around the St John’s Wood.
KC: St John’s Wood.
JC: Yes.
KC: And the government kicked them all out.
JC: Yes.
KC: And took over all their sumptuous houses, I mean for me as village kid coming up there, going into their bathrooms and seeing all the ornate stuff they had in their bathrooms, you know.
JC: Quite something was it?
KC: It was. It was unbelievable, you know.
JC: And were you so you were sort of put into these, these kind of houses and apartments I guess in -
KC: Yeah.
JC: In London. And you were sharing with people from your part of the country or from around the country?
KC: All over the country. There were guys that could hardly add up to five.
JC: Right.
KC: Sort of thing.
JC: Yes.
KC: And there was, not cockneys but they had accents that you couldn’t understand half the things they said, you know.
JC: Right. I bet, I bet there were people that you hadn’t been exposed to many of those kinds of accents, had you?
KC: No. I hadn’t. No.
JC: Right.
KC: Yeah.
JC: Fantastic. Okay.
KC: Yeah.
JC: And so okay so you did, so you did that and then from there that’s where they sent you I think to Booker wasn’t it? To start the -
KC: Yeah.
JC: The training.
KC: FTS Booker.
JC: Yes.
KC: To start pilot training.
JC: That’s right.
KC: Yeah.
JC: Okay.
KC: Yeah. Yeah. That Booker was near High Wycombe.
JC: That’s it and that was for air experience wasn’t it? On, on -
KC: Yeah.
JC: What sort of aircraft? Those were on -
KC: Seeing if you were going to be airsick all the time.
JC: Yeah.
KC: Which, they would chuck you out of aircrew. Yeah.
JC: And that on what sort of planes were those you were flying?
KC: That was Tiger Moths.
JC: Tiger Moths.
KC: Yeah.
JC: Okay. Gosh.
KC: Yeah.
JC: Okay. And how did you take to the flying? What was your sort of initial memories of doing that?
KC: I felt quite comfortable about it. I think, I mean I wasn’t eliminated or anything like that.
JC: Right and could you have been eliminated at that point?
KC: You could have, yeah.
JC: Right.
KC: If you didn’t cope reasonably well they’d chuck you off the course.
JC: Right.
KC: Yeah.
JC: Okay and so, so that was sort of April May 1942 and then in June 1942 they put you on board this ship the SS Leticia.
KC: Leticia.
JC: Leticia that’s right. And that was -
KC: And we went across the Atlantic -
JC: And that was from up in Scotland. You had to go up to Scotland to catch -
KC: Yeah. Yeah.
JC: That didn’t you? From the Clyde.
KC: The Clyde.
JC: To go over to Halifax in Nova Scotia.
KC: Yeah.
JC: And –
KC: We were chased by U-boats going across the Atlantic.
JC: That’s right.
KC: Yeah.
JC: And then, and then from there you travelled down on the trains through to Georgia to -
KC: Albany, Georgia.
JC: Albany, Georgia. That’s right.
KC: Took about three days and nights on the train.
JC: That’s it.
KC: Thousand, hundreds of miles. It was a distance train trip.
JC: Okay. But you were flying from a place called Turner Field.
KC: Turner Field.
JC: Yeah.
KC: Albany, Georgia.
JC: That’s it. Okay. And then you were, what sort of planes were you flying down there? This was -
KC: PT17s. Stearman.
JC: Okay.
KC: A biplane.
JC: And this -
KC: The American version of the Tiger Moth sort of thing.
JC: Yeah.
KC: But it was a heavier airplane than the Tiger Moth.
JC: And why were you sent over to the States to do, to do this?
KC: Because they wanted air crew quickly.
JC: Right. But why not train them up here?
KC: The only schools we had were absolutely jam packed full.
JC: I see. Okay.
KC: And to, they needed to, they needed hundreds more.
JC: Right.
KC: So we were sent. I mean some were sent to South Africa.
JC: Yes.
KC: I was sent to Canada and America.
JC: Right. And America was still neutral at this time wasn’t it?
KC: Yes. Yeah.
JC: So, so, so but they were still happy for, for aircrew to be trained up in America on this -
KC: Yeah.
JC: There was -
KC: I don’t know how we got away with that but we did.
JC: Yeah. Okay and this was something called, there was a name for this scheme wasn’t it? What was it called?
KC: The Arnold Scheme.
JC: The Arnold Scheme. Okay.
KC: Yeah.
JC: Alright. Alright. So, so you did some training on these Stearmans and then they decided that you needed to do more flying and they sent you back up to Canada.
KC: Yeah.
JC: But the -
KC: They said they hadn’t got enough hours.
JC: Yes.
KC: To keep me down there because it was such a concentrated course down in America.
JC: Yeah.
KC: So they sent me back to Canada and they said I could carry on up there. All the lot of guys had got up there at this holding unit and I found I was there with about five hundred other guys who were also were waiting to carry on with their training.
JC: Right.
KC: And so I was there, I can’t remember how long I was there.
JC: So this was in, this was Trenton.
KC: Trenton, Ontario.
JC: Trenton, Ontario.
KC: Yeah.
JC: Okay. So -
KC: Yeah.
JC: This was in September 1942.
KC: Yeah.
JC: And I think you were there for some months by the looks of it.
KC: Yeah.
JC: Through until about January, I think.
KC: Yeah.
JC: In 1943.
KC: In the process they’d come every so often and say, ‘would you like to become an air gunner?’ And I’d say no.
JC: Why didn’t you want to be an air gunner?
KC: Well I didn’t, I thought that was an unskilled job.
JC: Right. Okay, Fair enough. Okay. And so, so then they offered you this thing called an air bomber.
KC: Yeah. Yeah.
JC: And what, what was that?
KC: Well, the air bomber, that was coinciding with the four engined bombers coming in to the RAF.
JC: Right.
KC: And -
JC: Like what sort of, examples of those, like what?
KC: The aircrew in the Lancaster.
JC: Yes.
KC: You had the pilot and the flight engineer.
JC: Yeah.
KC: Then you had two navigators. One was what they called the navigator plotter.
JC: Yes.
KC: His job was to work out time, course and so on and the other one was a navigator observer which was me.
JC: Right.
KC: My job was to do all the, operate the radar that we carried to drop our bomb loads using my radar. If we had to do visual bombing I had to also operate the bomb site down in the nose.
JC: Right.
KC: Of the Lancaster and I also was trained to use guns in the turrets in case we were attacked and the gunners were killed.
JC: Yes.
KC: My job was to get them out of the, out of the turret and take his place.
JC: Right.
KC: That sort of thing, you see.
JC: And wasn’t there some forward guns as well that you were supposed -
KC: Yes. In the, right in the nose.
JC: Yes.
KC: There was a turret.
JC: Yes.
KC: Right at the front and the gun protruded out the front.
JC: Yes.
KC: And down the tail end there were four guns in the tail end turret.
JC: Yeah.
KC: And the mid-upper turret -
JC: Yes.
KC: Were two guns.
JC: Right. Right.
KC: Yeah.
JC: Okay. Good okay. So you trained on this new job of air bomber for a period of several months. You came off and you were commissioned.
KC: Yeah.
JC: And coming out of the course. What rank was it again?
KC: I was a flight lieutenant.
JC: No. I think you were a pilot officer.
KC: Oh pilot officer, sorry.
JC: I think.
KC: Pilot officer. That’s right.
JC: That’s what you came out as didn’t you?
KC: Yeah.
JC: And then you were sent back to the UK at that time.
KC: Yeah.
JC: And you went up to Wigtown to fly these Bothas. Bothas. What sort of aircraft was that?
KC: Botha was a twin engine.
JC: Yes.
KC: Aircraft, it had been an operational aircraft but they reckoned it was underpowered so they took it off ops.
JC: Right.
KC: And used it as advanced training for people like me going on to ops.
JC: And had you formed a crew at that time or were you just randomly -
KC: No.
JC: Assigned to -
KC: I was a random guy at that time.
JC: Right.
KC: Didn’t -
JC: Okay.
KC: Didn’t, get a crew until you got to the OTU.
JC: Okay so that was the next thing. You went to the OTU.
KC: Yeah.
JC: At Cottesmore.
KC: Yeah.
JC: And you were flying Wellingtons.
KC: Wellingtons.
JC: So you got a crew there.
KC: There, yeah.
JC: And how did you, what was the process of choosing a crew. How did you -
KC: [Laugh] That’s a good question. We were -
JC: Were you carefully selected and matched up?
KC: We were a lump, a lump of aircrew there.
JC: Yeah.
KC: All sorts and sizes gunners and wireless operators and bomb aimers and navigators and pilots and so on and we used to wander around in a, you literally used to go up and say, ‘Have you got a crew yet mate?’ And whoever it was would say, ‘No I haven’t. Would you like to join with me? I’m a navigator.’ He’d say, ‘What are you?’ ‘I’m an air bomber.’ He’d say, ‘Yeah fine.’ And then we’d keep together and we’d go to somebody else, ‘Would you like to come in our crew.’
JC: So it was -
KC: And that’s how it was done.
JC: So obviously it was a scientific and carefully managed process so –
KC: Yeah.
JC: So that was good. So tell me a bit about the crew that you, that you ended up with. What was the skipper’s name?
KC: Jim Kermans[?] He was much older. I mean, we were, I was twenty one, twenty two and he was twenty nine. He was the dad of the crew.
JC: Right.
KC: Twenty nine.
JC: And where was he from?
KC: He was an Australian.
JC: Yeah.
KC: Very staid sort of person. Not much sense of humour.
JC: Yeah.
KC: On thinking back he must have been worried to hell on every flight he did. That sort of impression.
JC: Did he give you that impression while you were there or did you think he kind of took it in his stride quite a bit?
KC: He did it a bit when I was there.
JC: Yeah.
KC: ‘Cause I had to get very close to him.
JC: Yeah.
KC: The pilot. With some of the things I had to do -
JC: Yeah.
KC: Was directly on behalf of the pilot.
JC: Right.
KC: So I had to get to know him.
JC: Yes.
KC: I mean he had a flight engineer.
JC: Yes.
KC: But er -
JC: What was the flight engineer’s name?
KC: Ken Randall.
JC: Right.
KC: Yeah.
JC: And where was he from?
KC: The other navigator, what was called the navigator plotter was Don Bowes.
JC: Where was he -
KC: Who was an out and out Yorkshireman.
JC: Oh was he?
KC: He could hardly speak English. It was all Yorkshire stuff [laughs].
JC: Alright. What about, what about Ken Randall. Where was he from?
KC: Ken Randall, he was a Birmingham, brummy.
JC: Was he? Right Okay.
KC: Yeah. Yes.
JC: So you were meeting people from around the country that you’d probably never met people from that part of the world before.
KC: Yeah. It’s amazing how we welded into such a good crew.
JC: Yeah and what so what made a good crew do you think? What was -
KC: I think -
JC: How’d that work?
KC: You were individuals. In a crew of seven you’d find two or three of you were buddies and then suddenly a fourth one in the crew would sort of latch on to us ‘cause we’d go to a pub and he’d be there on his own.
JC: Right.
KC: And you’d say, ‘Come on. Have a drink,’ Sort of thing, you know.
JC: Yeah.
KC: And that helped to bring them in, you know.
JC: Right. So the pub was important then?
KC: Yeah. Oh yeah.
JC: Yeah.
KC: The village pub.
JC: Yeah. Yeah.
KC: Yeah.
JC: And where was the village pub? So you were -
KC: Bourne. Well when doing ops from Bourne -
JC: Yeah.
KC: We used to go down in the village pub, literally was in the village of Bourne.
JC: Right. Yeah.
KC: And we used to brews[?] in there and have a few.
JC: Yeah.
KC: And then get back and get to bed ‘cause we probably had to get up early morning to do some flying the next day.
JC: So, so on a so you obviously with Wellingtons you found your crew now.
KC: Yeah.
JC: Who else on the crew? So let’s just finish the crew off. So you’ve got your flight engineer, you’ve got your navigator, you’ve got your skipper who’s the pilot.
KC: Yeah.
JC: What about the, so you’ve got two gunners haven’t you?
KC: Yeah. We had, the mid upper gunner was a Canadian.
JC: Yes.
KC: And the tail gunner was an out and out broad Scotsman.
JC: Right.
KC: He used to get excited when we were on ops and he’d talk about this thing coming in and he used to shout and scream but it was in broad Scots and none of us could understand [laughs].
JC: [laughs] Brilliant. Okay. Good. So, Okay, so you’ve got your crew and you’ve moved over to the, to Winthorpe and then on to Bardney where you started operations in Bardney.
KC: I did ten ops at Bardney, 9 Squadron.
JC: And that was on Lancasters.
KC: Yes.
JC: On number 9 Squadron.
KC: Yeah.
JC: Okay and, and what sort of place, what was, what was Bardney like as a place to kind of work from?
KC: Bardney was very much a new airfield with Nissen huts.
JC: Yes.
KC: Everything was Nissen hutted accommodation.
JC: Right.
KC: And it seemed that, you know, everything was sparse there but it was just about enough for human people to live and be fed.
JC: Right.
KC: And then, but you were going off on ops and that from there and you used to think coming back oh I’ve got to come back to that bloody den downstairs again sort of thing, you know.
JC: Right. Right. And what so if you had an op, when did you know when you were flying on an operation. Did you -
KC: We were all, all the aircrew had to go for the briefing which was always held on the night of ops. The briefing was at two o’clock in the afternoon.
JC: Right.
KC: So all the aircrew that were about on the station would go straight towards the briefing room which was -
JC: Yes.
KC: Quite a huge room.
JC: Right.
KC: And they had table after table in there.
JC: Yeah.
KC: And they could pack a couple of hundred or three hundred aircrew -
JC: Right.
KC: In there.
JC: Yeah.
KC: And you’d walk in and then the far you came always came in at the back door. You walked in and you looked straight ahead because there were the maps of Germany and the continent ahead of you and there was the route you were going to fly that night and [?] we’d say, ‘Oh not bloody Berlin again.’ This was after I’d done about eight ops to Berlin, you know.
JC: Yeah. Yeah.
KC: And so, you know, we used to talk to one another, ‘Oh bloody Berlin again,’ you know.
JC: Yeah. Alright. So, so had the briefing room there. And who ran the briefings?
KC: The squadron commander.
JC: Yeah.
KC: And his flight commanders.
JC: Right. Okay.
KC: And of course they had specialists. I mean they had the guy who looked after the wireless operator guys.
JC: Yes. Yeah.
KC: And he was the radio wireless op king sort of thing.
JC: Yes. Yeah.
KC: And I think that was about it. What other trade was there? Oh the engineer.
JC: Right.
KC: Station engineer.
JC: Yes.
KC: Was always there.
JC: Yeah.
KC: And he would say something about what had happened to some of the aircraft. They had to do some modifications or.
JC: Right.
KC: And he also would cover anything wrong with the radar gear that we carried on board that had -
JC: Yes.
KC: Been modifications to it dadedadeda.
JC: Right.
KC: And all that stuff.
JC: Right. What other things came out of the briefings? I guess you would have some intelligence. There would be an intelligence officer there.
KC: They showed the route and they had a large scale map on the wall, the big wall at the end of briefing room but all they had shading areas showing where all the searchlight belts were -
JC: Yes.
KC: Over Germany.
JC: Yes.
KC: And where the night fighter air fields were -
JC: Yeah.
KC: In Germany.
JC: Yeah.
KC: And heavily populated areas. They were brought out to show you that -
JC: Yeah.
KC: You know don’t go flying over these on the way because they’ll shoot you down.
JC: Right.
KC: If you get mixed up with some of these other cities.
JC: Yes.
KC: On the way in to, in to your target in Germany.
JC: Yeah. Okay and so how long would a briefing typically take, would you say?
KC: Sorry.
JC: How long would a briefing typically take?
KC: I should say minimum of two hours.
JC: About two hours.
KC: Yeah.
JC: Okay.
KC: Yeah.
JC: And then would there be a break and you could go off or did you then go straight to -
KC: They would tell you what time briefing was going to be.
JC: Yeah.
KC: For the raid.
JC: Yeah.
KC: They would announce what time the night flying meal was arranged for.
JC: Right.
KC: So you had a good cooked meal before you went.
JC: What sort of things would you have before you go up?
KC: Eggs and bacon ‘cause eggs were rationed. Eggs and bacon and you know tomato and things like that.
JC: Right.
KC: Lovely.
JC: Lovely, yeah. Yeah. Fantastic. There’s got to be some pros to it I suppose. So, that’s good. Okay and so you have your meal and then what happens? You go to your dispersal do you?
KC: You went back to your room in dispersal and if it –
JC: How did you travel around the base did you –?
KC: Bike.
JC: On bike.
KC: [We were drove?] or bike.
JC: Right. Okay. So you would ride out and it could be a half a mile away or that kind of distance.
KC: Yeah.
JC: To your -
KC: A couple of miles.
JC: A couple of miles.
KC: Yeah.
JC: Okay.
KC: Could be. Yeah.
JC: So it could be getting dark by this point and you’d be cycling off to –
KC: Yeah.
JC: And the plane would be there and there would be a building next to the plane that you would, you would sit in prior to -
KC: Yeah.
JC: Going off would you?
KC: Well remember we had to go back to briefing.
JC: Yes.
KC: For the raid.
JC: Yes. Okay. So that’s in addition to that. So you had a second meeting then -
KC: Yeah.
JC: Do you?
KC: Yeah.
JC: Right. Okay and what was, what was the purpose of that? That second meeting.
KC: Sorry?
JC: Have a drink. Have a drink, dad.
KC: Yeah.
JC: Sorry. I’m getting you to do too much talking.
[pause]
JC: And what would, what would the purpose of that second meeting be dad? The briefing. What was different from that from the first, the first briefing in the afternoon?
KC: Any changes of timing.
JC: Ah I see. Okay.
KC: Something might come through from group head or command headquarters.
JC: Yeah.
KC: That they’d found out something about Jerry tactics or something was going to happen.
JC: Yes.
KC: So that might modify the way you were going in. They may even change the route.
JC: Right.
KC: ‘Cause they were ‘cause your original route would take you right into the middle where all the German night fighters were.
JC: I see.
KC: So they would re-route you.
JC: Right. So they’d have updates on intelligence.
KC: To try to avoid that.
JC: Okay. So they’d have updated information. Alright. So you’d have that second briefing and then you’d go off to your dispersal area. Right? Is that -
KC: Yes. Yeah.
JC: Yes. Okay and then would you go straight in to the plane or sit around in the dispersal area for a bit or how, how long a -
KC: We used to sit in our room.
JC: Yes.
KC: You know, I mean it was Nissen huts where I was. I probably had about four or five guys on beds in the same Nissen huts -
JC: Yes.
KC: That I was.
JC: Yeah. Yeah.
KC: So I we’d have a chinwag or you know you’d, you may have wanted to go and have a bath or something like that.
JC: Right.
KC: You know.
JC: What else did you do to kind of while away the time ‘cause obviously there was lots of sitting around waiting isn’t there? So -
KC: Yeah if this lady wasn’t here I’d tell you exactly what we were doing [laughs].
JC: Right okay fine I think we’ll leave that to the imagination there, dad. That’s fine. Okay. [laughs].
KC: Yeah.
JC: What about things, did you play cards or anything like that or -
KC: Some of the guys did. Yes.
JC: Yeah.
KC: And -
JC: Yeah.
KC: And card games or poker and things like that.
JC: Yeah.
KC: Well, you know, poker’s a card game.
JC: Yeah.
KC: Things like that.
JC: Chess and things like that?
KC: Chess, yeah.
JC: Yeah. Yeah. Okay, alright so then the time came and you had to get in, get in to the plane.
KC: Yeah.
JC: Presumably you had to suit up. Just describe what you had to wear before you -
KC: Well, you’d, you obviously would put your flying overalls on.
JC: Yeah.
KC: But we used to have odd pockets in these flying overalls and so each chap would decide whether he wanted to take a knife, bars of chocolate stuffed down the leg or something like that.
JC: Yeah.
KC: In case you bailed out and -
JC: Sure.
KC: You wanted, you know. That was the idea was to take something like bars of chocolate.
JC: Didn’t you have ration packs as well?
KC: Oh yes.
JC: Did you have emergency rations?
KC: Yeah. Had a -
JC: Or something.
KC: Ration pack, yes.
JC: Yeah. Yeah that you carried with you.
KC: Yeah. Yeah.
JC: Right. Okay. So you had your overalls on and what else? What other things did you have to put on before you climbed in to the plane?
KC: Well, obviously the Mae West.
JC: Yes. What’s a Mae West for those that wouldn’t know?
KC: The Mae West was, was the, if you came down in the sea you wore it. You had your flying suit on and also your underclothing and anything like that and then this Mae West went over the top and it had a system of buoyancy.
JC: Right.
KC: But also you could inflate air. The little bottle -
JC: Right.
KC: With air and you could pull a plug plunger and that would shoot air and this thing would, from being close to you would suddenly you were in the middle of a floatation -
JC: Right.
KC: Gadget.
JC: Yes.
KC: Sort of thing, you see.
JC: Yes. So like a lifejacket almost. Yes.
KC: So if your aircraft came down in the sea and you had to get out of it whatever happened ‘cause it was going down with you on board –
JC: Yes.
KC: This was how you made your thing work so at least you.
[phone ringing]
JC: Yes. Yes. Okay so we’ve got that. And then what else? You presumably have a flying jacket would you, as well? That you would need to, to wear.
KC: Yeah.
JC: Yes.
KC: During the war they changed those quite a bit. I had one that was very woolly and fluffy.
JC: Yes.
KC: But it was also a nuisance ‘cause it was all padded in the wrong places and things like that for wear.
JC: Oh really.
KC: So it wasn’t, it wasn’t sensible.
JC: Oh right.
KC: So we chose not to wear that. We wore them in the middle of winter of course.
JC: Right. Yeah.
KC: But if we could get away without it we’d put an extra jumper on.
JC: Yes. Okay. Okay, alright so you put, put all that clothing. What about a parachute? Did you have to wear one of those?
KC: We all wore harness.
JC: Yes.
KC: What they called parachute harness.
JC: Yeah.
KC: With clips on the front and your parachute was a pack about that wide.
JC: Yes.
KC: Which was stored somewhere handy for where you sat.
JC: Right.
KC: In the aircraft.
JC: Right.
KC: And the idea was that if you had to get out the first thing you don’t enquire, ‘Where’s my bloody chute?’
JC: Yeah.
KC: You took it with you and as you went out of the aircraft you clipped it on.
JC: Yes.
KC: You pulled the thing so you come down alright, you know.
JC: I see. Okay.
KC: That was the drill that you were taught.
JC: That was the idea was it okay. And this was all -
KC: And I was pleased not to have to do that.
JC: Yes that’s good. Leaving a perfectly good plane. Yes.
KC: Yeah.
JC: Okay so that’s how you dressed. So you climb into the plane and then presumably what happens then the kind of engines on and you’ve got sort of checks that you have to do before -
KC: Yeah and you had checks to do and you got in to the aircraft. Each of us had our pre-flight checks to do.
JC: Yeah.
KC: You know, I had to get all my equipment, bits of equipment that I carried.
JC: Yes.
KC: To do my job. And if I was using radar which I was had to set up the radar sets. [ ?]
JC: Have a drink. You’re not used to talking this much are you dad? Actually, you are used to talking this much. Yeah.
[Pause]
JC: So you’re getting your radar sets ready. Yes.
KC: Yeah. Getting it all set up and you know you’d obviously plug in your leads to make sure you were on the air with everybody else in the aircraft.
JC: Yes.
KC: And just check that out.
JC: What about oxygen and stuff like that?
KC: Oxygen. Yeah.
JC: Pre-test that?
KC: You each had your oxygen point where you sat.
JC: Yes.
KC: [Excuse me] and plug that in.
JC: Yes and did you have if you needed to move around the aircraft you had presumably a kind of mobile -
KC: Yes. A portable bottle that you could -
JC: Yeah.
KC: Pick up. They were stowed in two or three places in the aircraft.
JC: Right.
KC: So if you I mean for instance if you wanted to use the loo in the Lanc.
JC: Yes.
KC: You had to go right to the back of the bloody aircraft.
JC: Was that presumably where the rear gunner was, was it?
KC: You went right near to the rear.
JC: Yeah.
KC: Gunner.
JC: Yeah.
KC: But to get there you had to climb over what we called the main spar.
JC: Yes.
KC: Which went right through the middle of the main wing.
JC: Yes.
KC: But also went through the cockpit bit where we were.
JC: The fuselage. Yeah.
KC: So to get to that you had to literally climb over this thing.
JC: Yeah. Yeah.
KC: With all your garb on you know.
JC: Yeah. Yes. And -
KC: Not popular that.
JC: Yes and a slightly personal question but what was it like going to the loo on a Lancaster?
KC: Shall I tell you?
JC: Go on. Yes.
KC: Well on one occasion my bottom froze to the, to the pan.
JC: Did it? ‘Cause it was a metal toilet seat.
KC: We moaned about these things and then they changed this seat from metal to plastic because of that. Because not only me but some of the other guys had gone to the toilet and found they couldn’t get their bottom of the toilet. It was frozen on. It‘s absolutely true.
JC: Oh right okay. Alright.
KC: And -
JC: Yes. So -
KC: Yeah. I don’t think I’d better say any more about that.
JC: Okay dad. There’s enough detail there. Thank you dad. That’s good. Alright. So, so you’ve done your pre-flight checks, you’re in the plane and then you’re kind of taking off. Now that must have been quite a spectacle being there with lots of aircraft taking off at one time.
KC: Oh yeah.
JC: Yeah.
KC: Yeah.
JC: What was that like? ‘Cause I guess you were able to, where you were sitting, look out and see -
KC: Yeah.
JC: Other aircraft around were you?
KC: See. Yeah, all the aircraft encroaching towards the beginning of the runway.
JC: Right.
KC: So they might have come right across the other side of the airfield. The airfields were pretty big.
JC: Yes.
KC: So they were taxiing around the peri track, they were.
JC: Yeah. Yeah.
KC: And suddenly all converge and all these aircraft were coming from all directions to -
JC: Yes.
KC: That one point.
JC: Yes.
KC: To get to the end of the runway.
JC: Right.
KC: That used to be a bit nightmarish at times because -
JC: You could have crashed into each other.
KC: Some of the guys used to get too bloody close and -
JC: Yeah.
KC: Bang the tips of their wings and things like that.
JC: Right okay so alright so can you, have a drink dad.
KC: Yeah.
JC: I was just going to ask you what your memories are of your early operations because that must have been quite, quite, you know, scary as a new crew.
KC: Yeah.
JC: Relatively new crew. Can you -
KC: It was, it was horrific.
JC: Yes.
KC: Is the fair way. In terms of there were these guys on the ground shooting up and trying to get you and you were flying along and suddenly there was a bloody great explosion out to the right and somebody’s been hit by ack ack and he’s exploded with all his bombs on board. The first time you see that is quite an eye opener I can tell you.
JC: I bet.
KC: And I used to see, we used to see it on almost every raid we went on. Some poor sod would get a direct hit from -
JC: Yeah.
KC: German ground ack ack stuff and what they, of course they had their night fighters up as well.
JC: And what sort of planes were those. Those were -
KC: They were –
JC: Messerschmitts, were they? Messerschmitt 109s.
KC: Messerschmitt and they were twin engine Messerschmitts.
JC: Yes.
KC: Yeah.
JC: And they had a tactic.
KC: The ME109 was single.
JC: Right.
KC: But they had ME110s.
JC: Right.
KC: Which was a two man crew.
JC: Right.
KC: Yeah. And they were deadly.
JC: Yes. On what –
KC: ‘Cause they had the latest radar as we had the latest radar.
JC: Right.
KC: So they could pick us up.
JC: Right. And what was their tactic? You said about them using to try and fly up underneath.
KC: Yeah.
JC: I remember you saying about that.
KC: Their main tactic was to get A, to get themselves into the bomber stream.
JC: Yes.
KC: Our bomber stream.
JC: Yes.
KC: And then they had to use their own radar to pick us up.
JC: Yes.
KC: Bearing in mind we were going across twenty or twenty five thousand feet across coming up from the ground.
JC: Yes.
KC: From Germany and across the North Sea and so on.
JC: Yes.
KC: So they would suddenly find they were up among us.
JC: Right.
KC: And we soon knew they were there because suddenly, you’d be going along all nice and dark and suddenly boom an aircraft blew up just in front of you.
JC: Right.
KC: ‘Cause they, if they attacked us on the way to the target we all still had all our bombs on board.
JC: And was that the tactic that they used to try and shoot up into the bomb bays as well.
KC: Yes they used to fly. If that was me flying along with my crew along there they used to come up there.
JC: Yes.
KC: And they’d open up because they knew all your bombs were in the bomb bay.
JC: Yes.
KC: On the bottom side of the aircraft.
JC: Right.
KC: So their idea was to explode our bombs.
JC: Yes.
KC: To blow us up.
JC: Right. Right. I see.
KC: And the nearest I ever had in my crew was when they did that ‘cause they did it several times but this particular occasion the, they were so close they were too close when they opened fire.
JC: Right.
KC: So the cannon shells came through the bottom of the aircraft, missed all our bombs but they ended up some of them in the front cockpit just missing me and the pilot and the other navigator.
JC: Right.
KC: But it was so close, bearing in mind we were wearing oxygen masks, the bomber crew.
JC: Yeah.
KC: But it was the cordite when the shells exploded in the aircraft.
JC: Yes.
KC: Was so strong even with oxygen mask I could smell, smell the cordite.
JC: Right.
KC: From the cannon shells exploding -
JC: Right.
KC: Inside the aircraft.
JC: That’s amazing.
KC: But also of course they came through and didn’t just stop. They kept flying through and this particular case of the attack they broke our plexiglass nose.
JC: Right.
KC: It shattered.
JC: Yes.
KC: So we had a gale blowing in the front didn’t we ‘cause there was no blooming plexiglass to protect us.
JC: Right.
KC: I’ve never forgotten that one. Yeah.
JC: Because didn’t you have to go down there as well to do the bombing?
KC: Visual. If the radar didn’t work.
JC: Yes.
KC: You didn’t bring your bombs back. You went down. I had to be able to use the visual bomb sight.
JC: Yes.
KC: The Mark 14 bomb sight.
JC: Right. Right.
KC: Lying prone and looking through the actual bomb site and directing the pilot verbally over the intercom telling him which, to go left, right, up or down whatever the case might be.
JC: Yes.
KC: Because I was using my bomb sight.
JC: Yes.
KC: To aim at what I thought was the target we were going for.
JC: And, and so what stopped you from just dumping the bombs and heading off home? Why, why would that, you know.
KC: Well we weren’t going to do that. Fly all that bloody way and not drop our bombs were we?
JC: Yeah I know but why, why was it so important to, to kind of, you know, get, get them on target. Would you have been required -
KC: Well -
JC: To come back again if you -
KC: Because when you operated the bomb release.
JC: Yes.
KC: You set in motion a line overlap camera.
JC: Right.
KC: There was a camera built up in the bomb bay.
JC: Yes.
KC: And when your bomb doors was open and you pressed the bomb button to release the bombs, it operated this camera.
JC: Yeah.
KC: Which then took a line overlap the ground that you were flying over so when you got over that back to base the station photographic officer came in and took the camera thing out of the camera, whatever they called it, you know.
JC: Yeah.
KC: Part of the camera away.
JC: Yes.
KC: And developed it and could, they could plot and decide whether you’d bombed your target or you’d bombed ploughed fields or something.
JC: Yes and so if you hadn’t hit the target they’d send you back there again the next night basically.
KC: That wouldn’t have counted as an op.
JC: And wouldn’t counted it as an op. So you would have -
KC: And your crew would kill you.
JC: Yeah. Yes.
KC: ‘You didn’t do it properly Ken. You made us do another bloody op Ken.’
JC: So but I guess on the other side of that there would be occasions where you were over a target being shot at.
KC: Yeah.
JC: And searchlights going everywhere weren’t there?
KC: Yeah.
JC: And you were trying to make sure you hit it and they probably wanted you to leave quick sharp didn’t they?
KC: The rest of the crew.
JC: Yeah.
KC: They’d say, ‘Ken drop the bloody thing. Drop it.’ [laughs]
JC: Yeah. Yeah okay. Alright.
KC: And I didn’t.
JC: No. No. No.
KC: And so when we came back I knew I had a good photograph of what we’d actually, where we’d bombed.
JC: Yeah.
KC: We had bombed the proper target.
JC: Okay so you did those early, those early operations in 9 Squadron and then you were moved to 97 Squadron as part of the Pathfinder force.
KC: Yes.
JC: Why, why were you selected to go to the Pathfinder force?
KC: I think we discussed as a crew because if you went there you got a promotion.
JC: Right.
KC: You got another rank.
JC: I see.
KC: Okay.
JC: Yeah.
KC: Yeah. And we felt that we’d done ten ops on main force.
JC: Yeah.
KC: What we called main force. We felt we were ready to upgrade ourselves.
JC: Right.
KC: And so we volunteered and went through the, of course we had to learn all the latest radar which the main force -
JC: Did you automatically get put on to Pathfinders if you volunteered or is there a selection process that you had to go through. Did they, because presumably they wanted?
KC: There was a selection process.
JC: Right.
KC: Yeah.
JC: Okay.
KC: But they knew your record if you’d already done ten ops on. As I had.
JC: Yes.
KC: As we had on 9 Squadron.
JC: Yeah.
KC: They knew that you knew what was going on.
JC: Yes.
KC: Sort of thing.
JC: Yes.
KC: And they still put us through this course to learn the latest radar.
JC: Right.
KC: That the Pathfinders had that the main force didn’t have.
JC: So tell, what was the role of the Pathfinder force? What was that really about?
KC: The role of the Pathfinder force was obviously to find the target and mark it with pyrotech markers or whatever –
JC: Yeah.
KC: You were, had been told to use. It was also part of our job was to put down route markers because some of the main force would lose their radar on the way.
JC: Right.
KC: So we’d put markers down which were at their briefings they would be told that route markers would be dropped and look out for a red/yellow or whatever pyrotechnic coming down. That’s the one you aim for going towards the target and things like that you know.
JC: So it was like breadcrumbs was it?
KC: Yeah. Yeah.
JC: Laid for you and you did they breadcrumbs.
KC: Yeah.
JC: Right. Okay. Okay and why, why did they need you to put markers down? Why couldn’t every, every crew just - what, what was the purpose of marking?
KC: They were not highly trained like we were.
JC: Right.
KC: We had been put through these special courses when we joined the Pathfinder force. We had special courses to try to get us to work to the odd minute.
JC: Yes.
KC: Of time.
JC: Yes.
KC: Bearing in mind we were going on a twelve to fifteen hour flight and to talk about getting within the minute or two or whatever was quite a tall order.
JC: Right.
KC: But we did it.
JC: Yeah.
KC: The guys who were, like me who were Pathfinders. That’s what we had to be able to do.
JC: Okay.
KC: That’s why I got a DFC at the end of it.
JC: Good. Yeah. Your timekeeping. That’s good.
KC: Yeah.
JC: Good. So you, so you did this role and you, you marked the targets. Were you also dropping live munitions as well or was it just markers that you were dropping?
KC: Oh every time we dropped bombs.
JC: Yeah. You dropped bombs as well.
KC: Well when I pressed the button to let go the markers.
JC: Yeah.
KC: On that stick of bombing that I was using.
JC: Yeah.
KC: We were getting rid of incendiaries, sometimes incendiaries.
JC: Yes.
KC: Would go down.
JC: Yeah.
KC: A shower of them or it could be incendiaries plus five hundred pound bombs were going down.
JC: Right.
KC: It could be a whole stick of all that stuff.
JC: Yes.
KC: And then in the middle of that we were dropping stuff called Window.
JC: And what is Window?
KC: Window was the code name given to stuff that we used to throw out, disperse out of the aircraft to try to muck about with the ground radar system so it would instead of just getting, picking up our aircraft this was a massive metalised thing that dropped out of our aircraft and it caused consternation to the Jerries on the ground because instead of getting one clear blip of a bomber suddenly there was a bloody great cloud of stuff and you couldn’t pick out the bombers.
JC: Right.
KC: Because of our, the stuff we dropped out of the aircraft.
JC: It sort of confused.
KC: One of the tactics we were doing things against them and they were doing things against us.
JC: Right.
KC: But this was the sort of thing that we were trained to do.
JC: Right. Right. Okay. Okay and so were the Pathfinders always ahead of the main force or did they, ‘cause they had to mark the target.
KC: Yeah.
JC: Or did they have to -
KC: They were always the primary markers.
JC: Yes.
KC: They were Pathfinder primary markers.
JC: Yes.
KC: And you did that when you were, had become very -
JC: Yes.
KC: Experienced Pathfinders.
JC: Right.
KC: But then because some of the raids we had seven or eight hundred aircraft on.
JC: Yes.
KC: There had to be marker crews coming in towards the end.
JC: Yes.
KC: To drop markers for the last lot of ordinary bomber boys that were coming in.
JC: Yes.
KC: They still needed to find and put their bombs down on the target.
JC: Right.
KC: So the Pathfinder guys, believe it or not, we used to hate that. If you were one of the unlucky sods to come at the end you know you would get everything shot out of you because -
JC: Yeah.
KC: By the time you got there the Jerries knew you were coming anyway.
JC: Right.
KC: And their night fighters were up amongst you.
JC: Yeah.
KC: But usually very experienced Pathfinder crews that came in towards the end.
JC: Right.
KC: To make sure that the rest of the main force had some markers to aim at.
JC: Right. Okay. Okay that’s good. Alright. So, any particular, so you obviously did quite a few operations. You did forty five in total didn’t you?
KC: Yeah.
JC: And any, any, any of them stand out in your mind at all for any reason?
KC: Um -
JC: You mentioned Berlin as a difficult place to go to.
KC: I did ten ops to Berlin.
JC: Yes.
KC: I think what was the, there was, also we did trips to the Ruhr area.
JC: Yes.
KC: Which was full of anti-aircraft. That was a terrible lot to go over because they used to try to knock you out of the sky straight away. There were some trips. I’m trying to think. I’ll think of it in a minute.
JC: Well just while you’re thinking about that the other thing is obviously during your operational time was the, of, was preparations for D-Day wasn’t it? Going in to -
KC: Yeah.
JC: 1944.
KC: Yeah.
JC: And so you started to intersperse operations over Germany with operations over France.
KC: Absolutely.
JC: And so what was your role really in the kind of run up to D-Day?
KC: We, we were given targets, German targets on the beaches.
JC: Yes.
KC: The Normandy beaches.
JC: Yes.
KC: We were given targets for about three nights in a row.
JC: Yes.
KC: To cover the Germans.
JC: Yes.
KC: They had built quite hefty defence systems behind the beaches of Normandy and we went over, and we came down lowish to do it. We didn’t do it at twenty odd thousand. I think we were dropping stuff over, over the French coast about ten thousand feet.
JC: Right.
KC: And so the idea was to make sure that you clobbered all the German ‘cause they had tanks on the beaches.
JC: Yes.
KC: And they’d built in gun systems.
JC: Yeah.
KC: Into the rocks and so on the beaches and so we used to go and drop sticks of flares to have a look and then when we could see them we’d turn around and do a visual run over them and clobber them.
JC: Right. Right.
KC: Yeah.
JC: Okay. So that was a, was a slightly different role then from what you’d been -
KC: From normal.
JC: Normal operations.
KC: The normal mass bombing.
JC: Yes. Yes.
KC: We did in places. The big cities in Germany.
JC: Yes. Okay. Alright. So you, so you did all that and that took you up to, to around the time of D-Day which is when I think you had your, your last operation. July 1944 in fact was your, no, sorry, April 1944 was your final operation I think.
KC: Where was that too?
JC: I don’t know. I haven’t got a note of that but your, certainly your latter ones you did, I think, ten or twelve operations over France.
KC: Yeah.
JC: Various parts of France.
KC: Yeah.
JC: Including the Normandy, the sort of, the immediate environment of the beaches.
KC: That’s why I got that gong.
JC: That’s right. Yeah so that was why you got the Legion d’honneur.
KC: Yeah.
JC: So yes you did that. Then you moved on to do sort of training type roles didn’t you? After -
KC: Yeah.
JC: Preparing other crews to go up.
KC: Yeah. That was one of the worrying things in my life.
JC: Yeah.
KC: Whenever I flew with people I’d say, I’d say to, when I got down I’d say that bloody Pardew[?] he can’t land it.
JC: Yes.
KC: He was doing what we called a kangaroo landing every time he landed.
JC: Oh really. Bouncing down the runway.
KC: Yeah.
JC: With inexperienced crews.
KC: Yeah.
JC: And your role with them was to prepare them on the radars and that sort of thing.
KC: Yeah.
JC: Okay. Okay and how were you feeling at this kind of time? What was the sort of, ‘cause you’d done forty five operations so an experienced hand at doing all this so what was your sort of feeling about things? Do you recall how, how that was?
KC: Yes. I felt that I was due for a rest.
JC: Right.
KC: I felt I was happy to come back again.
JC: Yeah.
KC: But I felt we’d had some real tough ops.
JC: Yes.
KC: We’d been on Pathfinders.
JC: Yeah.
KC: And I thought enough is enough for a while.
JC: Yes.
KC: And that’s the way it went.
JC: Yes and you had, I think at least one or two operations where you come back and you’d lost engines.
KC: Yeah.
JC: Yes and so -
KC: Yes, that’s, yeah at its believe it or not I was never terribly worried about that as long as –
JC: Yeah.
KC: We had two or three engines left.
JC: Yes.
KC: The Lanc would fly on it alright.
JC: Yes.
KC: But if you lost two engines -
JC: Yes.
KC: Particularly on one side.
JC: Yes.
KC: That could be, that meant that meant the pilot really, it was it was really critical because he had to operate the pedals to offset the fact he hadn’t have any power on one side.
JC: Yes.
KC: He’s got all the power on the left side.
JC: Yes.
KC: Or the right side.
JC: Yeah.
KC: And it needed quite a bit of physical effort to control that.
JC: Right. Right. Okay -
KC: But we had this chap Jim Kermans [?] who was a bloody good pilot.
JC: Yes.
KC: He was mature. He was twenty nine years old and we were all about twenty one.
JC: Right.
KC: The rest of the crew.
JC: Yeah.
KC: And he was mature, he was a trained lawyer in Australia.
JC: Yeah.
KC: And you know he was, he was a great guy really.
JC: Right.
KC: I didn’t like him too much as a man.
JC: Right.
KC: ‘Cause he hadn’t got any sense of humour.
JC: Right.
KC: But as, as an aviator he was tops.
JC: Yes. Got you back safely all those -
KC: Yes.
JC: All those times.
KC: Yes.
JC: Yes. Yeah, so that’s good and what happened to the crew after you finished your forty five operations. Did you stay in touch with them or did you all disperse to do other things?
KC: We soon dispersed off.
JC: Yes.
KC: To do, you know, different members of the crew, whatever their job was, they were sent to training schools.
JC: Yes.
KC: To, like the wireless operator guy would go -
JC: Yeah.
KC: To help train new boys and so on and that sort of thing. Yeah.
JC: Yeah. Okay, alright. And at the end of the war you were you did this goodwill tour as well which we hadn’t spoken about so -
KC: To America.
JC: Yes. So, tell, tell us about that. That was with quite a famous squadron wasn’t it?
KC: 617.
JC: Yes with 617.
KC: The one that Guy Gibson when they did the -
JC: Yes.
KC: Eder dams and all that.
JC: Yes that’s right. The Dambusters.
KC: They were based at that time at Binbrook.
JC: Right.
KC: And the AOC asked me would I like to go along -
JC: Yes.
KC: And fly on that trip to America with 617.
JC: And what was the purpose of the trip? You said it was a goodwill tour.
KC: Goodwill.
JC: So it was to -
KC: We were going to first of all flew across the Atlantic to Washington DC.
JC: Yes.
KC: And whilst we there of course we, the public were invited to come and look at our aircraft because you know we had, we had operational bomber aircraft.
JC: Right.
KC: So the public were invited in, in their droves.
JC: Yeah.
KC: To see our Lancasters.
JC: Yeah.
KC: You know, and it was quite a sight.
JC: Yeah.
KC: To have the whole squadron of Lancaster lined up on their airfields.
JC: Yeah.
KC: And the crowds would come in literally in their hundreds and thousands.
JC: Right.
KC: To see them.
JC: Right.
KC: You know.
JC: And what’s your memories of America having gone from wartime Britain. You know, immediately after the war to what was your lasting memory of America?
KC: I thought they were lucky sods.
JC: Yeah.
KC: Yeah because -
JC: I guess the food was slightly different wasn’t it?
KC: Oh yeah. Yeah, that was lovely you know ‘cause we were still on rationing back home.
JC: Yes.
KC: But there we had the best of everything.
JC: Yes.
KC: That we could lay our hands on.
JC: Yes.
KC: You know.
JC: Fantastic.
KC: Sorry that sounds awful but you know what I mean.
JC: Fantastic. Okay and, alright so, and so you toured around the States with this -
KC: Yeah.
JC: Good-will tour. Okay. Right -
KC: We were on Lincolns by the way.
JC: You flew on Lincolns. Not on -
KC: Not Lancasters.
JC: Right.
KC: They’d just brought the Lincoln in and we were, we took, was it twelve or fourteen Lincolns across to America? And of course everywhere we went, the first thing we would arrive we would do a flypast.
JC: Yes.
KC: Bloody great Lancs flying over the town.
JC: Or Lincolns, yeah.
KC: Or Lincolns rather.
JC: Yeah. Yeah.
KC: Flying over their towns.
JC: Yeah.
KC: Which they seemed to enjoy and we went right across. I mean we started off in Washington DC was our first port of call and then to Detroit. Across America to Detroit and from Detroit across to Kansas and Kansas to LA and from LA coming back more south. What was the place in the south? I’ve forgotten the big cities across the south.
JC: Was it Dallas or somewhere like that?
KC: Dallas, yeah.
JC: Yeah.
KC: Dallas was one of them.
JC: Yeah.
KC: Yeah and then back up to Washington eventually.
JC: Right.
KC: And from there and then we took off and flew back to England.
JC: Right. Right.
KC: It was, to me it was an absolute education ‘cause I mean we saw the states you know all the time.
JC: Yeah.
KC: Seeing places we’d read about and never been to.
JC: Yes, fantastic alright. Good. Okay so you came back and then you had your post war career and you carried on flying Mosquitos and then you converted to some of the early jets didn’t you?
KC: Yeah.
JC: And what was that like? Going from a sort of a propeller-driven plane to a, to a jet.
KC: That was an education.
JC: Yeah.
KC: Yeah.
JC: Yeah. So that was, that was the early Meteors and then on to Javelins wasn’t it?
KC: Javelins. Yeah.
JC: Yes. Yes, okay.
KC: Yeah.
JC: So, good -
KC: Super planes they were. I thought anyway.
JC: Okay and you took and you took some of these planes on overseas didn’t you? I remember seeing pictures of you in places like Cyprus.
KC: Yeah.
JC: You went on training.
KC: Yeah.
JC: Operations didn’t you? Down -
KC: Yeah.
JC: Down there.
KC: Yeah.
JC: Were you involved in any of the sort of post war, so there was obviously problems in Cyprus and then there was -
KC: Yeah, we were there.
JC: In Suez and things like that were you?
KC: What aircraft did we have to go there?
JC: It would have been either Meteors or, or Javelins I’m assuming. Was it?
KC: I think it was Javelins.
JC: Yes.
KC: Yeah ‘cause when we were there we were the air commander of Cyprus [billed us?] we were told quickly, ‘You are now part of my defence force.’
JC: Right.
KC: Sort of thing and I was going off at night in the dark. My crew and other members of the crew and so on ‘cause they were having problems with the, what are they called? The Jews. You know the -
JC: The Israelis.
KC: Israelis. Yeah.
JC: Yeah.
KC: They were being a nuisance and coming over Cyprus and things like that.
JC: Right.
KC: And into the Cyprus airspace.
JC: Yeah.
KC: So we’d get scrambled to go and chase them off.
JC: Yeah.
KC: At night.
JC: Okay.
KC: But they were also Turkey were reinforcing their own people because there were a lot of Turks on the island of Cyprus.
JC: Yes.
KC: And the Turks were bringing in, we found out through flying -
JC: Yeah.
KC: They were bringing it, dropping in at night on parachutes.
JC: Right.
KC: Down to their own people in the villages.
JC: Yes.
KC: So we, more than once I’d been up the backside of one of these guys dropping stuff to the Turks from Turkey.
JC: What? Transport planes -
KC: Yeah.
JC: Coming over.
KC: Yeah I used to hone in on them I used to tell our control downstairs, ‘Got one, I’m locked on to him. I’ve got one.’
JC: Right.
KC: And they used to say 'Monitor him. Keep an eye on him.'
JC: Yeah.
KC: For the -
JC: Right okay fantastic. And then you say you carried on and you actually moved. Did a permanent stint out in Aden. What was going on in Aden? Why, why was there an air force base in Aden?
KC: I’m trying to think what made me, what made us go there.
JC: It was a British protectorate really wasn’t it?
KC: It was a British protectorate and I think that, I can’t remember how I ended up going there, what made me go there but that was a very interesting part of my life because you know we were the forerunner of what later was going to be problems up in the Persian Gulf.
JC: Right.
KC: From Aden I used to jump on aeroplanes and go up to some of these towns, biggish towns and so on the Persian Gulf which later became real trouble spots.
JC: Right.
KC: Yeah.
JC: Okay. Okay so that was that and then you came back and I think you did sort of some MOD type roles until the end of your air force career in 1968. Moving around. Non-flying duties. Yes. Yeah, okay.
KC: I’d had my innings.
JC: You’d had your innings at that point. Had your innings at that point. Okay. Good.
KC: I was very lucky to get away with it, with what I did when I think when I look back at what I did and what could have gone wrong, you know things like that. Amazing.
JC: Amazing. Yeah absolutely.
KC: Yeah.
JC: Good. Alright.
KC: You’ve got a history book now.
SJ: We have [laughs]. So did you have any lucky charms or superstitions?
KC: No. I honestly didn’t. I didn’t believe in it.
SJ: Yeah.
KC: No. No.
PJ: They say a lot of crews are superstitious or they were weren’t they, you know and there was always this little teddy bear in their -
KC: Yeah. I don’t think I had anything like that.
PJ: Coat or something.
KC: No. No. No.
JC: No. You didn’t believe in all of that.
KC: No.
JC: Just a good square meal.
KC: That’s right.
JC: What happened, what happened when you got back from flying, as well? Presumably you got another, there was a debriefing.
KC: No.
JC: Was it a debriefing?
KC: We got a night flying supper.
JC: You got a – did you?
KC: That’s what it was called. The night flying supper.
JC: Oh right. So you had a good meal before you went and a good meal when you came back did you?
KC: Yeah.
JC: Oh right.
KC: When we came back there would be plates of eggs and bacon.
JC: Again.
KC: Beans and things like that again you know.
JC: Yeah.
KC: We, well we’d been flying for the last ten hours.
PJ: Yeah.
KC: Things like that and we were a bit, bit ravenous.
JC: Yeah. Did you take presumably in addition to your kit could you take things up in the plane with you?
KC: Yeah.
JC: A flask of coffee and things like that, did you?
KC: Yeah Mars bars and things like that. Stick it down there.
JC: Yes.
KC: There was a zip pocket in your trouser leg.
JC: Yes.
KC: And so on to stick a couple of Mars bars in there and things like that.
JC: Keep you going yeah?
KC: Just in case you had to bail out.
JC: Yes.
KC: People used to try and think ahead and think well at least I’ve got a couple of Mars bars I can have something to eat for the next couple of hours or so.
JC: Yes. Yeah, okay.
PJ: Did you all used to go out for a drink together? ‘Cause there was always this thing isn’t there, they say, that good crews -
JC: Well I -
PJ: All stuck together, and they all went out together like family.
KC: Well we did a lot of it. The strange thing was that some of my crew were not terribly social. Only one or two of them and we were seven in the crew of course and there was probably three or four of us that did that and there were a couple who always had a reason for not coming. Yeah. But you know we used to get on and let them do with what they wanted to do.
JC: Was there anybody out of the crew you felt particularly friendly with compared to the others?
KC: Em, Ken Randall, our flight engineer was a lovely chap. Brummy. You know, Birmingham. He was almost naïve but he was absolutely a totally professional flight engineer. He knew everything about all the engines. He could hear noises nobody else could hear coming from the engines and things like that and nice boy, nice fella.
JC: Yeah.
KC: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Our tail gunner was absolutely, absolutely, absolutely broad Scotch so if we were being shot at, being chased he would shout but he was shouting in Scot and we couldn’t understand [laughs].
JC: Okay was, he was from Glasgow or somewhere wasn’t he?
KC: Yeah.
JC: Yeah. Yeah. Right. So, yes. Fantastic. Good. Any other questions? I think I’ve got most of the ones from here.
SJ: Yeah. How do you feel that Bomber Command has been treated since the war?
KC: Pretty grim I think. Politicians I think are absolutely shysters. They want, you know they want things their own way and, but they don’t realise how people are doing trying to please them and I always felt that some of the things I’ve read that were going on around me were absolutely terrible. Politicians, on the whole, I have no time for them. They’re just there for the moment and they get what they can at the time and that’s it. But then that’s me. I could be quite different from anybody else on that.
PJ: What about a medal? A campaign medal?
KC: Yeah.
PJ: Do you think it’s, that you should have had a medal because they never had a medal did they? They had the bomber clasp they just brought in. A campaign medal.
KC: Well, I had medals.
PJ: Yeah but a campaign medal for, you know like for actual the bombing duties and -
JC: You had, you had a war medal.
KC: Yeah.
JC: You have an Aircrew Europe Medal, you had a defence medal and a Pathfinder Eagle.
KC: Yeah. And I got a DFC.
JC: And you got your DFC as well.
KC: Yeah.
JC: But yes there was, there were campaign medals for others weren’t there but not for Bomber Command?
KC: Bomber. We didn’t get anything special campaign for the -
JC: No.
KC: All the raids we did. No.
JC: No.
KC: You know we were going off night after night in the Lancasters with a bomb load. Not just bombs. We had bloody great loads of incendiaries we were taking to cart and drop down. It was, when you think back on it was a dirty war really but we did what the Germans tried to do to us didn’t we? I think we were a bit more successful.
PJ: Well, thank you Ken for letting us interview you for the IBCC.
KC: Okay.
PJ: It’s been a pleasure to hear your stories.
KC: You’ve got some notes.
PJ: Thank you.
KC: Yeah. Good.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ACookKHH160725, PCookKHH1601
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Kenneth Cook
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
01:20:59 audio recording
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Peter and Sandra Jones
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-07-25
Description
An account of the resource
Wing Commander Kenneth Cook was born in Randwick in Gloucestershire. At Marlings grammar school, he joined the Air Training Corps. On the outbreak of war he joined the Royal Air Force and went to America under the Arnold Scheme for pilot training. He continued training in Canada as a navigator/bomb aimer. He returned to Great Britain and continued training at RAF Cottesmore and the Heavy Conversion Unit at RAF Winthorpe. His crew were posted to 9 Squadron at RAF Bardney. After ten operations, they joined 97 Squadron Pathfinders. Altogether he flew 45 operations, including several to Berlin. At the end of his tours, he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. Thereafter, he served at 1 Group Headquarters, and then RAF Fiskerton, RAF Fulbeck and RAF Syerston, tasked with checking the readiness of new crews, specifically the navigators. For a time he engaged in preparations for Tiger force. At the end of the war, he accompanied 617 Squadron on a goodwill tour of the United States. After the war, he remained in the Royal Air Force and was stationed in Aden and Cyprus. He was awarded the Legion d’honneur and rose to be a wing commander. He retired in 1968 and thereafter pursued a civilian career.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1944
1945
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Janet McGreevy
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.
Canada
Cyprus
Great Britain
United States
Yemen (Republic)--Aden
England--Gloucestershire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Rutland
Germany--Berlin
Yemen (Republic)
Germany
1 Group
617 Squadron
9 Squadron
97 Squadron
Botha
crewing up
dispersal
Distinguished Flying Cross
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Lincoln
Meteor
military living conditions
military service conditions
Mosquito
Nissen hut
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Pathfinders
RAF Bardney
RAF Bawtry
RAF Coltishall
RAF Cottesmore
RAF Fiskerton
RAF Fulbeck
RAF Syerston
RAF Winthorpe
sanitation
Stearman
Tiger force
training
Window
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/241/3386/ACrawleyF151222.1.mp3
c7e60126e907dfc9fd813433d3cabec6
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
Crawley, Fred
Fred Crawley
F Crawley
Fred Crawley DFC
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with Squadron Leader Fred Crawley DFC (146012 Royal Air Force).
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-12-22
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
Crawley, F
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
PL: Hello. I’m Pam Locker and I’m here today in Enfield interviewing Squadron Leader Fred Crawley DFC and the date is the 22nd of December 2015. So, Fred, can I just start by saying thank you very very much indeed on behalf of the International Bomber Command Memorial Trust for agreeing to talk to us and I know you’ve lots of things that you want to say so please, please do start. What I’d like to hear first of all is how you got in to the RAF in the first place.
FC: Well, I thought about the beginning of this and I thought to myself well what I could do, I could tell you, Pam as the interviewer just three lines of information and that would be my career. The first thing I would tell you I spent six and a half years in the RAF from 1939 May to the last day of 1945. I did over a thousand hours flying in doing what I did and I did seventy four operations against Europe. Twenty nine of those came on four engine Halifaxes and the forty five came on the Mosquito Pathfinder squadron. That was all continuous but the amazing part of the story really is the amazing change that happened in my career, not of my doing but what the authorities decided to do with me. So I will start by enrolment. I enrolled in what was known as the Volunteer Reserve, the VR, in May 1939 by leaving the office where I was being trained as an accountant and went to London in Embankment and there I was interviewed. First, for fitness to see if I was fit to be considered at all and despite having had appendicitis the year before and having happened on the Saturday morning when the local hospital had no doctor. They just had a student and he made a complete and utter mess of it and the RAF doctors who examined me on the day I enrolled said, ‘You’ll never fly with that wound.’ So I said, ‘Well, don’t be silly because I’ve been playing football and cricket ever since,’ So I said but if you say it, well they gave me such a pummelling I thought they would break it open but they didn’t and in the end they said, ‘Ok. You’re fit to have an interview,’ and my interview took place the same afternoon with an elderly, well ranked, he was an air commodore and all he said to me, ‘I suppose you want to be a pilot.’ I said, ‘Oh no. No. No, I don’t want to be a pilot. I want to be a navigator.’ ‘Why then. I’ve heard about this.’ Heard about navigation. I thought the first step which told me something really important and I said, ‘Well I, I’m interested in all things mathematical,’ I said, ‘I went to a good grammar school. I’ve been in employment for a year. I’m eighteen years of age and I would like to go in and train as a navigator’. Accepted. Then things started to move quite quickly. We had a few lectures in London and then I was posted to what was called ITW the Initial Training Wing and that turned out to be at Bexhill and it didn’t take long to see why. I thought I was fit despite my appendicitis operation but Bexhill pebbles, if you pound up and down Bexhill pebbles you get fit and we were without anything really except training, drilling, guarding at night with broomsticks and that finished with one of the most laughable things I’ve ever heard. It didn’t take long. It was just over two months and we went to the Delaware Pavilion which was quite a famous pavilion in Bexhill and there the chap in charge was once again an elderly, high ranking, I think he was an air commodore too, and at the end of his speech he said to me, ‘You who are about to die, I salute you.’ And I thought we’re back in Roman times. And so there was just dead silence and then muffled laughter and so that was the introduction to the RAF and almost immediately we were posted. We were all going to be navigators so the whole building was filled with would be navigators. That told you something. We were short of navigators and they were trying to redress the balance and we were posted to Scotland to Scone airfield which is just north of Perth. It was a grass airfield and I started in fact about it was there wasn’t one RAF personnel on the station. Not one. The navigation training was given by retired sea captains, the aircraft, which happened to be DH Rapides, de Havilland Rapides, they were flown by retired civil airline pilots over seventy and we did all our training but it was a wonderful training because they were not satisfied, if you didn’t understand they would go over it and over it and over it again to make sure you did and when you were in the air the pilots would respond. For example, would say, ‘Are you lost?’ ‘Yes, I’m lost.’ ‘Well down there is Lord Inverary’s place. I was playing golf there yesterday and you notice a strange building? That’s their home.’ And that was the attitude. I loved it. It was so friendly but those old people, those old sea captains, those old pilots, they were the salt of the earth and so we had a very marvellous training but nothing was skipped and we had a longer training than was normal. But all things come to an end and we left Perth to go to a place in North Wales for bombing and gunnery training. I couldn’t pronounce the name because it was P W L L H E L I which is pronounced Pwhelli. Well, we found out when we got there that that was where we got out and we were met and we were taken for bombing and that was done by old Fairy Battles which had become worn out and open cockpit Demons. Biplanes. So you could see it was using the rubbish really that we had only to use and so that went on and then we left there and, where did we go then? Oh then we went to Penrhos which was for bombing and gunnery and we did have a wooden platform built out on Aberystwyth Bay and you were supposed to try and hit it. Well there was one snag because they were very small bombs that you used because we couldn’t afford to waste any real bombs and I for one couldn’t find anyone who had hit it but so it was. We left there then to come away -
PL: Can I just ask you a little bit more about that?
FC: Yeah.
PL: So you would go up in just that little open -
FC: Cockpit.
PL: And then what? And there would be a bomb dropped from? How did that happen?
FC: Well the bombing was done from the Fairy Battles which were outmoded. They went to France I was going to talk to you about that. They went to France when war broke out and the French had of course, the French, made the fundamental mistake of relying on the Maginot Line but left the end open for the Germans to walk around the end and our 12 squadron, I think it was, were sent and they were literally wiped out. They destroyed a few bridges here and there but that was all. They did no good at all in stopping the advance of the Germans. So there we were and we were at the end of my training and I was posted then to my first operational squadron which I did on 12 squadron and that was on the Oxford Road at Benson. Well it was a crew of three. The pilot was in an open cockpit. He sat up in front. You couldn’t reach him from the inside and at the back was me as navigator facing forward and behind me, back to, was an air gunner/wireless operator with a single Lewis gun with a pan on top and that was our defence. The only other thing that was terrible about it was that if you got down inside to bomb then you had to pull the slide back and right in front of you there was the radiator for the Merlin engine which just about singed your hair off but that was life but of course in a way it was exciting because I was going to France. I was being trained for France and in being posted to Benson they had this off shoot of that to train people to replace the losses in France and that’s how it worked. In the meantime we were utilised. We used to attack our own forces, the military and bomb them or give them experience of low flying aircraft attacking them head on. Well, we didn’t have any bombs and this is perfectly true, we were given bags of flour and they were tied at the neck and we used to drop them over the side and hopefully hit a tank and one day I did. I was the only one who did but I did and it went straight down the turret which was open and the chap standing in it and it covered him with white flour. I never had the skill to do it again but anyway it was good fun. That was then for Benson in its prime but of course all things come to an end and the powers to be soon realised it was a waste of time sending our dilapidated aircraft to France to be shot down like flies by the Germans fighters who were so much better and the French had nothing at all. They pulled 12 squadron back and so I therefore never got further training in 12 squadron. I was then posted to my next move and so - I’m trying to see now what I put down. They decided that in going from Benson I would be well used in training others. I must have been giving a good impression that I had done fairly well because I never, I couldn’t get away from this training others as an instructor and so I was sent to Prestwick and they had a racket going there in my view. I’ve got to be careful what I say. I think I’ll withdraw that Pam because that might have repur but it was run by a private firm and they had one four engine old Fokker, a German plane, fixed undercarriage. It made the noise of twenty five devils when it took off and we crammed forty or fifty pupils in that with a small table to write on and we tried to teach them navigation and it didn’t work. So they then got a few Ansons and that was better. The old lady of the air force who I loved actually. I flew them myself as a navigator and so I was there at Prestwick for a time and then it was obviously costing a lot of money paying this private firm and I was moved down to, lower down the coast of Scotland to, where are we, [pause] oh yes I went then to Penrhos which was a navigation school and there I had a happier time. They were equipped with Ansons mainly and then I was posted yet again to another training place in Scotland and I kept, I was there until, flying Fairy Battles again, which weren’t used in France anymore and the replacements that came back from there. So the accent was always on training. Training, training, training and so in the end I began to get a bit annoyed and I said to the CO of, of the training station look I didn’t come in to the air force to train others. I want to do something for myself. So, at long last I was posted to [pause] forgive me, I went from Prestwick to [?] I was posted to an operational squadron of Lancasters by myself. Now in the air force it’s very dangerous to be on your own. If you’ve got six other blokes you regularly fly with you form a compact seven and you trust each other but to go by yourself, it’s a nasty position to be in but however I went to 106 squadron at Coningsby and the man in charge happened to be Guy Gibson of fame and he said, ‘Well we’ve got a navigator who’s permanently sick, he’s really ill. So,’ he said, ‘I think the chances are he won’t come back and the crew that you will go with are experienced and they will be pleased to have you.’ And I thought wow and would you believe I hadn’t been there for two or three days and I got my first op and that was to Poland so I was chucked in at the deep end and we went to Danzig Bay and we laid five very large mines in the harbour. Very cleverly done too. One mine perhaps would let two ships over before it got, this one would let four ships go over, this one would only allow one to go up so it shut the harbour right down for a very long time till they got them all up. So I thought right [?] and would you believe luck run out again because the first part of the war I had no good luck in it at all. The chap came back from sick. He wasn’t very well but he passed fit for operations so I was out of a job and I said to Gibson, ‘Look. What are we going to do?’ ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I’ll fit you into a good crew.’ So I said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘I don’t want to be the odd bod fitting in an odd place. I want to be posted and pick up a crew of my own and fly with them.’ And so, so he said, ‘Right. I’ll get you posted. Well I was sent back to Prestwick but much to my utter amazement it wasn’t to teach others. I was pulled in to the CO’s office and he said, ‘We’ve got a special job for you.’ ‘Oh what am I going to do?’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘We are going to ask you to lead formations of the American 8th Air Force from Prestwick down to their bases in East Anglia.’ I said, ‘Why do you do that?’ ‘Because they are getting lost going from Prestwick to East Anglia.’ And I can understand that. Where they were training if they came across a town there can only be one town because there’s no other town near it but when they get over here of course one town merges into the next one and the poor souls they just, they lost some aircraft too. Crashes. And in the end I had a wonderful time with the American 8th Air Force. They’d do anything for me. They supplied my mother, who lived in London, with butter, eggs and that’s what, that’s what they gave me as, ‘Thank you very much.’ So happy times. Here we go. And so having got away from 106 I was then with the 8th Air Force until, again they did get the idea how they could get from Prestwick to East Anglia without having someone to lead. I was given a special aircraft, a B25 Mitchell, a twin engine and a pilot whose name, would you believe it, was Lieutenant John Haig. Now, I liked whisky and here was a chap with a whisky name and we were great friends by the time we parted but parted again. I had to say, ‘Look, this has got to stop. I must, I must get on to a proper squadron and so I got posted to, much to my amazement from 5 group where Gibson was to Yorkshire, 4 group, on Halifaxes and I went to Marston Moor where they had an OTU, an Operational Training Unit and you were there to pick up a crew and well when I found the crew they were short of a navigator and I thought how odd. That’s the second time this has happened to me. What’s the matter with the chap? Well, he’s not the right type. When he gets angry he loses his temper, he breaks all his pencils and says, ‘’m not doing any more navigation.’ Well they were a young crew. A very young crew. I was the oldest at twenty one, I think. Yeah, twenty one, and so anyway we introduced ourselves and we got to the stage where we were doing the last night circuits and bumps, you know, as you do, with an instructor pilot on board. Well, in the Halifax a navigator’s position on take-off is on the rest bed in the middle of the aircraft. It’s simply because his navigation equipment is up front in the nose and so we did two or three. It was in February ’43. A rotten night. Very dark. Windy. They kept changing the runway to suit take-off better and he said to the pilot, I heard him say it, ‘Well you’re not too bad. Do one more then call it a day.’ He got out and we took off. Well, by this time I’d got fed up lying on the rest bed and I decided to do something about it so I said to the mid upper gunner, ‘Look you’ve had your turn. Can we change places? You come and have a rest on the rest bed and I’ll go in your turret and I can at least see what’s going on.’ No problem. ‘Yes, fine.’ He was fed up being up there himself so we took off and then all bad things happened. We were only just off the ground at about five hundred feet possibly when fire broke out in the starboard outer. So you remember the pictures of Concorde with all the gaps and there it was and we, everything was done that could be done. The fire extinguisher was pressed, the fire didn’t go out and it was trailing back and so all I heard at all was somebody said, ‘My God. We’re low,’ and with that there was a big bang and I went out like a light. Now that aircraft happened, by sheer luck, to be landed on a downhill field so it hit, it didn’t dig in, it bounced. The tail section broke off with the tail gunner in it two fields that way. I was thrown out. I didn’t know how, what had happened but I found out after the middle section broke off from the front section and I was catapulted but I had no shoes, no socks, no trousers on, and I was half in and half out of a bush. The rest of it was down another field and burning like fury and I saw one bloke come to the edge but he fell back in and he’d obviously had it. Well, of course this was on Marston Moor. There were no roads on Marston Moor so they could see the fire but they couldn’t get to it but the MO, the Medical Officer, he had a motorbike so he eventually managed it although he came off the motorbike several times. He got to me because when I came around, the reason I came around my feet were in a small pool of burning petrol and it was the pain of that that brought me around but the experience that I had then was bang, but then you’re going down a long, long black shaft and I was saying to myself if I reach the bottom I shall die. If I reach the bottom I shall die but then a voice out of the darkness, ‘Is there anybody there?’ And it was the farmer whose farmhouse we just missed on the way down and I yelled and said, ‘Yes I’m here.’ And he was, he had his small son of about six or seven with him and he picked me up, carried me on his shoulders and took me to his farmhouse. Laid me on the floor. And the MO got to me there and he filled me up with morphine and then of course I went out for a light, well, as a light and I woke up next morning in York Military Hospital lying on a stretcher in the corridor. Then I found I couldn’t move anything this side at all. Everything didn’t work. Legs, arms, shoulders anything, and they were very painful. I then saw the senior medic in York Military and he said, ‘How are you?’ So I said, ‘Terrible.’ I said, ‘What’s happened?’ So he said, ‘Well I’m puzzled by you,’ he said, ‘You haven’t broken a bone in your body. I’ve been all over you,’ he said. So I said, ‘Well what’s happened?’ So he said, ‘Well, what did you do immediately before the crash?’ I said, ‘I was looking at the fire.’ Of course I was. So I turned the turret around to look at it and so we were going that way you see and I was looking this way so I took everything on this side and he said, ‘What has happened is the force of the crash,’ which must have been a hundred and sixty knots or something like that, a hundred and fifty possibly, he said, ‘All your nervous systems have been so pulverised but,’ he said, ‘If you think you’re in pain now it’s nothing to what you will experience when it starts to recover.’ And it was true. It was agony. So I stayed in York Military. I had facial burns, burns to my legs and I was transferred to Rauceby near Ely Burns Hospital and there of course once again luck on my side. They had just got a new technique to deal with burns which applies to this day and they treated me and the only way Joyce could tell subsequently that when I got hot you could see that there was this side. You could see the outline of the fire and the legs too. And so there I was. So I was in hospital for a month and when I came out they said, ‘Go and have some leave.’ I was arrested in London because they thought I was drunk. I was taken to the SP’s hut and I said, ‘Well I’ve just come out of the burns hospital. I can’t put my coat on because I can’t do it.’ He took me into a pub and bought me a half a pint of beer and got me on the train home. So eventually I go back. I go back to Marston Moor.
PL: Did anybody else survive that?
FC: Well there were seven crew members. The tail gunner and I were the two survivors. The other five died. Two on impact and three from their injuries subsequently and it’s on the internet. My daughter-in-law found the account of this and all the pictures on the internet. I couldn’t believe it. I’ve still got it somewhere. Yeah. So back I go to Marston Moor. So I’ve been in the air force quite some time. I haven’t done anything worth talking about so when I got back to Marston Moor it was difficult to believe but they said, ‘Well, we are a navigator short in a crew.’ Ah. So I said, why, why, ‘Why, are they short?’ ‘Well he’s got a bad temper.’ it was exactly -
PL: Same chap?
FC: And I was convinced it was going to happen to me again and so when I saw the crew I’d got from a young innocent crew I’d got, I mean I was the oldest at twenty one and ok I was a bit older now. This was a Canadian pilot and and these people were a different calibre altogether. And to cut a long story short no trouble. We did our training at the OTU and we were posted to 158 on the East Yorkshire coast and that was my introduction to the operational theatre but I’ve wrote down here I’d been in the air force nearly four years and I’d done one op. Poor return. But then of course as so often happens in life things started to get better. We had, we did a full tour on 158 near Bridlington. I got the DFC and the pilot got the DFC for that and I was then posted to an OTU to train others and I thought I’m back to training again and this kept on dogging me. I get pulled in again but mind you to go to Blyton which was near Gainsborough, dreadful place. Wartime airfield. Nissen huts running in condensation. You couldn’t get a dry shirt and so I got very friendly with the adjutant who happened to be a West End actor. Unfortunately, I can’t remember his name now but he was quite somebody to reckon with at the time and he said, ‘Isn’t this a dreadful station?’ I said, ‘Yes it is.’ So he said, ‘I’ll tell you what,’ he said, ‘Suppose we put on a show.’ ‘Doing what?’ I said. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I thought of a mannequin parade. We’ve got some lovely, young, beautiful WAAFs. I’ll go to London and I’ll get all the dresses and you write the music,’ ‘cause I used to play a lot in those days. ‘You write the music and there’s a WAAF, there’s a WAAF officer, she’s a good pianist we’ll tune one of the WAAF pianos so we got two pianos and you write the music.’ So I thought, ‘I don’t think I can do that.’ ‘So,’ he said, ‘The first thing you’ve got to do you’ve got to retune the NAFFI piano to match the Grand in the mess. Never try it,’ he said, ‘It drives you nuts.’ However, we did it and there we were and so he went to London and he came back. Well, when he showed me some of these dresses it left nothing to the imagination, Pam and I said, ‘It won’t do,’ I said, ‘You’ll have a riot because,’ I said, ‘The erks at the back, they’ll be on the stage grabbing them.’ So he said, ‘No they won’t. No.’ He, so he said, ‘Let’s give it a try with nobody in attendance.’ Well no we asked the CO to attend. So he said, ‘Well I can’t see anything wrong with it,’ But one girl was a very pretty girl. She took one look at the dress she was going to wear and she said, ‘I’m not wearing that.’ So he said, ‘Look. Nothing will happen. It will be like a graveyard. They will be so mesmerised by you and your,’ well to cut a long story short again it went ahead and it was true there wasn’t a murmur. I concocted something that was [in a Strauss?] nice and easy, bouncy stuff, you know and the WAAF, she was a lovely pianist and we did well there but when the girls came on in these wonderful dresses, I mean they left nothing to the imagination I can assure you, there wasn’t a murmur and they went out to thunderous applause and we then toured the area to the other airfields with it and so the time at this terrible airfield went quite well. But again I wasn’t happy because I had to go around the night skies with these to make sure they were doing alright and sometimes when I saw them do I thought, ‘Oh dear. You won’t last long.’ And so I thought to myself, ‘I must get out of this somehow.’ How am I going to do it? Well I had a particular friend at Bomber Command Headquarters in York and so I phoned him up and said, ‘What have you done with my application for Mosquito Pathfinders?’ ‘Oh I didn’t know you’d sent one in, Fred.’ ‘Oh yes,’ I said, ‘It’s been in a long time.’ I said, ‘I thought you were craving for navigators,’ because what they were doing they were taking pilots who’d got through the initial training, hadn’t done much flying, but putting in an experienced navigator with him. Only a crew of two you see and that made it compact but I said, ‘Well see what you can do.’ He came back to me and said, ‘I found your application.’ I hadn’t sent one in so he was lying in his teeth. So I said, ‘I’m so pleased. When can I go?’ So I said, ‘Like tomorrow?’ ‘Well if you want to go that quickly.’ So I did. I went the next day and I went to Warboys just near Huntingdon and there they were all being selected. Sprog pilots with experienced navigators and they would have had to have done a tour on something to be considered. Well, in that group of inexperienced pilots was a chap that worked in the same office as me in peacetime and who I knew very well and so it was obvious. I phoned his wife before I went and I said, ‘When is Mark coming down?’ ‘Tomorrow,’ she said. He’d been training at Lossiemouth in North Scotland and so we met and I saw the chap who was dealing with the matching. I said, ‘Look, I know him very well. Is it alright with you?’ ‘Yes. You take him.’ So my crew was established. Now, he wasn’t a particularly good pilot to start with. He became one and I was well satisfied with him and we did forty five trips as Pathfinders and of course with Pathfinders you’ve got radar. I had two types of radar. Gee in the nose and H2S up here. Do you know what I’m talking about? No. Well a Gee is a two wireless stations transmission of beam and you’ve got an oscilloscope and you measure the strength of each beam and where they meet that’s where you are. So that was the simple thing. The H2S is something quite different. This was a scanning machine which rotated a hundred and twenty degrees like that in the nose and you could illuminate any building ahead of you to a hundred and twenty degrees wide. You couldn’t take a back bearing. If you’d gone past it you couldn’t do it but with H2S, H2S is the symbol for hydrogen sulphide isn’t it? You know, bad eggs. I mean somebody had a sense of humour and so those two, navigation I was always fascinated by. In fact I loved what I was doing and but mind you the Mosquito, a lovely aircraft and I’ve listened people say marvellous aircraft and I think to myself, ‘Yes, it was,’ but it was, it had it drawbacks. For example, it was so cold. The engines could never give you enough warmth. They gave you a pipe which were supposed to stuff up your trouser leg, you know, to preserve your manhood sort of thing but it was only a trickle of warmth and at the blister at the side, thick ice, that thick. But the windscreen always freezed [they covered that?] But again no toilet. Now if you fly for five hours in freezing cold there’s things happen to the human body and the pilot had a tube between his legs, it came up as a nozzle here and the navigator had to try and get it down there but you know nobody worried about that because it was a wonderful aircraft to fly and so we developed our own skills there because when he came it was bumps-a-daisy for landing. He couldn’t get it right and so I said, ‘Well I think it’s too much to ask. You’re having to do too many things. I’ll do some of them. For example I’ll put the wheels down. I’ll put the flaps down. I’ll call out the airspeed.’ And, ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘Would you?’ I said, ‘Oh yeah.’ And we even gravitated to when we were on our way back having bombed and marked oh and by the way the radar screen, you always took a picture of it and if it wasn’t a picture of the target you didn’t get it, you didn’t get credited. It was tough. The WAAF officers used to develop it and in the morning when you came down from your sleep they had a big blackboard and there was the target and your ribbon, you know, O-Orange that’s your picture and if you had a picture of a herd of cows you weren’t there and you didn’t get it. So you had to work for your points. So there it was and that went on and on. There was never any talk of giving up because in Pathfinders once you got, you know your special brevvy as you did. It shows you in the picture there you never talked about giving up. You just went on. I’m sure, we had one bloke who did flip and he was found at 2 o’clock in the morning walking around the perimeter track and it was too much. But he went to hospital, he came back and finished his tour. Yes, it’s amazing what people did in those days and so I continued with him and I actually went on the last raid of the war which was in 1945 to Kiel where the Germans had set up their puppet government and do you now that was one of the worst trips I’ve ever experienced because there was nothing happening. No searchlights, no flak, nothing. It was eerie but I kept on thinking, ‘What if the engines pack up? The last war raid that’s likely to be. War is going to be cancelled tomorrow and I get shot down. I ditch in the North Sea.’ And it wasn’t until I saw the lovely cluster of searchlights that always appeared on the English east coast to welcome you home I thought, ‘Oh isn’t it lovely.’ Now, you would think that was the end of my career because the war had finished. I had done, as I said to start with, a thousand hours flying. More than a thousand hours flying. I’d done seventy four trips and I had done six and a half years’ service but no when the war finished myself and one other chap were given a weeks leave. It looked perfectly normal, perfectly normal. I said, ‘Oh that’s very nice.’ And of course I knew my co very well. I was friends with him after the war and he said, ‘Go and enjoy it. Go and enjoy it. You’ve earned it.’ You know. I should have twigged that something was in the wind but I didn’t. I had a nice weeks leave. I was reunited ‘cause we weren’t married then. We knew each other. We’ve known each other ever since babies because our mothers were great friends so we will be married sixty seven years and we are now in our sixty eighth year and so I called on her. We had a lovely weeks leave. And it was that that started it ‘cause I said, ‘Oh we must do more of this,’ you know, and we were married within six months or so and [laughs] when I got back from leave I saw the same CO and he said, ‘You’re posted.’ ‘Oh yes? Where to? Somewhere nice?’ ‘Oh yes. Very nice,’ he said. So I said, ‘Where?’ ‘Italy,’ he said. ‘Italy? But the war’s over.’ ‘Well I’m sorry. You’ve been chosen.’ ‘Am I going by myself?’ ‘No. We’re sending a pilot with you so the two of you are going.’ ‘Mosquitos?’ ‘Yes.’ I thought this is all very fishy. So he said, ‘But you’ll have to go by boat.’ To Italy. So off we went the very next day to Morecambe. We got on the Empress of India or a boat of that ilk and it took us a couple of weeks to get to Naples but right out to Atlantic and down the Med and into Naples and there I was met and billeted near the base of Mount Vesuvius. Nice, nice billet provided you remembered to walk on the duck boards because if you walked on the sand it took the skin off your feet because it was so hot. So, anyway, I was met by the duty officer and he said, ‘We’ve got you all lined up,’ he said, ‘Stay the night here and we’ll get the train to the airfield.’ ‘Train?’ I said. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘Don’t you know where you’re going?’ I said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘You’re going to Foggia,’ which is right in the middle of Italy towards the south. Oh well. Anyway, on the way in the train I was very lucky. I’ve been lucky too because I sat in the same compartment with two army officers who had been on leave and had been in the area and they were starting to ask questions, ‘First time out old boy?’ you know, he says. Well they could tell by my knees ‘cause my knees were white. I said, ‘Yes. I’ve just come.’ ‘Oh. Have you got a gun?’ So I said, ‘Well yes but it’s in my kit bag.’ I’d never had any reason to fire a gun. So, he said, ‘Well get it out and load it and always wear it,’ he said. So I said, ‘Why? What’s happening?’ He said, ‘Well it’s very very dangerous out here,’ because they had literally got to starvation by the end of the war and they were ripe to take anybody’s food, clothing, transport or anything. And so I had [?] at Naples airfield. I had Foggia in the middle and I had Bari airfield on the east coast. The Adriatic coast. And so he said, ‘I’ve been detailed to give you two days run around the area.’ So I said, ‘Oh well that’s something. Yeah.’ So he said, ‘But do come prepared. You must wear your gun and you must be prepared.’ He said, ‘Never stop for anybody.’ ‘Never stop for anybody?’ ‘No. Like this,’ he said and out in front was a small village and out of a side turning came a poor old chap. He must have been fifty or sixty on a very rickety bike and he deliberately drove in front of us. So I expected him to stop. ‘Oh no,’ he said, ‘This is it. Don’t take him on. He’s not what he seems to be.’ I said, ‘What are you going to do?’ ‘I’m going to run him over.’ And he, well he tried but that chap was off that bike so nimbly we went over the bike but we didn’t go over him and of course all his cohorts were -
PL: Hiding.
FC: Behind the wall. And the other trick was to get the girls to pull their skirts up on the mountain roads all by themselves you see but the blokes were all behind the wall and it was very dangerous. And that was after the war had finished. And so that went on and by then I realised I had the most wonderful job I’ve ever had in my life. Never mind about air force. My job, I was in charge of three airfields. The three I’ve mentioned. Naples, Foggia and Bari and in each airfield there was a marshalling area for all, any kind of military personnel who was due to go home for leave, demob or whatever and my job was to get the aircraft from this country to these three airfields to take them there and I could, I had a very powerful radio station. I could order seven hundred aircraft at the drop of a hat. The power. It was marvellous, you know. You don’t, you can’t believe you’ve got that power and there they were all coming into the three places. The colonel or the major in charge of the army camps, they got all the details ready and they were loaded on the aircraft and they all came back to this country. You couldn’t do better than that. I could have made a fortune because everybody wanted to get on the planes but of course they had to take their time. I only did it once and that was because a chap came in, came to see me in the administration building where I was and he said, ‘Can you help me get home out of turn?’ I said, ‘No.’ I dare not do it. ‘Everybody is allotted a day. I can’t do it. Why should you be so particular?’ ‘Well,’ he said, he looked embarrassed for a minute, he said, ‘I’ll be frank with you,’ he said, ‘My girlfriend lives in Milan, she’s pregnant and she’s going to have a baby tomorrow. Now, if you could drop me off tomorrow I can be with her when she has the baby.’ Well, I didn’t know what to do but one of the Lancs that came in I knew the pilot very well and I said to him, ‘Do you think you can sneak a landing at Milan, drop my bloke off and take off like the hounds of hell were after you?’ He said, ‘I’ll do it.’ And that chap gave me a travelling American suitcase so you could take all your gear and it never creased and that was the only thing I ever got out of it. And then it all finished when my number came up ‘cause I had a very early number having been in so early. I found that it was my turn to go and I thought well this time I will get a Mosquito to take me home. No. All the RAF effort was controlled from Caserta in Northern Italy and they told me point blank, ‘I’m Sorry. You’ve got to go home on the train.’ Anyway, we had an Italian train allotted to us, no windows because they’d all been blown out and this was December. Bitterly cold. And the only thing that saved my life was I met my old batman and he had a primus and so he made tea every half hour. I had a stinking cold. I think I almost had pneumonia and he kept us going on that. When we got to Milan we changed trains to the Swiss railway. Lovely. Oh luxury and at every station we stopped at, ‘We hope you will come and have your holidays here.’ You know. Well listen to this when we got to the French border it was the smallest tank engine I’ve seen in my life and it had to pull this whole long train to Calais. Well it had to stop every hour to fill more water in the thing but eventually we got to Calais and, as I say, up to Birmingham for demob and that in a nutshell is my story.
PL: What an extraordinary story.
FC: Yeah.
PL: What an extraordinary story.
FC: It is. I mean could put all sorts of fine detail on it but I think it would spoil it because I think, it’s a true story. I have a job reading my notes so I stumbled a bit here and there but what it taught me was and I only got to this conclusion when I had finished putting these notes together for you. It was obvious to me that they had singled me out to be of the utmost use in training others. They weren’t interested in me getting on to an operational squadron. They’d much rather get the through pull of dozens of fellows. Much better return on paper. Yeah. But then you see four years in. One op. Six and a half, seventy four ops. So they all came in the end but they were the killing years. 1943 was dreadful. I mean the losses were so high. I mean, you could sit and have your eggs and bacon before you took off. When you came back sometimes there wouldn’t be one crew on the table. There was one table. The losses yeah. And touches still come flooding back because on Mosquitos they were really some of the elite if you like. I mean they were blokes with long flying experience because pilots had caught up a bit now. The navigators had been at it a long time. We lost some. We lost one or two perhaps a week. Never found out why. But of course Gibson himself had been killed in a Mosquito, but that was a boob. That was his navigator killed him but he changed over the wrong petrol tank. Still not many people know that. But -
PL: Sorry, what did he do? He changed over the tanks?
FC: Sorry?
PL: He changed over the tanks.
FC: Changed, yeah, the navigator had to do that.
PL: Right.
FC: Because the cocks, he sat in his seat here. The cocks were down there.
PL: Right.
FC: Now, it was very easy, so it was an unwritten rule that the navigators and of course when we were flying Mosquitoes we used, there were drop tanks underneath the wings, papier mache. There was two tanks in the wings and two tanks in the centre piece. Two tanks there. Now if you weren’t careful you had a couple of pints in that one, a couple of pints in this one, a couple of pints in that one. If you were caught when you got brought back ‘cause the weather had closed in you had it all over the place. You didn’t want that so we used to drain every tank dry so ok the drop tanks cause you would jettison those. They were made of papier mache you wouldn’t get a second and then move to the wings because that’s where the shells were going through and you would have fire so drain those and leave it so the centre section ‘cause if you were hit in the centre section you were, you were gone anyway and so we worked that out so we always had every drop of petrol, when we were coming in to land and coming out of markers and watching the beacons we had all our fuel in one place so if we were diverted because the weather packed up, we didn’t get too many. I think the met people did a wonderful job during the war. Far better than they do now sometimes and so petrol in one place. In the heavies you learned the hard way. Now we were raw recruits in East Yorkshire but it wasn’t long before you realised that if you stayed straight and level over there somebody would creep underneath you and - so don’t stay still but move to the side a bit. Get somebody else to take your place. And we and I was the main instigator in this sort of thing. I used to think about these things and say, ‘Well don’t do it.’ It’s a bit of a drudgery you know and of course you had to do it if you saw a fighter. You corkscrewed then but, but I think so many of the crew that were pushed in to these four engine Lancs and the Halifaxes they hadn’t had enough training and that didn’t get put right until 1944 when, of course, the German air force was marvellously organised. Their radar was every bit as good as ours but they used it for a totally different purpose. We used radar to find a target, they used the radar to find you. And they did. And they had directly you crossed their coast they were then saying, ‘Well, where’s he going? Where are they going? Are they going that way or that way or that way,’ and they had got everything organised to pass you on and they did. Pass you on box to box and that’s how it went and one thing that I shall never forgive the RAF for in 1943, round about September, October time, I suppose it was obvious something new was happening because you got these terrible explosions in the sky and it was obviously an aircraft blowing up and you thought well why are they getting so many? Well, we found out afterwards but the RAF said it was because the Germans were firing decoy shells which exploded and made it look like an aircraft going down but when you’re near it you can see it’s an aircraft going down. And that was dreadful because it was so many.
PL: So why were they saying that? Was that just about morale?
FC: Well just to get you, yes it was. That’s to stop you sort of getting the wind up. But as I said at the time when you’re looking at it you’re in no doubt what it is. Yeah. Yeah. And they were red hot. I only had one dodgy time on the Mosquitos because they were so fast they had to be in the position to catch you. And so what they did was as standard we went to Berlin more often than not because we had two types of oboe squadron. Mosquito squadrons. I had one type of radar and the other type of Mosquito had a different type of radar which was used for the Ruhr Valley because the Ruhr Valley was always covered in smoke and dust from the manufacturing. You couldn’t find it and so they controlled the Mosquito entirely from take-off. They took off, set course and they would give them changes of direction and they would even get you in a line which went right through the target and tell you when to drop [targets?] whereas we had to find them and in our case the Germans knew what we were at because the best way to find a target is to identify something near it or comparatively near it which you could see on radar and radar picks out buildings or more particularly, water. So if you go over a big lake you can see it because there is no response at all from water and so the great lakes north west of Berlin and about a twelve minute run in to Berlin stood out on the radar and it was a dead reckoning and so once you got there and took the line, altered course, twelve minutes you were there. You couldn’t miss but they put all their fighters around the great lakes and one of them was educated in this country and he would come on our frequency, he got our frequency taped and he would say, ‘Good evening gentlemen. You’re a little late this evening but we can see you all right,’ because we were the end of the contrail of course and they were up above us because they had the super chargers ME109Fs. They were up above. They could see our contrails. We had three markers per target so the three of us were very close together. They made a lot of contrails dead stick and they would come down, they could dive, they could get the speed to catch them but they had to get us first shot otherwise they were gone through us and they would never catch us up again but, but he would talk to you all the way. He would talk to you all the way in and say, you know, ‘Just stay like that, we’ve got that,’ and he –
PL: So they were really really -
FC: Yes.
PL: Messing with your heads and -
FC: Oh yeah. It was a war of psychology really, you know. He knew exactly how to ruffle people. Yeah. Yeah. And he would talk to you like that.
PL: So, so -
FC: But there is about the story of my RAF life.
PL: It’s just an extraordinary story. It really is. Do, do, I get the impression then that you, did you feel safer in the Mosquitos?
FC: Oh it was so much faster. Yeah
PL: Did you sort of feel in control of the situation more?
FC: A German fighter could outrun you but only in the diving mode so they used the height to catch you and of course we were flying, we always flew at twenty six and a half thousand. Don’t ask me why. Someone at the air ministry rather thought that’s a large figure so they won’t dream of, but always twenty six and a half thousand. Sometimes somebody would say alright we’ll make it thirty thousand but very rare and of course we were, time and time again the target was Berlin because we didn’t need any escort. No escort could keep up with us and so we always went the same way across the north German plains and came back the same way taking bearings on Hamburg, Mannheim and all those places as they came up on the radar screen. Yeah. Yeah
PL: I’ve heard a lot about the relationships within the crews and you talked a little bit about that earlier on.
FC: Yeah.
PL: With that dreadful crash but on base did you, I mean obviously you were in pairs in the Mosquito. Did you all socialise together and form relationships or -
FC: Well in my case because I knew Mark Wallace so well we shared a room. Didn’t have to. You were just allotted a room. We had batwomen instead of batmen by then of course [?] but they were the salt of the earth. They would defend you so that you got some sleep and they would make up their own boards and put them, “Quiet. Operational crew sleeping.” And they’d do your uniform and oh they were the salt of the earth. I always had a tremendous affection for them because they were all in the forty to fifty group, years of age, yeah but they wouldn’t take anything for the, you know, extras. Go treat yourself to something. No. They wouldn’t do that. No. They were really wonderful and of course again we were lucky here ‘cause whereas the Yorkshire one was a wartime airfield I can tell you something about that too but you might want to pack up. Upwood was a peacetime camp so it was all beautifully laid out and the mess was all brick built, everything was brick built. It’s still there. It’s just a massive American hospital now. Not working except for the local airfields. They treat any airmen from their local airfield but it’s there to deal with a calamity like, you know, a multiple train crash or something.
PL: So where is that?
FC: It’s just outside of a place called Ramsey which is just near Huntingdon.
PL: Right.
FC: Yeah.
PL: Right.
FC: And the airfield is called Upwood and it’s still there. I’ve been there. I was taken there by the mayor and of course they wouldn’t leave me alone. They’d say, ‘Was it like this when you were here?’ I said, ‘Yeah. Oh you changed that,’ or, you know, and then you get a magnificent meal you know, oh dear that was a lovely time. George came with me and of course the mayor was one of the, well he wasn’t a real relative but he, we were very great friends and he said well I’ll take you there. I’m invited to bring friends and so I did. Yeah.
PL: Lovely.
FC: Yeah.
PL: Tell me about the Yorkshire airfield.
FC: Well, it was, as the name suggests, a wartime airfield. It was built probably in late part of 1941 or thereabouts and it was all nissen huts except for the control tower. That was made of brick. And it’s another odd thing about my time in the RAF I was always, a squadron normally has two flights A and B. Sometimes, if they’re big enough they have C as well but normally it’s A and B and never, never was in A. I was always in B and I placed some importance to that because I thought I want to be in B for luck. And so as it was a poor airfield you can guess I was a bit of a rogue in those days I got back one morning about half past two in the morning. We’d had our debriefing and so on and we went back to the nissen hut and I thought, ‘Oh this is awful.’ Running in condensation. Well I had -
PL: This is the Yorkshire airfield.
FC: Yeah. Yeah.
PL: So, different from the one down in -
FC: Huntingdon.
PL: Bladon, Bladon, Was it Bladon near -
FC: Blyton.
PL: Blyton yes. Where you had the show.
FC: Yes.
PL: Right.
FC: No that was pretty stark.
PL: Right. Yeah. Ok. Fine.
FC: So that was alright. But I wasn’t flying this particular night and I missed the last bus back to the airfield. That’s me, you know. So I thought, ‘What do I do?’ I gave myself up. I went to the local police station. ‘Can I sleep in one of your cells?’ And they said, ‘No. We can’t do that. That’s for locking up prisoners.’ So I said, ‘Well, what am I going to do?’ ‘Oh, that’s no trouble. If you go along the main road to,’ I can’t remember the square number but it was Beaconsfield Terrace, ‘And the second house as you go in, ask for Mrs Wilson.’ I said, ‘What will she do?’ ‘She’ll give you a bed for the night and breakfast in the morning in time to get the bus back.’ So I said, ‘Really?’ So I went there. I trudged down to Beaconsfield Terrace. I saw this lovely Yorkshire grandmother she was and she looked at me and she said, ‘My God you’re thin.’ Well of course I was. I hadn’t long been out of hospital. I’d been flying on ops as well. So, ‘Come in. We’ll have to get some flesh on you,’ she said. And she took to me like and she, I stayed at Mrs Wilson’s so I had an arrangement from then on. I thought well if I can do it this far I can go a bit further. As the adjutant, I always made a friend of the adjutant because he’s the all-powerful admin. So I said to him, ‘Look, can we have an arrangement? If I phone you and say its Fred here you can tell me if I’m wanted back or not and if you say no I’ll stay in Bridlington and I’ll get the afternoon bus.’ So he said, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘What if it changes?’ I said, ‘Well I’ll leave you a number to ring just in case something pops.’ It worked like a charm. I was never let down by the adjutant. I never got caught. I used to get the afternoon bus in and she fed me up. I used to have hot milk and whisky at eleven in the morning. No charge. And she used to make the life of the butcher on the corner of the square a misery because, ‘Look at him. Look. He’s hardly got a bit of flesh on him. Give him something.’ And do you know that continued after the war.
PL: Really.
FC: Joyce and I, we were married by now. We used to go up there for holidays.
PL: How lovely. Whereabouts was that in Yorkshire?
FC: Bridlington.
PL: And this was at Bridlington.
FC: Yeah.
PL: You said about Bridlington.
FC: Yes. In the main square. Yeah.
PL: Fantastic.
FC: Yes lovely, lovely women she was. My boys she used to call us. My boys. I had two brothers. One was in the navy on North Atlantic convoys on the, on one of the small, I forget what they called them now, small boats. Terrible time. My eldest brother was too old to serve as a combatant. He was, he was put in, some sort of officer in charge of a prisoner of war camp in Cornwall so he had a lovely war did my brother, Harry. Of course they’re all dead now. Everybody’s dead. But er but we met once only. My brother Bob and he come up with his wife. Yeah. Stayed at Mrs Wilson’s of course. He had the front bedroom on the first floor. Now, Mrs Wilson had one weakness. Her drink was port and brandy. I thought that’s a killer. I couldn’t take it. I’ve never been very good at strong drink. I like a whisky with lemonade. That’s the sort of stuff I like. And so she said, ‘We’ll have a celebration.’ So, ‘righto,’ my brother was there with his wife. The whole of my crew. Now the whole of my crew were all younger than me and she bought them all a port and brandy. Well you can imagine what it did to these kids. I mean at twenty three now, I was, I was the oldest. They were out like lights so they all went to bed early. We heard them all collapse on the bedroom floor. Somebody went up and put them to bed but the thing I always remember with some amusement my brother was just an ordinary sailor, a matlow as they called them. Never try and undress a sailor because we couldn’t get, his wife and I we were so convulsed with laughter we put him to bed in his uniform in the end because we couldn’t get it off. But they were the good times. Yeah. Yeah.
PL: And he survived the war. Your brother. That was in the navy.
FC: He survived the war. Yes. Yes. He was never caught by a submarine or anything and he did it all the war. Backwards and forward to the States. Yeah. Bore a charmed life. Yeah. Harry was -
PL: Talking about the lucky, about being lucky, being lucky, the B squadron was lucky. Did lots of you, were you, were you sort of superstitious in that way? Was there a sort of -
FC: I think everybody -
PL: Did people have charms.
FC: Flying is superstitious really. You, for example you would never dream of dressing to fly except in one way. For example, you always put something on first and then something on second and if you do it wrong you’d strip, start again. I’ve done that. I’ve done that a dozen times. Never change that. No.
PL: How funny.
FC: Yeah and you get an affection for a particular aircraft. That’s the funny thing you see. You know, I had an amazing experience. We had an [laughs] am I boring you?
PL: Not at all.
FC: Oh. Because we had great losses in 1943 and our replacement aircraft used to be flown in by little girls dressed in a beautiful white uniform and they had the time of their lives because they always stayed the night in the mess and then they were picked up. Nobody asked any questions and so and they were right royally entertained but now and again a particular aircraft, I nearly always flew in O-Orange or P-Peter and one of those photographs is O-Orange.
PL: What does O-Orange and P-Peter mean?
FC: Well, each, each aircraft has its squadron letters which in, in Yorkshire was NP but then on the other side of the roundel that was on all our aircraft the NP was on the left of the roundel but the letter of the aircraft was on the right. So you, A flight was from A to H, I think it was, and then B flight was from say L to, no, yeah L to Z and so you identified yourself as you were coming in. You’d say O-Orange
PL: Right. Right, I see.
FC: So, you see, they knew who you were. But we had one occasion which, it really accentuated superstition because the little girl brought the aircraft in. There was three of them. They brought in three Halifaxes from the factory but we were operating that night and we were one aircraft short so we had to bring one of these new arrivals in to the raid and it happened to be the one that was given to us because our own aircraft had been so badly damaged it couldn’t fly and I said, ‘What’s its letter?’ It hadn’t got a letter. It had just come from the factory. It’s got a squadron letter NP but no individual because they didn’t know what it was going to be. Well, I said, ‘Well that’s alright. We’ll call her O-Orange. So we did. We thought of her as O-Orange. That aircraft flew like a gem. It was fast. It was trouble free. It gave us no trouble. We had no trouble finding the target. We had no trouble with enemy fighters. Everything was perfect. I said, ‘We’ll keep this one.’ So we all went to bed. When we came down to the flight offices there’s the chap in charge of maintenance said, ‘Sorry about your aircraft.’ I said, ‘What aircraft?’ ‘Well, the one you flew last night.’ ‘Yes. Wonderful aircraft. We want to keep it.’ ‘It’s finished.’ ‘Finished?’ I said. ‘It will never fly again.’ I said, ‘What on earth are you talking about?’ He said, ‘Well, it’s got a major fault in it.’ For that one raid it didn’t show it. Anyway, it was loaded on a Queen Mary vehicle and taken away in one piece. It never flew again. It was broken up and made into another one.
PL: Good gracious.
FC: I know. And that convinced me -
PL: So that had two flights.
FC: Just that one.
PL: It was delivered and then it went on the raid. How extraordinary.
FC: Extraordinary isn’t it? Yeah. But people did have a, did get a love, it was always a kind of love anyway, you know because for example in the Mosquitos we had one old timer. It was, it was operational but it didn’t have all the modern amendments. For example, the windows at the side were flat whereas in the new version it had big blisters so you could see backwards and that poor thing it kept on going and going and going but I never liked it and we were sitting at the end of runway waiting to take off. It was dark. It was a night take off and S-Sugar it was, with the side windows flat was sitting in front of us. As was the first one to take off in front of us and we saw it go down the runway, we saw him lift off but then the tail lights started to do this and he, obviously something terrible happened to it and it went straight out of control, straight in to the bomb dump of another airfield. Boom. Nobody knew what happened. Poor Mark said, ‘What on earth was that?’ I said, ‘Don’t worry about a thing. Just concentrate on what you’re doing.’ Yeah. So, yeah, poor old S-Sugar had a poor end. Yeah.
PL: Goodness me.
FC: I could tell you a story. One more story about the Mosquitos. Now, our, our losses of course were so little compared to the big ones. After all we had two fellows to lose instead of seven, for one thing and of course the big ones were much more vulnerable. Well, on this particular occasion we had marked very successfully. A lovely picture on the screen showed we were right on the dot and we, the bomb doors shut, pictures taken and dive and turn to come home and we were coming back across the north German plains at about twenty two thousand, something like that ‘cause we were gradually losing height and picking up a bit of extra speed and I started to feel very uncomfortable. I’ve told so many writers about this it’s almost as if I, you know, it happened yesterday. Well, I said to Mark, ‘Is everything alright?’ ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘Let’s have a good check all around. You check yours and I’ll check mine.’ Couldn’t find anything so I thought, well, sat down, got on with my work and this feeling came back. I said to Mark, ‘There’s something wrong here. I know what I’ll do.’ We had a little extra astrodome and if you got your head into it you could see backwards so I said, ‘I’ll have a good look around. Perhaps somebody’s on our tail somewhere.’ Anyway, I got under the astrodome and I had wonderful eyesight in those years. I could see things in the dark that most people couldn’t which I’ve now lost of course, completely and I said, ‘Well I can’t find anything, Mark,’ and I sat down but as I sat down something down there caught my eye. I couldn’t see it when I tried to see it so I thought, ‘I know. I’ll wait for my eyes to get adjusted here and I’ll look again,’ and there about a thousand feet down but flying the same course was a single engined plane. Couldn’t be mine. Couldn’t be one of ours. We had no single engines during that so it was obviously one of these 109Fs and so I said, ‘I’ve got him.’ I said, ‘I can see him now.’ ‘What’s he doing?’ he said, I said, ‘Well he’s not doing anything. He’s just flying parallel to us about a thousand feet down,’ but I then began to notice he was getting a little bit closer all the time. Very, very, very slowly. And I said, ‘Oh I know what he’s going to do. He’s going to get as close as he dare and then he’ll come up, firing as he comes up.’
PL: Underneath. Yeah.
FC: So I said, ‘I’ll tell you what we’ll do. Let’s turn around and go back into Germany.’ ‘What?’ he said. I said, ‘Let’s turn right around and go right around and go back into Germany for three or four minutes. Then come back on the course again.’ Exactly what we did. I sat down. I felt quite comfortable but in a few minutes the feeling was back and so was he. He’d done exactly the same as we had. So I thought this is no, no pupil here this is a really experienced bloke and this time he was definitely closer. So I said, ‘Now, get ready now Mark. Do the same again but dive. Stuff the nose right down,’ and as I said that up he was coming and as we turned he came and he was firing but of course we’d dropped out of his firing range. He gave up after that and I knew he’d given up ‘cause I felt fine. So I think you do get senses of things. Yeah. No more trouble. I said, ‘He’s gone Mark. We can proceed.’ And that’s I think I could bore you to death if I carried on.
PL: No. It’s, absolutely, honestly it has been fascinating hearing you. Really. Are there any other stories you want to share?
FC: Pardon?
PL: Are there any other stories you want to share?
FC: Well, I suppose the story that haunts me all my life, has done and still does, is when I crashed on Marston Moor because I think I was half dead. When I was going down, when we hit there was this colossal bang and blackness and I was out but I was conscious, no, I was aware that I appeared to be going down a long black shaft. Not terribly fast but I was saying to myself, ‘If I reach the bottom I shall die,’ and I’m convinced that had I reached the bottom and been conscious when I did I would have died. So I have no fear of death at all. None at all. I mean we often talk about it, Joyce and I. She’s ninety four. I’m ninety five. I’m ten months older than her and we talk about it. Now, what we have done we have decided we will not go into a home so we’ve persuaded our daughter who has a lovely house in Royston, a big house, to build on it a suite for us and we’ll pay for it. Now, it’s all been done. We have stayed in it. It’s a little bit smaller than we had hoped because when they started to build they had to do something in the building of whatever and so it is a little bit smaller but it’s beautifully done and so when one of us goes the survivor, when all the battels are cleared up will go and live with our daughter and I’ve got the most wonderful family in the world.
PL: How lovely.
FC: My daughter and son are and their spouse’s, well, no I’ll qualify that. No. One of the, my daughter’s husband is an absolute gem. He’s just like a son to me. I say my two boys. Yeah. My son’s wife is not so easy but she’s alright but I often think of that time and I’ll never forget it. It comes back to me. Yeah. And to think that you could survive. Just think, you’re coming down and you hit the ground at about a hundred and sixty miles an hour. That breaks off, the next bit breaks off and the front stays there, huge fire and I’m out here somewhere in a bush. No socks, no shoes, no trousers.
PL: And if you hadn’t have gone up into the top -
FC: Ah that’s the point. If I hadn’t have asked that chap to change places with me I would have been where he was and I would have been flying up from there as I was but he died in my position and he was quite glad to do it because he was bored to tears of course. He’d done it three times already. He didn’t want to do it a fourth time, ‘Yes,’ so we changed over. I actually saw the fire start because, you know, you’ve got your big cupola turret. I happened to be looking down and saw the first globule of flame and I thought, ‘That’s odd.’ Then suddenly there was a long streamer of fire and going back toward the tail end and so I called him up and I said, ‘I think we’ve got a problem with the starboard outer.’ ‘Oh good gracious. Yes,’ turned the petrol off but one thing ‘cause the chap who was CO was Cheshire. Leonard Cheshire. He was my CO at Marston Moor and he said, ‘Well what did you do?’ I said, ‘Well in the front they did everything right except for one thing. They did not feather the prop,’ So the prop was windmilling and dragging that wing down and that did it. And the fire of course did the rest, you know, but they were so inexperienced. They had very little flying between them.
PL: But it’s amazing that you dared go back up again. Were you not terrified when you went back in to the air?
FC: Well I, when I went back to Marston Moor and they told me they’d got another crew whose navigator [laughs] I thought, ‘Oh no. I can’t take that again.’
PL: No. No. No
FC: So I thought, ‘Oh well.’ But of course you can’t refuse. I mean you’re under control from the air force and, but when I saw them I thought well these are a different kettle of fish and the chap, the Canadian pilot, he had hands like ham bones. You know. When he got hold of the [cold column?] he dwarfed it but even then he hadn’t got these [?] you see. It was his first trip and it could have gone so badly wrong because on the first trip which they gave you always what was called a gardening trip. A gardening trip. What do you mean by a gardening trip? Laying mines. And so three newcomers to the squadron took off together on this night and we were going across Denmark in to the Kattegat and putting the mines down in the shipping lanes. Well, there were only three of us flying from that squadron that night and we were the last to get off and the other two were on our left so we were following here but they kept on drifting further and further left and my pilot kept on giving a touch on the rudders to follow them and I said, ‘Don’t do that. They’re not right.’ Drifting away, ‘They’re not on track.’ He did, well he didn’t know me so I got set up but when it got dark he couldn’t see them so I gave him an alteration of course, brought him back where I knew he ought to be and we found Terschelling Island which was the turning point, went over the point of the island, into the Kattegat, down the lanes, no problem at all. Back again to Terschelling Island, home and we were home and in the debriefing room all finished. No sign of the other two. I thought, ‘Oh dear, we haven’t lost them already have we?’ Anyway, they turned up very very late, they had got lost and then been chased up and down the Norwegian coast by fighters but they got away with it but that taught me a lesson so I said to Smith, the pilot, ‘If you ever do that to me again I’ll finish with you.’ I said, ‘I’m navigating. If I say you ought to turn right, turn right.’ If I’d have said it’s raining cats and dogs outside he’d have believed me from then on and they all got their commissions in turn and it was an all commissioned crew in the end.
PL: How wonderful.
FC: Yeah. Yeah.
PL: And that’s photograph that you showed me.
FC: Yes. That’s the photograph. Yeah.
PL: So, what, so what was the relationship like between navigator and pilot then? Was that -
FC: Ah well you had to have good relationship. I mean when you think of a pilot what is he doing? He’s sitting in a seat. He’s strapped in as tight as he can be. He’s staring into the dark, darkness. He can see all the terrible things that are going on. Aircraft going down in flames and so on you know but he’s got to what his instruments and so he doesn’t, and the compasses. His job is just to do what he’s told and do it well but then of course you’ve got to think about other things because the Germans devised the JU88 and also the ME110 where they, underneath, no on the top of their aircraft they had upward firing cannon. It was called schragemusik. You may have heard of it?
PL: Ahum.
FC: Well of course what they did was if you got a bloke flying along straight and level they’d come along underneath. The gunners couldn’t see him unless he did, the aircraft was doing something like and then he would manoeuvre his German aircraft out, to right or left, it wouldn’t matter and he would fire into the wing where all the petrol was. Boom. Gone. If you manoeuvred he’d let you go because he could find somebody who won’t and I got very friendly with a number of German night fighter pilots when I had a writer here. His name was Williams and he said they knew straightway whether the aircraft they were looking at was one that knew the ropes or didn’t and if they started to jink about it was too difficult to pick somebody that starts. And I had a wing commander once who came from Training Command, took over and of course they only flew occasionally, wing commanders, on ops. Anyway, in my, Smithy was not well so as a natural choice he turned to me and said, ‘I’m taking your crew.’ ‘Oh,’ I thought, ‘I don’t like that,’ because not only was he green but he wouldn’t listen. So when I said to him, ‘I think it would be a good idea if we did a bit of jinking and weaving.’ ‘I’m the pilot here and I will do what I think fit.’ I couldn’t believe my ears. So I said, ‘Well we have learnt sir, from experience, that if you stay straight and level you gradually find that someone is underneath you and the gunners won’t see him if you don’t move anything.’ ‘I’ll decide when we do that.’ He lasted two trips and he was shot down. That’s the sort of thing. So, gradually, throughout your tour you were learning all the time. Little things happen and, ‘Oh I must remember that.’ You know.
PL: Because it might just save my life. After the war did you, did you sort of, was it a big shock at the end of the war, you know, your transition into doing other things? I mean were you -
FC: Oh the worst time of my life was in the aftermath of war and demob because Pam, I went back to where I came from. They paid me a small salary throughout the war which was very nice. I was training to be an accountant in a big commercial enterprise. When I went back there all the men that didn’t go had the top jobs and all the people below them were their girlfriends. I’m not joking. They were all their girlfriends or [?] so there was nothing for me at all. I went back as an office boy. I came out as an office boy really at eighteen and I went back in exactly the same and the secretary had the gall to call me down when I went back ‘cause he phoned me up and said, ‘I’m so glad you survived,’ you know. ‘Jolly good show chaps,’ you know. ‘When can you come back?’ I said, ‘Well I’ll start on Monday if you like.’ I’ve never had a day’s unemployment in my life. So he said, ‘Well that’s great,’ he said, ‘We’ll make sure we look after you.’ The first morning I got back he called me down and I thought well he’s going to call me down for a drink. I really did. And when I walked in, ‘Oh it’s good to see you. Lovely to see you.’ Something in the boss changed and he said, ‘Let’s get one thing clear,’ he said, ‘You may be able to take an aircraft from A to B and bomb it to blazes but you’re no good to me unless you can do the job which earns money.’ And I thought, ‘Well.’ So I was thinking all the old boys have got the top jobs, the girls underneath them got the second row. Where do I fit in? There is nowhere. So I thought well I don’t know what I’m going to do so I decided the only way to do it was to do two jobs so I went to work for a football pools and I worked Saturday evening and all day Sunday and I earned more money doing that because I love maths. Permutations and combinations were my bread and butter. I loved it. And so old Alfie Coates, it was Coates of course, which was quite near. They’re down in Edmonton. We were living in Palmers Green and he took a shine to me. I soon got on to the top rank of payment and he said to me, ‘I’d like you to come to work for me,’ and I was tempted because I was earning more on the Saturday night and Sunday than I was getting for the full week but I thought, no. You never knew what was going to happen because they were all Jews of course and [laughs] he said, ‘Well I must use your skills,’ he said, ‘You don’t, don’t sit in the factory. Come in to my private office and we’ll give you all the syndicate coupons,’ you know and they put thousands and thousands of lines and very complicated. I might only do five coupons the whole night because there were so many lines but I loved it and that was so satisfying but I learned one of the major lessons of life and that is what you can do as discipline with staff if you have the guts to do it and this came about because with Coates they got so much bigger and bigger and bigger their throughput got bigger and bigger and bigger they wanted more time so they then started to say, well, Saturday evening, all day Sunday. Can you come in Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday evening? Well, of course if you’ve got a young family of course I couldn’t do that so what he did in the end was, he said, ‘Well, I’ll take people who can work Saturday evening and Sunday out to lunchtime but if you can’t work beyond lunchtime come to my desk and tell me why.’ So I watched this parade of people going up to the desk and I watched them coming back. They obviously hadn’t got their own way at all but what I never expected ever to see in England all the exit doors were barricaded, locked and a guard put on so nobody could leave the factory and he never got taken. Human rights? I mean, he broke every law imaginable but he never got taken to task and I thought, yes, if you’ve got the guts to do it you’ll get away with it because those chaps had to have the money. They were all fighting for money to support their family and their wife and they would do anything to do it. I did it myself. But then of course things do change. We had a change of chief accountant and somehow my face fitted. He was hated as a man and as the chief accountant but for me he had all the time in the world and he was a lay preacher. Now, of course I was a church goer in those days and I was an organist at the church and I used to read the lessons and so on so I had some sympathy for him and so he said to me one day, ‘Do you think you could drive me to the station to go on holiday?’ I said, ‘Of course.' That was another brick in the cement. All building the wall. And his wife took a shine to me. She was the mothering type. She took to me. It was embarrassing. She always wanted to give me things. And I said, ‘No you mustn’t do that,’ but where he was concerned he suddenly said to me, ‘I think you’re wasted where you are.’ He said, ‘What would you say if I gave you a department of your own?’ I said, ‘I’d say thank you very much and I’ll go for it.’ I finished up, he gave me one, he gave me two, he gave me three, he gave me four and it was damned hard work but I learned the lesson, never complain about the hard work. That’s not what pleased him and I watched one of the other departments that I hadn’t got. The chap who used to work to 5.36 no less on a Friday afternoon for the weekend. Well, of course there comes a time when you’re doing dividends and so on and this chap came in, very close to 5.36 and this chief accountant said to him, ‘How are you getting on.’ ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘I’m in a bit of trouble ‘cause I’m a bit behind.’ ‘Why is that?’ ‘Well, we haven’t got the work done.’ ‘Yes I know that. Why is that?’ You know this was the kind of, I thought, ‘You idiot. Fancy, you’re provoking,’ what happened in the end he said, ‘Look I’m a reasonable man,’ the chief accountant said, remember Friday evening, 5.36 knocking off time he said, ‘I’ll be generous,’ he said, ‘You let me have that at 9 o’clock on Monday morning and we’ll call it square.’ And the chap said, ‘Thank you very much sir,’ and walked out. Now I don’t know when the penny dropped but I said to him, that’s the chief accountant, ‘You’re the wickedest man I’ve never met,’ and he laughed his hat off because nobody had ever spoken to him like that and from then on we were not master and pupil. We got on like a house on fire and in the end, unfortunately, he died in my arms because he said because we used to go out together around the area ‘cause it was a big area. We were in the Enfield offices and had our meeting with the manager there and said, ‘Well this is not good enough, do this,’ and he, my chap said, ‘Well I’ll go down to the car now. You finish up Fred and I’ll write up my notes and give them to the typist when I get back and they’ll have it ready for the next morning,’ and it was in the local manager’s hands the next morning. You see, pressure. So I said, ‘Ok.’ And I finished up and when I got to the car he was slumped like this and he’d had a heart attack.
PL: Oh my goodness.
FC: And although I yelled for the manager, the local manager to come down and drive the car and I got behind him and I massaged his heart but I couldn’t save him. He died. I think died shortly after we got to the [?] but and that and then life was good. I had four departments. I had a beautiful office over the main door at the south end. I was then promoted to be the manager of two large warehouses where we introduced a system whereby it was all computerised and a crane picked it up and put it down and put it, and then of all things I got the sack. Why? We had a steering group where we all prepared and I asked a question of the eastern board, Eastern Electricity Board’s chairman, I said, ‘Can we go anywhere to see this system working?’ ‘No.’ ‘Why is that?’ ‘Because there isn’t one.’ I said, ‘You’re buying on spec that it’s going to work.’ And he said, ‘Oh it will work.’ I said, ‘How do you know that? You haven’t seen it work have you?’ ‘No.’ Anyway, I said, ‘Well you’re going to have to use a system of contractors which will be liable to failure instead of using solid [states?] I knew a bit about things then and he said, ‘Oh no. That’s old hat,’ he said, ‘We’re going to do exactly as I say.’ Then he appointed me as the manager. Well it never did work and it wasn’t capable of working but of course who do you blame? You blame the bloke in charge and, you know I, Joyce and I used to go down to the warehouse at 8 o’clock on a Sunday evening, cure all the faults on the cranes, automatic cranes, get it all loaded so the lads could pick at 8 o’clock on Monday morning. Nobody knew we were doing it. I even drove a ten tonnes lorry to get supplies down to Harold Hill in Essex on a Sunday night. Nobody knew. And of course I’d have been sacked if they’d have found out but I had such a host of friends now from Harold Hill who realised that I was facing getting the sack because I hadn’t, well I’d driven bigger things than a car, yes, but a ten tonnes rigid full of parts and machines and at the end of course they weren’t satisfied with output of the factory and so we had a meeting and they said, ‘Well, regretfully we’ll have to say we’ve got to have you out.’ I said, ‘Well that’s alright. I fully expected this. In fact I anticipated what you came here for,’ because in the interval they had a spare engineer. They didn’t know what to do with him. He was a very objectionable bloke too so they put him down with me and even said that he has got authority over you but where he made his terrible mistake, he loved sailing so he used to disappear from the factory at Friday lunchtime and come back Monday lunchtime. Never saw him. So he had no idea what was going on. Not a sausage. So of course I all I said to them when they literally sacked me, the secretary of the board was a very old friend of mine and he said to me, ‘I think you’ve been treated abominably.’ I said, ‘Well that’s life. ‘It happens.’ He said, ‘But there’s a job going in Hemel Hempstead but it’s going back to accounting.’
PL: How funny.
FC: ‘How strange,’ I said. But then he said the chap that’s leaving has been promoted and he was very good. It’s the best area on the board. You’ll have a job to beat him. And I said, ‘Well I’ll try.’ And I got there. I got the job by merit and I made that district the best in the board.
PL: How funny.
FC: And then of course once you’re known the deputy chairman said, phoned me one afternoon and said, he never announced who he was, he said, ‘Are you going to be in this afternoon?’ I said, ‘Of course.’ So he said, ‘I’ll come, I’ll be over shortly,’ and he came over and he said, ‘I’m moving you.’ I said, ‘Oh I’m just enjoying myself here,’ I said, ‘It’s a lovely life here. It’s cushy. The entertainment is lovely you know. We go for walks at lunchtime.’ So I said, ‘What’s the job?’ And I dreaded it. It’s the trouble shooter for the board. So if anybody’s in trouble Charlie goes and sorts it out and gets it right. And in this area which was Pinner. Which you may know. Yeah. The offices were just, well you know where it is the manager was permanently sick, was never there, just take it over and get it back. So I did. And that’s where I retired from.
PL: Good gracious.
FC: And I closed that factory down as I retired because we’d moved on and we brought other premises. You know.
PL: So did you never miss your navigational skills? Did you, did you ever think I’d have love to have carried on with something or -
FC: Well you see I tried to -
PL: Flying or -
FC: I tried, well I tried to get into civil flying but I was knocked about so much. So, that, I I had a fictitious medical category. So, you know you get A1 or A2 or whatever. I was called, I was RAF A3B. There isn’t such a category but I was. That was me.
PL: So what did it mean?
FC: It meant that he shouldn’t be flying at all but as he wants to go and fly let him fly and that’s how I went through with the Mosquitos. I was always A3B after that crash but everybody sort of turned a blind eye and said well if he wants to fly let him fly. And I must say I look back and it’s only one of pleasure I look back on because I met some wonderful friends. I met some wonderful characters. Really. I mean one of the pilots was a policemen in the Met police. Totally different from my own who was very careful, nursed an aircraft. This fellow, this policeman his idea was thrash it. Get home first. Why? ‘Cause you got the meal first you see. [laughs] And he was always back first. I never knew why but I said to him quietly one day, ‘One of these days you’re going to get caught.’ ‘Why so?’ I said, ‘Because you’re racing back. You’re using more petrol and you won’t have enough petrol to contain the diversion. I said, ‘Think on it Alec because,’ I said, ‘One of these days you’ll regret,’ but when it came, he should have been a fighter pilot because he was an artiste. I mean you couldn’t tell he was down because I flew with him four or five times when my pilot was sick. You couldn’t tell he was down. He was shhhhh shhh shhh wonderful wonderful pilot. Natural pilot.
PL: So did he get caught?
FC: No. No, he didn’t. He saw the war out and he, he I had to laugh because he liked to drink. He married the owner of a pub whose husband had died. [laughs] Now if that’s not -
PL: So he was lucky to the last.
FC: Well there you go. Yeah. Yeah. I can look back and say I was frightened many times. You can’t go off it but generally speaking I look back with pleasure because you get so skilled in what you’re doing ‘cause in navigation the rule was you fixed your position with radar, you plot it, extend it forward three minutes, alter course in three minutes so it’s six minutes. I did that in three. So I got my fix and in three minutes I altered course. I never got out of the stream so everybody else was there. It made all the difference. You were never a low one that could be picked off by anybody that was about.
PL: So do you think, how do you think your experiences changed you for the rest of your life or -
FC: Well I’m lucky to have the loveliest woman in the world. I mean, to me the thing where Joyce is concerned we only had two children but I would have been quite happy with one but David was very dangerously ill before he was one and finished up in Great Ormond Street but I won’t go into that but she was an only child and she said, ‘That’s wrong. I think we ought to have two children,’ So we had, we got Gillian and my two to me they are the salt of the earth. They’re wonderful. If I have a preference its only because naturally a father thinks a little bit more of his daughter I think. And she, she’s lovely. And I’ve had a wonderful life. Wonderful life. Joyce has been the kindest, the most efficient ok she’s got trouble now. She’s a very bad knee which, every time she goes to the hospital to get it done they find her blood pressure has gone up so they won’t do it. And so I said, ‘Just give it up old girl. You’re never going to get it,’ because she suffers from [Coates?] syndrome, you know. She goes to the doctor her blood pressure goes up. Never win. You know. I hope -
PL: Well Fred –
FC: I haven’t bored you
PL: You have, I’ve been absolutely fascinated. You haven’t bored me for one second.
FC: Oh I’m glad of that.
PL: But I guess there’s just one last question that I’d like to ask you and that is what are your thoughts about how Bomber Command were treated after the war?
FC: Badly. Well of course it hasn’t been handled well this side. First of all let me preface by, I feel very strongly. You’ve touched on a rise, well I won’t speak.
PL: You must say whatever you want to say. This is your moment.
FC: Well, Fighter Command saved this country to start with by not allowing the German air force to rule the skies and to allow an invasion and nobody can take that away but Fighter Command unlike Bomber Command had good aircraft in the Spitfire and the Hurricane. A good match for anything the Germans had, in fact slightly better and they were able to hold their own. Their trouble was pilots. They didn’t have enough pilots and Dowding said very, very strongly, ‘I wish I had more pilots,’ but of course it wasn’t quite as bad as it might have been because we had the university air squadrons, we had the club squadrons and they all had got some training and they were able to slot in. Mind you some of them flew with very little flying hours, I know that, but so did the Germans. They had to bring [?] so there was a parity there which at least gave them a chance of holding their own and so it proved it be and of course they were in foreign territory coming from France. We were on our home territory. If they baled out we could fly again where the Germans once they were shot down they were shot down. They were finished. So gradually they, and Hitler gave up any idea of an invasion but if you look at the history of Bomber Command. Are you alright?
PL: Yeah.
FC: Yeah.
PL: Fine for batteries.
FC: If you look at Bomber Command, the Bomber Command had not been dealt with properly. When we went to war we had no decent bomber aircraft. What we did have we sent to France. They were shot down like flies and in the end it was given up as a bad job and that’s where I first come in the picture when I go to Benson. I’m being trained to replace somebody killed in France. Ok but of course on paper things were happening. New designs were emerging. The Fairy Battle was never a bomber worth talking about. It was a crew of three. Pilot, open cockpit. Couldn’t get at him. One single Lewis gun at the back and nowhere to do navigation. Hopeless. Absolutely. But it served the purpose of giving our military on the ground some experience of being attacked by low flying air and the laugh of the flour bags. So, gradually we got replacements. We got the Wellington. We got the Whitley. We got the Hampden, the Hudson but they were not really satisfactory. They were only twins but of course the Germans made exactly the same mistake. They never went for four engine. The only four engine they ever had was the Fokker Wulf which they put on the convoy routes and so of course they made their mistakes as well but they were never really successful and of course above all else the thing in my book which turned the balance was the advent of radar. Now, we and Germany were well on track for being first. In the end it was a tight race and I think the Germans got radar more or less the same time we did but totally different motives. We were keen on two things with radar, defending our country by detecting incoming aircraft but more importantly finding targets in the dark which we could not do. I mean you can’t just circle around in the dark and hope to pick up something and we couldn’t find the targets and so when we got radar along came the better aircraft to equip it and so we had three. The foremost in the public mind was the Lancaster. Then came the Halifax and then came the Stirling. Now the Stirling really was the poor man’s plane. It was big, cumbersome, slow, couldn’t get the altitude and really was although they flew through the war I always felt desperately sorry for them. I know one or two people who flew them, one particularly well and I said, he was always down there. We were up here and the Lancasters were a bit further up and so gradually we not only got better aircraft but we got radar as well and they became standard. We could find places in the Ruhr because we had two types of radar. The type that finds the targets in the Ruhr were controlled from this country. Two radio stations and you flew on a beam and as long as you got your fix, crossed swords, you flew and kept it if you bring it back and then they would tell you when to mark. I didn’t get that. I got the other one. I got the H2S which was totally different, which was long range. It was, it was a signal which was radiated by the aircraft and so it swept on this, on those, a hundred and twenty degrees like that and I, if I went over a town I could take a bearing on it. I’d get a fix. Never let me down. Never let down once and Gee was marvellous. Gee had its limitations ‘cause the Germans were very clever. They learned how to block it out. And so you got Gee to the enemy coast or just short of it and then they jammed it, you know and so I feel that we were totally wrong when dear old Chamberlain you know, was trying to give us peace in our time, as he said, and then he said, ‘I regret to say we are now at war with Germany.’ Of course we were at war with Germany. I could see it at eighteen coming and that’s why I decided to go in the RAF. I didn’t want to be in the infantry and I didn’t particularly want to be on the waves so I went with that and so I think we were poorly led at the start of the war. We were ill prepared and only the natural gifted talents of our beloved country and the men that would give their lives for it could got us back into it in the end and I think that at the end and to answer your specific question when it then started that Churchill took sides against Dresden I thought don’t they realise the only reason we bombed Dresden was because Stalin asked us to. Dresden was the rail and road junction where all the pulling back of the German forces were going through and it was wood and so of course it burned. I went and looked at it. We’d been to Berlin. I said, ‘Let’s go and have a look at it,’ because we were quite confident by then about what we were doing. And nobody has had the guts to say well, A) Stalin asked to have it bombed because it will reduce his losses as they were pursuing the fleeing Germans and of course the nature of the town being wood it was catastrophic but it was no more catastrophic than Hamburg in 1943. I went to Hamburg two nights running, I should have gone the third night but the aircraft was u/s and that, I saw a town as big as Hamburg on fire from end to end and thousands of people died in their cellars from suffocation because the fires were so intense they had a fire storm and that destroyed all the oxygen in the cellars and so they couldn’t breathe. And so Dresden was no exception but Churchill, I felt he thought he was on a weak wicket here and he, to our dismay anyway, I thought he just let the blame go to Bomber Command. No. Old Butcher Harris, he knew what he was doing. After all, think back in the war. What were we trying to do? We were trying to bomb individual factories which we couldn’t find. When we got radar well you could find the town but you couldn’t find the factory. You didn’t know what it looked like. It took Butcher Harris a long time to convince Churchill we ought to bomb the towns because if you knock the houses down the workers won’t be able to go to work and you’ve effectively stopped production. And so it did and of course time after time you could, well I used to always navigate by the fires, you know. As you were going across the north German plains you go across Mannheim and Frankfurt and all those places you could see where they’d been because of the fires but all those chaps didn’t go to work the next day and so the production dropped and in the end well they either did one or two things. They either had to take the factory, get it undercover, mountains something or caves and transfer all the people that worked there to it and that’s the way they survived in the end. Yeah. So I think and then of course when it came to supporting Bomber Command there was not a voice raised. Not a sausage. And I still think that memorial opposite the RAF club in Piccadilly is is abominable. Do you realise they’ve dressed them up in uniform which we never used. They’re old fashioned clothes. They were the days of open cockpits. So -
PL: Goodness.
FC: Really, you know, so often I see people on the television. They’re usually gunners or wireless operators and they talk about wonderful aircraft to fly. They didn’t do anything to make it fly. Only two people did that. The pilot flew it and the navigator got it to the place it wanted to go to and let’s face it if you didn’t get to where you wanted to get to the pilot is superfluous but most pilots would agree with that and they would say well they were sitting there in the dark. Very little light. I mean the lighting in those things was an anglepoise lamp attached to the outside which came over your shoulder with a nozzle at the end and in that nozzle was cardboard with a pinhead opening and the light [of emmission?] came through that and you were navigating on your knees, you know and people, I mean these blokes how could they know that? They had no experience and it always tickles me, of course, ‘What did you do?’ ‘I was a wireless operator.’ Well he sat down below and he used to listen to the German night fighter controllers, usually wetting his pants as he did so ‘cause the bloke I had he would come eyes as big as saucers and say, ‘They got so and so, all up. We’re going to get a terrible pasting.’ I said, ‘Yeah. Alright well we’ll deal with it when we come to it. Go back and tell us what’s happening.’ But I felt so sorry that we hadn’t got somebody in authority who could have said, ‘Don’t talk rubbish. Tell what the real reason was why we destroyed Dresden.’ Why did we destroy Hamburg then ‘cause that was a burn out. Thousands upon thousands of people killed in their cellars. Doesn’t that merit an equal comment to Dresden, but of course Dresden was wood. Made it worse. It just jumped from one place to another ‘cause all the initial load were all incendiaries. Get the fires going, drop the bombs in, kill the firefighters. Yeah. It’s very sad because, you know, now and again one of the things, I hope you don’t mind me saying this.
PL: No. Not at all.
FC: One of the things that appals me we have got so many women in parliament now. You know they come on the box and they talk with great authority and I think how old is that one? Twenty three. Twenty seven perhaps. But you know they talk as if they’ve lived a life of experience. Hands on, you know but they can’t have done. They’re not old enough. Mind you they sometimes get men that are no better. And one thing I do admire is the vitality of these girls. They work and they speak well too. Yeah. So, but I sometimes I think to myself I don’t thing they have the right to say that to me. [laughs] And how does she know? But there you are looking at an old, irascible, sort of awkward old boy.
PL: I think that’s perfectly fine.
FC: Well there you are. I must say it’s been a pleasure to see you.
PL: Well it’s been an absolute pleasure to talk to you.
FC: I wondered how could I talk? That’s a big task. When you talked about an hour and a half I thought to myself well you’ll be lucky to get away with an hour and a half if you really are going for it but you’ve been very generous. You’ve just let me ramble on.
PL: Not at all. I think it’s been an amazing story and -
FC: Yeah.
PL: I’d just like to say thank you very very much indeed.
FC: Jolly good.
PL: For sharing that with us.
FC: Oh well it’s my pleasure to meet you too. I would love to meet your husband and perhaps that might happen one day. Who knows?
PL: He’s, I’ll switch off here.
FC: Yes. 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/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ACrawleyF151222
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Fred Crawley DFC
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
02:05:36 audio recording
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Pending OH summary
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Pam Locker
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-12-22
Description
An account of the resource
Fred Crawley joined the Royal Air Force in 1939 when he was 18 years old. While at an operational training unit he survived a crash which killed five members of his crew. He was treated in hospital at RAF Rauceby for burns. After training he completed 74 operations as a navigator with 158 and 139 Squadrons.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
139 Squadron
158 Squadron
aerial photograph
aircrew
bombing
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
crash
Distinguished Flying Cross
entertainment
Gee
ground personnel
Guinea Pig Club
H2S
Halifax
Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984)
medical officer
Mosquito
navigator
Operational Training Unit
Pathfinders
perception of bombing war
RAF Benson
RAF Blyton
RAF hospital Rauceby
RAF Marston Moor
RAF Penrhos
RAF Upwood
RAF Warboys
superstition
target photograph
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/246/3392/PDenverI1704.2.jpg
333052530a5ff31f1299a9657b634587
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/246/3392/ADenverI170221.2.mp3
9763d77aca3da4289606b069f644e294
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
Denver, Ian
Ian Denver
I Denver
Description
An account of the resource
Five items, Collection concerns Ian Denver (422844 Royal Australian Air Force) and contains an oral history interview, extracts from his log book and photographs.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Ian Denver 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
2017-02-21
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Denver, I
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
JP: We’ll just start the interview now. This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer — myself. Miss Jean MacCartney.
ID: Is this the one that they’re building out at Louth.
JP: Lincoln.
ID: Lincoln.
JP: Yes.
ID: Well — near Louth.
JP: Yes. That’s right. And the interviewee is Mr Ian Denver. The interview is taking place at Mr Denver’s home in Robina in Queensland on the 21st of February 2017.
ID: Yeah.
JP: Also present is Mr Denver’s daughter — Louise. Ok. Ian. We’ll start right back at the beginning. July 1923. And I believe you were born in Maitland.
ID: That’s right.
JP: And you spent most of your early years up until the intermediate certificate in Maitland. Is that right?
ID: I went to high school in Maitland ‘til I then did my leaving certificate.
JP: Leaving certificate.
ID: But then I finished early. Right.
JP: Yes.
ID: In [pause] I said finished early. I wasn’t allowed to go into the air force ‘til I was eighteen.
JP: No.
ID: And I did my leaving at seventeen.
JP: Seventeen. Yes. Well just tell me a little bit about your time in Maitland because without being too personal I believe you were actually born as Ian Deramore - Denver.
ID: That’s true.
JP: And you’ve, you’ve dropped the —
ID: Yeah.
JP: The first part of —
ID: I think my father just adopted the word Deramore because he liked it. Also, he, he was very badly wounded Gallipoli and he spent a lot of time in hospital in London and he met a lady who was very kind to him and she lived just off the edge of the estate that was Lord Deramore’s estate which is at a place called Acomb in York. Just out of York itself and [pause] well that was it. After the war of course he did all sorts of things. And he was, initially he was constantly in and out of hospital because he was hit here. Went in there and out the other side and his bleeding internally was very bad.
JP: Right. And so —
ID: Louise. Get me my hearing aids and I’ll see if —
LD: That would be a very good idea. Well done dad.
JP: Dad. Ok. Well we’ll pause for a minute while you —
ID: They should be in there.
[recording paused]
JP: Ok. We’re resuming now. Ian’s now got his hearing aids in so that makes it a little bit easier for him. So, we were just talking about your father and his war injuries and your time when you were at Maitland and I think I’ve seen something that when you, when you were a young boy or in your, at school and that you were involved in a lot of sports and competition. Would you like to tell me a little bit about those? You were in diving and —
ID: Well I did —
JP: Athletics.
ID: On the swimming, diving side there was a fellow named Ron Tubman whom was called —my son Michael that was killed in an accident. We named him after Ron Tubman. Ok. Who came from Maitland. Went to the same school same as me. The other pilot Geoff Jones who was called Michael Geoffrey then, but Geoff was from Pymble. Came out of Sydney. Nothing much to tell you about as far as sports are concerned.
JP: Did you compete in a lot of competitions?
ID: Well, yes and no. Yes, in that I competed a lot but I didn’t win that much, you know. I was a bit too small to compete for some of the things. But in the diving for example Ron and I were always competing against each other to see who would, well to see who would win the school diving championship. That sort of thing. As far as cricket and football was concerned rugby league it was. We played that. And I suppose my most exciting period was the last game I had with the school. We played the combined Newcastle High Schools. And, in the process I scored all the points which happened to be —I can’t to remember the numbers. Two tries and four, four goals and it came to about sixteen points or so. But the teacher didn’t like my dad so instead of covering it in the school magazine or anywhere he just ignored it. Bill Bates was his name.
JP: That’s unfortunate.
ID: Yeah. I thought so too because I didn’t really — I worked hard.
JP: Yes.
ID: And I tried hard and did well.
JP: That’s right and that’s an outstanding result
ID: Yeah.
JP: To beat the other team.
ID: And we won —
JP: That’s right. That’s right.
ID: The Newcastle area which in those days included [unclear ] and everywhere and we competed against them.
JP: Yes. And —
LD: And the reason that Ron is important is that dad went to the war with Ron.
JP: With Ron. Yes. I know. That’s right. Yes. And your father, I know he was not well but is —he was doing some editing of the local paper at that time as well. Is that right?
ID: Yes. He —he was the sports editor for the Maitland Mercury and was the editor of a magazine called Golfing Australia.
JP: Oh right.
ID: So, he did a fair amount of writing. He was a very good writer, my father. And I can see him today sitting at a butcher’s table we used to call it. He’d sit at the butchers table and rip of this bunch of paper and word after word and it was given to me. I would get it typed.
JP: That’s and and so did he write up that? Your match in the local paper then so that you at least had some coverage.
ID: Yeah. Well he would then send it to the local paper but then he would edit it himself too. So he wasn’t only writing it. He was editing it.
JP: Yes. That’s right.
ID: But a big problem was that his wounding. There was a hospital at Sydney, a slight royal, Randwick anyhow and it was a Repat hospital at Randwick.
JP: Yep.
ID: And we’d go down there and see him occasionally. But he’d often be two or three months at a time in hospital. So, we had a fair period without a father.
JP: Father.
ID: Supervising and [lying up?] so everything was left to my mother.
JP: Mother.
ID: And we had three boys and a girl.
JP: Goodness. And she, she wasn’t working, was she? She was —
ID: Well in those days women really didn’t work.
JP: Really didn’t work. No. That’s right.
ID: And she had four kids to look after anyway.
JP: Look after.
ID: And the only income a lot of the time was a pension that he got from his war wound. Which we lived on. Sometimes for years.
LD: So, we’re talking 1920s. The end of the twenties and early thirties here.
ID: About 1930 there.
JP: Yeah.
ID: I was seven then.
JP: Yes. That’s right. And then of course then the Depression came, years came along. So you had, you as a family had to go through that. So, you were still in Maitland during the Depression years.
ID: Well, my father and mother and my sister June —they all moved to Sydney. Mainly for dad to get a job. He was offered a good job down at Sydney. And because I had two years or so to go to do my leaving certificate I stayed on in Maitland. Living with my grandparents and went to school there.
JP: Right. And so, then they were living in Sydney. You were in Maitland. You finished your leaving certificate and then at the end of that I think you then went because you was too young to go in the air force at that stage.
ID: That’s right. Yeah.
JP: You went into the bank.
ID: You had to be eighteen.
JP: Eighteen. That’s right. But you also I think were in Air Training Corps. Had you joined the air training corps?
ID: Yes.
JP: Yes.
ID: The ATC.
JP: And what, what age did you join the Air Training Corps?
ID: Quite young. You know. Maybe I was only about thirteen or something like that. I was always interested in flying. The first time I saw a plane fly was a Lockheed Electra that came out to Australia and came up to Newcastle and was putting on exhibitions at Newcastle. And so, we went to Newcastle Airport and had a look at that.
JP: Good.
ID: But not my dad or my mum or anybody in the family didn’t particularly encouraged me to go into the services.
JP: No.
ID: My elder brother Peter had already been through the initial campaigns in Libya. In Benghazi. And fought the rear — guard action in Greece and Crete and so on. And then as soon as I turned eighteen the bank had been opposing it but as soon as I turned eighteen I said, ‘I’m going.’
JP: Going. And what, what did you learn? Any skills in the Air Training Corps that gave you, you felt an advantage of initial training for the air force when you came into that?
ID: I — when I [pause] when I was in the ATC.
JP: C .
ID: We went through things like the theory of flight at that time so that by the time I actually did get in to the air force I was fairly well off. You know, what went on in aeroplanes and engines and hydraulics and so on.
JP: And did you actually get taken up in a flight at all when you were in the ATC? Did you do any flights whatsoever? Or they just left you on the ground and got you to do all the theory.
ID: I did have a flight. But I think it was a Rapide or something. But it was, you know, as a passenger, it wasn’t –
JP: Oh yes. Yes. Just as a sort of a joy flight type thing. Yeah.
ID: Just to have a look and see what goes on.
LD: How old were you when you went up in the Rapide?
ID: How old was I? Well I’d been really keen when I was about sixteen.
JP: Right.
ID: And from then on it was just a matter of waiting ‘til I got eighteen because the war started and I wasn’t allowed to go into the war until I turned eighteen.
JP: Eighteen.
LD: So, this was 1941.
JP: Well he enlisted, he enlisted in May 1942. In Sydney. You went down to Sydney because obviously your parents were still there in Sydney so —
ID: Yeah, they went down to Sydney and stayed there.
JP: Yes. That’s right.
ID: And lived in Potts Point.
JP: Potts Point. Yes. Now, one thing one other thing before we move into what was your initial training were you — when the Japanese mini subs came into Sydney harbour were you in Sydney with your parents at that stage or were you up in Maitland still?
ID: When the submarines — the Japanese submarines came in?
JP: Yeah.
ID: No. As a matter of fact I was in Sydney.
JP: You were in Sydney.
ID: They went up and we lived only a hundred yards or so from where the bombing took place.
JP: So, did you, were you at home at the time? Did you feel the —any, you know. Reverberations.
ID: You didn’t give you any news in those days.
JP: No. But I just —
ID: You found out in the newspaper what happened.
JP: Yes. But you — but you didn’t feel, there was no vibration from the bombs.
ID: No.
JP: No. No. No. Or any noise. You didn’t hear any noise.
ID: No. It was night time.
JP: Night time.
ID: And also, I don’t, I don’t think they bombed as such.
JP: No.
ID: They just fired a few guns and went off. It was a submarine.
JP: Submarines.
ID: Japanese submarines.
JP: Yes. Yes. Yeah. Ok well we’ll move along now to your enlistment and you did your initial. Where did you do your initial training?
ID: In Bradfield Park.
JP: Bradfield Park. Right. And then when when did you start your flying?
ID: Not [pause] about three or four months later. What actually happened was that they enrolled too many people and they couldn’t place them all, so we had no choice but to — you either get out of the air force or you wait ‘til we can find room for you. And then I was made, as was quite a few other people who were with me, made an aircrew guards they were called. And I was placed in Richmond. So, I spent about four months or so out at Richmond. Which suited me because Richmond was, you know, in Sydney and I could get into town without any real trouble. But —
JP: So, if you —
ID: My father was very much involved in the war activities as such. He started, or helped to start the Gallipoli Legion of Anzacs which was a club that was formed under the Harbour Bridge at Milson’s Point there. That’s gone. Since gone. But he was the founding secretary.
JP: Secretary.
ID: And I think president. Ran about two or three jobs.
JP: Right.
ID: But he was a very good bloke my father.
JP: Sounds like it. To be so —
ID: And he was very very proud of any kind of service that we’d done.
JP: Done. Yes.
ID: And my elder brother had a very tough time, you know. And yet he got out and went up to Darwin and he was bombed in Darwin and then they sent him from there to train in Queensland and on to New Guinea.
JP: Gosh.
ID: And he fought hand to hand battles against the Japanese.
JP: Japanese. Up on Kokoda.
ID: Yeah and my younger brother joined the navy. And he was in the [pause] I don’t know [ASDE?] it was called. Anti—submarine warfare. He was in that section. He was an able seaman.
JP: Right.
ID: And he did a good job.
JP: Job.
ID: And they liked him, and he was earmarked for future promotion but the war ended before they got around to —
JP: Ended.
ID: He was younger than me.
JP: Ok. Let’s go back to your that your first flying and when you were getting your wings and that time. Were — you were doing some flying down around Urana. The Rock. And there was —
ID: The rock near Uranquinty.
JP: Uranquinty yes because you were doing your flying. That was where you were doing your —
ID: That was where I got my wings.
JP: Your wings. Yeah.
ID: In Nerrandera on Tiger Moths.
JP: Yes.
ID: And then when I did that initial flying training then switched to Uranquinty.
JP: Uranquinty.
ID: To Wirraways which —
JP: Wirraways. Yes.
ID: I used to land. That’s all we had as far as fighters, or fighter bombers were concerned.
JP: Yeah.
ID: So, I was getting ready to go on those and then all of a sudden there was a demand for pilots in England and so I was allowed to transfer and went across to the UK.
JP: Yeah. Did you have some little near miss at one time?
ID: Some bit of what?
JP: A bit of a near miss when you were doing one of your training flights down near The Rock.
ID: Well I had one experience which I’ve not forgotten was that The Rock sticks up. Not like Ayers Rock. Not nearly as big.
JP: Not as big but it still sticks up. That’s right.
ID: Sticks up and gets in the way and also a wind came across from the south west and it made a wave and I remember very well even to this day as you were climbing towards The Rock instead of going up you weren’t. You were coming down and you had no control. So, I was able to very luckily to well luckily and I suppose well trained and —
JP: Skilled.
ID: To do a hard turn and get away out of that wave.
JP: And so —
ID: That was one of the few experiences I had at the time in Australia. I had many more in the UK.
JP: In the UK. Which we’ll come to very shortly. In fact, yes, we’ll go then. We’ll start getting there. So, you then — you got — they said they needed pilots over in the UK so you went up to Brisbane and you sailed out of Brisbane. Is that right?
ID: Yes. We sailed out of Brisbane.
JP: When was — when?
ID: Through the Panama Canal.
JP: Yes. When did you leave Brisbane? Do you remember?
ID: Well not the day but —
JP: No. But roughly.
ID: Roughly it would have been I went in to the air force 1942.
JP: Two.
ID: I was being trained in 1943.
JP: So it was in —
ID: So somewhere around Christmas 1942.
JP: Ok. And so you went through to the, through the Panama which would have been an interesting experience.
ID: It was very exciting. I’ve never seen anything so green.
JP: Yeah.
ID: I remember it today. You look out there and it’s not this type of green which is tinges of brown. This was pure green. Jungle green. And it was very interesting. Very exciting. I enjoyed it. And then we sailed through steam through the Caribbean. We didn’t stop in any particular place but we did pull over outside Havana.
JP: Right.
ID: And for a very short period.
JP: Were you able to disembark at all or you had to stay on board all the time?
ID: On there we stayed on board. And then when we went up to New York and when I got to New York we were only supposed to be there about two weeks or so and what in actual fact happened was we instead of going straight across the Atlantic the ship we were supposed to be going on was sunk. So, we were told that you’d better stay here and —do you know New York at all?
JP: No. I’ve not, not been to New York.
ID: Yeah well —
JP: I’ve only been to the west coast. Not the east coast.
ID: North of New York was an HMS British navy base and they used that to house us until a ship would be available to take us across the Atlantic and then when that ship became available because I’d trained as a pilot, as a fighter pilot, they presumed that I had good eyesight and so we stood, we did a period all the way across the Atlantic on submarine watch.
JP: Up on the bridge.
ID: Up on the bridge.
JP: Oh, my goodness.
LD: Wow.
ID: It was very interesting. Very exciting. We landed in Glasgow. The Clyde. On the Clyde and then from Glasgow we hopped on a train.
JP: Train.
ID: The train took us. We were on our way to Bournemouth.
JP: Right.
ID: But Bournemouth was bombed.
JP: Bombed. Yeah.
ID: So instead of switching us, leaving us at Bournemouth they switched us across to Brighton.
JP: Brighton.
ID: And it was at Brighton then that I was chosen to do multi engine training. And I was good to go on Oxfords. Airspeed Oxfords. And the first place I went to was at [pause] I’m not sure if I can remember the names and getting them correct. Anyhow, we went up around the Doncaster area.
JP: Yeah.
ID: And Doncaster then. This was a satellite. A training satellite. And we were sent out to [unclear] and I was based at a satellite station called Snitterfield which was really only about ten miles from Shakespeare’s country.
JP: Oh, right yes.
ID: Near Stratford on Avon.
JP: Yes.
ID: So we were there and when this was — by now it was winter and it was very very hard to get any training done because of weather conditions.
JP: Weather conditions were —
ID: Weather conditions. And I had one or two frights there. Ran into barrage balloon there one time. found out how easy that was. I didn’t. Thank God.
JP: And so this is what? Only a two, this is a two engine plane at this stage or four?
ID: Two engine.
JP: Two engines. And how many crew were — you hadn’t, you were all just, were you just pilot and one other or —
ID: We were just training to be pilots.
JP: Pilots. Yeah. Pilot and instructor basically.
ID: I was, I would have been the trainee pilot.
JP: Pilot.
ID: And there would be an instructor. And he was a fully qualified pilot.
JP: Fully qualified. Yeah. Ok and was that what a couple or three or four weeks. A couple of months. What? Roughly. Just roughly what time frame do you think?
ID: Well I would say roughly about three to four months.
JP: Three or four months.
ID: Simply because it was so —
JP: Because the weather conditions were slowing the training down.
ID: It was bad. It wasn’t good for training.
LD: What was the flight? What was the plane?
ID: It was an Airspeed Oxford is was called.
JP: Oh the Oxford. Yeah. Yeah. And ok so from there where — is that when where did you go from that? Did you then go to 625 or did you do another — oh you probably did another conversion in between that.
ID: No I —
JP: Or an OTU. An OTU.
ID: We went from —this was initial training.
JP: Training yeah. So you had to go, you had to do an OTU.
ID: An OTU.
JP: Yeah.
ID: And the OTU I went to was near Doncaster.
JP: Yeah.
ID: Finningley.
JP: Right.
ID: And then they put us into a base at Finningley just along the road from the Robin Hood’s trees.
JP: Trees [laughs] Shakespeare. Robin Hood. Yeah.
ID: So we did our training there with Wimpies we called them. Wellington was a difficult aircraft. It was a geotetic aircraft which was the design of the fuselage but it meant the control was hard. You know you put the flap down and you get power. Respond much more radically then you would think it would. Anyhow, the point is we went to OTU and I got through OTU ok. And went then, went from there to Halifaxes.
JP: Right.
ID: The Halifaxes were at the Doncaster area.
JP: Right.
ID: A place called Sandtoft. We called —
JP: Right. So this is like a conversion course then.
ID: Yeah. We called it Prangtoft.
JP: Oh I see. Right. Right. Obviously there’s a story or two here. Yes.
ID: The engines were underpowered for the aircraft so it wasn’t —
JP: Particularly the earlier. I assume this was an earlier Halifax. The later Halifaxes were a bit better but the early Halifaxes were, yeah.
ID: But the Halifax, later on Halifaxes with Hercules engines was a good aircraft. Very good aircraft.
JP: So what sort of little stories come to light at this time? When you’re doing this early Halifax training.
ID: You were really concentrating on your RAF training. What you wanted to do was be the best pilot in the air force so I spent all my spare time studying the aircraft. Getting to know it completely only to be posted away from them. Which was good because the Lancaster was unbeatable as an aircraft.
LD: But I thought you wanted to be a fighter pilot when you first started.
ID: Well I did. Yeah. But we all did and when we left Australia they told us, ‘Sorry, there’s no room for you. We don’t need you as a fighter pilot. There’s plenty of fighter pilots available in England. There are no bomber pilots. So we switched to bomber training. And then I went from there to what’s called a Lancaster Finishing School and I was at Hemswell which is just next to Lincoln. And [pause] what happened there was exciting.
LD: Were you with Ron and Geoffrey still?
JP: Were you with Ron and —?
ID: I was with Ron and Geoffrey until we finished Operational Training Unit and Heavy Conversion. But we separated from then. Ron, I believe, was killed on return from a flight. And Geoff was shot down on his sixth mission.
JP: Sixth mission.
ID: On the sixth. And it was at a place called Gelsenkirchen which, in German I think probably means many churches. The point was that we were there. We, we’d separated by this stage because they’d posted us to different directions.
JP: Directions. That’s right.
ID: They didn’t like us all to stick together. Form an Australian clique or something.
JP: Yeah.
ID: So we were switched around.
JP: Switched around. Yeah.
LD: You did tell me that you had done some, you had to do night flying and you heard there was good surf in Cornwall.
ID: Say that again.
LD: You told me once that you, being a few Aussies that you had to practice your training and your night flying and you heard there was some good surf in Cornwall.
ID: Well, I went down to Cornwall to surf but it was freezing. I’ll never forget going in. The first time I decided to put my toe on the water.
JP: Toe in the water.
ID: It went numb.
JP: Numb. That’s right. Yes. That’s, that’s exactly right. And so you finished this training and that’s when you went to 625. You were posted to 625.
ID: 625 yeah.
JP: And was that, when you went to 625 is that when you did your crewing up? Or did you do the crewing up before you went to 625?
ID: Most of it was done before we went. At the end of OTU.
JP: OT.
ID: When we went to Wellingtons. We only had one pilot of course but we had our gunners..
JP: Yeah.
ID: We had a radio operator.
JP: Right.
ID: We had a navigator.
JP: Right. Ok. So that, so that, you got that crew together.
ID: Yeah.
JP: Back then. At OTU.
ID: I remember —
JP: Yeah. So who did you have then?
ID: By this time there was only one pilot at a time to plane.
JP: Right. Yeah.
ID: Geoff and Ron had gone off in their own directions.
JP: Direction. Yeah. So who was your navigator?
ID: His name was Carpenter. Stanley Carpenter.
JP: Stanley Carpenter. He was an Australian.
ID: He was a bank manager out of Durham.
JP: Oh an Englishman.
ID: Yeah.
JP: Right. Ok. What about the other chaps?
ID: Well, the radio operator I think I mentioned who came from Toowoomba.
JP: Yeah.
ID: And then I had a bomb aimer named Ron Jacobs who came from Sydney but he was quiet and quiet after. I never really got to him after the war. He just kept quiet. Disappeared.
JP: Ok. And he was your bomb aimer you said?
ID: They were called bomb aimer navigator.
JP: Right.
ID: And they were called an Observer.
JP: Yeah. Ok.
ID: And they would stand by in case something happened to the navigator. Also, I had, in my case, I gave mine special training so that if anything happened to me he’d be able to fly the aeroplane back.
JP: Plane. Yeah. Ok and what about your gunners? Did you have some gunners at that stage?
ID: One came from the Newcastle area. Do you know the northeast of England?
JP: Roughly. A bit further up around Aldwick and yeah.
ID: Yeah. Around. Well one of them came from the area that was known as —they have a special name for it and [unclear] anyhow it was near on Newcastle and the other gunner came from Scotland.
JP: Oh ok. Whereabouts? Do you remember roughly where in Scotland?
ID: No. And not only that there was no way to track him after the war.
JP: After right.
ID: He just disappeared.
JP: Ok. So the –
ID: But the mid upper gunner [McClowsky?] migrated to Australia and died only just recently at a, at a home down in the south coast at Sydney.
JP: Oh really.
ID: Yeah.
JP: Goodness. Ok. Ok so this is your crew and you’ve been together basically since OTU and so now you’ve been posted to 625.
ID: Yeah.
JP: And you start your ops. That’s right. So I think you did about eighteen ops with this crew at 625.
ID: That’s right.
JP: What particular, any –
ID: In actual fact nineteen.
JP: Nineteen yeah.
ID: You see the first, the first two you flew as what’s called second dickey and in my particular case one was an American pilot. The other was an English pilot. And they had I thought rather mild problems with it. Enough so turned back. So we didn’t really count them yet they were over German.
JP: Territory.
ID: Territory. So they really did count. But —
JP: So, what — what stands out in in those various ops? Any particular near misses or little events that, stories that you can tell me about from any of those ops?
ID: Well, they were particular times. I was I suppose you could say poetic. Sorry for what but I was fascinated by Robin Hood, England and, you know. The Sherwood Oaks. So I did lots of exploration.
JP: Yes, but in —
ID: Every chance I got.
JP: Yeah.
ID: I went and had a look at some new place.
JP: Ok.
LD: Did you fly there dad. Did you do extra training or did you go —
ID: No. No. I was fine in training.
JP: Yeah. But with, when you — with the op [pause] in the raids that you were doing when you were at 625 —those eighteen, nineteen, twenty raids.
ID: They were very scary raids.
JP: Scary raids. Why were they scary?
ID: That was a very rough time flying. We lost more aircraft at that particular period than at any other period. And it was just that, well the Germans had enough aircraft to put in the air.
JP: Yeah.
ID: To shoot you down.
JP: Yeah.
ID: So we were you trying to dodge them all the while.
JP: Were you flying always more or less to the same area? Were you flying in to the Ruhr? Was that the main or were you flying elsewhere?
ID: The Ruhr Valley as it was called or Happy Valley. We used to get it. Was our main target area because it was Germany’s main industrial area. So, most of our raids were on places like Dusseldorf, Duisburg, Cologne, Essen. And then on the edges of there. Places like Frankfurt and Stuttgart which wasn’t too far from the Ruhr.
JP: Ruhr. Yeah.
ID: But they were on the River Rhine.
JP: Yeah.
LD: How was it when you were flying dad. Was it very loud. How long did it take you? How many hours. Was it really cold?
ID: Well that depended on where. Which particular target you were on. But it could go from about four hours to about six hours. That’s the length. The duration of the flight.
JP: Yeah. But always you were dealing with a lot of German fighter planes.
ID: Yeah.
JP: Sort of up there creating trouble.
ID: I wasn’t. I wasn’t doing much dealing with them because it seemed somehow or other they dodged me and let me get on with the job of bombing [laughs]
JP: So, you were able to successfully drop quite a lot of bombs in those.
ID: Yeah. I always. I never turned back, and you know I did some very fine raids I thought at the time. Particularly some with winds that hadn’t been forecast. You turned around and come back and you had a howling headwind and you wondered if you were going to get back.
JP: Get back and have enough juice in the tank to get you home.
ID: This was, this was where I met Pat. When she — and what happened there was that we tried to get back into our base . The whole of the south of England was fogged in and we were given a diversionary. Numbers like three or four figures. That meant it was a certain base. I was given a base. And the navigator got the base and they said, ‘You’re going to Wymeswold.’ We got to Wymeswold and that was fogged in. We were running low on gas. There is only one other place for you to go to and that was Fort Ellen. Which was a little island off the coast of Scotland. And I said, ‘We’ve got no choice we’ve got to get in there.’ So, we waited will we landed at Fort Ellen. I was reported missing. Pat was at that stage we were starting to get fond of each other. So, we came back the next day and we carried on.
JP: And did they — the senior officers have anything to say about you having to divert so far or or –
ID: No. Not really.
JP: Not really.
ID: The closest I got, I got what? A DFC. And that was an award for fighting.
JP: Yeah. Well we’ll come, we’ll come back to that.
ID: I also was told by the wing commander I myself when the war ended we were going to go out to Japan. If I stayed and not get married that he would make sure I got the DSO. I’d done sixty missions by this time and some of the [unclear ] squadron leader but you know by that stage I think starry eyes take over and I was too fond of Pat to think of giving her up to go and fight. So —
JP: You didn’t.
ID: So, I thought about it for a while and then I decided, well, what am I going to do when I got back? I didn’t like the bank, but I worked in a bank so —
JP: Ok. Well we’ll come to that bit later because we need to go from 625 to 156.
ID: Yeah.
JP: To the Pathfinder. So how did you persuade your crew to —
ID: With great difficulty.
JP: With great difficulty. What special —
ID: No. No.
JP: Charms did you exert?
ID: None of them wanted to go.
JP: No.
ID: We’d done our tour and then they, you know, by rights they could then take at least six months without having to operate again. But in actual fact I said I’m going to stay on for forty five. Do forty five trips until ’45 at that stage and stay on until ‘45 and [unclear] put it to them. I said, ‘Well I’m going to go to Pathfinders. If you want to come with me you come. If you don’t want to come, I’ll go off on my own and pick up another crew,’ because there were crews available and places for good pilots like me if I wanted. So, every one of them volunteered to stay.
JP: Volunteered.
ID: So, the whole crew continued on and by the time I’d done nineteen operations and also it was a very difficult period as far as getting shot at was concerned. But well I think [unclear] Although we got [unclear] somewhere that there was two hundred and seventy two holes in the aircraft and it didn’t come down.
JP: Amazing.
ID: Yeah.
JP: So, when did you actually start with Bomber —Bomber Command — with Pathfinders? Do you remember roughly what month that you —?
ID: By this stage it was’44. In the, out in the middle of 1944.
JP: Right.
ID: I switched to Pathfinders.
JP: Yeah. Ok.
ID: And then we had to do further training.
JP: Right.
ID: It was called a Pathfinder night training unit where we had to do a lot of day time training and a lot of low level flying. We did all sorts of training.
JP: Yes. Because of training.
ID: The flying programme was specialised. In case you were called upon to do it.
JP: Do it.
LD: And all on Lancaster.
ID: We were lucky. We were lucky and we worked hard.
JP: Yes.
ID: We planned.
JP: Planned. Yes.
ID: And I think I would say that I was a good pilot and I was able to dodge incoming but I could still today do that [sniff] and still smell the cordite of shells exploding around the aeroplane.
JP: That’s right.
ID: So, I was very very close.
JP: Close. Yes.
ID: I think I was on the raid Geoff Jones was shot down.
JP: Right. And the raids, the ops that you did as part of the Pathfinders. What, what particular raids — do they stand out to you that you can tell me about?
ID: Raids.
JP: Yeah. What. You know— the missions that you did. Any. Any. I mean I know, I know there is a bit of —
ID: Well right at the end of the war when I was, I’d been made a Master Bomber.
JP: Right.
ID: Which meant you took control of the whole of the bomber force. But you do a period as deputy master first and I’d completed two of those and then I was given my call sign. That was not very romantic. Plate Rack it was called.
JP: Plate Racket.
ID: Plate Rack.
JP: Oh my goodness.
ID: I was Plate Rack 1.
JP: Plate Rack 1. Right. Ok.
ID: Plate Rack 1 would be telling the, you know, the main force on what they had to do.
Other: With his crew.
ID: Bomb forward and so on and so forth.
JP: And you say they were scary because of the amount of the combination of factors being low level flying, lots of German aircraft. What would you say was the most scary factor?
Other: [unclear]
ID: Being shot down by the fighters. Because they’d creep in from behind you and you didn’t know they were there. We had no way of establishing.
JP: Establishing.
Other: Yes. He’s not in this one.
ID: Am I in that picture?
JP: Yeah. That’s right.
Other: Eight of them.
ID: That’s me.
JP: Yeah. And the operation. When you were — you mentioned and I said I’d come back to. You were awarded the DFC. Can you tell me about which operation?
ID: It wasn’t anything —
JP: No one operation. It was an accumulation of —
ID: It was over a period of time.
JP: Time.
ID: A number of very hairy operations that I did but you know I had —
JP: Was this in Pathfinder? As part of the Pathfinder ops or —
ID: Well, I was in Pathfinders by this time.
JP: Yes, right, yeah.
ID: And what actually happened was that when I went down to Pathfinders they just said forget what you’ve done up till now. So, I had to start all over again. And it was a bit, well it wasn’t scary [unclear ] because I was well trained for it. It was frightening. And as long as you planned well and trained well you had as good a chance as anybody. You know, we lost at that particular stage, we lost about half the, half of the people that took place in the raids.
JP: Yes. That’s a very, a very significant loss ratio. It’s, it is quite amazing.
ID: The raids on the Ruhr were always difficult because every one of those places I’ve mentioned had their own particular ack-ack batteries of flak and they were constantly shooting at you. So, dodging that was always scary. I mean there’s nothing much you can do about it.
JP: Except stick together and follow and do —
ID: Yeah.
JP: Follow all your planning and make use of all your preparation.
ID: Yeah but you know you didn’t fly in formation like the Yanks did.
JP: Oh no. No. No.
ID: We went independently. Navigated independently.
JP: Independently.
ID: To the target and that way, we were able to adjust. And I think it’s probably one of the reasons why they accepted me in the Pathfinders. That I was able to make decisions. Life affecting decisions that always worked out right.
JP: And I mean, and the flying conditions were never easy anyway with, with your own squadron members because there, there were so many if you needed to take quick evasive action there was always one of your own planes not that far away that you were trying to avoid as well. Is the situation.
ID: Always was that fact. Normally was no problem.
JP: Right.
ID: But if you got weather fogged in which you can get. Particularly during that Christmas of 1944 was a very very difficult period weather wise.
JP: Wise.
ID: Yeah. Had to be able to get in. Get landed.
JP: Yes. And so —
LD: This photo is at the end of March 1944.
JP: ‘44. ok right. We’ll come back to that one then. That’s good. And so all of these forty two ops take you through to forty —
ID: Sixty if you count. If I counted those two as one.
JP: Yeah. One. Ah yes.
ID: Do you know what I mean?
JP: By the time you add in the 625 yeah. The sixty.
ID: Of which thirty nine were with Pathfinders.
JP: Path. Yeah. Yeah. And —
ID: And remember you worked your way through. I had a very good navigator so the navigator wanted him to be chosen to do what we called sky marking. It was operating, marking in the blind, in the cloud because his work on radar was good. He was able to give me directions which meant I always got through.
JP: So, your navigator was doing this blind sky marking.
ID: Yes.
JP: Yes.
ID: He was, he, you know you’d fly the aeroplane but as you got nearer the target was under his direction for ten miles to the left and so on and so forth because as we got further into the Ruhr there was nowhere to go, you know. Because when you went to Duisburg or Dusseldorf one flak battery was shooting at you. As was the other one.
JP: And were you taking photographs as well during the —
ID: No. I did have a camera which I got in New York which was stolen in Cornwall of all places. Newton Abbot. All my baggage disappeared.
JP: Oh dear. Right. And so —
ID: And I bought a leather jacket in New York. And a camera.
JP: Right.
ID: But I’ve never been like my younger brother. Spent his life taking pictures. I never bothered that much.
JP: No. Right.
ID: Still don’t. I can remember it pretty well.
JP: Yeah. You can. You can remember it very well. And with the — so the crew then. You mentioned your navigator, so your entire crew was still all the same. You hadn’t changed any of your personnel at this stage. So, all your crew —
ID: No. I never lost any crew members.
JP: No.
ID: They all stayed with me until —
JP: The end .
ID: The end of their tour.
JP: Stayed until the end of the operation. The end of that tour, that’s —
ID: With the exception of the rear gunner who stayed on.
JP: Who stayed on.
ID: And I stayed on to go on my third tour.
JP: Oh, my goodness.
ID: He stayed on with me.
JP: Right.
ID: So, we could have very easily been shot down but we weren’t.
JP: You weren’t. No.
ID: That’s the way it goes.
JP: Well as we say there’s, that’s —
ID: And when you do it sixty times you know, you get your frights from time to time.
JP: And what — obviously you had a very close crew at this point because you’d been together for so long.
ID: Yes.
JP: Did any of them have any particular good luck charms or anything like that? Or superstitions that they always —
ID: Well let me just say one thing here. That our crew — we stuck together as a group even though I was an officer and the others were all other ranks or flight sergeants more or less. We went out together. We went to the local pub together. That sort of thing. And we just didn’t separate out and go off in different directions. It was only when I definitely decided to get married that we started to spend a bit of time occasionally with ourselves.
JP: So, when you did —
ID: What I used to do, for instance, we used to go to Cambridge. We were based near Cambridge. And in Cambridge there was a swimming pool and you could practice your dinghy drop. So, we were, this was where we signed up. I’d sign and they’d provide a dinghy for me and then I’d take the whole crew along and we would do a dinghy drill which was good because if we got shot down we’d get some practice.
JP: Practice.
ID: We’d be in the water.
JP: Yeah.
ID: So, we did that and then after we’d done the dinghy drill Pat and I would go off to explore Cambridge for example.
JP: Right. So, when you had periods of leave you would have sort of gone your own separate ways a little bit then from the rest of your crew. Or even when you were on leave did you all stay together?
ID: No. When I met Pat — when we decided to become engaged after we’d done our training then we’d go our own way and then most of the crew accepted that I was with Pat so we did our own thing. And the pictures that you see of my wife in the canoe there. She — I’ve got a picture of her there.
JP: That’s good. And —
LD: Because my mother used to interpret the photos.
JP: Oh ok.
ID: So, she would debrief the crews.
JP: Debrief. That’s right.
LD: So dad got his crew to wait so that he could be specifically debriefed by Pat.
JP: Very good. Very well done. But this was while you were at 625 so I presume she stayed at — around with the 625 base to do the debrief. The intelligence work there. She didn’t —
ID: No. No.
JP: She moved did she? When you moved to Pathfinders.
ID: When I moved to Pathfinders.
JP: Did she move?
ID: She got —
JP: She got herself another job did she?
ID: She tried to get down. She was the senior female officer in intelligence. Female officer that is. And so she tried to pull a few strings.
JP: Pull a few strings.
ID: And get as close to me as she could. And she was fairly successful. She was based at Wing and she was based at Wratting Common. And when she was at Wratting Common I was able to take the Oxford on beam training and I’d called in to Ratting Common for tea.
LD: You told me you couldn’t drive a car, but you could fly a plane. Drove over for tea and took mum out on a bicycle made for two.
ID: That’s true. I was flying an aeroplane before I —
JP: Got your licence.
ID: Drove a car.
JP: Well that’s, that’s good. And —
ID: And of course, people like Pat, in those days they didn’t have cars. They were allowed to have cars.
JP: No. No. So what would you say your best experiences were from — what would you say were the best I mean there’s an awful lot of bad parts associated with all of those ops and all the rest of it. Are there any, would you say there were some good parts to come out of that? Can you identify any good parts?
ID: Well —
JP: Apart from Pat I mean. I’m not talking about your —
ID: No. No, I know that.
JP: Yeah.
ID: One thing I’ll still — I’ll often go to bed and fall asleep thinking about or reeling about it. And that’s when I was deputy master bomber. Right. That meant that I had to orbit the target the same as the master bomber in case he was shot down. I had to take over. And we were doing a raid on a place called Plauen which is a between Berlin and Leipzig. And I’ll never forget the next day. I suppose it were really a freighter carrying ammunition or something but we hit it and it jack-knifed and you could see in the air the train coming together. The front and the back and the rest of it up in the sky like that. That was a scary period.
LD: You mustn’t have been very high up.
JP: No. They were never high up.
ID: No. No. Not on that one. It was a strange one because the master bomber had said to me there was too much cloud there, ‘Go down and find a level we can bomb at.’ So, you did as you were told so I went eighteen thousand where I was at and had to get down to ten thousand and then eventually eight thousand. I was underneath the cloud base and able to direct the raid and saw this go on.
JM: Amazing. And so, when you decided not to go — go on with the flying and you got you then sort of went in to discharge mode. You got that you were married in England.
ID: Yeah.
JM: First in what about —?
ID: Well remember the first thing was the wing commander offered me a job.
JM: Yeah.
ID: As a flight commander with the Tiger Force which was coming out to fight the Japanese. I had that choice, or I could get married.
JM: And you chose to get married.
ID: Chose to get married.
JM: Yes.
ID: And Pat and I was quite close as far as bases were concerned at that particular time.
LD: You also helped drop some of the provisions in Holland didn’t you? I seem to remember.
ID: Yes. Well that was after that.
JM: After VE day. After —
ID: It wasn’t after the war so much. It was after the area where we were operating. And I know I had to mark the target.
JM: Target.
ID: That was a field. And we had a field that — in the middle. It was Rotterdam.
JM: Right.
ID: And we went to Rotterdam and you found the field and you put markers. These are very powerful lights that shine and allow the Pathfinders to see it. So, we did that, and I controlled that particular [unclear] it was done properly and we were very successful.
JM: So how?
ID: And the Dutch were very happy about it.
JM: Yes. How many trips did you do for that?
ID: Two. I think.
JM: Two. Ok. So, when did you and Pat get married?
ID: On June the [pause] June the 20th I think it was. 1944.
JM: ‘44 or ’45?
ID: ‘45 sorry.
JM: Yeah. And that was up in Scotland was it?
ID: We were married actually in Scotland but it was, was a bit unusual. The wing commander as I told you wanted to [pause] me to go and be his flight commander but I chose to stay and then I had to do something. But Pat had some influence and she introduced me to a wing commander in London that controlled the postings and I told him that QANTAS had just got Lancastrians and that if I wanted to get a job with a Lancastrian it would be a good idea to to do the initial training in England and go back to Australia with a licence. And so what happened — I did the pilot’s training initially and to do that I had to go special course on hydraulics and a special course on electrics because they were different on the Lancastrian than they were on the Lancaster.
JM: Right.
ID: So, what actually happened was that I went to — I’ll never forget it to this day. I went to — I think it was called Woodford. Woodford and Chatterton. I went to both of them. And he said, ‘What do you want?’ — the fellow in charge of security at the gate. And I said, I’ve come — ‘I want to see Roy Derbeau‘ ‘Who?’ ‘Roy Derbeau.’ I don’t think we have anybody named that but I’ll have a look. So, he had a look and then a message came down from headquarters. They sent him up to see me and so I went up to see him and then —
LD: Because, Do you mean Sir Roy.’
ID: Secretary that I saw and he said, ‘You couldn’t possibly mean Sir Roy [laughs] I’ll never forget it. ‘You couldn’t possibly mean Sir Roy.’ I said, ‘Is he the fellow in charge of Avro’s production?’ Which he was and he said, ‘Yeah. That’s the bloke.’ The next thing I knew they had provided me with a Humber car.
JM: Oh.
ID: And put me up in the Midland Hotel where they kept some spare room and I stayed in that room for three weeks doing these two courses.
JM: Marvellous.
ID: I showed that I had the necessary equipment now and knowledge to get a first class — first class licence.
JM: First class licence.
ID: Air transport licence.
JM: Licence. Yeah.
ID: And then because nothing was happening we didn’t really know whether Tiger Force was going to get away.
JM: Get away.
ID: So, what I did was go went down to Southampton University and told them what my problem was. They said, ‘Well, you’ll have to learn about the tides. And I said, ‘What do you mean the tides? I’m flying an aeroplane. Landing a plane.’ ‘It doesn’t matter. The rules say you’ve got to have a knowledge of the tides around the shores of England.’
JM: Right.
ID: So, they put me on a special course for that.
JM: Right.
ID: So I got out of that and I’d now a first class pilot’s licence. Now, I got a second class navigator’s licence and then a radio operator’s licence that I went and did in between.
JM: Goodness.
ID: So I thought that’s fine ,and that’s basically where I was.
JM: Basically was. Yes.
ID: Until I came back.
JM: Back to Australia.
ID: To Australia.
JM: Ok. Well we’ll —
ID: I convinced them that I’d done enough.
JM: You’d done enough. Ok. Well we’ll follow that up in a moment. We’ll pause there so you can have your pills. Ok.
[recording paused]
JM: I was obviously lucky because I got shot at many many times.
ID: Many times. That’s right. As somebody else said to me it’s the luck of the draw.
JM: Yeah.
ID: Yeah. If you were in the wrong position at the wrong time you got shot down.
JM: That’s right. Very hard. So, you’re doing this training. You’ve got married to Pat and so then you — what about your return to Australia at this point? When? Where? When did you leave?
ID: Well when I came back —
JM: When did you leave because you and Pat came back separately didn’t you?
ID: Yeah.
JM: Yeah so —
ID: I came back on the Aquitania via Cape Town.
JM: Right. When did you leave? What —
ID: When I got here about two months. Three months later Pat arrived. Very, very pregnant at this stage. But she was — everything was above board.
JM: Yeah.
ID: We were brought up, well I was brought up the old fashioned way. You didn’t go flirting around with your wife to be. You waited. In our case we waited and we got married. We got married in Ely.
JM: In —
ID: Ely Cathedral.
JM: Ely. Oh right.
ID: Yeah.
JM: Right. Lovely.
ID: And the thing with that was that the crew that was supposed to be bringing up the best man. You know, my close friend —
JM: Yes. I was going to say were most of your crew at the wedding?
ID: Yeah and they didn’t come.
JM: They couldn’t come.
ID: No. They couldn’t come. Couldn’t.
JM: They had to go off and —
ID: Well I think what actually happened was that they, they’d been on a raid and they’d got back and they didn’t have enough time.
JM: Time.
ID: To get ready to come up to Glasgow. It was a bit of distance to do that so I remember walking along. I didn’t know because I had a phone call. I was staying at a hotel that and it was Pat’s mother saying, ‘Where are you?’ I said, ‘I’m having a shower.’ And she said, ‘You’re supposed to be getting married in a few minutes.’ ‘Don’t be silly our wedding’s at 11 o’clock and its only about half past eight.’ She said, ‘The priest changed the time.’ And I said, ‘Why?’ She said, ‘Oh he wanted a bottle of whisky.’ So, I had to find this bottle of whisky for him and then he put the wedding off.
JM: Oh dear.
ID: Fella on the street that I got and there was a sergeant in the RAF. ‘Sergeant. You’re under orders. You are to attend this church.’ It was about twenty minutes by then. ‘In about twenty minutes you are to be the best man at my wedding.’ He said, ‘I don’t know you.’ What does that matter?’ I said, ‘I’m going off in a different direction.’ So that’s what happened.
JM: That’s what happened.
ID: I never, I never even knew his name.
JM: Name. So, Pat’s mother was there at the wedding. Was there any other family there or not?
ID: Yes. Pat’s sister. Sister [pause] And this was us just leaving on our honeymoon.
JM: Right. Ok. And where did you go for your honeymoon?
ID: A place called the Trossachs.
JM: Oh yes up in the middle there —
ID: In Scotland.
JM: Yes. There’s an old castle with — yes, I know the Trossachs very well.
ID: Do you?
JM: Yes. Yes, I do.
ID: Well, in those days that hotel was put aside especially for people who had had a very risky life in the war and particularly submarines. They seemed to go there. Anyhow, somehow or other I got through Pat. We got a room at this hotel. I’ll never forget to this day because we decided to go for a swim in that area. And there’s three lakes. Loch Venachar, Loch Katrine and Loch Achray. And there’s a great song that goes, “The copsewood grey that swept the banks of Loch Achray.” And we went for a swim and so I was last to go. And it was second last, she dived in and she didn’t really have a proper bathing suit. She’d tied some sort of bandage around her top and of course she came over the top of the water, I saw her and I thought oh God she’s drowning so I dived in. I’ll never forget it. I got her out of the water and we went in to — we had separate rooms at this stage and a basement and we warmed ourselves up there.
JM: So I guess Pat then went back and finished up work when you were on the boat coming out to Australia. Is that right?
ID: I didn’t work coming back to Australia. No.
JM: Sorry?
ID: I was just a passenger.
JM: No. No. Yes. I said Pat finished work.
ID: Yeah. Pat
JM: Finished work.
ID: What she did was she spent whatever time she had as near to me as she could.
JM: Could. Yeah. Yeah.
ID: But you very quickly ran out of money in those days.
JM: No.
ID: I had the paybook and didn’t have too much in it.
JM: No.
ID: Then we ended up at the, it was called the Abbot or something hotel at Brighton and we between us had about four or five pounds left and had about two weeks leave left to use up at that time as well. So I said, ‘Let’s go up and watch the races at Palace Court.’ And there was a horse there called The Reel and we put the whole our money on The Reel that won and we got fifty pounds out of that.
JM: Wow. Oh, that was good.
ID: For fifty pounds then we had a lovely last week or so in England.
JM: Yeah.
ID: And then of course I came home.
JM: Yeah.
ID: From Southampton.
JM: Southampton and you came back. Did you come back to Sydney or Brisbane? Where did you — or did you have to —
ID: On the way back, we came back through Cape Town. Stopped over in Cape Town for a couple of days and then we just dropped off troops in Perth and then the train. I think the plane or a train The ship stopped in Melbourne.
JM: Melbourne. And you had to come up by train from Melbourne.
ID: Up by train. I’ll never forget it because Pat had made herself a dress and it was big polka dots and she [unclear ] the polka dots. it looked really quite weird and out of place and she was pregnant by this time.
JM: But you, but she didn’t come out, but she came out after you didn’t she?
ID: Yeah.
JM: So, you came in to Melbourne, came up to Sydney. Met up —
ID: We came up together.
JM: Oh. You oh she was not that far behind you. You stayed in Melbourne did you, till she came?
ID: I was lucky in that things were and still are, you know, I’m ninety three, ninety four now they fall my way and this was what actually happened. We were able to get tickets on the Spirit of Progress, and it was [unclear] black something or other the temperature was about a hundred and ten at Melbourne. And we came up through the heat and then the air conditioning broke down. We had to change train at Wagga. Not Wagga.
JM: At Wagga Aubrey wasn’t it?
ID: Aubrey.
LD: So, dad you actually came before mum though didn’t you?
ID: Yes. Sure.
LD: How long before mum did you arrive?
ID: About two months.
LD: Yeah.
JM: Two months. Yeah. So you came up to Sydney but then you went back down, and you caught up with your parents in Sydney. And then —
ID: No, I came straight back, and I was staying at my parents’ house.
JM: Yeah. Ok. So, you were staying at your parent’s house and then Pat landed in Melbourne so you went back down to Melbourne to meet her.
ID: We came back by train.
JM: Yeah. Yeah.
ID: And then we both stayed.
JM: Yeah.
ID: And it was at that stage my sister was just about to get married or had just got married and Jack, it was, had won the military medal in the Solomons. He moved out and June moved out to make sure there was a nice big room for Pat and I.
JM: That’s good. So, so now we’re in to right, right. Ok so this is, which into January ‘46 by this stage. So you then set about getting into your working life I guess. At this point.
ID: Well, what happened was obviously after I’d done this study in England, to get a licence so I could get a job with QANTAS. I went to see the QANTAS people and they said, ‘No way. We’ve got twenty thousand pilots all looking for jobs.
JM: Jobs.
ID: All of them wing commanders. and I said, ‘Well I’ve got licences they don’t have.’ ‘Well sorry.’ When I went down to Melbourne strangely enough and I managed to get a flight out with the air force and I went to see the A&A people ‘cause they were —
JM: Yes.
ID: And they offered me a job straightaway. So when I went home again I had a call from QANTAS to say we’re still a little bit interested in. Yeah. And I said well interested back. And I said well interested had better harden straightaway because I’ve just accepted an offer for a job for A&A. Within an hour they phoned me and asked, ‘If you’re here at 9 o’clock tomorrow morning we’ll put you in your uniform.’
LD: Pretty good. There’s the Aquitania arriving in Woolloomooloo.
JM: Right.
LD: In 1945.
JM: Oh ok.
LD: And that’s taken from your mum dad’s, parent’s house. Flat.
JM: Oh, my goodness. Goodness. Right. Right. Ok. So, so, then you actually started with QUANTAS then and how many years were you with QANTAS?
ID: I joined QUANTAS on the [pause] January 19 –
JM: 1946.
ID: ’46, it was back then.
JM: Yeah.
ID: And I stayed with them until the April 1st 1954.
JM: Right. Ok. So, eight years. A bit over eight years. Yeah.
ID: Yeah. I — at the age of twenty four I was a captain with QANTAS.
JM: Gosh.
ID: And I think the youngest international captain in Australia.
JM: Youngest. Australia. So, you were doing international flights then. You –
ID: Yeah. Oh yes. Straight away.
JM: Did you do the Kangaroo Route or —
ID: Straight into international flying.
JM: Flying.
ID: On the Lancastrians.
JM: Yeah.
ID: And true to this day, and main reason was that they didn’t have anybody to fly in an aircraft. And there was a Liberator had lost an engine. They had to get an engine across to Learmonth of all places.
JM: Right.
ID: So I now had a licence. It was easier in those days just to switch it over and have — endorsed to fly Liberators. They took me up in an afternoon. Put me through like four hours flying. They said right you go and fly the Lancaster. So didn’t go as captain of course but as first officer.
JM: No but at least that meant they then had a crew to be able to solve their engine problem.
ID: They did.
JM The replacement engine problem
ID: Of course, they had the Lanc engine fixed up and that took off, going to the Cocos Island I think it was.
JM: Right. Right.
ID: And left me abandoned if you like at Port [unclear], they used to call it.
JM: Right. So, any particular experiences that stand out for you during your time at QANTAS? Your eight years at QANTAS? Any particular trips or particular important people that you might have carried.
ID: Well, one thing but I don’t want to put it in print. One of the first officers, you see, we only had two pilots and a flight time of nine to ten hours and we were coming back from Hong Kong. Trying to get in to Darwin and then there was a cyclone. And the cyclone forced us to dodge trying to land in Darwin. So we were sent to Cloncurry and I couldn’t get the plane down on the ground it was so hot. It started fluttering along there. That was one scary time.
JM: That must have been one scary experience. So, what did you do? Did you get it. Did you have to give up and go somewhere else. Or where else did you go?
ID: There was nowhere else to go.
JM: There was nowhere else, you just had to get it down.
ID: What actually happened to it was [unclear] Cloncurry I went back to Darwin. I was still on the outskirts. [unclear] We couldn’t land at Darwin, so we went back to a place called [unclear]
JM: Right.
ID: We went on to and the [unclear] I loaded up with gas. Headed back towards Darwin. By this time I was getting pretty tired so I thought I’d have a rest. I had to have a rest. Anyhow, I got up after my very brief rest to look out and see mountain peaks just there. By that house. As close as that. And it was all part of the ranges that went through. [unclear] Papua New Guinea. And the first officer who was supposed to fly in the aircraft had fallen asleep and they had a special recording compass which would — you put the thing in George and George followed the thing around on one, and I looked up and we seemed to be heading in the wrong direction. And I looked again and sure enough we were. We were very very lucky. We could have gone straight into that mountain. He quit inside a week.
LD: Golly gosh. You also told me that you helped to open up the air route to Christchurch.
ID: Yes. I did a lot of flights.
JM: Yeah.
ID: I did the [pause] Melbourne to Christchurch. That was on DC4s.
JM: Right. And so, moving along. Just summarising after you finished up at QANTAS you decided — did you have an approach to move to your next job or did you decide you wanted to give up QANTAS.
ID: Firstly, QANTAS paid very poorly in those days and I had a bunch of kids at home always looking for Christmas presents. Anyhow, I had the opportunity. I was in Singapore. I was introduced to the head of Caltex in Singapore and he said, ‘We’re looking for a chief pilot who’ll take on the job of training the Indonesians and then hand over to them.’ And they were willing to pay more than twice what I was getting.
JM: Gosh.
ID: So I said yes please. I went back and on the 1st of April 1954 I left QANTAS and joined Caltex.
JM: Caltex.
ID: And it was Caltex Pacific Petroleum it was called. And I’ll never forget it. Because when I got there, you know they put all this panic on, ‘You’ve got to be there tomorrow.’ So and so [pause] when I got there, they put me up in the Captain’s Room in the Raffles Hotel where I stayed for six weeks. Doing nothing.
JM: How nice.
ID: Except playing golf.
JM: Oh, my goodness me. Oh goodness. That must have been a tough life. But still, I mean, apart from the fact that your away from your family or had any of your family come up at that point or you were up there by yourself at that —
LD: When did we all go to Indonesia dad?
JM: In that six weeks at — when you were in Raffles Hotel were you by yourself?
ID: I was by myself.
JM: Self. Right. Yeah.
ID: I was staying at the Raffles.
JM: Yeah.
ID: But Pat and Louise and Mary came up by ship.
JM: Right.
ID: Norwegian ship. And they flew them in and then I had two or three days staying in a place not far from the actual airport itself in Singapore [unclear] The fact we were being based in Jakarta.
JM: Right.
ID: Because they reckoned that would be the best place to do their training from.
JM: Right.
ID: So I went to Jakarta to pick them up. One thing mind you was though I had no training on DC3 at this stage. I hadn’t really flown the aircraft at all and all of a sudden I’m the chief pilot.
JM: Pilot.
ID: I’m the chief training captain.
JM: Right. So, you had some, had to do some reading up quick smart then I guess to just be able to do the bit of pick up the bits and pieces you needed for the different plane.
ID: Well, flying is like riding a bicycle. You don’t forget how to do it.
JM: No but there would have been. Each plane has its own idiosyncrasies doesn’t it?
ID: As long as everything goes alright you have no trouble.
JM: Yeah.
ID: If something goes wrong then you’re in trouble.
JM: Yeah. That’s true.
ID: So I flew off and picked them up and went to Jakarta and we stayed in a place called [unclear] and then we moved out to [unclear] which a very nice house actually we had. Had up to eleven servants.
JM: Gosh.
ID: What actually happened was I was a pretty good golfer and the president of the golf club was the British Ambassador.
JM: Oh ok.
ID: And the club captain was an Australian. The Australian ambassador and when they said to me, ‘You fly pretty well. Do you want a job?’ I told them what I was doing. You leave tomorrow. Tomorrow I was on the way to Jakarta.
JM: Gosh.
ID: In those days it was, you know, who you knew.
JM: That’s right.
ID: [unclear]
JM: Well I don’t know as it’s all that different today quite frankly but yes, so you had six, six years in Indonesia.
ID: Well I was.
JM: Roundabout.
ID: I was there from April 1st again. 19—
JM: 1960.
ID: 1960.
JM: Yeah. And then from there you had a big change of scenery. You went off to Bahrain.
ID: I went there. What actually happened was that I decided that once I was going to go away from QUANTAS. I mean I was already doing very very well in QANTAS. I’d better get something worthwhile. So I was offered this job as chief training captain which I took up but then part of the job was to train the Indonesians to take over. And it took six years, but remember we had full crews and needed pilots or radio operators and whatnot, so I stayed there as supervisor. So that was done and then I got Type B Hepatitis and I remember I was pretty ill. Down in Melbourne. Royal Prince Albert Hospital.
JM: Hospital. That would have knocked you around a bit.
ID: Yes. It was a bit scary because I was in constant fever there for a while. But whatever.
LD: We used to go and visit him in hospital and there was the man next to him and he was always [flailing about?] for water.
ID: And the deputy chief of Caltex Petroleum was [unclear] who came down to Melbourne to see me. [unclear] coming to visit me. [unclear] and he said what do you want? And I said well I left QANTAS to try and further myself. I wish to go at marketing. I wish I did have, probably still have, to a degree. Anyway, the point is that they decided that they’d send me to Bahrain to do some brief training in marketing because in Bahrain we had marketing as shipping producing exploration and a full gamut of the oil business and they thought that was a good place for me to learn. So, I was sent there. Well basically to be there for six weeks. But the chap was superintendent of transport operations and remember we had a big transport operation was [pause] he was, I forget his name. A British major. You know One of the old fashioned types.
JM: Right. Right.
ID: So, I went in there and met [unclear] and he said, ‘Sorry. There’s no place for you.’
JM: Oh yeah.
ID: And I said, ‘Come on.’ Anyhow, a couple of days later HH Arnold Junior descended on them. He was President of them, and he said, ‘What are you doing here?’ ‘I’m playing golf.’ He said, ‘Why aren’t you learning?’ And I said, ‘What’s to learn’ Not that I know anything immediately. So he said, ‘Leave it with me.’ And within an hour I’d had a call to say to come up to the President’s office. The local president’s office saying that, ‘We want you to go to Bahrain and to train in Bahrain for six weeks and then we’ll see where we’ll place you. We have in mind the head of marketing in Beirut.’ But in actual fact the fella that was in charge of transport got there ahead of me, being British and being very pompous. He took advantage and they sent him off to Beirut and left me. And I had to fight my way through.
JM: Through.
ID: But I did every job I could get. Every time they gave me a job they said you take this fella and you learn about it. So everybody they gave me I learned his job. Could do it in a week or so because it was fairly simple jobs basically. It was just a matter of following up.
JM: Well, being used to organising yourself as a pilot and being responsible and organising others I mean, you know, you’ve got the basic skills there for any management role that you would need to do so I mean.
ID: Yeah. It came quite easily to me to be a manager. And so I was, apparently, I had and still have at ninety four a gift for working with people and I was able to [noise on microphone] oh I wondered what that was —
Others: Just loosening them up.
JM: So, you ended up with ten years all up.
ID: Ten years in Bahrain.
JM: Bahrain.
ID: And then in Bahrain I did all kinds of jobs but most were with maintenance planning of major shut downs. Many millions of dollars being spent and I was in planning. That was well before the days of computers and laptops.
JM: Yeah. That’s right. A very different work environment.
ID: You had to be able to do it. Worked out this is what will happen if you do this. So —
JM: Yeah. So then from Bahrain you went to New York. You had fifteen years in America.
ID: Hang on. I went to New York. I was in Bahrain for ten years.
JM: Ten years and then from there to —
ID: From there I’m sure I went to [pause] oh I know what happened. I won the first two Bahrain Opens at golf.
JM: You won the —
ID: What’s called the Bahrain Open it was then.
JM: Oh ok.
ID: That was the Bahrain open golf champion.
JM: Oh yeah. Yeah.
ID: And because I won them I think I got to know the president better.
JM: Yeah.
ID: And he called me up and said, ‘What are your plans?’ And I said, here it is what I’d done so far, ‘And really, I expected to be long since to be marketing somewhere.’ And then you know in a matter of days the call came forward to ask would I like to be head of training and development for Caltex Worldwide.
JM: Right. Gosh.
ID: Based in New York.
JM: New York.
ID: And I was there in New York for I think it was about ten years. Give or take six months or so. In which time I did a lot of travelling for Caltex. And I ran maintenance courses. Management training. Mostly as a organiser really and doing it but in many cases the organisation ones I liked. I used to do them myself.
JM: Yes, well that —
ID: That was just a small part. Right. Then they came with up a — when I was in New York I decided to come away with a golden handshake to cut back on everyone and I said I’ll take that and they said, ‘No we don’t mean you.’
JM: Oh ok.
ID: I said, ‘Well this is what it says. It’s all written down there anybody and everybody is allowed to apply.’ So that’s what actually happened, I applied and they said, ‘Well, you can’t go.’ And I said, ‘Well you shouldn’t have put it on paper like that.’
JM: Yeah.
ID: Because everybody else sees that I was turned down for being too good rather than I’d got a right.’ So, I did that.
JM: You did that and as you say you did a lot of travelling and a lot of courses.
ID: I’d done quite a few organisational development programmes as such.
JM: Yeah. Yeah.
ID: Training enroute in different countries.
JM: Countries yeah.
ID: And I ended up going to Kenya for the best part of a year.
JM: Yeah.
ID: And I was at Nairobi.
JM: That would have been a very different experience because I mean.
ID: It was indeed.
JM: We’re talking about you know mid to late [pause] mid–eighties. I mean it was a very different.
ID: Well it was most unusual in the firstly I was in the jungles in Sumatra and then I was in the desert of Bahrain and then I went to New York and then from New York. Well I obviously did well, or I wouldn’t have been selected to —
JM: To go to Kenya to –. Do, to run the.
LD: I remember as a little girl flying with you in the DC3 to Sumatra dad. Along the line. And then we went down into the oil caps high in Sumatra. Down that, on a small punt through the river and then there had been this — because you guys had gone shooting tigers.
ID: We had to go by boat from the airport where the plane landed to a terminal along the river. Siak River it was called. Along the Siak. I’ll never forget it because the river was the same colour as tea.
JM: Oh, my goodness.
ID: Funny that. That was stained. The water was stained.
JM: Stained.
ID: Run off the mountains and that. Anyhow, the point was I was trying to make that after that I was offered this, not offered. I took this golden handshake. Wasn’t much money in those days but I took it and I hadn’t been away from there for more than six weeks and I was down here in Sydney. And a phone call came and they said they want you to go to Indonesia for a year.’ I said how long?’ A year. What will they want for a year? Oh you’ll find out there. You’ll go there for a year. Your job is basically to train the Indonesians to take over completely. So, it took me six years, but I got it done. And [pause]
JM: So that was in Malaysia. Indonesia. Then from there you got another call and had to go off to Oman for twelve — for about a year. Is that right?
ID: Yeah. Well what actually happened was we were going to go and build a refinery in Bangkok. But if you remember back there was a big fire in a place called Bhopal in India.
JM: Oh yes. Yes. Yes.
ID: Ok. And the insurers withdrew the money that they’d put up for us to build that refinery.
JM: Yeah.
ID: So, I was suddenly without a job.
JM: Right.
ID: So, they said they were establishing a Tiger Force and would I be part of the Tiger Force? And the first place to go would be Oman for six months.
JM: Two months.
ID: Which turned out to be two and a half years. Which turned out to be very nice. I enjoyed Oman. We both liked it.
JM: Right. Right. Because I guess at this stage it would just be you and Pat. The children would be off doing their own things well and truly by this stage.
ID: Yeah.
JM: And then so you had the time in Oman and then a short break again and then Thailand.
ID: Well a short break. I can’t remember the exact time but certainly I’d already done the job.
JM: Yeah.
ID: In Oman and I’d come home. I think I was home for about six months and the phone goes. New York. New York wants you.
JM: Yeah.
ID: What for [unclear] and I’ll tell you and then they turned around and said we want you to go to Thailand to open up training manager.
JM: Right.
ID: Whilst in charge of development. All levels of people who wanted, who knew, and it was what we called a star petroleum refining company.
JM: Right.
ID: And the actual — the actual running of the place was done by a couple of engineers, a managing director and his vice president but I was responsible for human aspects of it.
JM: Right. Right. And then finally you went to Japan.
ID: In between I did quite a few.
JM: A few bits. Yes.
ID: Specialised trips.
JM: Specialised short trips. Yeah.
ID: Trained on.
JM: Sort something out.
ID: We were the first people who engineered simulated management programme and because it was so successful they decided I could stay on doing that and I had one computer specialist who was very good and myself and we were the mainstays behind this Tiger Force and somewhere between Oman and Thailand. Yeah. Oman to Thailand. And then Thailand we built a new refinery completely and I had the responsibility of manpower training and providing the man power and basically trying to stop Shell who had been there for quite a bit longer from stealing the only trained people in the country. And we did, and I got that job done and went home and I thought it was all over because by this time I was about seventy six or so. And —
JM: Amazing.
ID: I got a call again and, ‘We want you to go to Japan.’ And I said, because I liked Japan, and I looked forward to that, ‘Can my wife come?’ ‘Cause I took Pat out to all these places.
JM: Places. Yeah.
ID: Yeah. Well, they said, ‘Yeah. Alright.’ I said, ‘When do we go?’ ‘Tomorrow.’
JM: Nothing like a bit of notice.
ID: Yeah. So, I went off with — with [pause]
LD: [unclear]
ID: Having done the job in Thailand I then was involved in this Tiger Force group and was busy trying to downsize the way the Japanese run their refineries and what was happening was they were buying you know twice as much as they should have done and they had far too, far too many people for what work there was. And the men would stay back till 8 o’clock at night shuffling paperwork from one to the other. But Pat and I were there for — oh I don’t know — fourteen months. Something like that. We thoroughly enjoyed it. We like japan very much.
JM: That’s good.
ID: Of course the men aren’t nearly as nice as the women. And the women helped Pat a lot.
JM: You’ve had an incredible life and it’s just amazing to think you continued to work in such influential positions for so long. it’s just a tribute to your whole —
ID: Well an attitude to work. And of course —
JM: Well attitude to work but it’s the skills. It’s the ability to relate to people. It’s the ability to deliver. It’s the ability to manage. It’s all of those things and I think that comes back.
ID: Well they all —
JM: And explains why you survived. You know, I mean, it’s the people —
ID: They came all together again and well I was successful was I wouldn’t have been working till I was seventy eight.
JM: That’s right. Amazing. So there’s just one other thing that I would ask out of an interest in your golf. So, you when did you first start to play golf? When you were a boy back in Maitland or —?
ID: My father was a very good golfer.
JM: Right. So —
ID: Played [off scratch?]. ]
JM: Right.
ID: Back in Maitland
JM: Right.
ID: But he wouldn’t let us you know play because he didn’t want us around when he was having his booze and God knows what. But the point was I did get a few hits in so I knew which end of the club to hold kind of thing.
JM: Yeah. Did you caddy for him at any time? Did you caddy for him at any time?
ID: No. I don’t think so.
JM: So, you didn’t get a chance to see him.
ID: I played with him.
JM: You played with him but —
ID: But not against him.
JM: Not against him. Yeah. Yeah.
ID: The last time we played together was in Avalon in Sydney.
JM: Oh ok.
ID: A course there.
JM: Yeah. A little public course yeah. Yeah. Because again being a good golfer often works very well in the corporate world. And I think that’s evidenced by the fact that –
ID: That corporate role as such but the fact that you could go to a place and then meet with the managing director of the company.
JM: That’s right. Yes.
ID: And talk about golf.
JM: That’s right.
ID: And not about anything else.
JM: Exactly.
ID: That was enough to get you through the front door. Put it that way.
JM: That’s right. Well as I say and the perfect example is when you were saying about Bahrain.
ID: Yeah.
JM: That’s right.
ID: You kind of soon found that you were capable. What you were capable of.
JM: Yes.
ID: And you concentrated on that.
JM: That’s right. Well I think we’ve covered an enormous amount of territory today and I appreciate so much the effort that you’ve made because I know you’ve not been well. And it’s just to put –
ID: My main problem is just sitting down.
JM: To sit down for too long. That’s right. That’s why I want you to be able to have a little time —
ID: They tell me I’ve got –
JM: To finish up. So, I think we’ll conclude there and as I say thank you very very much Ian for all.
ID: Jean. It’s been a pleasure to have you here.
JM: Thank you.
ID: And feel welcome to call by any time.
JM: Thank you very much.
ID: And ask any questions you want and I’ll give the right answer.
JM: I appreciate that. I appreciate that. Thank you. So, we’ll finish it off there now. Ok.
ID: 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/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ADenverI170221
PDenverI1704
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Ian Denver
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
01:59:04 audio recording
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Pending OH summary
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
2017-02-21
Description
An account of the resource
Ian Denver grew up in Australia and joined the Royal Australian Air Force as soon as he was old enough. After training he completed 60 operations with 625 Squadron and 156 Squadron. He met and married his wife, Pat who was an intelligence officer at 625 Squadron and returned to Australia after the war. He joined QANTAS and became the youngest international captain with the company.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Australia
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Kenya
Kenya--Nairobi
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1944
1945
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
156 Squadron
625 Squadron
aircrew
Halifax
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Lancastrian
love and romance
Master Bomber
military ethos
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
Pathfinders
pilot
sport
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/255/3402/PLairdCraig1701.1.jpg
dd35678b5dd714fa6ca7f93d8b04d077
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/255/3402/AFoisterMS171010.1.mp3
42bc4842674a2bca0286d57de31c3599
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
Foister, Mary Stanley
Alan Laird Crag and Mary Stanley Foister
Alan Laird Craig
A Laird Craig
Mary Stanley Foister
Mary S Foister
Mary Foister
M S Foister
M Foister
Mary Stanley-Smith
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with Mary Stanley Foister (nee Stanley Smith, formerly Laird Craig )(1921 - 2017, 2028611 Woman's Auxiliary 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
2017-10-10
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LairdCraig
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
HB: This is an interview between Harry Bartlett from the International Bomber Command Centre Digital Archive and Mary Foister. Mary was, formerly, the wife of Wing Commander Alan John Laird Craig, but Mary, in her own right, was an RAF officer. The interview is taking place at [redacted] Hoby, Leicestershire. It’s Tuesday the 10th of October 2017, and the time is 10.05am. Mary, thank you for doing this interview, for agreeing to this interview. Could you just tell me a little about your background before you joined the RAF?
MF: Yes. Well I was born in Buckinghamshire and we moved to Pound Farm in a little village in Buckinghamshire, near Princes Risborough. I was the eldest grandchild on my father’s side so I was very spoilt because of all the uncles and aunts, and the youngest one on my mother’s side so I was spoilt because I was the youngest. So I had a very happy childhood. And then my father came into some property in a place called Walters Ash, a village, Walters Ash and Knaphill, up on the hill, about five miles away from where we were and his home was there, his original home from the farm, and then suddenly, we had a boy next door called Alan Oakcroft, who lived next door to us, was in the Air Force, and he was constantly, stationed at Abingdon, constantly flying over the house and we thought oh he was just being friendly, you know. But eventually he said to my father, ‘Ernest I must come and see you officially, we’re going to take over your’ - daddy had the lease on Bradenham Manor and the land and the farming you see – ‘we are going to take over your Bradenham Manor land for Bomber Command Headquarters.’ This is why he’d been flying over, taking all the things you see, all the photographs.
HB: What year was that, Mary? Can you remember?
MF: That would be about, er, I think about ’36 ’37, yes, about then, and so well, it was absolutely amazing. He’d been chosen to do it because he’s a local boy and they thought he would know the. So they took over Walters Ash Farm, which was my father’s home, and, well it changed the whole village of course, and built Bomber Command Headquarters there. I mean we were very much a farming family, nothing to do with the services at all, but we used to go to the mess and I said to my father ‘I want to join the WAAF’ and he said ‘whatever for, you’ve got your own bedroom, you’ve got your own pony’ [laughter]. I said I want to join the WAAF, so I joined the WAAF. And I was sent to, and he had friends in the Headquarters, he said I don’t want her to go too far away so I was sent to Bicester, which was an Officer’s Training Unit for bombers and I had, well he used to come down and see me every weekend, you know, check up on me. He said ‘you’re not going to stay in are you?’ I said yes, I loved it, ‘cause I loved boarding school and so that was that. And I was at Bicester as a corporal, I got my commission, went to Windermere for the officer training thing and then the only thing I’d done after leaving school was done an admin course in London, shorthand typing, and so I was sent to Newcastle on Tyne for an admin course, and I had about three months there and that was fun because it was near Edinburgh, we used to pop up and you know, then my posting came through. By this time of course I’d got a commission.
HB: What rank were you then Mary? When you got your commission, what rank would you be then?
MF: Oh, Assistant Section Officer, ASO, [laugh] the lowest of the low. So, you see my father obviously wanted me back at Bomber Command under his control, nice control, and I didn’t want to go back to Bomber Command because it was Headquarters and they were all old all me! I was about eighteen at the time you see, so I had this friend there and he said there’s a good posting going at Exning near Newmarket, at a Bomber Group Headquarters.
HB: Exning?
MF: Number 3 Group Headquarters. So I was posted there as ASO, Assistant Section Officer, to Air Vice Marshal Richard Harrison, who had been left at the altar so he didn’t like women, so he wasn’t very receptive. [Laughter]
HB: Oh dear!
MF: But we tamed him [laughter] anyway, yes, we became great friends in the end, so that was, as I say, my first posting and I was his PA for, oh goodness I can’t think, and I avoided Bomber Command like the plague because I didn’t want to go home, you know, but eventually I got posted to up Bomber Command right at the end of the war, as the war ended, to Bomber Harris, a little bit, about six weeks of him, and that was quite enough, and then to, my last posting was Air Vice Marshal, Air Marshal Sir Norman Bottomley, who was an absolute dear, lovely to work for. In the meantime Alan had, he was the youngest Wing Commander in the Royal Air Force at twenty one, he had a spectacular career, very well decorated and he was chosen, his squadron was chosen to go to the Far East and then that war stopped, so what do we do.
HB: The Japanese war.
MF: So he trained Lancasters to do formation flying which had never been done with Lancasters, been done with fighters but never done with bomber aircraft you see, and this impressed Bomber Harris, and Bomber Harris’s PA came from Rio de Janeiro, can’t think of his name now, anyway, and he said ‘I want three white Lancasters to take my PA back to Rio.’ So he had three white Lancasters, and Alan was the chief pilot, back to Rio and they were gone for six weeks. Of course you know they made so much a fuss after the war, and they gave them a wonderful time, so I thought well that’ll be the end of that, I shall never see him again, but I did and came back and Alan was stationed at Gravely in Huntingdonshire then, RAF Gravely, which was Pathfinder Squadron, under Don Bennett, and so I was at, I was on leave, in the south of France with my mother and I said ‘I have to go back on duty’ because I thought I’m going to see that squadron come in. So I came back all the way from France, to Gravely, to see 35 Squadron come in, back from Rio de Janeiro. But Alan never spoke to me, I mean we’d been quite friendly, but I thought well that’s the end of that. A week later he phoned up and said ‘hello, how are you’, and I said ‘I’m all right’ [laugh] and he said ‘well shall we meet in London’. So I said ‘yes, fine, where?’ he said ‘oh meet at the Dorchester’. So we met at the Dorchester and he said ‘oh, I’ve been posted’, I said ‘oh goodness, really, where?’ And he said Buenos Aires. He said will you marry me? I said yes! [Laughter]
HB: As quick as that!
MF: Anyway, because of this trip to Rio, they more or less said to him what would you like to do and he said I’d like to go back to Rio, but he went to Buenos Aires and so in a month, my mother was very sort of formal person, you know in dress and everything, we had to have a white wedding in London and one thing and the other and we were married at St Peter’s, Vere Street, and then the reception at the Dorchester, and well, then within a fortnight we sailed for BA, I got out of the WAAF and.
HB: What year was that, Mary?
MF: ’40 - when did the war end?
HB: ‘45.
MF: ’46. November ’46. I got married on November the 9th ‘46. And we sailed from Tilbury on the Highland Chieftain, had a wonderful three week trip across to BA, and that was that, you know, so then I found I was pregnant with that one – straight away! [Laugh] So Gavin was born out there.
HB: So you had to resign your commission when you got married?
MF: Oh yes. Yes, yes.
HB: Can I just take you back Mary, a little bit, just a little bit, because I was intrigued, you actually started, once you were qualified at Bicester, you went out to Ixney. Ixney? How have I written it down? You qualified at Bicester, but you, for a period of time you ended, you were with Harris.
MF: Oh! At the end, that was when I was commissioned, right at the end you see.
HB: Ah right! So prior to working for Harris, what would your job entail being the PA, before Harris, because you were PA to, um, at 3 Group.
MF: Harris was before BA you see.
HB: Yep. Sorry, PA, you were personal assistant to?
MF: Bomber Harris.
HB: Before Harris.
MF: Um, well to the man at Newmarket, at Exning.
HB: At Exning, Exning, right. It’s all right, I’d just lost, I lost a little bit of the continuity there, I thought we’d.
MF: No, I didn’t want to go back to Bomber Command so that’s when I got posted to Exning, near Newmarket in Suffolk, and I was PA to Air Vice Marshal Harrison.
HB: Yup. Harrison! That’s what caused me the confusion. It’s Harrison and then Harris!
MF: Harris. Ah yes, As I say he was left at the altar so he was anti women!
HB: Yes, but you talked him round. Wonderful. So you went out to BA, as a new bride, you’re then expecting Gavin. How long were you out in Buenos Aires?
MF: How long?
HB: How long were you in Buenos Aires?
MF: I think about two years, yes.
HB: So Gavin was born.
MF: Born out there.
HB: Out there. So what was Alan doing at the time?
MF: Well he was Assistant Air Attaché.
HB: Ah, right.
MF: To a man called Beisegel. B E I S E G E L. So they, we had Paraguay, Uruguay and the Argentine. We never got into Paraguay ‘cause they were always having a war [laugh], we got into Uruguay a lot, which was nice, and Buenos Aires of course which was enormous, so we went right down the south and travelled all over the Argentine.
HB: Right. So you were down in South America for two years.
MF: Two years, yes.
HB: What happened then? How did you?
MF: Then we came back, then we came back to earth a bit because they’d caught up with, Alan had been, way, way back, back in Coastal Command, earlier on in his career and they wanted a Chief Flying Instructor at Kinloss, in Scotland, so we went from Buenos Aries to Kinloss.
HB: Hmm. So that would be 1948, ’49 [phone tone] I’ll just have to pause the interview a minute. I’m just going to resume the interview that we temporarily paused. So, you’ve arrived at RAF Kinloss, what was Alan doing there? What was his job there?
MF: He was Chief Flying Instructor.
HB: Right. And what kind of aircraft, what kind of aircraft would he be flying there?
MF: Good heavens, I ought to know. I can’t remember at the moment.
HB: Shackletons perhaps?
MF: No, I don’t think so. Huh.
HB: It doesn’t matter, it’s not a major. So you were in quarters, living in.
MF: Well no, there weren’t any quarters; we lived in these little cottages. This one used to slide along on his bottom because he couldn’t, on lino you know, they were very barely furnished and suddenly one day he stood up and walked and I rang Alan and said: ‘Gavin’s walking!’ [Laugh]
HB: Lovely! That was in Findhorn village, in the village.
MF: Yes.
HB: So how long were you at Kinloss?
MF: [Sigh] Well, I, my daughter was born when I was up there, but I went south to my mother to have my daughter. I was away for a month because she said you can’t have that baby up here, so I went south and had my daughter. We were there about two and a half years, I think. Such a long time ago now, to remember all these things.
HB: Well you’re doing very well [much laughter]. I have to say, extremely well! So what was, when you first came back, from Buenos Aires, what was the biggest change you noticed in this country, having been living abroad for two years? You would have come back in 1948.
MF: Hmm. Well, I don’t know, you see my mother and sister came out to Buenos Aires for three months with us, to stay out there, and then they came home well, I don’t, well what biggest change, I don’t know. Can’t really think of anything.
HB: You found everything fairly settled.
MF: Well, much the same really. I mean obviously, I mean there was still food rationing when we came back. Course, when we went to Scotland that didn’t apply, I mean there was no rationing up there.
HB: Oh! No!
MF: No. Well not literally no, ‘cause you could get anything you wanted.
HB: Yeah. So, in Buenos Aires you lived, where did you live in Buenos Aires?
MF: We lived in a flat in the town to begin with, and then we moved out because we had Gavin, when we said we need a garden, and we moved out to a little house in San Isidro, up the river, and we had a Chinese cook who lived in a little hut at the bottom of the garden, Chinese cook called Georgie, and he was marvellous, and he, you know, Gavin was in his pram and he was in the sun, he would go out and move Gavin out of the sun.
HB: Lovely, oh that’s delightful. So you left the sunshine of Buenos Aires and you moved to Kinloss.
MF: Kinloss! That side of Scotland was, is very good, I mean it’s better than the west side, as you know. Oh yes, it was very good.
HB: And that’s your family’s developing now, your daughter, you came south and you had your daughter.
MF: Had her in the Radcliffe, came back and went back to Kinloss and that was that. And then we got posted back to Bomber Command, er no, got posted back to Air Ministry, but my mother said ‘you can’t live in one of those awful little quarters’, [chuckle] ‘you must have your own house’, so we bought a house in the village of Walters Ash, where Bomber Command is, and we had our own house there, and Alan used to go to Air Ministry every day and then he met our MP, called John Hall, and Alan said ‘well I’m a bit fed up of this’, because he was a Wing Commander at twenty one as I said, at thirty two he’d reverted to a Squadron Leader because well, you know, that was the thing, so he said bit tired to John Hall and John Hall said ‘come and see my Chairman’, he didn’t know him. He was a man called Sir Lindsay Finn and we didn’t know what on earth he did, apart from sit in Parliament. It turned out he was Chairman of Gossard Corsets! [Laugh]
HB: Oh right, right.
MF: So when Alan came home I said ‘well, what does he do apart from siting in Parliament?’ he said ‘he’s chairmen of Gossard Corsets!’ I said ‘well you can’t do that!’ But you see, by this time I’d got three children, I’d got my daughter and another son, Adrian, and we were in our house in this village, in Bomber Command village, and well, he was very tempted to come out because as I say, and my parents, of course, didn’t want us to move away again, so they were very influential. It was awful that we came out of the Air Force, I was so sad, it was wrong really, ‘cause Alan would have I think gone a long way. Anyway, we came out and, but they then, they had, Gossard, had this factory up here in Syston and they sent him up here!
HB: Oh right!
HF: So he was up here for three months and I was alone in Bucks and said oh goodness so they said well you’d better buy yourself a house, to Alan, and move your family up there. This was in 1954 I think ’55 I think, and so then we bought Gadsby Hall, and, they bought it for us, and we had, we lived there. The house had had twenty seven bedrooms, but they knocked the top off and the sides off and made it into a reasonable house, but it had seven acres of garden, which it still has. So anyway we did that and he was, my father was ill and in hospital and I was down south visiting him and I thought Alan had gone to France. By this time he, as I say, joined this, when I say they made the corsets, they made the machinery up here, this was the, so he was due to go to France on the Friday morning, on the Monday morning, I thought well I’ll go and see my father because he’s in hospital in High Wycombe and so I went off after Alan went but Alan didn’t feel well so he didn’t go. And the next thing was, on Tuesday, I got a message, we had a houseboy living in the house at Gadsby, called John Griss and he rang me up and said ‘oh the Wing Commander’s not too well, I thought you should know’ I said, ‘he went to France!’ He said ‘no he didn’t go because he didn’t feel well.’ So he said the doctor, our doctor lived in Gadsby village, so he sent him straight to, which hospital in Leicester?
[Other]: Royal Infirmary.
MF: Did he go to the Royal Infirmary?
[Other]: Glenfield? No.
HB: Not then, Glenfield not. Be the Leicester General?
MF: No, it was a nursing home.
[Other]: No, it wasn’t a nursing home, it was a full blown hospital.
MF: Oh was it, it was, yes. [Pause] Anyway, but Gavin and I got into a car straight away, rushed up here and this boy in the house said ‘he’s been taken to the hospital in Leicester’, and we walked in and Dr Ward, who lived in Gadsby was our doctor, was struggling, said ‘I’m afraid he’s dead’, so, like that. [Paper shuffling]
HB: What year was that?
[Other]: 1971.
HB: ’71 Oh dear. Oh right, I think, I thought I’d read somewhere that he’d been taken ill, and he was being treated for the illness and had the heart attack. Yes.
MF: Yes he was. Yes. As I say, he should have gone to France, but he didn’t go. But he didn’t let me know that he wasn’t going to France, so course I thought he’d gone, there you are.
HB: Can I just take you right back, very simple question: can you remember what your service number was?
MF: Ha! Something 0 double 1. Can’t remember. 20286 double 1. 20286 double 1. Maybe.
HB: 202 86
MF: Double 1. Maybe.
HB: Double 1.
[Other]: Sorry Harry. Can I just interrupt, just one second?
HB: Can I just pause the tape. Restart this, it’s 10.38, we’re just restarting the interview. Mary’s son Gavin has just had to leave, so we’ll just carry on. Right, so we’ve got to Alan actually dying in 1971. Can I just again, just go back a little bit, very, very disreputable question to ask a lady, but can you tell me what your date of birth is?
MF: 25 11 21.
HB: That’s lovely, thank you. What was your original maiden name?
MF: Stanley-Smith
HB: Stanley-Smith hyphenated. And has the Stanley got an e in it?
MF: Yes.
HB: Stanley-Smith. That’s lovely. [Cough] ‘Scuse me. Yes, just going back now, just try and pick up on one or two things we may have skated over a little bit. You said you went to boarding school. Where did you go to boarding school?
MF: Cliftonville, in Kent.
HB: Cliftonville, right. And you finished boarding school in time to join the RAF.
MF: Yes. I became head girl at boarding school. [Chuckle]
HB: Ooh!
MF: And well then, as I say, left. I did a little job in London for a bit, for a month or two, then I joined the WAAF.
HB: Yes. And as you say, you did your training in Windermere.
MF: Yes.
HB: How, what was your training like? Was it austere or was it very relaxed?
MF: No, quite happy, quite easy going year, yes.
HB: But you had to learn to look after your uniform.
MF: That sort of thing, yes. Yes, we marched about, as I say so long ago now, I can’t remember.
HB: And then you became a personal assistant to Sir Norman Bottomley.
MF: Ah, not, no, to Air Vice Marshal Harrison to begin with.
HB: Ah. Sorry, Harrison was the one that was left at the altar.
MF: Yes, yes.
HB: So you went to Air Vice Marshal Harrison and then a short time.
MF: At Exning, yes.
HB: At Exning. And then a short time with Harris. Where were you based with Harris?
MF: Bomber Command, Headquarters.
HB: At?
MF: Well, Walters Ash.
HB: High Wycombe, Walters Ash.
MF: Back in my home village you see.
HB: Yeah. And then you went to Sir Norman Bottomley.
MF: Yep. He took over from Harris, so I, and he was lovely to work for, and they had a house, the official house there was called Springfields, up at Prestwood, a mile or two away and we used to go up there. If there was nothing to do he’d say ‘oh let’s go and have a game of tennis’, he was lovely.
HB: Oh, right.
MF: But then you probably had to work till midnight if something happened, but you didn’t mind.
HB: And did you, when you worked for Harrison and Harris and Bottomley, did you notice, or did you, were you conscious of the pressure they were under?
MF: Well not really, no, I think you just accepted it, you know.
HB: Because I mean at that stage of the war, in ’43 ’44 things were very pressured.
MF: Yes, yes. Well I mean, that was when I was at Newmarket you see, at Exning, during the war, yes, I suppose you did, but I mean he, Harrison, the man at Newmarket, the Air Vice Marshal, was, as I say, very difficult to get on with to begin with as he didn’t like women because he’d been left at the altar, but he, I mean we tamed him, he became quite human, but he wasn’t easy. I mean if we went to a party, we had Corporal Wynn, the driver, and a Humber car, and we’d go out to this party, you know, and he didn’t drink, he’d have that much beer and then he’d come up to me and say ‘well I’m going home now, if you can get a lift you can stay.’ [Laugh] He was terribly non-party so that was when I invariably got a lift with Alan you see, went home with Alan because he was then stationed at 3 Group where I was, having a rest from operations and so he used to take me home, so that’s how we met really.
HB: Ah, right. That falls into line now. [Cough] When you worked for Sir Norman Bottomley, you got a Mentioned in Despatches.
MF: Yes.
HB: What was that for? Being very good?
MF: [Laughter] Well, I must have been quite good I suppose at something!
HB: Can you remember what year that would be?
MF: 40, what 50? When did I work for him, 50?
HB: Well you finished with the RAF when you were married, which was er, 1946.
MF: Yes well that was when I got my MiD, when I left him, you know.
HB: Right, so that’s. Right. And do you know if that was published in the Gazette, the London Gazette?
MF: Well I suppose it was. Yes they would be.
HB: Oh, right, so, social life, in the RAF, you’ve joined the RAF, you’ve done your training, what was your social life like?
MF: Oh marvellous! [Laughter]
HB: It was, it was good was it?
MF: Absolutely! Yes, I mean even uncommissioned we had great fun, good parties and things and I’m a party girl, you know, like people. Oh, we had great time and then when I was commissioned we had marvellous parties at Newmarket and Exning. [Chuckle]
HB: Oh right. Were the parties in private houses and places or did you have them on station?
MF: Oh, on the station mainly. Yes, yes.
HB: Did you go to any of the parties out at say somewhere like Lakenheath, or?
MF: Oh yes, oh we went everywhere, yes, all round because 3 Group covered Lakenheath and all those things in Suffolk you see, stations in Suffolk so we never stopped. But as I say my boss then, Harrison, didn’t like parties, so that’s why I had such a good time. [Laugh]
HB: So you were left to your own devices. Oh, that’s wonderful, that’s wonderful. So you met Alan when you were at 3 Group.
MF: Yes, ‘cause he came in for a rest from his operations.
HB: He would have been, ‘cause he was in four squadrons as far as I can find out. He was in 7 Squadron, 35 Squadron, 156 and 161.
MF: 161. All Pathfinders.
HB: Yeah. And he, at the time you [emphasis] met him, in 3 Group, what rank was he then?
MF: He was Squadron Leader.
HB: He was Squadron Leader. Right. So, there’s this dashing Squadron Leader, having a rest from operations.
MF: Operations, in Newmarket, Exning. Yes.
HB: And he swept off your feet!
MF: Yes, sort of. [Laughter]
HB: Or you were just great friends and gradually got swept off your feet. So just going on with the theme of Alan, Alan had joined the RAF quite early.
MF: Yes, he joined at sixteen, said he was seventeen.
HB: Did he? Right.
MF: But he was very tall, so he looked seventeen you know, so he got away with it.
HB: Initially where did he start his training, can you remember?
MF: Of course I didn’t know him in those days. He lived in Gloucestershire. I can’t remember.
HB: ‘Cause he would have joined as, what, something like a Leading Aircraftsman I would think. If he was going to.
MF: Yes.
HB: And can you remember where he did his flying training?
MF: Where he started? No I can’t.
HB: So actually, thinking back, if he joined in, when he was sixteen.
MF: He said he was seventeen.
HB: That would be, that would be just about 1939?
MF: Yes.
HB: Right at the beginning of the war.
MF: Yes, right at the beginning.
HB: Yeah. So it’s possible he learnt his flying in this country.
MF: Oh yes, oh definitely.
HB: Before they started sending them to South Africa and Canada.
MF: Oh yes.
HB: So he did his pilot training and went to squadron. He flew an awful lot of operations, didn’t he.
MF: Oh yes, yes. Whole lot. I couldn’t, I should have looked out the books for you.
HB: Oh no, no. It’s what you [emphasis] can remember of it because obviously that’s a little bit closer. If think if memory serves, he certainly flew seventy or more operations.
MF: Oh yes.
HB: And eventually became a Master Bomber?
MF: Yes, he was a Master Bomber.
HB: With Pathfinders, so, while he was doing that, you’ve had the party time and you’ve now moved on, so you’re serving at the level of Sir Norman Bottomley, and you’re seeing the strategy and everything, but you must also have seen the returns coming in of the losses.
MF: Oh yes.
HB: And Alan was still flying then, obviously. So how did, did you just accept that, or did it concern you?
MF: Well you did it was going on all the time, wasn’t it, I mean you know, it was all part of the war so you just accepted it. You were sad for twenty four hours when somebody you knew lost their life, but that was it. I mean there we are.
HB: Sad time. Lot of good people went.
MF: Mm hm.
HB: Yeah. The, so as you’ve come, as Alan was coming towards the end of the war, before you went, before you were married, did you sit down and talk about what you thought you might do after the war or was it just accepted?
MF: Oh, I mean we didn’t think we’d ever come out of the Air Force, I didn’t. I didn’t want to. But he thought it was better for him, I mean the money was better and we had three children to educate, so that was one reason, you know, when he came out, but it was the worst thing we ever did because I think he would have made a very good high rank officer. I didn’t want to come out, but there we are, what do you do.
HB: Am I right, were there rules about whether or not you could stay if you were married to a serving RAF officer?
MF: You could stay.
HB: Could you stay if you were married?
MF: Oh yes. Well.
HB: If you, sorry, a woman officer, could a woman officer stay in the RAF if she married another RAF officer?
MF: Oh no! Well I don’t think so. I suppose so, I don’t know. I mean I got out, I gave up because of having children.
HB: Yeah, I see what you mean, right, so Alan’s flown all these tours, you’ve eventually come back to Bomber Command, what was Alan doing in Bomber Command before you went to Buenos Aires, can you remember?
MF: Goodness, I ought to. What was he doing? I can’t remember now. No.
HB: I mean obviously he was working on things at a higher level.
MF: Yes, yes. That’s right.
HB: To become an Assistant ADC, sorry, Air Attaché, is quite, obviously quite demanding. So, I think what we’ll do is, I’ll terminate the interview now because I think there’s so much of Alan’s memorabilia that we need to look in to, we need to research properly, it’s unfair to ask you all the questions without the documents in front of you, so I think what we’ll do is, we’ll terminate the interview now, and I thank you on behalf of the Digital Archive for what you’ve told us.
MF: It’s silly, the things I’ve forgotten, but you do after all these years, you know.
HB: Absolutely. It’s been a pleasure, it’s er, I haven’t got a clock, I’ll have to just have a quick check, it’s quarter to eleven, sorry, I do have it wrong.
MF: Five to eleven.
HB: It’s five to eleven, and we’re just going to just stop the interview there and I’ve photographs to take, so thank you very much, I’ll just stop that. Supplementary to the interview, it’s 11.38, we’ve been chatting and Mary has just been telling me about an incident which I think is relevant. So just tell me what happened when you came back from France to see Alan.
MF: Well I saw them land in, from Brazil, and then a week later he rang me up and said would you like to come on this flypast?
HB: And the date of the flypast? 6th. 6th of June?
MF: 6th of June, yes.
HB: 6th of June 1946.
MF: And I said yes please, so I flew with Michael Beetham who was on Alan’s right, Alan was the commander and so I flew with him and it was absolutely marvellous, and then went back to Gravely where they were stationed, had a marvellous lunch and very late because I mean they were so good to the Air Force, you know, didn’t mind, and that was when he said, somebody said ‘Mary, what are you going to do when you leave the WAAF’, and I said ‘I don’t know’, and before I could say anything he said ‘she’s going to marry me.’ Just like that! [Laughter]
HB: Right! So the flypast was over London.
MF: Over London, yes.
HB: Over Buckingham Palace.
MF: Yes, over Buckingham Palace.
HB: [Cough] And it was a flight of Lancasters.
MF: Whoops. Come and see.
HB: Steady, steady!
MF: Whoops. I’ve got this.
HB: Got it. Just going to pause the interview. We just paused the interview there.
MF: Can I offer you anything drink? Would you like a sherry or something, dear?
HB: No I’m fine thank you, I’m fine. We’ve just paused the interview to pop out into the hall and take some photographs of the various pictures that Mary has of her late husband Alan’s career, the most important being the 8th of June Flypast in the white Lancasters, with Mary sat in the right hand plane with, what was his name? Bentham?
MF: It was amazing!
HB: You obviously thoroughly enjoyed that.
MF: Oh absolutely! I mean I was young enough then to enjoy all these things and I sat on this little bit, you know, about that big, all the way over London!
HB: About the size of a footstool. Oh dear. Could you actually see out of the aircraft?
MF: Oh yes, a bit. Yes.
HB: Exciting!
MF: It was exciting. I was the only girl on the, in all this. Amazing.
HB: Wow, wow! So how, I notice in Alan’s medals he has the DSO. What did he get the DSO for?
MF: Oh goodness, [sigh] I can’t remember, some bombing, you know, thing. I don’t know.
HB: Oh right, ‘cause I know he got a DFC early on for bringing a very badly damaged aircraft back.
MF: Yes. DSO, DFC, AFC. Well the AFC was in peacetime I think, wasn’t it.
HB: Yeah. The Air Force Cross. Yes, but they aren’t, they’re not a common medal. He must have done something Mary!
MF: You what?
HB: He must have done something to earn it! [Laughter] I notice in the photograph of the medals there’s one there that has the look of an Argentinian medal, was that a gratitude medal from Argentina, for his service there? Buenos Aires.
MF: Oh yes. Yes, that’s right.
HB: That’s great.
MF: Yes, we, it’s rather nice, wasn’t it.
HB: Yes it is, very nice medal that one. So in, having gone through all of that time, he’s flown all the aircraft he flew during the Second World War and he’s ended up, he ended up flying Canberras. And where were they stationed?
MF: At Kinloss.
HB: At Kinloss. The photo reconnaissance and surveillance aircraft.
MF: Yes.
HB: So did he ever comment on the change from, the change in technology and aircraft.
MF: Not really, no. We had one tragedy there. There was a dining in night and a message came through that the ‘Truculent’ had gone down in the Thames and Kinloss had the only lifting gear, so Alan asked for a volunteer crew to, would they pick up this lifting gear, take it down to the Thames to get the ‘Truculent’ out.
HB: This was the submarine.
MF: Yes. And he got a volunteer crew. They went and crashed into an aircraft, into a mountain about five miles from Kinloss, just on take off: they were all killed. It was the most dreadful [emphasis] night, awful thing. And of course, well the ‘Truculent’, everybody drowned in the ‘Truculent’. So dreadful night. Always remember that.
HB: That must have affected Alan, quite.
MF: Oh yes, I mean, well it’s so depressing. I had all, we didn’t have any quarters at Kinloss, but we had a very nice flat in a big house in Forres and I had the wives in for supper because it was a dining in night, you know, and next thing was we knew, all the husbands coming up, well Alan and lots of his members, coming up the stairs, to tell these wives that their husbands had been killed.
HB: Oh no!
MF: Awful. Dreadful night, you know. Never forget it.
HB: That was.
MF: Yes. Think, as I say, he asked for a volunteer crew and, well there we are, they all crashed into this. So that was a very sad night at Kinloss.
HB: Yes, yes, it’s, it’s the sort of incident that hits you very personally, it’s so involved.
MF: Oh yes, hm. Yes, I mean we all knew, well we all knew each other so well; I’m very gregarious and so was Alan, we all got on with everybody, you know.
HB: Yes, difficult time.
MF: Yes, very difficult.
HB: Difficult to remember as well, it’s an emotional thing to remember, it’s yes, difficult to talk about, yes. So we’ll come to the end of our supplementary interview, [laughing] that’s very, very kind of you Mary, thank you for letting me record that.
MF: Oh not a bit, I hope you’ll come back!
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
AFoisterMS171010, PLairdCraig1701
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Mary Stanley Foister
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
00:49:11 audio recording
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Harry Bartlett
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-10-10
Description
An account of the resource
Mary Stanley Foister grew up in Buckinghamshire, where her father's farm was taken over as Bomber Command Headquarters. She served in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force after she left school. Following training, she had a number of administrative posts as PA to high ranking RAF officers. Mary married Alan Craig, a Pathfinder pilot, and had three children. She was posted to several different locations during her service and in her married life before they settled down in Leicestershire. Mary tells of her various experiences during her life associated with the RAF, including flying on the Victory Flypast in London.
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.
Argentina
Brazil
France
Great Britain
Argentina--Buenos Aires
England--Buckinghamshire
England--Cambridgeshire
England--London
Brazil--Rio de Janeiro
Scotland--Moray
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1946
1948
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Anne-Marie Watson
Carolyn Emery
35 Squadron
ground personnel
Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984)
Lancaster
Pathfinders
RAF Graveley
RAF High Wycombe
RAF Kinloss
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
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
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
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
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
AGrayLW170301
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Bill Gray
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
02:06:45 audio recording
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Rob Gray
Lucy Davidson
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-03-01
Description
An account of the resource
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
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Australia
Great Britain
England--Suffolk
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
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/283/3439/AJonesPWA171207.2.mp3
b1161008fdc7ccbc2058d73a7d2e684d
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Jones, Thomas John
Tom Jones
T Jones
Description
An account of the resource
62 items. An oral history interview with Peter William Arthur Jones (b. 1954) about his father Thomas John Jones DFC (b. 1921, 1640434 and 184141 Royal Air Force), his log book, photographs, correspondence, service documents, aircraft recognition manuals, medals and a memoir. He flew operations as a flight engineer on 622 Squadron Stirling and 7 Squadron on Lancaster. <br /><br />The collection also contains an <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/2566">Album</a> of 129 types of aircraft. <br /><br />The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Peter Jones and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2014-12-04
2017-12-07
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Jones, PW
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today is the 7th of December 2017 and we’re in Lincoln talking with Peter Jones about the career and life of his father Thomas John Jones DFC. I think just first of all it’s interesting to reflect that in this case Peter didn’t elicit much information from his father, which is exactly the same with my father, and also Jan’s, in that they might have touched on trivialities, but they didn’t talk about what actually happened.
PJ: That’s very true.
CB: So Peter, how does that fit with your feeling of the background?
PJ: [Sigh] I feel very sad, that he, that he didn’t talk to me about it, about what he actually did and had to put up with, and when I did find out, I was immensely proud.
CB: I can imagine.
PJ: But also, as I only found out twenty four hours after he had died, it was an absolute maelstrom of emotions, of reading the memoir that he’d written fifty years after the war, secretly late at night, when my mother had gone to bed - I wasn’t living there at the time - and he’d put all his memories in a WH Smith notebook.
CB: Had he, really.
PJ: And when he’d finished them, he just hid them with all his personal papers I guess knowing I would eventually find it, after his death.
CB: What do you think prompted him to write it? What age was he when he wrote it?
PJ: He was in his eighties when he wrote that; he died in 2004. I don’t know, was he trying to exorcise his demons? Was he conscious that he hadn’t been able to tell me what he’d done and how he actually felt about what he’d done? I really don’t know.
CB: He was awarded the DFC.
PJ: He was.
CB: So clearly he’d had some really horrendous experiences which were rewarded. Do you think that it, to some extent, he felt he didn’t want to look as though he was in any way building on the background?
PJ: Yes, I think he did. He was a very modest man; he was a very modest, self-effacing gentleman. He was a lovely dad.
CB: But never got on to anything to do with wartime.
PJ: Only the very light-hearted stuff. [Microphone noise] He would talk about that, I mean he relates various stories of some of the capers the crew got up to, but when it went to operational, no. No details.
CB: What were the most dramatic capers they got up to would you say?
PJ: Um, I’ve got a lovely photograph taken at Mildenhall when he was flying with 622 Squadron and it shows my dad and three or four of the other crewmen dangling one of their colleagues out of a first floor window. By his legs. [Much laughter] I think that would probably be one of many stunts like that in the day, you know, it, obviously it would be quite a safety valve, and they would thrive on the black humour, but it was a lovely photograph.
CB: This is out of context in the sequence, but I think it’s worth just talking about – how do you think they dealt with the stress?
PJ: Certainly black humour. I think everyone deals with stress differently. So, I don’t know. My father was a smoker. When you, I’ve noticed that a lot, so many photographs of airmen back in the day, and airwomen, of course, they’re nearly all smoking. I think they enjoyed going down the pub as well.
CB: I mean we’ll get on to your father in a minute, but you, as the archivist here, are covering a huge range of different situations and they, there are two things that come out of that in a way, one is the release from the stress, and the other is, we’ll touch on later, is the LMF, the lacking moral fibre bit, which comes up but is largely buried, but the release of the stress is a broad one and in practical terms, what was the main safety valve would you say?
PJ: High jinks. I think that it was the high jinks. We at the archive have got so many photographs of, wonderful photographs of crew, both aircrew, ground crew, WAAFs, having a really good time, it was an adventure. They were young people. And when you look at the photographs of them having a good time, and then just look at the, look at the face, and then look at the rank, they really don’t go together. You’ve got a very, very young man or woman, with a very senior rank and again that must have, must have really weighed heavy on their shoulders.
CB: There was a notion, there is still I suppose a notion, that what the war did to people in the RAF, but particularly Bomber Command, was make them grow up really quickly. Do you reckon you see that in some of the pictures that have been submitted?
PJ: Definitely. Yeah. Certainly some of the more senior officers, you can see it in their faces: they’ve aged. They’ve aged. I mean my father when he, in 1944, he was twenty three. He looks older. And I think they did go through the mill, and I think it did age them, certainly mentally and probably physically as well with some, particularly the rear gunners who had to endure such cold. It must have been pretty dreadful.
CB: And constant flight, fright.
PJ: Yes. Of which they never spoke.
CB: No. I mean my CO in the Reserve had a mental breakdown after being chased by a Ju88 and then shot down, and so the stress there was huge. But what would you put down to the fact that almost, very largely, people in all of the Forces failed to talk about their experiences in the war? What do you think was the background of that?
PJ: We’re looking at a different decade, aren’t we. It was the stiff upper lip decade. It was the decade where men feared to shed tears, other than in private. I think that’s got a lot to do with it. I don’t, would they share it with the rest of the crew? I don’t know whether they would. In fact I don’t think they would, share their fears with the rest of the crew.
CB: No. I just get a feeling, having talked to people, that the LMF bit actually destabilised the crew so there was a very good reason for getting rid of them quickly, but if, and if they spoke about it, the crew was destabilised.
PJ: Yup. I think it was a fear of letting the crew down.
CB: That’s it.
PJ: Definitely.
CB: And that’s bombers, so we’ve got wider scopes than that, which is difficult to fathom.
PJ: [Pause] Mm. One of the things that my dad talks about, is a particular incident where, I can’t quite remember the details of it now, the nearest he actually came to being killed, and he actually quotes - this is in a, in his notes that he wrote fifty years after the event - he actually writes in there and describes this event and he describes himself saying, saying aloud, ‘don’t cry when you get the letter, mum’, and then he suddenly realises that he may be on an open mike, and thinks oh, maybe I shouldn’t have said that, but he wasn’t. You know, so I think that’s an example of again, fear of letting the crew down.
CB: Well I think we know, don’t we, that it’s clear from the four engined bombers but also from the, [throat clear] excuse me, two engined bombers, that the crew was the family.
PJ: They were. My dad describes them as being like brothers, rank didn’t matter.
CB: And they superseded all other relationships.
PJ: Indeed. Yeah, yeah. And because of the nature of the role that they were dealing with, they never made friends with other crews. They felt unable to, because they didn’t know how long they would know them for, and no thought was given to who had been in your bunk before you got in it. That must have been quite difficult to deal with.
CB: So in the Nissen huts there were two or three crews, and when one was lost then everything was picked up quickly, for replacement with another crew. Who they didn’t know either.
PJ: No. It must have been a terrible time for the ground crew, who saw so many come and go.
CB: Yes, and on ground crew, there are two aspects to that. One is losing their crew and their aeroplane, the other one is when the aeroplanes come back bent, or with horrors in. So what’s your perception of the ground crew reaction to that?
PJ: Well of course the ground crew always thought that the aircraft was theirs [emphasis], and they loaned it nightly to the aircrew and lo, you know, god help anyone that bent it, you know. But there was a lovely relationship between the flight crew and the ground crew, and I would imagine there was great banter. I know that my father thought the world of the ground crew. I mean they worked on his aircraft in the most appalling [emphasis] conditions sometimes, to keep it in tiptop condition and to keep the aircrew as safe as possible, or as safe as they could possibly be. But the ground crew must have gone through such terrible times, when their aircraft didn’t come back, you know. And it must have been there in the back of their mind that was it something that we missed? It’s terrible times.
CB: And the link between the aircrew and the ground crew would be the pilot and the engineer would it? Or what would be the main link – just the engineer?
PJ: I think pilot and engineer, yeah, but there would be camaraderie with the whole crew. I don’t know whether the ground crew actually were involved with trying to install the rear gunner in his turret because of course they struggled to get in there on their own.
CB: Yes, ‘cause moving on from there is the aftermath of an attack and removing crew who were injured, or dead. What was your perception of that?
PJ: Pretty grisly business. Very often it, I mean the rear gunners’ odds of survival were so few, so low, and it was quite common that the rear turret just had to be hosed out. Pretty unpleasant job.
CB: And the bits taken out as well.
PJ: Yes. One of the early things that my father talks about in his notes was when they first went to Mildenhall and they saw their first operational aircraft, and it was a, if I remember rightly, it was a Stirling, outside the Flying Control and it was absolutely riddled with holes. And as they walked round, round this aircraft, they got to the rear gunner’s turret and it was just a shattered mess of just shattered Perspex and bent metal, with lots of blood in it, and uniform, bits of uniform and hair, it was at this point my father actually quotes in his notes, ‘it was this point we realised we’d got to pay back the cost of our training,’ and it all became very real.
CB: Yes. Let’s just. That’s a good phrase, I think, that’s appeared in many cases, probably, which is the payback, so how did you perceive the crews’ attitude to that?
PJ: They were professionals: they were dedicated. They were airmen, trained. They were young men, it was an adventure, it was a job and they were young men under orders and they would obey those orders.
CB: Hm. And in a way they were completely detached, if they were at twenty thousand feet, that’s four miles above [throat clearing] where the effect of their ammunition, their bombs, is felt.
PJ: Yes, they’re kind of divorced from it.
CB: Detached.
PJ: Yes, all they see is fires, and explosions and then of course the flak, the searchlights, et cetera and the ever-present fear of fighters.
CB: On a slightly lighter note then, there’s if they make a mess inside the aeroplane, there’s a fine attached to this.
PJ: There was. My father actually flew three hundred hours, three hundred flying hours, before he got rid of his air sickness and squadron lore had it, that if you threw up in the aircraft you had to pay a fine to the ground crew and clear it up yourself. He actually, he mentions that his bank account was saved by a member of the ground crew who gave him any empty biscuit tin. [Chortle] I think that’s another reason why he liked ground crew!
CB: Then there’s the other aspect which is the filling of the Elsan, [clears throat] or not. [Laughter]
PJ: Exactly, or not! Yes, I would think so, or not. A filthy piece of kit, back of the aircraft, just near the rear turret which must have been pretty unpleasant for the gunner. They’d use anything rather than have to use the Elsan, including milk bottles or peeing down the flare chute or even into the bomb bay. But you know, it was desperate measures to have to go and use the Elsan.
CB: See how long it was before it froze!
PJ: Not long, at eighteen thousand feet! [Laughter]
CB: Now [throat clear] what about the interpersonal relationships of the crew? How did that work?
PJ: They were, as I’ve said, they were like brothers; rank didn’t matter. However, once they were operational, on an operational flight, it came into play. The rank did matter then and the skipper’s order was to be acted on, there was no messing about, when they were on ops, there was no, there was no overuse of the communications at all. Everything was spot on. They were professionals.
CB: I think one of the interesting things, looking at the log book and your details of the crew, is that they, the pilot was Royal Australian Air Force.
PJ: He was.
CB: And you also had a wireless operator who was the same, but you had two, he had two Royal New Zealand Air Force and two RAF, three RAF Reserve, RAF Volunteer Reserve. So how did that interaction go?
PJ: It seemed, looking at my dad’s notes, it seemed to work really well. There was no, they were a crew and it didn’t matter where they were from or what their backgrounds were. They were a crew.
CB: I’m going to stop just a mo. Now your father did a lot of ops, but we’ve talked about the aircrew, what about the hierarchy? So, there was a Flight Commander and a Squadron Commander, did you get much out of the notes on that, the relationships?
PJ: No, he does, it’s humour, in some of it. He doesn’t talk much about the squadron commanders although he does talk about when he joined 7 Squadron, that they’d just lost their CO on operational flying. He was replaced and within a fortnight the replacement had gone; had been killed as well.
CB: This is a Pathfinder Squadron.
PJ: This is 7 Squadron at RAF Oakington, yeah. Thinking that, looking back you think was the policy of the squadron CO flying ops a good one? You have to question it really, don’t you. It can’t have done the morale any good, when the boss cops it.
CB: Well presumably the Flight Commanders were Squadron Leaders and the Squadron Commander, ‘cause there’d be thirty aircraft, would be a Wing Commander, would that be right?
PJ: Yes. The quote that my father gives it was three Wing Commanders that were lost.
CB: Oh was it? Oh, I see. In sequence.
PJ: In sequence, yes.
CB: Any indication of whether the Station Commander flew with them occasionally, because Group Captains did sometimes.
PJ: Um, in his logbook there is one: Lockhart. He was, he flew, my father was Lockhart’s flight engineer for one op, other than that it was Fred Philips, DFC and Bar, who was my father’s pilot.
CB: I mentioned earlier the topic of LMF – the lacking moral fibre - did he, in his notes in any way refer to that, either by experience or hearsay?
PJ: He did. And he speaks, and he speaks with warmth about those that just had reached the end of their tether and couldn’t do it any more, and he says he felt sorry for them, but they were still airmen; they weren’t to be ridiculed.
CB: Any indication of their fate, fates?
PJ: Nope. No.
CB: Just stop a mo. I think, in restarting, it’s worth just exploring a couple of things and putting it into context. A lot of these things are written up and in this case there’s a lot from Thomas’ recollections, but the key is the being able to listen to the narrative that you’re delivering. And there are two topics: one’s LMF and the other is the Guinea Pigs. So on LMF, what’s he say there in his report? Notes.
PJ: In his notes he writes a paragraph about LMF in it and he writes: ‘some unfortunates, through no fault of their own, reach the point where they can no longer carry on. Irrespective of how many ops they’d completed, they were deemed lacking in moral fibre. I never knew or heard of any member of aircrew that had anything but sympathy for them.’ And I think, I would like to hope that was a general feeling amongst the airmen, they had reached a point where they couldn’t go on.
CB: Yeah. For whatever reason.
PJ: For whatever reason, yeah.
CB: What do you know about their fate, after they were removed?
PJ: He doesn’t mention a fate at all, he doesn’t mention it.
CB: Okay. And then the people who were badly injured, burned or amputees, what’s he got on that?
PJ: He says, ‘I remember some of the lads who had a tough time: the empty sleeves and trouser legs of the amputees, there were lads with no faces, noses and ears no more than shrivelled buttons, and heavy, newly grafted eyelids, their mouths were little more than slits in a face rebuilt with shining tightly stretched skin grafts, some had hands shrivelled and clawed like eagles talons. They sought no sympathy or favours, but carried on doing a job they could manage. When they went drinking with us, their laughter was as hearty as ever, their spirits unbroken,’ I’m sorry.
CB: It’s all right, we’ll stop. They carried on doing the job they were trained to do.
PJ: Yeah. And he goes on to say when they went drinking with us, their laughter was as hearty as ever, their spirits unbroken and no sign of bitterness. I do find it very difficult to read some of my father’s notes. Even though it’s now, what, thirteen years since he died.
CB: But it’s intensely personal for you.
PJ: Very.
CB: Which it was for all these individuals.
PJ: The notes that he wrote, he wrote in the first person, so it is as though he’s actually speaking to me from the page. Which he is.
CB: Of course, yes.
PJ: That was his idea.
CB: Well the Guinea Pigs, we’re talking about partly there, of course, we’ve interviewed as a group of people, I’m sure we’ve interviewed a number of those, and seen the effects of them and even these years later, some of them brilliantly mended shall we say, but always obvious that they’ve been injured in one way or the other, and McIndoe did an amazing job.
PJ: Fabulous man. And his team.
CB: And of course, there is now, indeed, not just him. There is actually a museum, isn’t there, down in East Grinstead now.
PJ: Yes, I really must go.
CB: In the County Museum, in the Town Museum, and there’s a memorial as well of course. There aren’t many left, but there were six hundred and fifty, in total.
PJ: Yes, it’s sad that we are losing so many of our ladies and gents now.
CB: Shall we now go specifically on to your father’s situation. Here, if we start with earliest information about him. So, he was born in 1921.
PJ: He was.
CB: In Birmingham, is that right?
PJ: Yeah. He was born on the 19th of April, 1921, at 35 Wrentham Street in Birmingham 1, right in the very city centre of Birmingham. The house that he was born in was a back-to-back property on three floors, and a cellar. I think now we would class these properties as slums; they were dreadful places. On the ground floor was a living room and a small scullery, the bedroom above was where his parents slept and then the bedroom above that was where the children were. My dad was one of three. They were, Edna was his, his older sister, and she had a bed of her own, whereas Dad and Ron, his brother, shared a bed. He would talk to me about these sort of things, and he always said that it was cold, bitterly cold, in winter, and they would snuggle up together and there were times when they actually had to sleep under coats. Another thing he would talk about was the fact that it was shared facilities for houses and I think it was six families shared two toilets, which would have made mornings rather interesting, I think.
CB: Out in the garden this is.
PJ: Out in the yard. Yes.
CB: In the yard.
PJ: My father’s parents were William Jones, and Amy Jones, neé Roberts. His father had served with, in the trenches in the First World War, but after the war he became a metal presser. His mother, obviously my grandmother, was a housewife. The family before my dad was of school age, thankfully moved south to Hall Green, which is quite a nice, leafy suburb, and certainly things got better for them down there and he went to, I think it was Pitmaston Road School, and he actually says in his notes that he rather liked school and, but I don’t know what age he was when he left school. I know certainly that he, when he left school he started an apprenticeship with the BSA, in Small Heath, in Birmingham.
CB: Well school leaving age in those days was fourteen wasn’t it, so apprenticeships tended to pick up from there.
PJ: Yeah. When war broke out he was too young to enlist, really. He joined the Home Guard, but I don’t know a lot about that, and I think he was determined to serve, because he was just fed up with sitting at night in the air raid shelter and watching his city burn. He describes in his notes how Edna would sob in, at the very back end of the shelter, frightened as, frightened stiff, as the bombs whistled down. But he was always the boy in the doorway, watching what was going on. Eventually he applied for service, and he applied for service in the Royal Air Force. Why he chose the Royal Air Force I don’t know. Was it the nice uniform? Was it the chance of flying? Why didn’t he choose the army? I think possibly why he didn’t fancy the army was because his father and his grandfather had both served in the army. His dad had served in the trenches and Walter, his, my father’s grandfather, had been out in the Boer War so maybe he’d heard grisly stories about life in the army, on the front line. One memory that I have of my dad when I was growing up, was that he wasn’t a good sailor. In the 1950s and 60s we would go on holiday to the East Yorkshire coast, or the East Riding coast as it was then, and we’d go to Bridlington, and during the holiday it would always, there would always be a cruise on the Yorkshire Bell or whatever the other ones were called, in Flamborough Bay, and I remember my father was always very quiet and rather green around the gills, [chuckle] so I think that was probably the reason he didn’t volunteer for naval duties. Um, I think, I need to go through his log book, but I’m pretty sure he went to Cardington first, in September ‘42 for aircrew selection. And interestingly, when I got hold of his service record, he was turned down - for aircrew - and I think he must have been pretty, pretty brassed off about that. What changed their mind, I really don’t know, because he ended up as aircrew and successfully carried out sixty four ops with main force and Pathfinder Force, so something must have impressed them. I think I have a very vague memory of my dad talking about the flight engineer’s position on Stirlings, which is the aircraft that he started on, as being very poky. My dad was five foot one, so maybe they changed their mind because they wanted small flight engineers! I’d rather think that they saw his potential rather than his size [laughter]. But I guess, like all of the trades, they needed engineers and here was an enthusiastic young feller who wanted to fly. Anyway, from Cardington he was posted to Padgate for his induction and that’s where he was issued with his service number, and like all servicemen it was a number he would never, ever forget. From Padgate he went to the Initial Training Wing, 42 ITW, at Redcar up on Teesside, and there he was billeted with Mrs Thatcher on Richmond Road, Redcar for six weeks and he talks about the capers he got up to with Ken Battersby and Chaz Curle, but most of all he remembers how icy cold it was doing drill on the sea front with the howling north, north wind and the spray from the North Sea. Must be pretty unpleasant. But anyway, he got through that. In December ’42 he then went to RAF Cosford, and there he, a quote from RAF Cosford, he actually said, ‘everything involved muck and mud down there.’ He says that in the first week of every entry it was spent on fatigues, peeling four foot high piles of vegetables and after every meal the floors and tables of the huge dining hall had to be cleared and polished. There was also guard duty but they didn’t mind it because everybody else had to do it. I suppose they’d all gripe but it had to be done, it’s just how it was. From there he went to start his engineering course at St Athan, by this time he was what, twenty two. I’ve got a lovely photograph of him at the age of twenty two, taken at St Athan, where he looks like a very, very young sergeant. He was a natural engineer. It never left him, he was a perfectionist in everything he did in later life. He drove my mother batty because he was plan, plan and then do, whereas my mother wanted plan – do, or just do. [Laughter] But he was a great planner. He was a perfectionist in everything he did. I think that comes from his RAF training and it was instilled in him how important it was. A lot of the people that he’d been at Redcar with were also at St Athan and he writes, most of the lads that had been on the ITW were at St Athan. He records in his memoir lots of names, Tommy Meehan, MacMeehan, John Mullins, Jimmy Cruickshank, Albert Stocker, Arnold Hurn, Jack Walker and John Gartland. And that they would be killed. Taffy Lightfoot and Roy Eames would go down over Bremen and that Billy Currie was shot down whilst still training. It was pretty terrible, and it was a relatively small group to start with, at the ITW, that so many would be killed, and so quickly. From there he went to 1657 Heavy Conversion Unit at Stradishall, and it was here that he experienced his first flight in a Stirling. He’d never been higher than a first floor window in his life and he really didn’t know how he was going to cope with it. And his description, I think, of his first flight is fabulous. It’s just something that you don’t think about unless you’ve done it yourself, in an aircraft of that generation, which sadly I haven’t but would love to. And he describes taxying to the runway and, ‘hesitating for a few seconds before beginning the mad dash to the other end and how the aircraft’s thirty tons lifted off the runway and it promptly began to sway from side to side and up and down. Looking back down the fuse, the wings actually flapped, the huge engine appeared to be nodding in unison, looking back down the fuselage the whole structure was twisting back and forth,’ and he says that the height didn’t bother him but after ten minutes the motion caused him to be sick and here he says it took three hundred flying hours before the airsickness settled down. Quite remarkable. I can’t imagine flying in an aircraft that’s doing that, but. It was at Stradishall that he was crewed up, and it was the same process that they all went through: all met up bumbling around in a hangar and sort of someone would come up and say fancy being my flight engineer or I need a rear gunner, and it’s a kind of odd way of doing things; but it worked! You know. I think it’s quite remarkable that a skipper could have, I don’t know, almost a special sense of who he’s choosing and certainly with Fred Philips’ crew, they gelled straight away. I mean the crew was Fred Philips who would become, was awarded DFC before he was twenty one and was awarded Bar before he was twenty two. He was an insurance clerk from Punchbowl, Sydney. Dave Goodwin was a New Zealander, he was the navigator, another Kiwi was Clive Thurstan who was initially bomb aimer, and he had an interesting nickname: he was known as Thirsty Thurston - I wonder why! The wireless operator was an Australian, called Stan Williamson. Ron Wynn who was RAFVR was the mid upper gunner, he was from Stockport. Joe Naylor, again RAFVR was the rear gunner, and interesting he was known by everyone, sorry, it was John Naylor, and he was known by everyone as Joe, or maybe I’ve got that the wrong way round and they did their first flight together on the 29th of September 1943. I can’t imagine what it was, what it would feel like, I really can’t. But having read the memoir, they became instantly, a crew, and gelled as a crew, immediately. And it was after thirty four flying hours at Stradishall that they were declared fit for operations and as I said earlier, that was when it suddenly became very real. On the 2nd of September ’43 they joined 622 Squadron at Mildenhall. They were flying Stirlings. The squadron converted to Lancasters in November ‘43. That’s where his log book starts to get very interesting. Whereas he’d logged his operations in quite detail with additional information added after the op, I think later on. He’s quite detailed, he notes targets and also notes the, sometimes notes, tonnage of bombs and the aircraft that took place and the losses. Having looked through a lot of log books they are all very different. They’re all of the same format, but every airman had his own way of putting things in. I love the fact that you rarely, rarely see a scrappy log book: the writing is almost identical in them all. Whether it was something that was taught at school, or whether it was something that was taught during their training, that they all seemed to have the same handwriting. They’re beautifully readable and they are fascinating books to look through. His first op was a gardening op, a minelaying op, on Skaggerat and he mentions that they had an extra man, for gardening ops, they had a naval, a member of the Royal Navy that would arm the mines before they were dropped and then it just goes on with I think, next we’ve got two ops to Hanover, the first of which they had to turn back due to engine failure, and then it was gardening again, but this time at Kattegat. And just, it’s not intense, the flying, really, right, having said that, I’ve just turned the page, [paper shuffling] and I’ve gone the wrong way round. Er, yup. He’s going to Ludwigshafen, Berlin, Berlin, Stuttgart, Schweinfurt, Stuttgart again. His last op with 622 was on the 1st of March, the Stuttgart. And it was there that they, went, after that they went to Warboys and this is where they each learned a little bit of each other’s role so that should anything happen someone else would be able to carry out your role and not let the crew down and hopefully get home.
CB: Now Warboys was the night flying unit, so what were they there to do?
PJ: A lot of it was circuits and landings, obviously like the initial training but they were learning night navigation I believe as well, using a bubble sextant and things like that and that was the second sort of hat that my father wore. That he, he learned to do the, now what is it called, the navigating via the stars?
CB: The star shots.
PJ: Star shots, thank you. Yes. It was after that, that on the 4th of April 1944 they transferred to 7 Squadron, Pathfinder Force, at RAF Oakington in Cambridgeshire. Their ops started on the 9th of April with an attack on the railway yards in Lisle. This was ’44, so a lot of the ops here are French. This was running up to D-Day, and interspersed with German ops as well, but there’s an awful lot of operational flying on Normandy. [Paper shuffling]. Get these the right way round. On the 1st of July they start doing day ops, or daylight operations again it’s all French and they’re hitting communications, flying bomb sites, railway yards, oil plants and then he goes night flying again, over Germany, and then it’s back to France. Interestingly some of these ops they were flying two ops a day. On the 18th of July ’44 they did a French op, a flying bomb site, flying three hours fifteen minutes in the morning, then at night they were up again for three hours thirty five minutes attacking an oil plant in France. A lot of these French ops now in July, Fred Philips had been promoted to Master Bomber with 7 Squadron, so I guess it would have been even more intense with the crew than it had been in the past because I guess they weren’t dropping bombs and markers then scarpering: they had to hang around. Must have been pretty stressful. Going on to again, July. On the 30th of July, my dad’s log book shows that they were bombing the Normandy battle area. That’s followed by more flying bomb sites. On the 6th of August they were observing the artillery firing, 7th of August it was the Normandy battle area again, and it was the enemy strong points were being bombed, back to oil depots and then fuel dumps. The 12th of August 1944 there were two ops: in the day it was a fuel dump, four hours five minutes, and then in the evening they were stemming the enemy retreat. Then it’s back to flying bomb sites on a daytime raid. 29th of August 1944 was the longest flight that they ever did, and that was to Stettin in Poland, a total of nine hours and ten minutes, and my dad refers to this op in his notes by saying that it was the coldest he had ever been on an op and he felt so sorry for the rear gunner, because my father was in a heated cockpit and of course there was little heating for the rear gunner and of course many of them had a clear vision panel although they punched the panel out to see, so he must have been incredibly [emphasis] cold on that raid.
CB: Just before you go on from there, in his notes, what does he say about the bombing of the V1 and V2 sites, because they were difficult a to find and b to actually hit?
PJ: He doesn’t actually mention them, he doesn’t say much about them. It’s all in his log book with just a little note, he doesn’t actually describe physically attacking the V1 and V2 sites, and most of his descriptions are of Berlin and the Ruhr, which were of course the bread and butter targets, and nasty targets as well.
CB: Yes, so how did he feel, in his notes, about Berlin?
PJ: Like them all, he hated it. It was the big city. It was the place that Hitler did not [emphasis] want hit, but.
CB: So what was the significance of them being an unpleasant place to go? Was it more flak, was it fighters or combination of both?
PJ: It was a combination of both. I mean Berlin had massive, massive flak towers didn’t they, and the flak was intense. Um, he describes the noise when the curtain went back, in the briefing, when they followed the red line and at the end of the red line was Berlin and he just describes it was a loud groan. Really, no one wanted to go to the big city.
CB: So as the Pathfinder, now on 7 Squadron, the most accomplished ones would drop the reds, the newer ones would drop the greens, if Fred Phillips became the Master Bomber did that mean they ended up dropping reds?
PJ: Er, I don’t know, he doesn’t describe that. He does remember graphically being extremely uncomfortable circling the target for so long, on an open radio, you know, and he was very aware that they were the sitting duck, the aircraft that had to be shot down.
CB: And what height would they be flying then? Does he give any indication of that?
PJ: He talks about eighteen thousand feet. Whether they dropped for the target, I don’t know. He does describe flying over enemy territory at ten thousand feet, when they were, they’d been severely shot up over the target and they experienced severe [emphasis] airframe icing and the only way that they could gain height was to make the, was to jettison anything and they ended up throwing out all of the ammunition and the guns and they flew back to the UK at ten thousand feet, over enemy territory. Eventually, there was no way they were going to get back to Cambridgeshire, so they diverted to the first airfield available which was West Malling in Kent, fighter station, and ran out of fuel and piled into the runway. They wrote the aircraft off completely. And he describes having to get back to Oakington, from Kent to Cambridgeshire, on the train, in flying gear. [Laughter] There was no taxi in those days. No, but that was just one of the dodgy moments he had.
CB: Did the aircraft become unserviceable or a write off because he landed without undercarriage, or what happened exactly?
PJ: He doesn’t go into great detail, but it was written off, completely written off. I don’t know at the time whether West Malling had a concrete runway or whether it was still grass, I don’t know. But I can’t imagine the CO of West Malling being impressed as a Lancaster drops in very heavily. But they got away with it. They were, at Oakington, Fred Philips’ crew were known as the lucky crew. They’d been flying on a lot of ops by then and they were probably seen as one of the more senior crews on station and they were invariably late back, and usually peppered with holes and my dad describes in his notes, once, the fact that they were so late back that he later discovered they’d been written off and marked up as missing and he describes how they eventually landed and they were debriefed and then they went into the dining hall for their post-operational bacon and eggs and he said there was one of the, there was a WAAF in there and soon as they walked there in she burst into tears.
CB: And the relationship with the WAAFs, was that regular or how did it pan out?
PJ: I think it was, yeah, again, they had great respect for the WAAFs and many a young amorous airman could be put down by just one stare from them [chuckle].
CB: Does he make any comment, it’s an interesting point though I think, about the experience of the WAAFS who had relationships with the aircrew and constantly losing that person?
PJ: He doesn’t mention it, but I’m aware that it must have been very difficult. And I mean some of the poor girls got the reputation as being the chop girl because they’d lost so many boyfriends, or well, airmen who they’d had relationships with, and they got this dreadful reputation and that must have been really hard to live with.
CB: Absolutely.
PJ: And yet there are so many lovely stories about the relationship between the aircrew and the WAAFs. Stevie Stevens’ story is absolutely fantastic, in that, I can’t remember where he was flying from, he, he really enjoyed, loved the sound of the WAAF controller’s voice and then she suddenly just disappeared off the radio and she was never heard of again at that station. I think it was Scampton that he moved to and lo and behold, there it was, the same voice as he was requesting permission to land and he was so intrigued by this WAAF’s voice that he actually went to the Control Tower to see who she was and of course the upshot of that was that they married!
CB: Never looked back.
PJ: Never looked back and are still happily married to this day. Yeah. Some lovely stories.
CB: I think one of the interesting ones that emerged from interviews is the occasions where the WAAFs lined up at the end of the runway to wave off. Does he refer to that in any way?
PJ: He does. Yeah, he does, he said there would be a row of them, or a row of people on the Control Tower balcony and there would be, and he said invariably there would be, I think he calls it a gaggle of WAAFs, that would wave their handkerchiefs to them, but another person that he talks about was a little girl and he talks about this, a family that lived next to the perimeter track in a farm cottage, and he describes how the squadron would taxi round the perimeter tracks from their various dispersals, describing, and he described the aircraft as being like a row of ducks and he said just this roar and spit and hiss of brakes and he said there was this little blonde girl would appear at the back, at the garden gate, every time there was an aircraft on the perimeter track and she would wave to them, every evening. And he said without fail each aircraft that passed this little girl, the crew would wave back and the gunners would dip their guns at this little girl and he said he would love to know who she was, and after my father died I was researching his notes and I found out who she was.
CB: Did you?
PJ: Her name was Clara Doggert, if my memory serves me right, but sadly she died, but it would have been so nice to have met this lady.
CB: Yes. On a lighter note, looking at the log book, [bump on microphone] I think it’s quite interesting to see the entry that says NFT – Night Flying Test - and the timing. What do you know about the choice of timing?
PJ: Um, I hadn’t spotted that one.
CB: So the idea is that you take off at twenty three hundred hours, and you do your night flying test which takes an hour and ten minutes and why is that?
PJ: I think it would be because they would get their breakfast?
CB: They would get their fry up! [Laughter]
PJ: Good for them!
CB: After midnight! And I think this is one of the intriguing things there. I mean on ops obviously they were coming back because they were flying at night, but to do the night flying test.
PJ: They had a cunning plan!
CB: Yeah! Some of them had to be in the day so that didn’t work. Same title, but different time.
PJ: Yes. I think they’d become a pretty savvy crew by then, knew how things worked.
CB: So how many ops had they done when the crew left 7 Squadron?
PJ: Sixty four.
CB: Oh, right.
PJ: They had, by then they had an extra crew member because Fred was Master Bomber so they had a specialist map reader, of course H2S had come along by then so they were an eight man crew. The eighth man was a guy called Steve Harper who hadn’t done as many ops as the rest of them, so when the crew split up he wasn’t tour expired, and Steve kept on flying with 7 Squadron for a bit longer and he was very, very seriously injured by flak on an op. He survived, but he was seriously injured. Their favourite aircraft was PA964 and in less than a month after them, the crew splitting up, the aircraft was shot down and the entire crew were held then, as POWs. So the name ‘Lucky Crew’ was pretty apt. They got away with it. They never saw each other again.
CB: Didn’t they?
PJ: A couple of the Australians and the New Zealanders did, but the RAFVR chaps didn’t. And in my dad’s notes he does actually mention that and he asks the question, would I want to meet them again, and he actually makes the point of saying no. And the reason he wouldn’t want to meet them again, because he wants to remember them as being young men. He doesn’t want to see a load of old men, he wants to remember them as, how they were.
CB: I think that’s a really telling sentiment, as to why some people don’t want to open up about what they’ve done: it’s a memory that’s hurtful, in some ways, it’s pleasurable in others. But there’s a mixture of emotions, isn’t there.
PJ: But there is, and again in his notes, he hints [emphasis] at the, the difficulty he had with the number of civilians and children that were killed. I think he took comfort from being, with his role as a Pathfinder, that he was marking targets as accurately as possible to cut down on the losses, but he was, I think one of the reasons he couldn’t talk about it, were the civilian losses.
CB: Any reflection on the British civilian losses being on the opposite, receiving end?
PJ: No. The only thing he mentions in his notes is the, when he was a teenager in the air raid shelter and he also mentions walking from Hall Green to Small Heath one morning after an op the night before, after a raid the night before on Birmingham, and he actually mentions being fascinated by the effect of the bombing: that one house was a shell and yet the house next door was perfectly okay. One had no windows, the other one was intact, with an alarm clock still ticking in the window, and he describes a double decker bus, sitting on its nose, in the middle of the road. And he just describes this as being absolutely fascinating in an horrific way, and he couldn’t, just couldn’t work out why it wasn’t all flat and yet why would one building remain intact, as though it’d not been touched at all and yet the one next door was completely devastated.
CB: Just on that tack, what do we know about the composition of the German bomb load, in dropping bombs on Britain.
PJ: Well they were using twin-engined aircraft and certainly the bomb load that was dropped on this country was far less than was delivered to Germany.
CB: I was thinking of the composition of the load itself. So they’ve got high explosive and they’ve got incendiary. Because the RAF learned from that.
PJ: Yes, um, it was the incendiary that would cause the, the devastating fires, then you had also, certainly from an RAF perspective, specialist bombs for, that were used on specific targets. Like the Grand Slams, et cetera.
CB: Had father got to the stage of dropping those as well?
PJ: No. No, by the end, by the time he was on Pathfinders he was mostly dropping markers with a basic payload as well.
CB: ‘Cause his job was to make a mark, marking.
PJ: Yes. Primary job was to mark, mark turning points and targets for main force.
CB: So at the end of the tour, tours, two tours, effectively.
PJ: Two tours.
CB: What did he do then?
PJ: When he left, when he left Oakington, I think, I’m sure he went to Northern Ireland to, er, looking at.
CB: To Nutts Corner.
PJ: To Nutts Corner, 1332 Heavy Conversion Unit, and he was there from the 28th of December ’44 to April ’45. One of the things that he talks about is the warmth of the people of Northern Ireland. And he describes that when he arrived in Belfast he was kind of adopted by a family and given a late Christmas lunch by this family because he was a young lad; you know, sort of, he wasn’t that young by then, but he was so far from home, from his, from Birmingham. 1332 Heavy Conversion Unit moved to Riccall in the East Riding of Yorkshire. It was an airfield to the south of York and just sort of north of Selby, and as a teenager I used to cycle out there and it was all still there, which was wonderful, knowing that my dad had served there, but that’s, I digress, and it was whilst he was serving at Riccall – he was the adjutant of the Engineering School there - he went to a dance in Selby, which was a little market town, and the dance was at Christy’s Ballroom, above a shirt factory, of all things, which I think was how they were in the day, and he met the girl who would become my mother. And she was a farm worker’s daughter, who was at the time working in service, as a maid for a quite a wealthy timber family that ran a wealthy timber business and actually where she was living at the time, working, was on the perimeter track of RAF Burn and later my mother would tell me how, as a young working maid, she would also go to the bottom of the garden, in the evenings. But anyway, my dad would cycle to Burn or to Hamilton, where my mother’s home was, and that’s four miles south of Selby, on his service bicycle. That wasn’t too bad, but then 1332 HCU moved to Dishforth and his weekly trips then were a hundred and twelve miles, on a service bicycle, in all weathers. I guess he was in love! [Laugh] Mad fool!
CB: Amazing what motivation there can be in that! What were they flying, 1332, that was a Heavy Conversion Unit, but.
PJ: Initially, they were on, at the time they had a mixture, I think, of Lancasters B24s, certainly the last aircraft my father flew in was B24.
CB: But what was their role? It wasn’t bombing.
PJ: I think, I think they’d gone over to transport by then, or certainly they were heading that way. But when his time was up at Riccall he went to Bramcoats, and there he was the Station Armaments Officer, and this is where his RAF career is kind of taking a spiral because he’s not flying, he hates it. He really [emphasis] wanted to stay in the RAF and pursue a flying career but my mother wasn’t having any of it, so that was the end of his dream of serving round the world and spending his days flying. From Bramcoats he ended up going to Uxbridge and after a medical and signing lots of papers he was given a cardboard box with a suit and hat in it. And he was demobbed.
CB: When was that?
PJ: Oh, I think ’46, I think. I’d need to look at the log book. But my parents married in February ‘46.
CB: And he was still in the RAF then.
PJ: Yes. His wedding photograph is in uniform.
CB: How did he feel about moving from operations, which were very intense and specific, in terms of being a Pathfinder Force, to an OC, to an HCU? What did he feel about that in his notes?
PJ: Um, I wouldn’t say he was bored. But -
CB: Frustrated?
PJ: Yes, frustrated probably. He did have the odd bit of excitement. I mean he talks about [bumps on microphone] one particular incident at Nutts Corner where he was a flight engineer for a young Canadian pilot. He said that this young Canadian was a flying boat pilot and he said lovely chap, really eager, and loved it, he said they were on final approach to Nutts Corner and my father kept looking at this pilot and the pilot kept nodding excitedly much as ‘I’m doing all right aren’t I’, and my father looked at him again and then looked down at the switch gear and looked at him again, and my father just gently leaned over and pushed the full throttles wide open to force an overshoot because he’d forgotten to put the undercarriage down! So the eager Canadian airman was having too much of a good time. Apparently his expression was one of hang dog!
CB: This was on a Stirling?
PJ: Yes, er no, it was a Lancaster actually. Because of course he wouldn’t have been on flight deck for a, with a Stirling. Yes, I can imagine the poor Canadian’s face. He thought he was doing really, really well.
CB: Amazing!
PJ: But I think he was disillusioned, my father was disillusioned: he didn’t want to be on the ground, he wanted to be in the air.
CB: So when he left the RAF, what did he do?
PJ: I really don’t know. As I say, my parents married in February ‘46 and initially they moved to Birmingham and also to Bath because my grandparents, my maternal grandparents lived in Bath for a very short time and then moved back to Birmingham, and then my parents ended up settling down in Selby and my father started working for John Roster and Son which was a paper mill. They were a Manchester based paper company and they had a satellite factory in Selby, and he worked there for years [emphasis]. I came along in 1954 and as I was growing up I remember that my dad was hardly ever at home. He, for years and years and years he worked six and a half days a week and he would always cycle to work and he cycled to work in all weathers, and I can still see him in winter with his RAF greatcoat with plastic buttons on it, he’d taken the brass buttons off, and he used his old gas mask, service gas mask bag, for his backup and there’s a really endearing image I have of him, cycling off in his greatcoat. Um, having said that he was never there, when he was there, he was a great dad. He always had time to read stories to me, and we would read things like the usual 1960s classics that every little boy read: Moby Dick and Treasure Island et cetera, and I have lovely memories of him reading those. Again, going back to his practicality, he used to build me all sorts. He made stations and tunnels. He made the tunnels out of paper pulp, from the paper factory, from the paper mill. So I always had a really good train set.
CB: A type of papier maché.
PJ: An early type of papier maché. Yes. It was very smelly as well!
CB: He worked as an engineer, presumably, at the paper mill.
PJ: He did, he did. Yeah, and he was there until I was in my teens and of course I changed from junior school. He was brilliantly supportive with my homework and he would spend hours helping me with homework and I remember one for some reason I was struggling with the coffee trade in Kenya and I now can’t forget it and he just sat down and we just went over it. He was an incredibly skilled artist - self taught - and sadly I never inherited those genes, although my daughter has. He produced some fabulous sketches.
CB: Amazing!
PJ: And watercolour paintings. [Paper shuffling]
CB: [Indecipherable] in 1979. Amazing, yes.
PJ: He started from nothing with his art, you know. He just used to doodle and then he just got better and better and better. An example I’ve got here today is the, this, his lionesses head and it’s incredibly [emphasis] detailed isn’t it, you can almost see every hair.
CB: Yes. As an engineer did he go into design engineering as well do you think?
PJ: I don’t think so, I don’t think so. I think he was possibly a bit of an innovator, when problems arose, which of course he would have had to have been back in the war, he would have had to have been very self reliant and that carried on with him. He became a model maker as well, and he produced a model that I still have at home that sits in my sitting room and it’s a twin engined compound engine. Stationary steam engine.
CB: Oh really!
PJ: And it works. It probably, well it worked. It probably doesn’t any more because I haven’t kept it serviced. But it has pride of place.
CB: Brilliant.
PJ: Yeah, it’s a lovely thing.
CB: So, you were a teenager when he left the paper mill. What did he do then?
PJ: He got a job as a maintenance fitter at Danepak Bacon, in Selby, and it was then that he actually started to only work five days a week, which you know, I suppose was luxury, really, but sadly he didn’t work there for a very long time because he was, the company got into difficulties and he was eventually made redundant. I think that [emphasis] had a big effect on him [pause] and after his redundancy he never had a job again, and he was made redundant before [emphasis] retirement age.
CB: So what messages did you get from his [emphasis] experiences and advice as to what career you would follow?
PJ: He wanted me to go in the RAF, and follow his footsteps, but I didn’t. [Laugh] My mother didn’t want me to. So I headed off in a different direction altogether.
CB: What did you do?
PJ: I went into acute healthcare. Well after a while, I went into acute healthcare. I had numerous, numerous sort of jobs first. Nothing too serious.
CB: Did you have some kind of vision of what your career was to be?
PJ: Initially no, not at all and then I met up with a few people who were working in healthcare and I thought yeah, that sounds interesting.
CB: So what did that involve?
PJ: It involved a thirty four year career working with anaesthetics and airway management.
CB: Tell us more.
PJ: I trained as an operating department practitioner and specialised in anaesthetic support and ended up working mostly with emergency patients. I specialised in emergency work in the end.
CB: Doing what exactly?
PJ: It was airway management. I used to work in, I was based in operating theatres but I worked in Intensive Care Units and then the resus rooms in A and E departments. It was the A and E work that I really did love. I worked all over the country. I started in Kettering and from Kettering I went to, um, where did I go from Kettering? To East Surrey Hospital in Redhill, then I went up to London and worked at Moorfields Eye Hospital, the Western Ophthalmic Hospital, Great Ormond Street. Then I worked in the St Mary’s Group, which was St Mary’s in Paddington, Mary’s West 2, St Giles West 10, Samaritan Hospital for Women, and then I got a little bit disillusioned with living in London, or maybe it was my then girlfriend who got disillusioned and wanted to move. So I got a job in Lincoln and a month later my then girlfriend who would be my wife and now my ex-wife [laugh] followed and I moved up here to Lincoln in 1987 and I’ve been here ever since. I took early retirement in June, July 2012 because I was just so disillusioned with how the NHS management worked, messing things up, and I really didn’t want to be part of it any more. I had two years where I didn’t do anything, really, and I saw a post, I think it was on the internet or something like that, about the International Bomber Command Centre and I read this post and thought that sounds really interesting. And lo and behold it was based in Lincolnshire, and so they were looking out for volunteers. So I thought well, I spent two years sitting on my bottom doing next to nothing, or once a week walking up the pub and I could be doing something a little bit more worthwhile and something that would reflect what my late father had been doing and I started on the project as a data checker. I was working with the, with Dave Gilbert who was doing a fabulous job recording at the losses and it was one of my jobs to check the accuracy of the information against the data and make sure that what was going to be put on the IBCC records was accurate. And it was fascinating but shocking, as well, going through the losses and looking at the ages of those that had been lost and also looking at the fact that an awful lot of those aircrew that had been lost were lost in training before they’d even got on the squadrons, and I was really shocked because I was, at the time, I’d been given a whole load of Canadian names, I’d been given about a hundred and fifty Canadian names, and the losses in training were higher that the loss, operational losses, for this particular group of airmen, and I thought, and I’m thinking where are these poor sods remembered. They’re not. Not really. There’s the odd little memorial in a hedge bottom, somewhere, which I think are wonderful, but there were so many lost in training that aren’t recorded. They’re not in Chorley. Mind you, Chorley was the record of the aircraft not the crew, wasn’t it.
CB: Absolutely.
PJ: And this is one of the reasons why I got so hooked on the project, and I think it was in January 2015 I had a phone call from the Bourne office asking me if I’d like to come on board as a paid member of staff, to work on the archive, and I bit their hand off. We were based initially at Witham House on the University of Lincoln’s campus. We were in a portacabin which I think my colleague describes as the nearest thing the university had to a Nissen hut, at the time.
CB: We remember.
PJ: You remember it well, [laugh] with the flexi floor, but in August 2015 we moved off the main university campus out to University of Lincoln’s Riseholme Campus, which is where we are today, and we work in the most beautiful country house and I think it just lends itself so, so nicely to the project. It looks, I [emphasis] think it looks like a Group Headquarters and when I first saw it I thought, yeah, I want to work there. But there are two things missing on that house: it doesn’t have a flagpole and it doesn’t have an RAF Ensign fluttering from the top of it. But um, beautiful house. Beautiful grounds and I am very fortunate that I’m now working with a fabulous group of people. Working with some amazing [emphasis] facts, figures, and dealing with amazing stories and artefacts and literally every day is like Christmas Day, when I open the post I have no idea what’s going to come through the door. But it’s also every day is an emotional rollercoaster, you go from the Christmas Day of opening a parcel and seeing these amazing artefacts and these wonderful memories that are sent in, or I’m listening to other recordings of fabulous stories, or heartbreaking stories that come through and it’s those stories and reading the letters, that a young airman wrote, hoping that no one would ever have to read it and of course I’m reading it because his parents did. And I remember reading one of those, it was from a young Canadian airman from Vancouver who had just started operational flying and he’d written the [emphasis] most beautiful letter. I found it remarkable that a nineteen year old could write such a mature letter. I was, I read this letter late on a Friday afternoon and I couldn’t get rid of it, and it haunted me all weekend. I mean, those letters were wonderful. But also we deal with the other side of it, in that I got into the archive about two hundred letters from a young airman who, before he joined up, had worked at Park Royal, in a printing works, and the letters that he was writing weren’t to his family, they were to his workmates, and so they weren’t sanitised and they were laugh out loud funny. My colleagues here will tell you that I was laughing, out loud, at some of these letters, and this particular airman was the Eric Morecombe of his day and I got inside his head and I got to know this man and reading these letters and he’s describing one where there’d been an influx of two hundred WAAFs on station and he actually says ‘the chaps are getting choosy’, with the WAAFs [chuckles] and you know, these were lovely letters and then I got to the last letter in this pile and I rang this chap up and the donor, the owner of this collection was from Bridgewater in Somerset, and I rang him up and said ‘I’ve just read the last of Peter’s letters’ [banging] and I said ‘what happened to him? Have you got any more letters?’ [Steps] And he just says, ‘well you’ve read his last letter.’ He didn’t come back. And that really hurt, because having read all his letters I thought you know, I’d got to know this man, he was a very funny man, and he must have been fabulous to serve with. But the project’s going really well. I’m in receipt of some amazing [emphasis] stuff and I do it in my dad’s honour.
[Other]: Yes.
PJ: Well, I hope he’s smiling down on me.
[Other]: I’m sure he is. You’ve given us a fantastic insight into your father’s experiences. Absolutely.
PJ: He was a remarkable man. He was a lovely man.
[Other]: Yes.
PJ: As I say, it’s been thirteen years since he died and, [pause] I still miss him.
[Other]: Course you do. I’m going to the loo. [Whisper] [Laughter] I’ll turn this off.
CB: It’s running. So Peter, thank you for what you’ve done so far. I think, in summing up we could cover a few other things, but what was your parents’ reactions to your career choices after the experiences of their parents, and your father in particular, in the war?
PJ: As I said, my father, I think, rather fancied the idea of me joining the RAF, as I did, but my mother put me off that. I don’t think my father was disappointed at all, in fact he was quite proud of the career path I chose, but interestingly, another career path that my mother put me off: I gained a Deck Officer Scholarship with Shell and my mother put the kybosh on that as well. [Laughter] She was quite, quite, um, she tended to get her own way.,
CB: What worried her about going to sea?
PJ: It was being away from home I think. Actually she was probably right because of course the British Merchant Fleet has gone. So I’d probably be redundant.
CB: As a Captain! [Laugh]
PJ: I doubt it! [Laughter] More like Pugwash! But no, my dad was proud of where I ended up.
CB: Of course. Well I mean it’s a very good thing to do.
PJ: And I really think he would be very proud of what I’m doing now.
CB: I bet, yes.
PJ: It’s a great project. I think that we are trying to turn back history, because Bomber Command and particularly those that flew were demonised and we want to tell the story of the whole of the bombing war, not just from British perspective, but we were an umbrella over the whole of the war. We want to hear the experiences of people on all sides and we are getting remarkable stories: we’ve got fabulous inroads into Italy with amazing stories from there. And, you know, going back to Bomber Command, I can’t, I really can’t imagine what it was like in 1945 when everyone was huddled around the wireless, waiting for Churchill’s victory speech and everybody was mentioned. Except Bomber Command. And I think that must have been a terrible blow to everyone that served with Bomber Command; a body blow. So many had been killed and what recognition had the government given them? None. What is a life worth? What was a life worth to them? You know, I think it was a terrible thing to miss them out.
CB: Did your father ever mention this matter?
PJ: I think he did once. I can’t, I wasn’t that old, and I’m pretty sure it was a conversation he was having with someone else, but he was pretty hacked off about it, he’s, I think his opinion of Churchill had gone from being very high to being very low. He was hurt by it, very hurt. Because he’d lost so many, many friends.
CB: Yes, you mentioned them.
PJ: Well that was just a few I think.
CB: Yes, that was just from his early days.
PJ: Exactly, it wasn’t from the later days.
CB: What was do you think his overriding memory was, of his service during the war?
PJ: I can tell you – it’s in his memoir, if you -
CB: I’ll pause while you look it up. Right, we’re re-starting now.
PJ: I can quote from my father, I remember him saying that all in all he felt he’d had a good war, he’d had a relatively easy war, he’d come out unscathed and that in a way I think he felt guilty because he had survived and so many hadn’t, but he then, in his notes, he reflects and he reflects asking what made them do it? What made them go on ops, over and over and over again, and he says was it the patriotism, was it the pride of volunteering being greater than the butterflies in the stomach, was it the fear of letting down the crew, or of the lifelong stigma of lack of moral fibre? And he says perhaps it was one or all of them, who knows? And then he follows that with what I think a lovely sentence.: ‘And what do I have to show for it? My discharge papers and identity discs, my flying log book and a few medal ribbons – and a thousand memories.’
CB: I think that’s extremely touching, it, it in a way, glosses over an important point which is not unusual for him, people like him to miss, which is: he got a DFC and nobody crowed about that but why did he get a DFC, what was the origin of the award?
PJ: I’ve never found the citation. I think possibly, of course, he was on a crew that carried out a lot of ops. I’ve found Fred Philips’ citations for both of his DFCs, for his DFC and his Bar.
CB: Which were earlier.
PJ: Which were earlier. Of course by 1945 they were dishing out quite a lot by then, weren’t they.
CB: What was the date of your father’s DFC?
PJ: I can’t remember.
CB: But it, was it a similar time to his pilot, his second one?
PJ: No, it was later.
CB: Later, exactly.
PJ: Which makes me think possibly the number of ops, or -
CB: Nothing specific. Could have been the end of the tour, the second tour.
PJ: Yes. That’s what I think.
CB: Would be nice to be able to get the citation though.
PJ: It would. I would like to see that.
CB: Right, we’ll pause there for a mo. Now we’ve already talked about the DFC and also the crew gelling together, but what sort of conversations did they have, in these circumstances?
PJ: One of the conversations that my dad did tell me about, and that was a conversation he would have with the mid upper gunner, Ron Wynn, when they were coming back, leaving the target on every op as flight engineer it was my dad’s role to walk the length of the fuselage doing a damage control walk, to see how badly damaged, or if [emphasis] they were damaged. And my dad would always use a shielded torch and Ron Wynn would always say, ‘Oi, you’re lighting me up like a bloody lightbulb up here, turn that torch out!’ And my dad would always reply, ‘If there’s a hole in this bloody fuselage I’m not falling out of it for you!’ [Laughter] And it would be the same conversation, every op, but there must have been more, there must have been more. Even in the, even in the sort of, the terrible times of the operations the humour was still there. Like in the breakfast before the op there was always somebody who’d say if you don’t come back, can I have your breakfast, wasn’t there, you know. There was always that, that lovely, lovely dark humour.
CB: Yes, it’s a trait where you deal with the danger, at the threat, and the horror of it, with humour.
PJ: Yes, but since my father’s death, I’ve spent over eleven years researching his notes and of researching his crew, or the crew that he served with, and I was fortunate enough to have made contact with Fred Philips in, who was living, still living in Sydney, and interestingly, when his flying career with the Royal Australian Aircraft, Air Force came to an end he joined Qantas and he eventually became the Chief, the Senior Training Captain, with Qantas and he was the first Qantas pilot to fly a 747 to Heathrow. Now sadly Fred died in October last year. The other one I managed to get in touch with was the mid upper gunner, Ron Wynn, still living in Stockport. After the war he’d been an instructor at Cranwell and I managed to speak to him on the phone and it was quite an emotional encounter I think, for him, talking to the son of someone he hadn’t seen for so long, but after the initial emotion he was very chatty. And after the conversation I had an email from one of his sons, saying how much his dad had enjoyed talking to me and hearing what my father had gone on to do, but then he said that the conversation had brought back a lot of memories and he wouldn’t want to talk again. I do hope that wasn’t too upsetting for him. But you know, I’ve gone through the crew and I now know what all but two of them did, after the war.
CB: One of the reasons was it, the link between the mid upper and the flight engineer was both were acting as lookouts, during this, but what was father actually doing as a flight engineer in his role?
PJ: In his role?
CB: So, start with take off.
PJ: At take off he would take over throttles so that the pilot could use both hands on the stick, for take off. During flight he would be constantly making fuel calculations et cetera, trimming the engines, shifting fuel between tanks et cetera, just to keep the stability and also keeping records, and as I say doing calculations because they didn’t rely on instrumentation for fuel, it was the engineer’s calculations, and woe betide if he got them wrong. My father could, could fly, he, it was again, going back to the Warboys experience where they did a bit of each other but I think it would have been straight and level flying, it wouldn’t have been landing, take off and landing, that sort of thing. Looking back at his, reading his memoirs, I think he did have a good time. I once went to the 7 Squadron reunion in Longstanton and when my, when his tour was up and they were going their separate ways they took their ground crew out, to the pub, The Hoops, in Longstanton, where they wouldn’t let the ground crew spend a penny. In his notes, my dad said it was worth the twenty four hours of hangover. And I dearly wanted to go and have a pint in The Hoops but it’s been knocked down.
CB: Oh dear.
PJ: But I did walk the streets of Longstanton, in the rain. One of the things that he talks about as well, is once on an aborted op they were returning to Oakington in a really vicious side wind and they had a sudden gust of wind and bounced badly on touchdown and went round again, and as they were roaring off, off the runway, the wind had sent them across the village at very low height and he can vividly remember seeing people staring up and people running away and he can clearly remember a lady running out of a house and grabbing a little girl, or her child, and pulling her into the house, out of the way. My father describes how they, they very narrowly missed All Saints Church in Longstanton and that when they touched down, got out of the aircraft, the rear gunner came, wandered around, and said to Fred Phillips, ‘if you’d have told me you were going to pull that stunt I could have taken that weather vane off as a souvenir!’ [laughter] But thinking as I was driving into Longstanton, it’s a long straight road into the village, the hair almost stood up on the back of my neck when I saw that, the spire of the church and realised that’s it! That’s it.
CB: In conclusion, because this is fascinating and it’s covered so many aspects of your experiences, and your father’s experiences. But thinking of father’s experiences with the research that you’ve been doing, and what he had written, what’s your overriding feeling about the story?
PJ: My father’s story or the story of Bomber Command.
CB: Your father’s story.
PJ: My father’s story. [Sigh] The little lad from, [pause] from the slums of Birmingham did all right.
CB: Can I translate that into a feeling of great pride?
PJ: Indeed.
CB: Thank you, Peter Jones.
PJ: You’re welcome
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
AJonesPWA171207
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Peter Jones
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
01:49:58 audio recording
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
2017-12-07
Description
An account of the resource
Peter William Arthur Jones (b. 1954) speaks about his father Thomas John Jones DFC (b. 1921, 1640434 and 184141 Royal Air Force). Peter Jones discovered a memoir written by his father, Thomas Jones, a flight engineer, just after he passed away. Peter talks about his father’s life and service during and post-war, some of the details in the memoir and memories of their time as a family after the war. There is much discussion about operations and post-flight details, how emotions, injuries and fears are dealt with, including non-flying personnel as well as those who flew. Peter’s own life and work, particularly on the IBCC Digital Archive is also talked about, and the way the stories of others are so emotive.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-09-23
1944-04-04
1944-08-12
1944-08-29
1945
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
England--Birmingham
England--Cambridgeshire
Germany--Berlin
Northern Ireland--Antrim (County)
Wales--Glamorgan
England--Warwickshire
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
Second generation
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Anne-Marie Watson
Carolyn Emery
1657 HCU
622 Squadron
7 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
flight engineer
ground crew
ground personnel
Heavy Conversion Unit
lack of moral fibre
Lancaster
McIndoe, Archibald (1900-1960)
Pathfinders
RAF Mildenhall
RAF Nutts Corner
RAF Oakington
RAF St Athan
RAF Warboys
Stirling
training
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/286/3442/PKirbyH1511.1.jpg
f2f26de792cac70f6b6c69e353b3a563
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/286/3442/AKirbyHVA160611.2.mp3
77fbbeda6cb538a1fc8c3a042b4c080b
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
Kirby, Harold
Harold V A Kirby
H V A Kirby
Harold Kirby
H Kirby
Description
An account of the resource
Nine items. Two oral history interviews with Warrant Officer Harold Kirby (1923 - 2022, 1637087 Royal Air Force), his log book, photographs and documents. He flew operations as a flight engineer with 467, 97 and 156 Squadrons.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-07-10
2015-09-21
2016-06-11
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Kirby, H
Requires
A related resource that is required by the described resource to support its function, delivery, or coherence.
Warrant Officer Harold Kirby 1637087 was born in Kilbourne, Loncon in 1923, his job after leaving school was in the accounting department at London Electric Supplies. He initially tried to volunteer for the RAF but failed the medical, at that time. He was subsequently drafted in 1942. Skill training started with training as a Flight Mechanic, but during this was asked to volunteer to rain as a Flight Engineer. His first posting was as an Aircraft Fitter at No.460 Squadron, RAF Binbrook, although only for 6 months.
After Flight Engineer training at St Athan and then training on the Short Stirling and then the Lancaster with 1661 Heavy Conversion Unit at RAF Winthorpe, the first solo flight for the crew, the port landing gear would not lock, during the landing the gear collapsed, although there were no injuries.
First operational unit was No.467 Squadron at RAF Waddington a mainly Australian Squadron, the crew were here for July and August 1944, One operation 3/4th August 1944, to the V1 storage site at Trossy Saint Maximin had another bomber flying above their aircraft and dropping their bombs, one going through the wing, narrowly missing vital structures, this resulted in a gear up landing, due to hydraulic loss, but again there were no injuries resulting.
He was then posted along with the crew to No 97 Squadron, based at RAF Coningsby a pathfinder squadron, tasked to mark the targets for other aircraft,
In total two tours were completed before the end of the European war, after finishing as a Flight Engineer, Harold trained as a RADAR mechanic, before leaving the RAF.
Andy St.Denis
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
TO: This recording was recorded for the International Bomber Command Centre digital archive which owns the copyright for this performance. OK, so what year were you born in?
HK: 1923.
TO: And, er, where were you born?
HK: In Kilburn. Kingsgate Road, Kilburn.
TO: I live near there. I live near there at the moment. I’m in West Hampstead.
HK: Oh, right. OK.
TO: And, er, when were you a child were you interested in aircraft?
HK: Not particularly no, although we did go to the Hendon Air Mus— display on occasions, um, but not, not particularly interested when I was young.
TO: What, what kind of aircraft did they have at the display?
HK: I think they were, er, sort of two-winged planes, yes. I can’t really remember much about it.
TO: Right and were your parents in the First World War?
HK: Yes, my fa— yes, my father was in the Army but he managed to survive.
TO: Did you, er, did he ever talk about his time in the war?
HK: Very rarely. We did go to the, er, an Army museum somewhere and he did explain a bit what he did but not very much.
TO: Is that on? And, er, when did you leave school?
HK: When did I leave school? At sixteen. We had moved to Kingsbury by then and I went to Kingsbury County School.
TO: And, er, what were your favourite subjects at school?
HK: Maths.
TO: And, er, did you use maths in your first job?
HK: No, not really, no. My first job was in the accounts department of London Electrics Supply. That was in Waterloo but, er, maths didn’t really come into it much.
TO: And, er, in the 1930s did they, did the papers talk about what Hitler was doing in Europe?
HK: I think they must have done but I wasn’t really interested at that time.
TO: And did you go to the cinema much?
HK: Yes, quite often, yes. I usually went with my mother and brother. My father wasn’t terribly interested.
TO: Do you remember any specific films you saw? Are there any films you remember seeing?
HK: Not really, no. I remember seeing some silent films early on but, er, I remember a film called “Rin Tin Tin” about a dog but I can’t really remember much about it.
TO: I have heard about that film but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it but my grandmother mentioned it to me once. And, er, do remember hearing about the Munich Agreement?
HK: Oh, yes, yes. That was 1938 was it? Yes, oh yes. I was a bit older by then.
TO: And what did you think of Chamberlain appeasing Hitler?
HK: I’m not sure whether it was just to delay things or not or whether he really thought it would be appeasement. But, er, I just don’t know.
TO: And after the agreement were people making preparations for war?
HK: Yes. Oh, definitely, yes. They seemed to think it was definitely coming by then.
TO: Was there any preparations you were involved in?
HK: No, not until the war started and then we dug the garden for allotments but nothing much at the time.
TO: And do you think Britain could have made better preparations?
HK: I don’t think so, no. Oh, possibly got in a better store of food [slight laugh]. I don’t know.
TO: But were you surprised though when you heard that war had started?
HK: I think we knew it was coming. Yes. Yes. I heard the, um, broadcast by Neville Chamberlain.
TO: Do you remember how you felt when you heard it?
HK: I really felt that, er, we’d have to — well, I don’t really know at that time. I was only about sixteen so — but apprehensive probably.
TO: And did you have any relatives who were in the armed forces?
HK: I had some uncles in the First World War. Oh, a younger uncle, um, was in the fire service and then he went in the Army. Yes. That was all at the time.
TO: And, er, did, how did you feel when you heard that France had been defeated?
HK: Well, I thought we had our backs to the wall by then, yes. So, er, had to get down and try and preserve ourselves.
TO: Do you think France let Britain down?
HK: I don’t really think there was much they could do at the time. Germany was too powerful.
TO: And, er, when war had started did you think it would be a short war or a long war?
HK: Well, I had hoped it would be a short one but I, I really don’t know. I didn’t really have an opinion then.
TO: Were you living in London when the Luftwaffe started their bombing?
HK: In Kingsbury, yeah.
TO: And can you remember any specific occasions?
HK: We did have a, a bomb came down in the road but it didn’t explode but, er, it damaged houses, they — I think the toilets cracked or something and there was a house about three doors away that was more damaged and they had to leave it. But no, no explosions took place.
TO: Did you witness any aerial battles at that time?
HK: Oh yes, at the time, yes. I was quite interested.
TO: Were you worried that the Luftwaffe might win?
HK: What, what’s that?
TO: The Luftwaffe might defeat the RAF. Were you worried?
HK: Well, I suppose I was worried but, er, we seemed to have the upper hand at the end of the Battle of Britain.
TO: What did you think of RAF leaders at the time, like, er, Dowding?
HK: Well, I can’t say I had much opinion at that age, no.
TO: OK. Do you remember what kind of rations you had? [sound of rustling papers]
HK: I couldn’t say definitely but I knew we had rations. Things were in short supply, yes?
TO: Did you have better rations though when you were in the Air Force?
HK: Yes, definitely.
TO: And did you, did you have an air raid shelter where you lived?
HK: We had the indoor one, the Morrison shelter, yes. I don’t think we ever used it really.
TO: Would the Morrison have been much use do you think?
HK: The shelter?
TO: Yes.
HK: Well, it, it would have been but as I said I don’t think we really used it much.
TO: And as there much bomb damage near where you worked?
HK: Where I worked? Quite a bit, yes. This was up in Waterloo.
TO: And were you worried that Britain might surrender?
HK: I don’t think I was. No, I don’t think I was, no. I, if I thought about I thought we’d probably succeed which we did eventually.
TO: And did you ever see anyone behaving badly during the Blitz?
HK: I can’t that say I did. No.
TO: Do you think people pulled together?
HK: Yes.
TO: So, when exactly did you come to join the Air Force then? [sound of rustling papers]
HK: This is a bit of a long story. Two school friends and myself tried to get in early on flying duties. They got in, eventually became navigators, but I was turned down. I wasn’t fit for flying duties at the time but I was called up in ’42, initially trained as a, a flight mechanic, er, went on to do a training as a fitter and, um, while I was doing the courses they were calling for volunteers to become flight engineers. This time I passed the medical and eventually became a flight engineer.
TO: Do you remember what kind of medical tests they gave you?
HK: Well, I remember sort of blowing in a tube and holding the mercury up and the colour blindness test. I don’t really remember much else.
TO: Was there a certain, was there a certain kind of educational test you had to do?
HK: I’m pretty certain there was but I can’t remember it.
TO: And did your maths play a role with you being selected as a flight engineer?
HK: I think it helped, yes. [sound of rustling papers]
TO: And would you — did you ever consider trying to be a pilot or navigator?
HK: I did but, um, eventually when I was called for the medical, um, I did explain I had originally applied and they said at that time I was quite fit to become a navigator but as that was going to take longer I thought I’d persevere with being flight engineer.
TO: Once you got into a certain role, like flight engineer, could you reapply to be something else?
HK: Yes, certainly. Yes.
TO: And what did you relatives think of you being in the Air Force?
HK: My mother was very apprehensive, yes. But I don’t know what else, no.
TO: And so, er, can you describe a bit more about your training for being air crew?
HK: Yes, well after I’d become a fitter I was posted up to Binbrook and did six months, mainly repairing airplanes, and after the six months I was posted to St Athan to do my training as a flight engineer. Eventually I passed out, went to the heavy engineering, er, heavy aircraft place at Winthorpe where I crewed-up. The rest of the crew were all Australian. So, er, then we went to Waddington on 467 Squadron initially and later, after about sixteen operations we were transferred to, um, 97 Squadron, a Pathfinders squadron.
TO: And do you remember the first time you went up in a plane?
HK: Yes. That, that was when we had the old Stirling planes for training. That was the first time I went up, yeah, but I don’t really remember much about that.
TO: What did you, er, think of the Stirling?
HK: I think they were really clapped out by then. This was in, yes, early ’44. Actually, on the — my pilot’s first, um, solo on the Stirlings he couldn’t get the wheels down. I had to wind them down by hand which was a long job but then the, um, port one wouldn’t lock so we were advised to go to, um, one of the air, air stations that were — had damaged aircraft. That was in Suffolk somewhere. I forget the name and, er, we went there and the undercarriage collapsed on that, collapsed on that side. We spun round but no-one was hurt. Then the instructor came down with another aircraft and made my pilot fly it back. That was all the excitement we had on that station.
TO: Were most bombers, did most bombers have the same layout inside?
HK: No, not at all, no. They were quite different. The flight engineer on a Stirling was way back. I’m not sure what it was on the Halifax now but, er, with the Lancaster it was next to the pilot.
TO: I, a couple of years ago I spoke to a chap who had been a navigator in Lancasters and he said in the Halifax you had, the navigator had a separate office downstairs or something.
HK: I believe so, yes.
TO: Did you have a particular favourite aircraft of the war?
HK: A favourite one. Well that was the Lancaster. No doubt about it.
TO: Was it, was it, was it, did it feel different flying a Lancaster, flying in a Lancaster to other planes?
HK: What?
TO: You said you were flying in a Lancaster. Did it feel different on board a Stirling?
HK: Yes, yes, it was much better, yes. I can’t really remember much about the Stirling.
TO: Were you ever aboard a Halifax?
HK: No.
TO: Or a Wellington?
HK: No. No.
TO: OK. OK. So, er, when you were sent to the squadrons what, what did — were they mainly Lancasters?
HK: Yeah. They were all Lancasters where we were, at Waddington and then Coningsby.
TO: And as the flight engineer what would your duties be aboard the plane?
HK: Well, to assist the pilot in taking off, um, keeping an eye on the engine temperatures and oil pressures all the time, um, keeping a lookout on the starboard side, um, and doing any repairs which were possible on board. That was about it I think.
TO: Could you please describe the procedure for taking off in a Lancaster?
HK: Well [clears throat] initially we had to check, um, go round the aircraft and check the outside, then inside we had to run up the engines in turn to see how they were, watch there no significant [unclear] as they called it and, er, then we taxied to the start off point, run up the engines with the brakes on until we got the green light and then we were away. The only trouble was on one occasion, as we were going round the runway, um, the brakes failed and the pilot managed to guide it by the engines and at the start off point we couldn’t run up against the brakes as was normal. We just got to the start and pushed the throttle forwards and went off. But we got off OK then coming back we went — I’m trying to remember the name of the place where we first went with the, er, the Stirling, but they’d got a long runway so we flew there and so they repaired the brakes and we flew back.
TO: How reliable was the Lancaster?
HK: Very reliable generally, yes. We did have a bit of trouble with the intercom now and again but no, generally very reliable.
TO: And were you quite friendly with the ground crew?
HK: Yes, quite, quite friendly yes but, er, I think I ought to have been more friendly at the time but I was young, young and they were older people so, er, I, I don’t think I got as friendly as I should have done.
TO: How old were the people you were with?
HK: The, the ground crew? Oh, I reckon in their thirties, um, most, most of them I think were regulars. [beep sound]
TO: And what about the crew aboard the bomber. How old were they?
HK: Well, I was the youngest. The pilot was twenty-eight. I was just, just turned twenty-one. The bomb aimer was also early thirties and, um, the mid upper gunner and the wireless operator were quite young, um, mid mid-twenties I suppose but I got on very well with them.
TO: Did, were you, were you allowed to be friends with the — sorry, what was your rank?
HK: Rank? At the time I was just a sergeant, then flight sergeant and eventually warrant officer.
TO: Were there any rules about who you could be friends with?
HK: No, not, not really. I went about with some of the crew, yes. Of course though we were kept separate at the station, the officers and the NCOs separate.
TO: Was there ever any friction between the crew of the bomber?
HK: Not as far as I was concerned no. Never heard any.
TO: What did you think of Arthur Harris?
HK: I think he was just the man for the job at the time, yes.
TO: And, er, what did you think of the German aircraft of the war?
HK: Oh well, they — fortunately we didn’t have much of a contact with them. On our first, very first operation we were coming back and the rear gunner suddenly shouted to corkscrew and there was a plane. It was a twin-engine plane coming up behind and it let off a burst, and one bullet went through the rear turret and went through the rear gunner’s clothing and cut off his heating supply, which he was very aggrieved because it got very cold but we got back safely. The attacking aircraft I saw over— overtook us as we dived on the corkscrew and we never saw it again. So that was really a sort of a foretaste of what could have come but we were quite fortunate. We never saw any single or twin-engine aircraft again.
TO: And how do you feel about the Churchill deciding to order the bombing of Germany?
HK: How about —
TO: Churchill ordering Germany to be bombed?
HK: Well, I think it was war-time. I must say that in all our briefing we were all briefed to bomb military targets, um, not just towns, but at the time the accuracy of bombing was such that towns were destroyed, um, acc— well, not accidently, but I think the powers that be knew what was going on but, um, as I said we, we were briefed to bomb targets.
TO: I’ve, I’ve, er, I read, listened to an interview with Harris where he defended the tactics he used and he says that anyone who wants to criticise him for ordering the bombing of towns has never looked out of a window because if they had done they would know the cloud conditions over Europe means you can’t hit individual targets.
HK: That’s right, yeah.
TO: And were there ever any occasions where aircraft were damaged by the weather?
HK: By the weather?
TO: Like snow or thunderstorms?
HK: No, I don’t think so. Well, not as far as I was concerned, no.
TO: And, er, you just mentioned briefings. How did the briefings work?
HK: In what way?
TO: Well, how many people would you have in the room? Were you shown maps or photos?
HK: Yeah, well there was a big map at the front and with the target route marked. The pilot and the navigator had a separate briefing initially and then we all went together to the main briefing. I suppose, depending on the number of planes that were going, about seven crew, um, there must have been sort of getting on for seventy, possibly, in the main briefing, yeah. [clears throat] The commander got up and gave a brief talk and then the chief navigator and bomb— bomb— bombing instructor all gave a brief talk and we went for a pre-operational meal and got ready.
TO: What did you do to prepare yourselves for the mission?
HK: Well, just went, um, to the equipment room and got our parachutes and got dressed and waited around for the time to, to go off.
TO: And as you got on board the plane were you feeling nervous?
HK: Tiredness more than nervous, yes.
TO: And was there anyone who was actually showing any fear or were they all keeping it, keeping it to themselves?
HK: I think they were all keeping to themselves, yes.
TO: Do you know of anyone who during the war who wasn’t able — who just felt too nervous to get on board the plane?
HK: I don’t know of anyone, no. I knew there were people who decided they couldn’t go on but they were got off the stations as quickly as they could.
TO: So, if you can please could you describe your first ever mission over German?
HK: Well, as I said the first ever mission was the one in which we got shot at but survived that. The, er, worst trip was on the VI storage sites in France. This was a daylight raid and the mid upper gunner said, ‘There’s a Lanc immediately above us just opened his bomb doors.’ But before we could do anything we felt two thumps and one of the bombs went through the port wing and took away the port undercarriage and so I shut down the engine on that side because it was immediately behind the engine and, er, we came home on three engines and landed but our pilot decided to land on the grass runway, which we did, and again no one was hurt.
TO: Were you worried the plane would crash when the —
HK: Oh yes, yes. It came down. Our pilot was very successful in landing it. We did a belly landing because we lost all the hydraulics. We couldn’t get the other undercarriage down, couldn’t use the flaps on it. We just had to come in but, um, yeah, we were quite fortunate.
TO: And incidents like that ever — after that incident, were you reluctant to go on more missions?
HK: No, no, no. It was just a job.
TO: So, you mentioned that — was it VIs you were bombing?
HK: Yes, the VI storage sites, yes.
TO: Sorry can you describe what they are? I’m not familiar with them.
HK: The VI, the Doodlebugs, yes. They had storage places for them. This was at Trossy Saint Maximin. I don’t know where that is now but it’s in France somewhere.
TO: And what kind of pay load would the, would your Lancaster carry?
HK: Well, initially it was, er, thousand pounders and the incendiaries and then when we went to Pathfinders it was — we dropped flares initially to light up the target area as well as high explosives.
TO: Do you remember what kind of military targets you were generally after?
HK: What, um — the canal, Dortmund-Ems [?] canal, railway sidings, bridges, harbours, all sorts of things.
TO: And did you ever hear how, how successful your missions had been?
HK: Well, they did display photographs afterwards so we could see. I — definitely some of them were definitely successful. But, um, I don’t remember a lot about it, no.
TO: OK. So, was your first raid over Germany in 1943?
HK: No. ’44.
TO: OK and had you heard about the thousand bomber raids that —
HK: Yes. I had, had read about them, yes.
TO: And how many planes would generally accompany your Lancaster?
HK: I think it depended a lot, um, possibly upwards twenty, fifty, possibly a hundred. I, I don’t really know.
TO: Was there, were there any points on board a mission where you could relax to a degree?
HK: Well, we relaxed to a degree once we were on the North Sea on the way home but, um, we still had to keep a look-out. But, er, we didn’t really relax until we’d landed.
TO: And what was the procedure for coming into land?
HK: We had to call up the station and were given directions as to what height to circle and sort of gradually come down and then told we could go into land.
TO: Were landings scary at all?
HK: No, I don’t think so. I don’t recall.
TO: So, the incident where you mentioned with the — where had to shut down the engines, could, did you have control, does that mean you had control over the engines as you were the engineer?
HK: Yeah, it was, yes. I, I’m not sure I got the order to shut it down but I did it anyway because as the bomber had sort of taken all the bits behind the engine I thought there was a danger of petrol coming and catching fire and so that’s why I shut it down.
TO: But was the rest of the aircraft still working fine?
HK: It was, yes, yes. As I said we’d lost all the hydraulics. We couldn’t operate the flaps or what was left of the undercarriage but, um, the pilot did a good job.
TO: So, how many people would you normally have aboard the bomber?
HK: Seven altogether.
TO: And can you describe the conditions in general aboard the bomber?
HK: There wasn’t a lot of room I know that. Yes, well we had to get from the door up to the front of the aircraft, over the main spar and, er, but once we were in position it was quite OK.
TO: And how was morale in general amongst the crew?
HK: Generally pretty good, yes, yeah.
TO: And did your squadron suffer heavy losses?
HK: Occasionally yes, yes. I can’t recall any particular case but we did lose certainly some.
TO: Did you hear much about the American bombing of Germany?
HK: I didn’t hear much about it, no.
TO: And did the, your friends in the plane, did they talk much about their lives at home?
HK: Which, the friends?
TO: Your fellow crew members on the plane?
HK: Not a lot, no, no.
TO: And did the Lancasters get new bombs as the war went on?
HK: Sorry, did —
TO: Did the Lancasters get new bombs as the war went on?
HK: I suppose so. I don’t really know.
TO: And, er, were there any — do you remember any occasions where you were over major German cities?
HK: I remember going to Munich and Hamburg a number of times. We never went to Berlin but, er, yes. I don’t really remember much about that.
TO: Was there heavy anti-aircraft fire?
HK: Oh, plenty, yes. We could see them exploding in the air, yes.
TO: Did they ever come near the plane?
HK: We were fortunate. We didn’t have a lot of damage. We did have some shrapnel damage but not a lot, no.
TO: You mentioned was it the tail gunner who got the heating supply cut off? Did he seem traumatised at all by that?
HK: I don’t think he was traumatised but, er, he certainly remembered it because, um, when my wife and I went to Perth in Australia where he lived, we managed to meet him, he was telling my wife about it. He was most aggrieved about the heating supply going off [laugh].
TO: Was his reaction to it pretty normal?
HK: I think so, yes.
TO: And I’m sorry to ask this but do you know of anyone who died during the raids?
HK: During the Blitz, yes, distant, well, distant friends of my parents moved to a place. I lived in Kilburn initially and then moved to, um, a place near Barking and then one of the girls who was my age, um, was out doing fire watching or something but she was killed and, er, the others, one of the other sisters was wounded but I don’t know anyone else really close.
TO: Did you know anyone who, anyone in RAF who died on raids over Germany?
HK: Yes, yes, quite a number from the squadron we were on, yes.
TO: Did you ever talk about them?
HK: Not a lot, no. I remember we had two people from Ireland. One was a young chap, probably my age, and the other was a bit older and the older man was on his last mission, got shot down and killed, and this young chap was really upset about that. But, um, I don’t remember much about anyone else.
TO: And did you hear about the attack on the Ruhr dams?
HK: Heard about them, yes, yes.
TO: Did that have much effect on morale?
HK: I think it probably did but we were quite, um, happy that they had done it but we didn’t know a lot about it at the time.
TO: Do you think the raid was successful? [bleep sound]
HK: It was successful I think, yes.
TO: And were there any occasions when your squadron dropped leaflets?
HK: I can’t recall dropping actual leaflets, no. We did drop the window over — you’ve heard about that. Yes, but I don’t remember about leaflets, no.
TO: Can you please describe what the procedure was for deploying window.
HK: Well, there was the chutes near where I was and it was just unpacking the, er, packets and dropping them sort of shortly before went into Germany. But, er, I don’t think we had them all that much.
TO: Do you think window was effective?
HK: I think it probably was, well initially anyway. Later on I don’t know. There was a chute next to my position where I could drop them through.
TO: So it was your duty and not the bomb aimer?
HK: Yes.
TO: Can you explain how, what impact window had on the Germans?
HK: Well, initially it upset their radar quite a bit but then eventually they got used to it and I think that was probably why we stopped.
TO: I’m not sure if you’re aware but I think that just before Hamburg when they first used window Germany actually had developed the same thing but didn’t want to used it on Britain in case Britain used it on Germany. So both sides had window but both sides didn’t want to use it. [slight laughter] And you mentioned you only saw that twin-engine plane on that one occasion, did you ever see other German planes?
HK: In the distance, yes, yes, or near a target we saw a couple way below us. I don’t remember seeing any, any more, no.
TO: When you saw them were you worried that they would come near you?
HK: Was I what?
TO: When you saw the planes below you were you worried that they would come and attack?
HK: Well, they were well below us. I, I don’t know what they were doing but they were coming cross-wise but, um, two of them together, but whether they were after a particular target or not I don’t know.
TO: And were you sat in the cockpit the whole time?
HK: Yes, well mainly, yes.
TO: What would you do if you had to move around the bomber?
HK: Well, we had portable oxygen bottles we had to take. I did have to go back to the rear gunner once because his, um, the fluid was leaking from his supply line that operated the turret. I managed to put one of these circuits round because it, it had come off the supply, but he had to be very careful ultimate.
TO: Can you describe what kind of equipment you — sorry, what kind of clothes would you wear on board the bomber?
HK: A very thick jumper, um, some form of outer coat of some sort. I don’t really remember. Then a Mae West. I remember it was very bulky getting through the aircraft at the time.
TO: And did you wear an oxygen mask at all times?
HK: Yes. Pretty well all the time, yes. [cough]
TO: And where did you keep the parachutes?
HK: The parachutes. Well, my parachute was stored just behind me. The pilot had a, er, sit-on one as did the rear gunner I think. The rest of the crew had the parachutes as near as they could get them.
TO: And did the Lancaster have escape hatches?
HK: Yes, yes. There was one by the bomb aimer down in the front and then there was the door at the back and hatches in the roof.
TO: Were you ever told what to do it you ever had to bail out?
HK: Well, yes. We had to practice getting out.
TO: How did that practice work?
HK: Well it wasn’t in the air. It was on the ground, just getting through the front hatch.
TO: Were you ever worried about being shot down?
HK: I can’t say that I was particularly worried, no?
TO: And what kind of instruments did you have in front of you when you were sat in the cockpit?
HK: Well, the instruments at the side were the oil pressures and temperatures etcetera. In the front you had the normal — you know, I can’t really remember. I know we had the, um, all the knobs for pressing to cut off the engines but I wasn’t so much concerned with the flight controls as the engine temperatures and pressures that was at the side.
TO: Can you remember what would happen aboard the plane when you reached the targets and had to drop the bombs?
HK: Well, the bomb aimer gave directions and, er, and had to fly straight and level for a certain length of time and then he said, ‘Bombs gone.’ And immediately closed the bomb doors and got off as quickly as we could.
TO: Did your Lancaster ever carry a cookie?
HK: That’s the four thousand pound. Yes, I think it did on occasions but I can’t really remember now.
TO: Could you actually feel the bombs leaving the plane?
HK: Did —
TO: Could you feel the bombs leaving the plane?
HK: Oh, well when they were dropped yes. We did sort of go up quite suddenly.
TO: And were there any times when engines, when, not when damaged but when the engines just malfunctioned without warning?
HK: No, no. The engines were pretty good on the whole, yes.
TO: Merlins weren’t they?
HK: Merlins yes.
TO: [unclear] And did you ever go on — were your missions mainly at night?
HK: Mainly at night although we did do some daylight ones. These were mainly, as I said, over the storage sites of — in France.
TO: Did you prefer daylight or night missions?
HK: I think night because we couldn’t see what was going on.
TO: Could you ever see the cities below you?
HK: Yes, we could especially when we were doing dropping the flares, yes.
TO: And can you explain, can you explain what the, how the other Pathfinder missions worked?
HK: Yes, there was Flare Force 1, which was — went out early when the bombing was due to start and we dropped flares then, er, if necessary, the master bomber called out for more flares and then there was the Flare Force 2 which was sort of circling around and then came in and dropped the other flares, and that’s really mainly what I can remember.
TO: When did they actually invent the Pathfinders, if you like?
HK: I think it came into force in 1942 because, um, they were worried about the, er, the bombing wasn’t very accurate at the time and, er, I think it did improve with the Pathfinders.
TO: So just to make sure I’ve got this right, the Pathfinders dropped the flares and the other main bombers would follow the flares?
HK: That’s right, yes.
TO: And was Pathfinding just as dangerous as other bombing?
HK: I think it was but we didn’t know much about it at the time.
TO: I don’t know if you can answer this question but how long did the missions tend to last, usually?
HK: From about five hours up to about ten depending on where the target was.
TO: How far into Germany would you tend to go?
HK: I think the furthest was a place called — I’ve got the, er, name of the place here.
TO: Do you want me to get it? Shall I get it? [background noises]
HK: No. [background noises] Yes, Trondheim in Norway but I don’t remember what the target was? That was ten hours.
TO: Would that have been the Tirpitz? The Tirpitz?
HK: Sorry?
TO: Would that have been the battleship, Tirpitz?
HK: Yes. Yes.
TO: Because that was around Trondheim or Tromso or something when it was sunk by 617 Squadron I think when they were dropping Barnes Wallis’s tallboys.
HK: Yes, yes. I think that was the longest one, ten hours.
TO: So, so were you on a pathfinding mission for the Tirpitz do you think?
HK: Yes. I, I don’t really remember what we were doing over Trondheim.
TO: I could be entirely wrong when I say the Tirpitz but I know that the RAF did go after it and finally got it in November 1944 so, so I don’t know if that’s adds up or — did you hear about the sinking of the Tirpitz though?
HK: Yes, I heard about it, yes.
TO: And do you feel glad to have had a role in it be destroyed?
HK: I, I don’t remember much about that raid, no. I think we had to go to Scotland and refuel before we took off but I don’t, don’t remember much about it.
TO: And what do you think about the bombing of Hamburg in 1943?
HK: We didn’t hear much about it at the time, no, so I can’t really say.
TO: And what about the bombing of Berlin?
HK: Well, there again I said we never went to Berlin so there again I can’t really say.
TO: And what about Dresden?
HK: Well, Dresden we were briefed to bomb the railway sidings. There, there was supposed to be a lot of German concentrations ready to go to the Eastern Front, er, which was what we did. We didn’t really know at the time how the town was devastated.
TO: Were you still on Pathfinders at that point?
HK: Sorry?
TO: Were you still on Pathfinders at that point?
HK: Oh yes, yes.
TO: So did Pathfinders actually carry bombs or just flares?
HK: We did carry bombs as well, yes.
TO: And were some cities more heavily defended than others?
HK: Yes. Those in the Ruhr were quite heavily defended, yes. Others not so much.
TO: Was Dresden heavily defended?
HK: That I can’t remember. I don’t think it was, no.
TO: When, was the, was the, was the AK 88 the main anti-aircraft weapon the Germans have?
HK: Yes.
TO: Were the crews afraid of it or was the firing generally inaccurate?
HK: I don’t know that we thought about it all that much and just hoped it didn’t get too close.
TO: Did you ever — I know you were at night but could you ever actually make out other RAF bombers nearby?
HK: Not usually, now and again, yes, we saw — yes. Some got very close.
TO: Was that — you probably don’t know but was the, the bomb aimer or pilot of that was above you when it bumped into the wing, do you think they would have been reprimanded for what happened?
HK: I don’t think they would have known because the bomb aimer would have been looking forward. I don’t suppose they realised what was happening but we never found out who it was.
TO: Would you hold it against them if you found out then?
HK: It was just one of those things. I don’t think they — well they obviously didn’t do it on purpose.
TO: How much do you think a Lancaster could take and still get home?
HK: Quite a bit, yes. I have pictures of the hole in the Lancaster the bomb went through if you would like to see it?
TO: We can see that later. Can we see that later? I’d love to see that. And ss the war went on did you, did you think the bombing campaign was being successful.
HK: I think, as far as I was concerned I thought it was, yes.
TO: And was there anyone claiming that the tactics weren’t working?
HK: I didn’t hear any, no.
TO: And, this is a strange question probably but when you’re, or not when you’re on missions but when you’re just sitting in the cockpit of the aircraft, did you ever get the chance just to admire the view down below?
HK: Yes, um, on one of the missions to Munich we were briefed to fly over the Alps and it was moonlight and that was a sight to see I must admit and, er, when we went to some of the eastern European count— towns we had to fly over Sweden, which was all lit up, and that was a sight to see as well. They did, well, we were told they would shoot at us but not to be too near. I don’t think anyone was shot down over Sweden.
TO: My, the navigator I mentioned earlier he mentioned that there was a crew of his that used to fly over Switzerland and said the Swiss would fire anti-aircraft guns but they would deliberately fire them too far away so —
HK: I think that was the same with Sweden, yeah.
TO: Was that strange to see towns that were lit rather than in black-out?
HK: Yes, it was certainly a sight to see [laugh].
TO: And did your plane, did the navigator, or not necessarily the navigator, but did your plane ever get lost, as in not sure where they were going?
HK: No, I don’t think so, no. I don’t recall that.
TO: So, again there was a pilot whose plane got lost because the navigation equipment got broken or something. Was it quite cold on board the plane?
HK: It wasn’t too bad where we were up near the front but it got cold further back but the mid gunner and the rear gunner had a heated suit but yes it was pretty cold back there.
TO: Do you know any Lancaster gunners who successfully shot down fighters?
HK: No, I don’t know any definitely, no.
TO: Do you think they were much use against fighters?
HK: I think so, probably helpful in, in keeping the fighters away, even if they were just looking out.
TO: Did you carry any food aboard the plane with you?
HK: Yes we had some rations. On the long, long operations but I don’t remember much about what we had except they were — we did have tins of juice, er, vacuum flask of coffee, some food of some sort but I don’t remember what it was.
TO: Do you remember if anyone had a firearm aboard the plane?
HK: No.
TO: And were you ever given instruction on how to evade capture if you were shot down?
HK: Oh, we did had some instruction, yes. Try and keep low and if we were over a country other than Germany trying to get hold of some local people if we could.
TO: Did anyone on board the plane actually speak German?
HK: Not as far as I know, no.
TO: How many missions did you go on during the war?
HK: Forty-four altogether.
TO: Was that a lot by RAF standards?
HK: Well, with the Pathfinders the normal tour was forty-four. You did the normal thirty and then there was another fifteen so we were one short of the total.
TO: How often would you go on a mission would you say?
HK: Sometimes it might be two or three times in a week. Other times it might be sort of a few weeks before we went on an operation, depending possibly on the weather or the targets, I don’t know.
TO: When you were on bombing raids could you ever see the fires below?
HK: I remember seeing when we were over some sort of harbour. I don’t know where it was. I saw one of the ships that appeared to be burning but it might have been a smokescreen. But apart from that I, I don’t remember because, er, we were usually the first in and then away.
TO: So, when, when you did go on missions were you told to — were you generally aiming as you said earlier only for certain targets, like the railways?
HK: Yes, we were always, um, given a briefing like that, not just a town, but definitely some sort of target.
TO: And was there anyone in the crew who just deliberately didn’t pay attention in the briefings?
HK: I can’t say that I know, no.
TO: Because I was just thinking well that if a gunner was at a briefing they probably thought it doesn’t matter what I’m doing. I’ve just got to shoot at the planes.
HK: I suppose they were.
TO: I don’t know.
HK: I suppose the gunners were at the briefings. I can’t remember.
TO: That’s just speculation by me. They might have been very interested but, sorry, it’s just that I think that’s what I would have done if I was a gunner. And what kind of entertainment did you have in the squadron?
HK: In the squadron? I can’t say that I remember much about any entertainment [slight laugh] at all, no. I suppose there must have been some but, no, it’s not something I remember.
TO: Did you ever go out to pubs or dances?
HK: The crew weren’t very, er, pub-minded and neither was I. We did go on some outings, um, some of the crew together. When we were doing the training for Pathfinders we went into Cambridge and out there. In truth there we had more interest in museums, which suited me, yes.
TO: Which museums did you like?
HK: I don’t remember now [laugh] but I remember going to some and — yes.
TO: I was recently in a few museums myself and looking round the Lancaster they have, or rather the Lancaster cabin, that they have at the, in the Imperial War Museum. I think they put it back as far as the navigator’s positon so you can, you can see into where everyone was sitting, sort of thing.
HK: Oh yeah.
TO: And other than the other ones you’ve mentioned to me already were there other missions that you remember very clearly?
HK: I think I’ve told you the ones that, er, I really remember but, um, I can’t say that I remember any others. We were quite fortunate really over all.
TO: You mentioned earlier on that — was it a gunner? One of the gunners shouted, ‘Corkscrew,’ when the plane, the fighter arrived. What kind of basic manoeuvres did the planes have?
HK: Well, we immediately dived and up and around and that’s why it’s called a corkscrew and, anyway we dived in one direction and up in another and so on but, er, we didn’t have to do that much and, as I said, the plane overshot us and —
TO: I remember reading I think that even though the Stirling wasn’t as good as a Lancaster it was decent at turning or something when it came to manoeuvres.
HK: It was too heavy I think.
TO: It was quite good at climbing but wasn’t good at turning or something.
HK: Oh yeah.
TO: Were you ever — was there any time when they brought in new equipment and you were confused by it?
HK: Yes. We had some new equipment, some cathode ray tubes, um, which the bomb aimer used to sit next to the navigator and assist him with the navigating and, er, that was towards the end of the war and, um, I was doing the bomb aiming then.
TO: So, what did you do as a bomb aimer?
HK: Well, the — I merely had to go down into the bay and press the tips when the graticule showed the marker but the bombs were all pre-set to go off at a particular time, um, but that was all done by the bomb aimer. He set up the equipment initially and all I had to do was press the tip when the target came into view.
TO: Was that to drop, release the bombs then?
HK: Yes.
TO: OK and did you do that often?
HK: I did about four or five times towards the end of the war, yes.
TO: And did you find out roughly how much damage the raids were causing?
HK: No, not really, no. We did have pictures taken by the later aircraft going over but I can’t say that I recall.
TO: And was there ever any occasions where your plane had to return early before it reached the target?
HK: No, apart from the fact that once we were all recalled because the target had been overrun by our troops so, um, but no, we, we carried on although I said once when we had the intercom equipment went the — we were told not to use it because the, the rear gunner, pilot were in contact but it was too weak to let anyone else but we decided to carry on anyway.
TO: So, how did the, er, communication work aboard the aircraft?
HK: Well, we had the speakers in the, er, speakers in the helmets plus microphones and you had to switch on the microphone if you wanted to speak. That’s all, pretty well.
TO: Was it very noisy aboard those planes?
HK: It was very noisy, yes, yes. So when we didn’t have the intercom it meant really shouting at the pilot.
TO: Was the noise mainly from the engines?
HK: Yeah.
TO: Were there any other occasions when you went to a target and found it was too cloudy to see the city?
HK: That I can’t really recall now, no.
TO: So, just going back, I’m keen to go back this one, the one over France with the VIs, did you actually get the chance to drop your [emphasis] bombs at the time?
HK: Yes. We did drop them, yep.
TO: So, so if I get this right. So even though you had a hole in the wing you were still able to go on with the mission or had you already dropped them?
HK: No, we hadn’t already dropped them. We were on the bombing run and we did actually drop them but, er, I don’t remember much about it, no.
TO: That’s fine, fine.
HK: I know we had to and I was watching out of the — because in case the wing was moving up and down more than it should but, er, fortunately we didn’t have to — if it had gone [laugh] we wouldn’t have done anything about it anyway.
TO: Would the, er, the pilot of the plane, would he ever be speaking to other aircraft in the squadron?
HK: Would he be?
TO: On the radio, would he ever speak to other aircraft?
HK: I don’t think so. Not generally no, no, I wouldn’t think so, no?
TO: Was it possible to communicate with them?
HK: It would be possible I think [unclear] had the necessary permission to do so. I don’t think it was normal, no.
TO: And did you ever attack coastal targets?
HK: Yes but I don’t remember where but I know we did have some, er, harbours and shipping there.
TO: What did you think of the — I know you weren’t on it — but what did you think of bombers like the Halifax?
HK: Well, some people that, er, flew the Halifax thought they were OK but I, I don’t think they had the — I don’t think they were as good as the Lancaster anyway but it is a matter of opinion.
TO: I do remember reading that a Lanc, a Halifax couldn’t carry a cookie because they didn’t have the space.
HK: Couldn’t carry them because of the load, no.
TO: So, er, did you hear about how — other events of the war, like the invasion of Normandy?
HK: Only on the radio I think. I don’t think we heard a lot internally about what went on.
TO: But when you heard that Normandy had been invaded did you think the war was in its final stages?
HK: Well, certainly thought so. We hadn’t actually started operations then. We were still at the Heavy Conversion Unit when we heard all the planes going over one night and, er, we realised what it was, yes.
TO: So, did you ever drop bombs around Normandy?
HK: Drop bombs?
TO: Around Normandy to help with the invasion?
HK: Oh yes, yes, yes.
TO: Was that area less heavily defended than Germany? Was there less anti-aircraft fire in Normandy than Germany?
HK: Oh yes, less, definitely less.
TO: And did you hear of events like Japan attacking Pearl Harbour?
HK: Heard about it only on the news.
TO: And do, did you ever hear about other cases that happened where, where planes got damaged by overhead bombs?
HK: Not at the time. Although I believe it did happen on occasions.
TO: I know it happened to William Read, one of the VCs in Bomber Command, I think on a Norway mission or something.
HK: Yeah.
TO: And were there, was there anyone you know in your squadron who was shot down and became a prisoner?
HK: I didn’t know of anyone, no.
TO: And at the time of the war were you aware that Bomber Command had a fifty per cent casualty rate?
HK: Bomber Command?
TO: Had a fifty per cent casualty rate?
HK: No. We didn’t know at the time, no.
TO: This is a slightly odd question but if had you known at the time would you have volunteered for the Air Force?
HK: Maybe not but, er, once I was in — yes, it, it became just a job. I didn’t really didn’t take much notice. We didn’t hear of the, the losses at the time. I didn’t realise they were so great.
TO: Do you think they might have been keeping it quiet deliberately?
HK: I think they would, yes. I think that was definitely.
TO: Did you hear about, er, certain stories about the war and just dismissed them as propaganda?
HK: Yes, I’m not sure. I don’t remember any, no.
TO: And was there, was there a, a certain type of single-engine German fighter that was very feared by the crew?
HK: Oh, the Messerschmitt but, um, I didn’t think we were worried one way or the other, no.
TO: [background noise] So I’m just seeing which ones are nice. I’m just seeing which ones are nicer.
HK: [slight laugh] Thanks.
TO: Did you ever regret joining the Air Force?
HK: No. No. It was, in a way it was a university to me.
TO: And when, when you joined the Air Force was it possible, did you get a choice as to what duty, whether you went to Bomber Command or Fighter Command?
HK: It would have been Bomber Command, yes. As I say, when I was called up initially I was trained as a flight mechanic and, er, it was mainly for the Bomber Command.
TO: Do you remember when you receiv— received your call-up papers?
HK: Well, I only vaguely remember, yeah.
TO: And do you think there was a reason why, do you think there might have been a certain reason why you were put in the RAF and not the Army?
HK: I don’t know whether it was the education at the time. I don’t know. It may have had something to do with it, yes.
TO: Do you think you were properly trained enough before you were sent on missions?
HK: I think so. We had quite a good training, yes.
TO: And did you feel ready for war when it finished?
HK: Yes, I think so, yes.
TO: And were you ever stationed anywhere other than Britain?
HK: No, no.
TO: Do you know of anyone who was sent abroad?
HK: I know that some in [beep noise] [unclear] Association Branch were abroad. I didn’t know at the time but heard about it afterwards.
TO: And were you ever escorted by allied fighters?
HK: Only, only once I remember. That was when we were coming back on three engines. The rear gunner said, ‘There’s two single-engine aircraft approaching from the starboard quarter.’ But only a couple of seconds later he said, ‘It’s alright, they’re Spitfires.’ And one of them did escort us back to the coast.
TO: Do you think maybe the pilot of that Spitfire could see the damage on your plane?
HK: Probably. Well, could see we’d only three engines going, yeah.
TO: I think there was one time, I was reading about it recently, during the war a German fighter actually saw a damaged American bomber and deliberately decided not to attack it because he could see how damaged it was and let it fly back. How did you actually feel about Germany during the war?
HK: Well, we knew it was the enemy and we had to do what we were instructed to do. I didn’t really think much about it at the time.
TO: Did you ever feel animosity against the German people?
HK: No. I can’t say that I did.
TO: Were any of your airfields ever attacked by German bombers?
HK: Not while I was there, no.
TO: And did any of the airfields ever run short of bombs or fuel?
HK: I don’t know, no.
TO: Sorry, I’m asking difficult questions here. And how many squadrons were you in during the war?
HK: Well, operational squadrons, two. That was 467 Squadron at Waddington and then 97 Squadron at Coningsby.
TO: Were there any times when actually your bombers were asked to attack German armies?
HK: The armies, German armies?
TO: Yeah.
HK: No, I don’t think so, no.
TO: And do you remember if the airfields you were stationed at had anti-aircraft defences?
HK: I think they must have done but I can’t say definitely.
TO: After Dunkirk were people in Britain afraid that Hitler would invade?
HK: I think they were yes, yes. Yes, we were very fortunate with the, er, the Battle of Britain fighters.
TO: Do you actually feel glad that you’d been put in the RAF?
HK: I what?
TO: Glad you were called up for the RAF?
HK: Glad it wasn’t the Army. Yes, certainly.
TO: Do you know anyone who was in or have any friends who were in the Army?
HK: I didn’t know anyone though definitely there were some from school who were in the Army, yes, joined the Army. Also at the time I think quite a few of them were called up for the RAF but I didn’t keep in contact.
TO: And what do you think was the most important battle of the war?
HK: Possibly what was known as the Battle of the Bulge was quite important at the time but I can’t say that I knew much about it at that time. I only read about it later.
TO: Was there heavy snow in Britain at that time?
HK: There was quite a lot of snow. We had to clear the aircraft and the runways.
TO: Did that ever effect operations much?
HK: I think it must have done to a certain extent but I don’t know details.
TO: OK. So what do you think was the best plane that the RAF had, in general?
HK: Well, as far as the Bomber Command was concerned the Lancaster but of course during the early part of the war the Hurricanes and Spitfires were the best.
TO: Did you know much about Wellington bombers?
HK: I didn’t know much about them, no.
TO: Was there ever any bullying in the Air Force?
HK: What?
TO: Bullying.
HK: What? Sorry I’m not with you.
TO: Was there any bullying in the Air force?
HK: Bullying? I didn’t know of any. No, I can’t say that I did.
TO: And were there particular songs the crew liked to sing at all?
HK: There was one that the bomb-aimer came out with. It was an Australian one presumably. I don’t know if you’ve heard it. It was about a — yes, something like “I put my finger in a woodpecker’s hole. The woodpecker said, ‘God bless my soul, take it out, take it out, remove it.’”And then it was, “Put it back, put it back, replace it” and it went on like that but I’ve never heard it before or since.
TO: I’m afraid I’ve never heard of it. [slight laugh] I guess I was lucky. Was most of your, was anyone else in the crew Australian?
HK: They were all Australian, yes.
TO: And did they, did anyone bring any kind of souvenirs aboard the plane, like personal possessions?
HK: I don’t know of any, no.
TO: Were you allowed to, I don’t know, decorate your own plane at all, that you could bring, I don’t know, if you wanted to bring an ornament with you could you bring that onto the plane?
HK: We could have done, yes, yes. The only things we were not allowed to take was money or things that could, um, easily tell the captors if we had to bail out where we’d come from, in case we had to try and have an identity of some other country.
TO: Were you ever told what you — did the RAF ever tell you how much information you could give if you were ever captured?
HK: Yeah. Name, rank and number. That was all we were supposed to say. [pause]
TO: So, when did the Lancaster actually become the main bomber of the RAF?
HK: It started in 1942 and it gradually built up from there so it was definitely the main plane of Bomber Command by the end of the war.
TO: What did you think of the bombers the Americans were using?
HK: Well, they — I think they did quite a good job but the aircraft weren’t any patch on the Lancasters. They couldn’t carry the, the load but, er, going as they did all alone at daytime I think they were very brave to do it.
TO: Did, er, did your squadron ever try and fly in formation when you were on missions?
HK: No, no formation. I know that when we went on to the daylight raids we were just more or less in a gaggle, not as a formation.
TO: Were there any ever any times when a bomb you were carrying failed to be released?
HK: Yes, there was one, which unfortunately got stuck up and we brought it back. We didn’t realise it at the time but no, no damage was done.
TO: So, what did they do with that bomb then?
HK: Oh, released it. It was up to the armourers. I think they released it and took it away. I don’t know what happened to it. It was a five hundred pounder apparently.
TO: Did you ever attack ships at all while they were at sea?
HK: Not at sea, no.
TO: [background noise] Sorry, you’ve answered a lot of my questions. I’m just trying to find some other ones. Did anyone, did the pilot try and tell anyone what would happen if he ever happened to get killed?
HK: Well, I was the one that had to take over it as necessary and I on training flights I was able to take over the controls and keep the plane more or less straight and level although the rear gunner said when I did it was more like a switchback [slight laugh]. But that was all.
TO: So, did the Lancaster have two steering columns or just one?
HK: No, we just had the one so I would have had to get the pilot out of the, his seat and get in myself.
TO: Was he allowed to teach you to do that?
HK: Yes.
TO: And would you have been able to land it at all?
HK: I don’t know [laugh]. I wasn’t taught how to do that.
TO: So, I’m just a bit puzzled why, why wouldn’t they teach you to land if you ever happened take over. It seems to kind of defeat the object of teaching —
HK: I think it was just that I had to try and keep it in the air while the rest of the crew got out.
TO: How did it feel to be in control of the plane though when you had it?
HK: I quite enjoyed it.
TO: Did you get a sense of pride doing that?
HK: Yes.
TO: What’s your best memory of your time during the war?
HK: I suppose the best memory was, um, when I heard that I was medically fit to fly.
TO: So, er, do you remember why they turned you down during your first medical test?
HK: I was slightly short sighted in one eye. At the time, um, that was quite important but it ceased to be important when I wanted to be a flight engineer, although as I ended up doing bomb aiming I don’t know. [laugh]
TO: Well did it ever, did your eyesight ever effect your performance?
HK: No, no. It wasn’t bad enough.
TO: Do you know whether the gunners had to have the same education as the other members of the aircraft?
HK: I don’t think they did, no. I’m sure they didn’t.
TO: Did you ever meet any famous people during the war as in senior commanders or leaders?
HK: I don’t remember, no.
TO: Did you listen to the radio very much?
HK: Quite a bit, yeah.
TO: And again, sorry for asking you this, but was the scariest thing that happened to you during the war?
HK: I think it was when the bombs came through the wing, yes.
TO: Did you think the plane was going to crash or did you think it could survive?
HK: I wasn’t sure whether the wing was going to fall off or not [slight laugh] but, er, so we were fortunate. Another few inches one way or the other it would have hit the front or rear spar.
TO: So, how far, how close to the fuselage was the hole?
HK: Well, it wasn’t very far away. It was the inner engine that got hit or just behind the inner engine. No, it couldn’t happen at a better place actually [slight laugh].
TO: And did it send a big shock wave through the aircraft when that happened?
HK: Well, certainly, yes. There was a big thump, yes.
TO: And when they said the Lancaster was overhead was everyone expecting a bomb?
HK: Well, we were expecting it but we didn’t have any time to do any manoeuvres. As soon as the mid-upper called out we heard the bumps. That was it.
TO: Did you think for a minute you might have to bail out?
HK: I thought that might be a possibility, yeah.
TO: And what about when you saw the German night fighter?
HK: Well, we were glad to see it disappear but, er, yes —
TO: Is there anything else you can add about that mission, about where you were going at the time?
HK: No. I can’t really remember.
TO: That’s fine. So, when — you mentioned as the flight engineer you might have to take over from the plane sometimes. Was it hard to learn how to take over or was it quite easy?
HK: No. We had training on the Link trainer so I knew what to do.
TO: So, did you volunteer for the Pathfinders or were you assigned?
HK: I heard after the war that the pilot, my pilot, had volunteered because he got extra pay for being — but whether that was true or not I don’t know but yes he volunteered first and we all agreed to go.
TO: Did you get extra pay for that?
HK: I think we did but I can’t remember that but I think we did.
TO: What was the average pay in the RAF?
HK: It was a few shillings a day I think. I don’t remember that, no. I know some people can remember these details but I don’t.
TO: That’s fine. And how do you feel about Japan and Germany today for the war?
HK: I think we should have lost the war [laugh] and we would have been better off than — yes. I don’t know.
TO: And why do you think that?
HK: Well, Germany and Japan seem to have done very well but—
TO: And do you think the war was worth the price?
HK: Sorry?
TO: Do you think the war was worth the price?
HK: Probably wasn’t but I don’t know how things would have turned out if it —
TO: And what did you think of the memorial that they built in Green Park a few years ago?
HK: It’s a very good memorial, certainly. I wasn’t able to go up to the unveiling.
TO: They’re having a service in a couple of weekends there and going to be recording that as well. Did you hear about the holocaust?
HK: I can’t say I did during the war, no.
TO: And do you think Bomber Command was treated unfairly after the war?
HK: I certainly think so, yes. I think Harris was given a bad, was bad, er, treated badly. That was — everyone thought Dresden was his idea but in fact it came direct from Churchill originally.
TO: Did you ever happen to meet Harris after the war?
HK: No, no.
TO: And do you think the RAF played a critical role in Britain’s victory?
HK: Oh, definitely, yes.
TO: And do you think there was anything that happened to you during the war which affected you later in your life? [beeping sound]
HK: Oh, yes. I think the fact that, um, I did some technical training during my life in the RAF was — before I was called up I was working at the, er, an accounts department in Electrics Supply but after the war I wanted to do something more technical and the GEC were advertising for people in their, um, research laboratories in Wembley and I applied and joined and came a patent agent so, yes, it made quite a bit of difference.
TO: And what did you do in your career after that?
HK: Well I trained as — initially I got a science degree and did the patent office, patent agent examination and I actually stayed with the research laboratories, um, until I, my official retirement and then I went on a couple of days a week after that until they moved the whole thing to Chelmsford and I decided that was enough.
TO: And, sorry to ask this, but what, what was the saddest thing you’d say that happened during the war?
HK: During the war? That I can’t really say. I suppose the saddest thing was, um, losing a very close cousin, who I was sort of brought up with, and caught diabetes and there wasn’t so much they could do about it at the time and she died. But that was during the war. It wasn’t anything to do with the war itself. I don’t know of anything connected with the war but it was so sad.
TO: And do you remember what you were doing the day the war ended?
HK: Yes. I was at, stationed at Coningsby, um, then we were sent home on leave, um, but the rest of the crew as they were all Australian were called back before me to be sent back to Australia, so I never really got a chance to say a proper goodbye, and it was only after the war when I went to Perth and saw the rear gunner’s name in the telephone directory that I got in touch with him. So, I don’t know if there’s anything else.
TO: So did everyone who were on that bomber meet again would you say?
HK: No, no.
TO: Did you get involved in any of the VE Day celebrations?
HK: No. I don’t remember any, no.
TO: Or did you listen to Churchill’s victory speech?
HK: I’m sure I did, yes, but I can’t remember it.
TO: Were you bothered by the fact that he didn’t mention Bomber Command?
HK: He what, sorry?
TO: In Churchill’s victory speech he didn’t mention Bomber Command.
HK: Oh yeah. I read about that afterwards, yes.
TO: But did that bother you when you heard the speech?
HK: Well, I can’t say I remember if I heard the speech. I must have missed it. I don’t know.
TO: And how do you feel today about your war-time service?
HK: Well, my particular service, I think I was quite fortunate and overall I had quite a reasonable time.
TO: Have you ever watched any films about the war?
HK: Some, certainly, yes.
TO: And what do you think of them?
HK: Some of them are quite good otherwise some aren’t.
TO: Any ones in particular that you liked?
HK: I think the one, the first one about “The Dambusters” was excellent, yes.
TO: And, er, do you think the atomic bombs were necessary against Japan?
HK: I think overall probably, yes, but if it had gone on we would have lost many more people, both Japanese and American and our country, so I suppose it, it was necessary. I think in a way it was a pity because it really put a shadow on nuclear reactors. I think if it hadn’t happened there wouldn’t have been quite an outcry on reactors that there is today.
TO: Were you involved in nuclear reactors after the war?
HK: Not directly but, um, the — our department was involved in patents for nuclear reactors and they did quite a bit of work.
TO: And, er, how do you feel about Britain’s involvement in events like Iraq and Afghanistan?
HK: In?
TO: In Afghanistan and Iraq?
HK: I think we probably should have kept out. I don’t think it really helps in any way. I just think it’s just made things worse.
TO: Is there anything you want to add at all about you war-time service?
HK: No, I don’t think so. I was quite fortunate overall and had quite a reasonable time.
TO: OK. Or is there anything you want to add which was important to you at the time which you‘ve not mentioned?
HK: No, I don’t think so, no.
TO: OK. Well, er, thank you very much for telling me about your experiences. It was really fascinating.
HK: I hope it’s not been a bit too boring. I couldn’t remember lots of things.
TO: It’s not boring at all. It’s amazing. No, no. What you could remember is amazing. Can I just, er, there is something I showed to another RAF veteran and you can either read yourself or if you want I can read it out for you now. This is a speech that Arthur Harris gave at an RAF reunion in 1977.
HK: Oh right.
TO: And he just basically talks about the role, basically pointing out, explaining what Bomber Command did and why it was so important now. If you like I can read it out but if you’d rather read it yourself out in your own time you can, whichever you prefer.
HK: Can I?
TO: Yes. You can read it out now if you want.
HK: Well, can I keep this?
TO: Of course. That’s why I bought it for you.
HK: Right, thank you.
TO: If you want to read it now you can or if you want me to read it out I can, whichever.
HK: Yeah. Well, I’d like to read it later.
TO: OK. OK. Right, thank you very much.
HK: Not at all.
TO: Sorry, I should have explained at the start, er, as an introduction that I’m supposed to do but because I was, because I was getting so many interviews done I forgot it. I just wanted to end by saying that we’ve recorded this interview for the International Bomber Command Centre. My name’s Thomas Ozel and we were interviewing Mr Harold Kirby in London on the 10th of June 2016. Sorry, that’s the 11th of June. Thank you for this.
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
AKirbyHVA160611
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Harold Kirby. Two
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
02:04:49 audio recording
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Tom Ozel
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-06-11
Description
An account of the resource
Harold Kirby grew up in London and worked in an accounts department before joining the Royal Air Force. He served as a fitter with 460 Squadron at RAF Binbrook before remustering as a flight engineer. He flew two tours of operations with 467, 97 and 156 Squadrons. He describes the Stirling that was used for training and also the Lancaster in which he flew on operations. He also describes the preparations before an operation and the procedure for landing. He explains how window and how flares were used by the Pathfinders. Harold gives an account of an incident where his Lancaster was damaged by another Lancaster dropping its bombs from above but otherwise says his crew were very fortunate. After the war, he worked as a patent agent until he retired.
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
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Christine Kavanagh
156 Squadron
460 Squadron
467 Squadron
97 Squadron
aircrew
bomb struck
bombing
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
briefing
flight engineer
ground crew
ground personnel
Lancaster
military ethos
Pathfinders
RAF Binbrook
RAF Coningsby
RAF Waddington
Stirling
target indicator
training
V-1
V-weapon
Window
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/290/3445/PLeicesterD1601.1.jpg
c2820bc7a7d2d3b32e67a8ee5335b9ba
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/290/3445/ALeicesterD160501.1.mp3
d86dafc77cb44e9b7caaf069d8f6a1a2
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
Leicester, David
David Leicester
D Leicester
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with David Leicester DFC (1923 - 2021), and his log book. He flew operations as a pilot with 35, 158 and 640 Squadrons.
The collection has been licenced to the IBCC Digital Archive by David Leicester and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-05-01
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Leicester, D
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
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AP: And I think we’re working. Yes. We are. So this interview for the International Bomber Command Centre is with David Leicester. He was a Halifax pilot with 158 and 640 Squadrons and a Lancaster pilot with 35 Squadron Pathfinders. The interview is taking place in North Plympton in Adelaide. My name’s Adam Purcell. It is the 1st of May 2016. So, David let’s start from the beginning. Can you tell me something of your early life? What you were doing before the war and how you came to join the air force.
DL: Well, really before the war I was at school when the war broke out in 1939. And I left. In 1940 I was at High School and was very interested in the, mainly in the Battle of Britain and what their pilots were doing. And I sort of made up my mind that if I happened to be in the war I would like to be a fighter pilot. My father was in the AIF during World War One so I was very keen to get into something. I left school at the end of 1940 and started work as an office boy in the rag trade, in a manufacturer’s agents office here in Adelaide until I was called up in August 1941 as — in number 19 Course EATS at the age of eighteen. Yeah.
AP: Did you, sorry did you say you had any prior military service up till that point?
DL: No.
AP: No.
DL: No.
AP: So you weren’t in the, in the army or the —
DL: No.
AP: CMF or anything.
DL: No.
AP: Ok.
DL: We did, prior to be called up, after we’d applied to join the air force we would, I was, I and others were too young at seventeen. We had to wait until we were eighteen before we were called up. So we did, we were put on the Air Force Reserve and while we were waiting to be called up we did a lot of the pre-entry work. Learning Morse Code, learning air force regulations and that sort of thing. So, by the time we actually got called up and went to the Initial Training School we had done a bit of pre, pre-interest work in the air force.
AP: Why did you choose the air force?
DL: Well, as I said I was interested in what the Battle of Britain boys were doing and I thought, oh boy that’s for me. Exciting and it, it was the one that attracted me the most. Even though my father had been in the AIF and told a lot of stories about the AIF. I wish I’d known more about my father‘s activities actually. As most of us say these days but the air force was the one.
AP: Can you tell me something of the enlistment process?
DL: The which?
AP: The enlistment process. The process of actually going to and signing the papers and all that sort of thing.
DL: Well I don’t, can’t recall a lot of that but I guess in the early 1941 I made application to the Air Force Recruiting Office. We were under age as far as the air force was concerned so we needed the parent’s permission which was freely given by my father and mother. And so I was really ready for, to be called up.
AP: Were there any medical type examinations or something that you can remember?
DL: Yes. We had to get, from our local GP we’d need to get a clearance to say that we were medically fit to join the services. But of course as soon as we went in we went through vigorous tests at Initial Training School. Initial medical tests to make sure we were alright. If we had a broken toenail it was more or less couldn’t get in. We were rejected.
AP: Can you remember any of the specific tests that you had to do?
DL: No. I can’t really. Tests on what we had learned prior to entry. Tests on Morse Code. Tests on what we’d learned as far as air force law was concerned, and the theory of flight. We needed to know quite a bit about that prior to going in. And they assessed us on the results of what we had learned prior to entry.
AP: The, you said before you were doing some, some study while you were on the Reserve. Where and how was that delivered?
DL: Well, we, we were mainly did our pre-courses. We had lecture courses on theory of flight and air force law. They were, they were given to us at a local school. But Morse Code and other things like that we learned at the local General Post Office. GPO. And we needed to reach a certain qualification particularly in Morse Code, again before being accepted. I can’t remember now how many words a minute we had to do but obviously those of us that were called up had passed the requirement.
AP: Do — alright, so this is in Adelaide. Sorry I didn’t clarify that.
DL: In Adelaide. Yes.
AP: You’ve lived in Adelaide all your life.
DL: Everything was in Adelaide. Yeah.
AP: Yeah. Alright.
DL: I had never been outside Adelaide until I joined the air force.
AP: Excellent. So your Initial Training School. Where was that?
DL: That was down at Victor Harbour.
AP: What happened there?
DL: Well, that was mainly furthering education on air force law and theory of flight and a lot of drill, marching and all that sort of thing. Discipline. We learned discipline and had to do what an officer said. So it was very strict. And it was at the ITS, as a result, I guess of how we came through each subject and an assessment by a higher ranking officer. They chose whether we would be pilots, navigators, wireless operators or whatever was needed in the crew and fortunately I was selected as a pilot. And that course at Victor Harbour was about three months. No flying at ITS. Just strictly all ground work.
AP: What was, what was the actual camp like at Victor Harbour? What were the buildings like? Where did you sleep? All that sort of stuff.
DL: Well, the actual headquarters of 4 ITS at Victor Harbour was an old mansion. But as far as we were concerned as air force recruits we just slept in tents. Six to a tent. And that was it. And —
AP: They had classrooms and things like that as well.
DL: Oh yes. Yes. They built classrooms and as I said the actual headquarters of 4 ITS was called Mount Breckan which was an old English mansion built out here. And that contained many rooms. The air force had acquired that building and it had many rooms which we used for lectures and all the other requirements.
AP: Was that, that — I drove out of Victor Harbour a couple of years ago on the way back from Kangaroo Island. Is that the big house on the hill as you go, sort of out?
DL: Yes.
AP: Oh cool. Now I know.
DL: The big house on the hill. Yeah.
AP: Yeah. Now I know where it is.
DL: It was actually a house built for some Englishman. I can’t remember now but all it was built as a replica of his home, or her home in England and was built almost entirely of imported material.
AP: Wow. Fantastic.
DL: A grand old building it was.
AP: Yeah. And I imagine the air force probably didn’t leave it in quite the condition they found it in.
DL: No. No. That’s right. No. It’s still there today.
AP: It certainly is. Yeah. I remember seeing it. Yeah. Ok so from ITS your next step would have been an Elementary Flying Training School.
DL: Yes, selected as a pilot. Well, first we were asked at ITS whether we wanted, what we wanted to be — pilots, navigators or whatever. We were given three choices and most of us put down number 1 — pilot. Number 2 — pilot. Number 3 — pilot because everyone that went in or most of all, almost all were, ninety nine percent probably of called up wanted to be pilots. But at the end of the course at Victor we were, looked at notice board to see what the next posting would be and fortunately for me it was to be a pilot and posted to Parafield in South Australia flying Tiger Moths at EFTS. Yeah.
AP: So you’re, you’re still in Adelaide.
DL: Yeah. I’m still in Adelaide. Yes. Still in Adelaide.
AP: Excellent. All right. Tiger Moths. They’re the ubiquitous training aircraft.
DL: Magnificent little aircraft. Yes. Because we didn’t know about any the other. That was, that was it as far as we were concerned. I’d never flown before. Never thought of flying. I’d never been up in an aircraft. But we had to. Our flying started within a certain number of hours and again like ITS we were assessed by superior officers as our flying capability and given an assessment at the end of the, at the end of the course.
AP: What was your instructor like? Who was your instructor? What was he like?
DL: Well, the instructors were just chaps that had finished their flying training and I think the chap I had, I can’t remember his name but he had recently finished his flying training at, at Parafield. And he was posted from Parafield to Parafield as an instructor. Some of them happened like that. But I wasn’t interested in instructing. So, and at Parafield there we were given three alternatives of what type of pilot we wanted to be. Fighter pilot, bomber pilot or whatever, or instructing. And again I put down, as many others did, fighter, fighter, fighter. And it looked that way that we would be fighters because from Parafield we were posted, some of us were posted to SFTS at Point Cook and flying Wirraways. The course at Point Cook was a four month course divided into two. Two lots of two monthly courses. Two months of what they called Initial Training Centre School and another two months of Advanced Training School. ITS and ATS, flying Wirraways at Point Cook. After the end of the first two months we were given leave and many of us, the South Australians we came back to Adelaide for leave. And when we got back to Point Cook we found that all the Wirraways had gone and they had been replaced by Airspeed Oxfords. That didn’t concern us terribly because ok it looked like single engine pilots were out but we could now be twin engine pilots. And we had to complete that first two monthly period again, over again. And still complete the four months within the prescribed time. So it was a bit of a rush. And it was at ITS — at SFTS the second two months when we received our wings and became sergeant pilots or some of them were officers but most of us came out as sergeant pilots waiting for another posting.
AP: So backing up a little bit more can you tell me something about the Tiger Moth in particular? What did it look like? Where did you sit? How did it fly?
DL: Oh the Tiger Moth is a twin-engined little biplane with a Gypsy engine. Not much bigger than a lawn mower engine but they had two seats back to back. The instructor sat in the front and the, we were sat in the back. And we spoke to each other through a funnel. Telling us, he was telling us what to do and giving, giving us instructions. We had to fly solo within twelve hours I think it was, or ten hours. And then most of us, there were some scrubbings but most of us were able to get through in the required time. I’m not sure what I, how many hours I took. Around about eight or nine I think. There were quite a few scrubbings strangely enough. Scrubbings, I mean chaps that failed the test and they had to be re-mustered as navigators or other crew members.
AP: Alright. First solo. Can you tell me about your first solo?
DL: Well the first solo was quite exciting. We’d go up, up with an instructor and land at a certain time and when he thought that we were, had done enough to go solo he just got out of the cockpit and said, ‘Here we are. Off you go.’ And that was it and we had to just go around on our own. A very exciting time getting the, getting, flying solo was the ant’s pants or mostly. When we would fly solo, amazing.
AP: Did, did you encounter throughout your training any accidents, or —?
DL: No. Not really.
AP: Did you see any?
DL: You’re talking about total training?
AP: All the way through.
DL: Hmmn?
AP: Yeah. All the way through.
DL: Yeah. Well, after we’d finished training at Point Cook many of, many of us were posted to England. To the UK. We were seconded by the RAF actually to replace aircrew. Aircrew were very short in England at the time. This is now in late or early 1942 perhaps. And we were posted from Point Cook to England. We went by ship to England via New Zealand. And when we got to England we were awaiting postings again. And a lot of us had all trained together and became close friends. And when we started off at a place called Advanced Flying Unit and that was still flying Oxfords. Still thinking we were going to be, or I thought we were going to be fighter pilots. After we’d done a course at AFU at Grantham in England I was posted as a lone figure to a bomber Operational Training Unit where all of the others went to further their single engine or twin engine fighting. Many of them finished up on Beaufighters or Mosquitoes. Now, why in the heck I was sort of singled out I’ve got no idea but I finished up at an OTU at a place called Honeybourne in England flying Whitleys. Now, the Whitley was Armstrong Arthur Whitley was one of the main bomber forces of England at, in the early part of the war, and Whitleys and Wellingtons were used for training purposes. And at the OTU at [pause] where did I say it was? Honeybourne. A place called Honeybourne. On my first solo flight at night in a Whitley an engine caught fire on take-off and I had to get up and go around and bring the thing back again. And I had to land wheels up. A belly landing. So that was during training. Yeah. And that was bad enough but quite an experience.
AP: I can imagine. Alright, so can you tell me how you got to the UK in a little bit more detail?
DL: Well when we arrived — on the way from New Zealand, Auckland to the UK we were in a South African luxury liner which had been turned into a troop ship. A vessel called the Cape Town Castle. The Castle Line ship was a South African ship. Now, this was, this was re-modified to take about two thousand troops but there were only about a hundred and fifty on it at the time. And we took off from New Zealand to England through the Panama Canal. And, but on the way across the Indian Ocean we came across some life boats with a crew from a vessel that had, a vessel that had been sunk by a U-boat, presumably. But then we, we carried on. Went to England via the Panama Canal and eventually arrived in Liverpool Harbour. Now the, Liverpool Harbour had been bombed by the Germans the night before and we had to stay about, oh three miles out. We couldn’t get near the harbour at the time so this large vessel anchored about three miles out and we were taken in to the city of Liverpool in row boats. Taken from, from the Cape Town Castle. So Liverpool was on fire. But then, there we boarded a train and went down to Bournemouth in the south of England.
AP: So this is the first time, as you were saying before, the first time you were outside of Adelaide.
DL: Yeah.
AP: The first time going overseas.
DL: Yeah.
AP: What did you think of wartime England?
DL: Well, at, initial, the initial because we didn’t know much about England of course. My father was very pro-English although he had never been there. But I remember, remember through my growing up days he always had, on the dining table, a huge map of the City of London and he would have been able to drive a taxi in London without any trouble at all. And this really got me interested in England. But the train journey down from Liverpool to Bournemouth was at night so we didn’t really see much at all. And the first we saw of it was when the next posting came which was only after a couple of days, for me only a couple of days at Bournemouth. From there I was posted to heavy, Heavy Conversion Unit. HCU in Yorkshire. So, I can’t remember now how I actually got from Bournemouth to Yorkshire but I remember being very thrilled at looking at the vast expanse of England. Even though it’s a very small area it seemed to have plenty of space. And I had heard that there was something like seven hundred aerodromes there so where the heck they put them all I really don’t know. But that was, by then I knew of course I was definitely on bombers. Getting to the Heavy Conversion Unit which were flying Halifaxes. So I I transferred from Whitleys to Halifaxes at the Heavy Conversion Unit. And it was at the Heavy Conversion Unit where we picked up our crews. For example, when, when pilots had, some pilots had finished their training they were sent to Heavy Conversion Unit. Same with the navigators and wireless operators and gunners etcetera. So we picked up the crew at, at Heavy Conversion Unit. Strangely enough on my first solo flight in a Halifax at night an engine also caught fire. But by then the training had been good enough to know exactly what to do without any, any problems. So we landed wheels down and only on three engines. So it was a good experience at the time. It was usual too for a pilot to be sent to an operational training squadron, yes an operational squadron, an operational flying squadron to become experienced in perhaps flying on operational flying. And the pilot would do two trips at least with an experienced crew at that squadron. And it so happened that, and I was sent to 158 Squadron to do my first second dickies we called them, with, with an experienced crew in 158 Squadron. And having done that back to the Heavy Conversion Unit to pick up the other six crew who I had obtained at Heavy Conversion Unit, and strangely enough when the posting came through we were posted to 158 Squadron, in Yorkshire.
AP: How —
DL: In East Yorkshire.
AP: How did, how did you actually meet your crew? How did you choose your crew?
DL: Well, it’s a funny thing. Strangely enough, as I said we crewed up at HCU and all navigators and other crew members came. Now, I was looking for a navigator so as soon as I saw one I said, ‘Are you looking for a pilot?’ Or he would say, ‘Are you looking for a navigator?’ And I’d say, ‘Yes,’ and the same with, we’d just see someone come into the mess or come into the — some, some pilots used to go out to the entrance gates of the aerodrome and as new crew came in pilots and the navigator or someone would just say, ‘How about flying with me?’ That’s how, it was as uncomplicated as that. We had no idea how good they were or how bad they were but that’s how we picked them up. Just by being in the mess with a load of, a load of other crew members.
AP: If you perhaps picked the wrong person. You discovered later that you weren’t suited was there any way out?
DL: Oh yes. Yes, that happened quite often. As a matter of fact a friend of mine from Adelaide he was on, finished up on the same squadron. He had got a very bad navigator. And so he just wanted him replaced so he would just, if there were any spare navigators on, around on the aerodrome he would, on the airfield he would just say, you know, or tell the CO that he wasn’t happy with his navigator and he wanted him replaced and that’s, he’d get him replaced. Sometimes, in his case the squadron navigation officer went on one trip with them and found out that the navigator was just not plotting his courses properly. Yes there was an out. Yes.
AP: What, ok, so, if you crewed up at the Heavy Conversion who were you flying with at the OTU?
DL: Well, nobody. Just, didn’t have any crew. Just an instructor. And I think on the night that I had the fire in the engine and crash landed I think there was a rear gunner. That’s all.
AP: Ok. It’s a little bit different to some other stories I’ve heard. So you did what a lot of what people did in the Operational Training Unit at the HCU instead. So it’s a little, a little bit different.
DL: What have others said about the crewing up?
AP: It tended to happen at the OTU. And so that’s where they started flying as a crew and then the Heavy Conversion Unit was just to add the extra two engines essentially.
DL: Oh well. It depends I suppose. I hadn’t heard that. I thought, I thought they all crewed up at HCU.
AP: Yeah. Well there you go.
DL: I’d never known, you saying that. Well OTUs, that’s strange because a, a Whitley or a Wellington didn’t have seven in the crew.
AP: Yeah. What, what tended to happen was they got the flight engineer when they got to Heavy Conversion Unit.
DL: Oh. I see. Yeah.
AP: So they were added on. But the, the six of them started out in those aircraft. But anyway that’s, that’s a —
DL: I hadn’t heard that.
AP: That’s different to your story but this is your story we’re telling.
DL: But is that how they got them at OTU?
AP: Yeah.
DL: The same way.
AP: Yeah the same sort of —
DL: Saying as hey you are you looking for a pilot?
AP: Or they’d put them all in a hangar.
DL: Yeah.
AP: Equal numbers of everyone.
DL: Yeah.
AP: And they say, ‘Sort yourselves out boys.’
DL: Yeah. Yeah.
AP: Yeah. I think it’s one of the fascinating parts of Bomber Command stories that so often worked.
DL: Yeah. And the seven became a very very close knit crew. Each relying on the other. I mean it was, if you had a dud, you know, no good having someone who couldn’t do their job properly.
AP: Did you, jumping forward a bit, did you tend to socialise with that crew?
DL: Yes. Yes. Yeah.
AP: You all lived together and —
DL: Yeah.
AP: Went to the pub and all that sort of stuff.
DL: You became almost all day and every day together doing everything together and became very close. You had to rely entirely on other members of the crew, particularly if something went wrong or something happened. There was only one pilot and if anything went wrong with the pilot they had to know what to do. No one could fly it if the pilot got hurt. It was almost baling out the rest of the crew, which did happen a lot.
AP: So I guess going on from the doing everything with your crew what sort of things did you get up to when you were on leave, throughout the time in England?
DL: Well, mostly on leave other members of the crew, if they were English and mine all were on Halifaxes, I had two different crews, I’ll come to that soon, they, they would go home for a leave. So mostly then I, I would go down to London and go to Australia House and meet other, meet some of my friends and who I’d trained with or, but the Englishmen would — would go to their home. I was asked to their home on, some of them, on occasions, where I went. When I went and met members of the family.
AP: Alright. So you flew both Lancaster and Halifax. What was your first impression of a Halifax when you first saw it?
DL: Well, I liked the Halifax. We might come to that later about the difference between a Halifax and a Lancaster.
AP: Definitely one of my questions.
DL: I didn’t know how a four engine bomber should, should operate or how it should travel. The Halifax was a very nice plane to fly and it did everything it wanted to do. In fact it did it too quickly at times. But my first impression was, was very good. They had Merlin inline engines, very capable and reliable engines. They didn’t have any real fault except that they were very vicious in any control needed by the pilot. It was like, I always say it’s like the difference between a car without power steering. The Halifax was very direct in its operational command of the pilot. It was very swift in its control, which, as far as the wartime flying was concerned meant a lot. The Lancaster was, was a beautiful plane. Very, very, very easy to fly. Very nice to fly. Very comfortable to fly but it was much slower to react to the pilots control in wartime. The Halifax would get me out of trouble more quickly then would a Lancaster. I’ve had arguments about this with Lancaster blokes forever, since the war. Most of them they, they, at OTU these fellas that you’ve already spoken to did they do their OTU on Lancasters?
AP: No. Typically they were, they were Wellingtons.
DL: Oh yeah.
AP: Or perhaps Whitleys.
DL: Yeah.
AP: And in the Heavy Conversion Unit was where they flew.
DL: Yeah.
AP: In some cases they went to Stirlings first.
DL: Yeah. Right.
AP: And then there was another thing called a Lancaster Finishing School.
DL: Yeah. That’s right, Lancaster Finishing School.
AP: That’s where they converted into the Lancaster themselves. That was later in the war though.
DL: Yeah. That’s right. That was later in the war.
AP: Yeah.
DL: But in most of the Heavy Conversion Units they were, were Halifaxes that had been passed their use by date. And they, they were cranky old things and they, they didn’t impress some of the pilots. But they would go from a beat up old Halifax and go on to a Lancaster Finishing School, a brand new Halifax, a brand new Lancaster and they would, you know, compare the difference. Well that’s not fair. In my opinion it’s not fair and, but the Halifaxes, oh boy, that really got you out of trouble in a hurry and also the pilot’s escape hatch on a Halifax was in a better position than that on a Lancaster. You could get out. The pilot could get out of a Halifax more quickly, not by much mind you, seconds quicker than a Lancaster. So those seconds meant a hell of a lot.
AP: So you talk about the escape hatch in a Halifax. Where actually was it?
DL: Hmmn?
AP: Where was this, this escape hatch in a Halifax? I know the pilot’s one they could get out straight up or they had to go down the nose. Where was the Halifax escape hatch?
DL: That was straight up.
AP: Straight up as well.
DL: But I can’t quite remember why it was better placed but I don’t think the Lancaster one was straight up was it? It was slightly to the front or back.
AP: I can’t remember. I don’t know.
DL: The Halifax one was straight up.
AP: Alright. I guess we’re getting towards the squadron now. Your first squadron was 158.
DL: Yeah.
AP: Where were they?
DL: They were at a place called Lissett in East Yorkshire. The East Riding of Yorkshire, right over near the coast. You’ve heard of Whitby I suppose. Not far from Whitby and it was, it was near the east coast of Yorkshire. What they called the East Riding of Yorkshire. It was war built airfield. So everything was strung out all over the place. All of the buildings and the sleeping quarters were miles apart, or seemed miles apart. Whereas in a permanent, permanent air force airfield was quite luxury compared with the wartime airfield. But they had everything there. I quite enjoyed it at Lissett and had no problems with, with anything. There were, there were three Aussies, three Aussies there, one other chap from Adelaide and a chap from West Australia and myself. We were the only three Aussies on the squadron and we got away with murder. We used to go and have a bath in the officer’s mess. Between, between where the sergeant’s, sergeant’s sleeping quarters and the ablution block, we had to pass by the officer’s ablutions. So on one occasion, it was about half a mile between each of the, of these areas. On one occasion the bloke from Western Australia was walking past the officer’s ablutions. He was a sergeant walking past the officer’s ablutions. He couldn’t hear anybody in there or see anybody and no lights on. So he hopped in there and had his shower, no shower, they didn’t have any showers, hopped in, had a bath in the officer’s quarters. He told the other two of us about it and we started doing it as well. The sergeant’s bath only had, they had a rim painted around the bath, six inches of water. Well, the officer’s had twelve inches. So, but we got caught out but being Aussies we got away with murder almost. And the CO found out but he didn’t take any notice. He just said, ‘Keep it going.’ So, that was a funny one.
AP: What, what sort of thing happened in the sergeant’s mess?
DL: The sergeant’s mess, well it was like a community hall I suppose. It had eating quarters. Tables and chairs. It had a billiard table perhaps. And lounge chairs. English papers, and just a general place to go and relax if you weren’t flying. It was used quite a bit when we weren’t flying.
AP: What, what other things did you get up to when you weren’t flying?
DL: Well, mainly, if we didn’t go to the mess we would go down to a local pub. English village local pub and spend the afternoon or evening there. I got a story later if you like about that. What we did when we were on Pathfinders. The crew instead of going down to the pub. We did other things first but it was generally just a recreation, time off, relaxing in the sergeant’s mess.
AP: So, ok you were on operations at this stage.
DL: Yeah.
AP: You’ve already flown two as second dickie.
DL: Yeah.
AP: And then went back to HCU and then came with your crew.
DL: That’s right.
AP: Do any of your operations from Lissett stand out in particular in your memory?
DL: Well, yes they do. But I can’t really tell which was which strangely enough. We weren’t allowed to put in our logbook strange things that might have, may have happened. We had a intelligence officer, a squadron leader intelligence officer who was besotted with the fact that the Germans were going to land in England. He had dates and everything else. And he would not let us put in the logbook anything that happened that might give the Germans an idea that their defences were good. So, unfortunately in the first few, while he was there, the first few ops even if we got hit up to glory all we were allowed to put was, “No flak. No fighters. Good trip.” But the logbook, the logbook, I’ve got my logbook here. The logbook doesn’t really tell us what happened. Tells us, tells me what crew I had and how many hours it took. That’s about all. So you know, I got hit in the tailplane for example one night. Now, I can’t tell you what night it was. The night of Nuremberg. You’ve probably heard about that. I was on that. That was my thirty first trip actually. We had a bad run but I can’t really tell you what happened unfortunately which is disappointing. I was very disappointed with the log book.
AP: That’s wartime for you I suppose.
DL: So I’m asked questions like that I’m inclined to say what happened on nights with Bomber Command. Example, things that happened, not only to me but could have happened to anybody else. Most of them did happen to me but as I said I can’t tell of one particular raid.
AP: Well look if we don’t know particular dates that’s fine. We’re more interested in, in those, those, those particular things that happened.
DL: I know the date when I went to Nuremberg. I know the date that, I know things that happened but —
AP: That’s alright. Let’s hear some of the things that happened. It doesn’t matter if we can’t tell when it happened.
DL: At Lissett we had nights of absolute horror, nights of near death situations. Near nights where had parachutes on ready to jump. Twice on occasion I had parachutes on ready to jump. Being chased by a night fighter, a night fighter plane. Being shot at from the front, from the back, from underneath. Dodging searchlights, avoiding collision, landing short of fuel. All things like that. Could have happened to anybody any night. I did sixty eight trips and had my share of trouble but, you know some fellas got shot down on their very first raid. It’s very hard to tell. And I’ve been, you know, shot up one night when the rudders got jammed and things like that. But that could happen to anybody. So I prefer not to sort of talk about individual things that happened to me.
AP: That’s ok.
DL: All those things I mentioned did happen but I can’t tell you when and what night and where.
AP: That’s alright. The when, what night and where is less important I think then the feeling of it. What —
DL: Well, you know, you land short of fuel or you land on three engines many times and it’s, you come back and you think you’ve had a hard time and you look at another aircraft on the same, you know, on the airfield that’s come back all really shot up.
AP: So you mentioned there were two occasions where you had parachutes on ready to jump.
DL: Yeah.
AP: Why? Why was that? What sort of things happened there?
DL: On one trip we got hit in the tailplane, and the, just prior to that the rear gunner had spotted an enemy fighter and he, he told me as pilot to corkscrew. You know what a corkscrew is? And while we were doing a turn, a steep turn we got hit in the rudder or got hit in the tailplane. Didn’t know where but the rudder became jammed, and we were in this turn and the rudder jammed. We couldn’t get out of it. And so the engineer and the bomb aimer came in to help me by putting pressure on my feet to try and stabilise the aircraft. But we, we were circling. We had, we had to go. You know, we could have caused collision or whatever and we couldn’t. And so I told the crew to prepare for, to abandon aircraft. We had practiced the drill many times as a crew and, but the engineer and the bomb aimer were helping me with the feet on the rudder, trying to stabilise it. And we could, my feet kept slipping off the rudder pedals so the bomb aimer took off — he had two pairs of socks on [laughs] he took off one of his socks and tied my foot to the pedal. Anyhow, after a lot of trying, we eventually, something must have been stuck in the rudder cables must have come loose because it did free itself and we were able to get out of it.
AP: So, now as the pilot were you wearing your parachute the whole time?
DL: No.
AP: No.
DL: No.
AP: So you had to go and grab it from somewhere else.
DL: I’m sorry. Yes.
AP: Yeah. You were.
DL: I had used the parachute as a, as a seat of course. You know the parachute was a seat, yes. I always preferred the parachute with a seat. Everybody else had the clip on type.
AP: Yes.
DL: And I’ll show you something. A friend of mine did a pencil drawing of me years ago, many years ago which I’ve got down in a room at the back.
AP: Cool.
DL: And I’ve got the harness on for a clip on ‘chute. I’d a funny thing to tell you about parachutes. I don’t present myself, or I don’t think I’m a superstitious type of a bloke but I — usually with a parachute we, if we were on ops, say tonight. Or during the day we would go to the parachute section and collect a parachute. Parachutes were packed every time, even though they weren’t used. We took back a parachute to the parachute section. It would be repacked before it went out again. But I never handed mine in. I went to the parachute section one day and they were all girls that did this — packed the parachutes, and asked if she would pack my parachute. And she was a young girl. Probably eighteen. And I had my parachute. I kept it with me all the time and got this one girl to repack my parachute three times a week. So, but I never handed it in. I would have got into trouble but we just kept it. Just she and I kept it. And what was the question?
AP: We were talking about just parachutes in general.
DL: Yeah.
AP: We were talking about the time that, so —
DL: Yeah.
AP: You told the rest of the crew, ‘Clip them on. We might need them.’ Yeah
DL: Yeah. I can’t really remember the other time. It might have been the Nuremberg raid. We got badly hit on Nuremberg raid.
AP: By flak or a fighter?
DL: Oh, we shot down a fighter. We actually got the fighter, yes. We got hit by a fighter. In my logbook I’ve got just, I’ve written the word, “Wheels.” Why? — I really don’t know. I can’t remember what the word “wheel.” It was something meant to happen. I think the wheels didn’t come down. They didn’t, no, that’s right. The wheels didn’t lock down. Well they didn’t show that they were locked down. The green light didn’t come on. And we were flying around so long trying to get the wheels down that we were nearly out of fuel. And so we, the air con, air controller, air controller told us to go and crash land. They had special crash landing ‘dromes, airfields, but I didn’t have enough petrol left to go so we just had to chance that the wheels had locked down. They felt as though they were locked down but didn’t show. I think that’s the story. We had a bad night. Everyone had a bad night on the Nuremberg raid. But it was, we did, it’s very hard for an RAF bomber to have a [pause] shot down fighter confirmed. Have you heard the story? For example if we saw a fighter, if we saw a bomber go down, through a fighter, shot down, a fighter. We would have to take the time, the height, the latitude and longitude and all details like that. And we would have to do it and so would other, about another dozen other planes come in with the same, with the same news. And if they all confirmed well they would, if they were all together we would get it confirmed. The Yanks used to, you know the top one used to shoot the fighter down and then the next layer down would put the hole in him as well, but very, very hard. We did get a confirmation of getting a fighter that night.
AP: That was on Nuremberg.
DL: That was on Nuremberg. Yeah.
AP: Oh wow. Can you remember that engagement at all?
DL: Yes and no. It was, there’s been a lot of stories written about it. A lot of books about it and everyone’s got a different opinion. I think we took five hours to get there and three hours to get home. We were using tactics to try and put them off. We would head, head towards another German city and before we got there we would turn off and go somewhere else. The idea was that by the time we got to Nuremberg the fighters would be on the ground refuelling. But instead of that they were there waiting for us and there’s all sorts of stories told about why. Careless talk and all that sort of thing. But that was absolute horror. There were ninety six aircraft shot down that night. You know that story? Yeah.
AP: Can you, can you remember particularly the fighter that your gunners got? Can you remember that attack?
DL: The what?
AP: Particularly, the fighter your gunners shot down.
DL: Yeah.
AP: Can you remember that actual engagement?
DL: Yes. Yes.
AP: What happened there?
DL: Well the rear gunner just advised that he had a Messerschmitt on his tail, on our tail and to corkscrew. The same thing. Corkscrew. But while we were doing all of that the rear gunner was perfect. He was terrific. And I guess while we were, while we were doing all this throwing around he put a few bullets into it. Because it was very hard for us because they were using .5 cannons and we were using 303s. So, of course they, they could get us before we could get them. But, no I can’t, maybe except for throwing around and trying to get out of the way so that the — but the gunner just reported that he had got it.
AP: So how many —
DL: Other than that it was just routine flying. What you do if you’ve got a fighter on our tail.
AP: So, ok that is one of my questions. The gunner says, over the intercom, you know, ‘Fighter. Fighter. Corkscrew port. Go.’
DL: Yeah.
AP: What happens next?
DL: That’s right. He says, he might say, ‘Fighter, fighter.’ Or they were called, what word they used. What words did the Battle of Britain use?
AP: Bandits.
DL: Bandits, yeah, bandits. So and so, and so and so. Corkscrew. I was always known as, I was never called skipper, I was always called, I was always the youngest in the two crews I had and I was known as Junior. Which someone had painted on my helmet. And he would just say, ‘Corkscrew. Corkscrew Junior,’ and he’d just keep giving an account of where the fighter was if he could see it still. But we were, yeah, so, he got close enough to us. He missed us fortunately, the tracer bullets going in, going past.
AP: And as the pilot, how, how do you do a corkscrew? What are the movements and how do you actually make a difference?
DL: Oh you’re just flying it all around. Up and down. Up to stalling point or down, you know. Just trying to, so that you couldn’t get which there was still enough room to get, to get his eyesight, his bomb site on us. His guns on us.
AP: So —
DL: That was just, just corkscrew was the best way of getting away from a fighter.
AP: How many trips did you do from Lissett?
DL: How many?
AP: Yeah.
DL: From Lissett I did twenty seven. And the 158 Squadron had three Flights. You know all about the Flights.
AP: Yeah.
DL: A B and C. And C Flight 158 moved to Leconfield and formed 640 Squadron. So, and I was in C flight, I was actually, I was flight commander of C Flight. And we moved over to Leconfield as 640 Squadron. And I only did four trips from there, from Leconfield. The — when we go to a bomber squadron it is a known fact that we would be expected to do a tour which would comprise thirty ops. Many were taken off. What we called screened at twenty six, twenty seven, twenty eight, twenty nine. There were a shortage of crews at the time. This was in March ’43. There were a shortage of crews and although the squadron commander CO had said that we were, we were ready to be taken off the crew were getting a little bit, a little bit [pause] what would I say? They were getting a little bit cheesed off. I became flight commander and was only allowed to do one trip a month. And there’s a reason for that which we can get on to. And they were getting a bit cheesed off with waiting around, waiting to be — waiting to finish ops. Not nastily but they just felt that they were, had had enough. And so we’d done our thirty and I said, ‘Ok fellas. That’s it.’ But on the night of this Nuremberg raid Bomber Command called for maximum effort. Now, when, when they called for maximum effort it was every plane they could get on the airfield and any crew they could get. So there we were supposed to have leave and finish because we were still on the squadron as a crew they wanted maximum effort. We were, every crew was put on and so we were rostered to go that night. And so actually it was our thirty first trip, op. And after that, yeah, we did finish up. They all went. They were all posted to different areas of instructing and I was posted to the RAF College to do what was called a junior commander’s course. During the time at Lissett on 158 Squadron our CO had finished. He was in permanent air force but he had finished a tour of ops and he had been posted to 158 Squadron as CO, but, and he was, they weren’t allowed to fly. COs weren’t allowed to fly on ops although they, they had a plane at their disposal. A staff plane which was shared with a couple of other squadrons. But he had itchy feet. Now bear in mind that he was not allowed to but he had itchy feet and he decided that he would go on an op one, one night. And he didn’t have a crew of course so he took with him the navigator, a crew from 158 Squadron. The navigation officer, the gunnery officer, all the senior officers on the station and the flight commander of C Flight which was the Flight I was in was, he was a squadron leader navigator. Unusual but he was a squadron leader navigator but he went as the CO’s navigator. Well, they were shot down and didn’t return. Here we are at 158 Squadron. No CO. No leaders. No flight commander for C Flight. No one to roster the crews for ops the next day, or the next couple of days. What a mess. I’m, our crew, as far as C flight was concerned was the, had the most experience on the squadron and I was asked as a sergeant to fill in for the squadron leader flight commander because they couldn’t get one. Couldn’t find one, particularly in a hurry. So, on the next night sure enough there were ops on so I with the other two flights — A and B squadron leaders, went and rostered all the planes and the crews for the night’s op, and off they went. And we had done twenty three trips I think at the time. Or about that many and we were the most experienced crew in C Flight and on the squadron actually. There were other officers on the squadron but they had, they were just none of them had done many ops at all and didn’t have any experience with, and so it so happened for the next six weeks they couldn’t find a flight commander and so [laughs] I was asked to have the job and I was given the rank of squadron leader. Six weeks from flight sergeant to squadron leader [laughs] and took over C Flight. Well then, C Flight as I told you, C Flight then moved over to Leconfield to form 640 Squadron and I was acting CO there until they found a CO for 640 Squadron. Still, still with a rank of squadron leader. And so that was it. But our crew, after the Nuremberg raid we all split up and they were posted elsewhere and so was I —
AP: So —
DL: So there we are.
AP: As a flight commander what actual duties did you have and where did you do them?
DL: Well, the duties were split between the flight commander’s office and the ground crew out at the dispersal area where the aircraft are kept. The flight commander was really, did all the paperwork necessary for C Flight. Not, not the administration for the squadron but just for C Flight. But it meant getting the orders for the day. If there was going to be an op on for that night roster the crews and make sure they were all ready to go and had no problems with crews. I was helped a lot by the chap who was flight commander of A flight. In fact, he helped me, he helped me even to his own working. He gave me advice that, from a flight commander’s point of view. I still, a New Zealander he was, and he’s still a friend of mine. He lives up in Queensland and he’s still alive and he helped me magnificently. In the meantime also we had transferred from Halifax with radial, no with Merlin engines to Halifaxes with radial engines. Mark 3 Halifaxes. And so when we moved over to Leconfield we had Mark 3 Halifaxes which were even better than the Mark 2s. And of course the radial engines were better because they were air cooled whereas the Merlin was glycol cooled. Liquid cooled.
AP: So —
DL: And when, there’s an anecdote there. With the, with the appointment as flight commander we had, I had the use of a motorbike and shared the use of a Hillman Minx motorcar. Have you heard of a Hillman Minx?
AP: Vaguely.
DL: They were not too.
AP: No. I can’t say that I’ve ever seen one.
DL: A Hillman Minx. The air force, the RAF had a lot of these. Hillman Minx’s, little cars and they were shared with the other two and I had this use of this motorbike and the car and I couldn’t drive any of them. I was nineteen. I was. And I could fly a four engine aeroplane before I could drive a motorbike or motor car.
AP: So did you, did someone teach you how to do it?
DL: Yeah.
AP: Or how did you get around it?
DL: Yeah.
AP: Yeah. Very good, alright. So after you’d been to Leconfield your tour finishes. You said you went to a junior commander’s course?
DL: I went to a junior commander’s course at the RAF college at [pause] where was the RAF college, Grantham I think.
AP: Cranwell.
DL: Cranwell, that’s it.
AP: Yeah.
DL: Yeah, Cranwell, now a junior commander’s course. There were about fifty of us. Mainly group captains, wing commanders, and a few squadron leaders. The idea was that the college was teaching these wing commanders and group captains how to be COs at squadrons. They had, most of them had finished their tour. Most of them were permanent air force blokes. Most of them had finished their tour and were being trained to be squadron COs. And I was put there, I don’t know why but I went to this course and it was just doing that. Learning how to run a squadron. But being more familiar with air force law and being more disciplined as far as a squadron was concerned. Now after, I don’t know how that lasted, I can’t remember that but after that that during that course we had a lot of exams and all sorts of things. And at the end of the course it was, I was found that I had done well in air force law. Now, I’ve never, I wasn’t interested in it at Cranwell but for some reason or other I — what happened then?
AP: No. That’s alright, the sun went down. The sun went behind a cloud. It just got a bit darker.
DL: What was I saying? As I did air force law and I was posted to a field somewhere as part of a, and I did well in organising Courts of Enquiry. So I was posted to an airfield somewhere, non flying to take part in organising Courts of Enquiry. Collecting evidence. Me and a couple of others there were, not just myself. Collecting evidence. This was mainly for crashes that had occurred during training practice and collecting evidence and all that sort of thing. And then the lawyers would come in who were mainly [pause] well they were seconded to the RAF. They wore a uniform although they weren’t in the RAF. They were like doctors and then they’d come in. Look at all this evidence and then find the pilot or whoever — why the aircraft crashed. And most of it was quite clear to me that they were fit on trying to make that the pilot error which I didn’t agree with. And I hated it there. Absolutely hated it. I wanted to get back to flying. And so I was friendly with a girl who was the personal assistant to the air officer commanding 4 Group. You know all about the Groups of course. And after I’d done a couple of these Courts of Enquiry I applied for leave. It was granted and so I went up and, to 4 Group headquarters and looked out, up this girl. Not romantically. I was just a friend and I was, she had an office outside of the Group commander’s office and I was sitting in her office with her just having a cup of tea and the Group commander came. She had a intercom thing on her desk and he came through the intercom and asked this girl if she knew of a spare pilot in 4 Group who could go down to 35 Squadron and take over a crew. They wanted a squadron leader. A squadron leader on 35 Squadron because 4 Group supplied 35 Squadron. The pilot had been injured and the crew were, were ok. And they wanted a pilot to take over this crew until such time as the other bloke could come back. So I’m sitting there, spare pilot and I said, ‘Hey, hey how about me?’ And she said to the air officer, commanding, you know, ‘Squadron Leader Leicester’s here. He’s looking for a job.’ So the CO said, ‘Send him down to 35 Squadron.’ So down I went. And when I got down there and made myself known to the CO he said that the pilot wasn’t as badly damaged as they thought he was and after a fortnight leave he could come back and fly with his crew. So I’m down there. And I said, ‘Well what do I do?’ He said, ‘You either go back to 4 Group or you volunteer.’ You had to volunteer for Pathfinders as a single unit. So I said, ‘Oh ok.’ I said, ‘I’ll keep on flying. Thank you very much.’ So then I was posted to the Pathfinder Navigation Training Unit flying Lancasters. Now, it’s funny but at this Pathfinder navigation, quite often when crews finish their thirty trips there’s one or two of the crew that don’t want to go instructing or anything like that. You’ve heard that story have you? Understand it?
AP: Go on.
DL: Yeah. And they want to keep on flying. So, if they don’t, if they can’t find a place for them the only thing they can do is volunteer for Pathfinders. And so within a week of being at the Pathfinder Navigation Training Unit in came a navigator, DFC and Bar. He had done flying, all his operational flying on Mosquitoes and he came in, navigator. And in came a bomb aimer DFC. In came an engineer and so on. Within a week or ten days I had a crew. And so we did a bit of flight training in the Lancaster and got to know each other and finished what we had to do. Strangely enough we were posted to 35 Squadron. We could have been posted to any other Pathfinder unit but we, it was usual for 4 Group to, 35 Squadron was originally Halifaxes. So that’s how that all came about.
AP: Alright. How did, in terms of the operational flying that you did how did Pathfinder flying vary from Main Force?
DL: Well —
AP: How was it different?
DL: Generally speaking for example the Pathfinders had a number of steps in a squadron. You’d start off at the bottom and step and then as you got experience you’d be given a different job to do. Now, when we, when we first got down to the 35 I think our aggregate in, every, every one of them had done a tour of ops. I think the aggregate was over two hundred. And so here we are at 35 Squadron as what we called a sprog crew, a new crew. And the first op that we were asked to do we were called a supporter. That was the bottom rank. Now, we would go in exactly the same way. Drop bombs with main force but carefully examine the work of what the Pathfinders did and so that’s as we got more experienced we got a different job to do. We didn’t carry bombs. We carried incendiaries. But we carried flares and as flares were required by the Master Bomber well we would drop them according to what was required.
AP: So you said that there were different levels of Pathfinders.
DL: Yes.
AP: So support was one of the bottom one.
DL: Yeah. I was trying to think of some of the levels. What was second? Supporter. An illuminator. Now, an illuminator would [pause] a raid is controlled wholly by the Master Bomber. Now, the Master Bomber would go in twenty minutes ahead of, ahead of main force with other Pathfinder aircraft and as an illuminator we’d go in early and we would drop an illuminator flare which would light up the whole of the area we were going to bomb. So, if we were bombing Nuremberg the illuminator would go in. If we were bombing the railway yards at Nuremberg the illuminator would light it up so bright that the Master Bomber could see quite clearly what he was looking for. And when he found the marshalling yards he would ask for a red flare to be dropped. And there would be a Pathfinder aircraft carrying red flares. And then when the red flare was dropped the Master Bomber would assess to where it was to where it should be. For example if it dropped on the Adelaide Oval instead of the Adelaide Railway Station he would be able to tell the main force of bombers it’s not in the right position and so on. And then the Jerries would start dropping red so we as Pathfinders would have to change them to green or something like that. And then others were visual marker. You could, dropping flares visually. You could see. And blind marking. You’d drop them at night. Or drop them above clouds. There was markers on little parachutes.
AP: How would you know where you were when you were above the clouds in that sense?
DL: Where that’s where navigators came in. They were, the navigator in Pathfinders had to be spot on. My navigator got the DSO when we finished.
AP: Wow.
DL: He came with the DFC and Bar. He got the, he got the DSO. He had to be, we worked to a tenth of a second and yeah, he was pretty sure he was right. He would have visual. He would have blind markers and they would drop them in the air but of course they had they would hang on parachutes so of course they’d drift all over the place. Then they had visual centrerers. That’s another name I can think of. The top job was Master Bomber. The second was the Deputy Master Bomber. You could get to Master Bomber class for example and never do a Master Bomber raid. Because there were eight squadrons in Pathfinders and each of them had their Master Bombers I guess. And we became Master Bomber status. You were given an extra crew member. There was so much radar equipment in a Pathfinder plane that the navigator just couldn’t handle it all. So, we had an extra man that was called a set operator. And he would just work entirely with, with a navigator.
AP: And would he be next to the navigator?
DL: Next to the navigator, yeah.
AP: On the same bench.
DL: Yeah. Just working all the —
AP: A bit squeezy.
DL: With all the equipment. Yeah.
AP: Wow. And so what, what level did you — what were you?
DL: I got to Master Bomber level.
AP: You got Master Bomber.
DL: Yeah.
AP: Did you ever do any Master Bomber raids?
DL: Yeah. I did. I did quite a few.
AP: Tell me about that.
DL: Hmmn?
AP: Tell me about that. I’ve never spoken to a Master Bomber before so —
DL: [laughs] I just told you about it. Just get there first. The Master Bomber is the first to get there and the last to leave and he’s flying around all the time assessing what’s going on.
AP: How would you communicate with the rest of the crews?
DL: By just voice over.
AP: On VHF. Or on the, what would they call it?
DL: I don’t, no. It wasn’t VHF.
AP: It wasn’t.
DL: No. It was, I don’t know what they called it but they were all on the same channel.
AP: Yeah.
DL: And the Master Bomber did voice over.
AP: RT.
DL: We would just tell them what to do.
AP: Excellent. So ok, how many, how many trips did you do with Pathfinders?
DL: Thirty eight, thirty seven.
AP: Thirty seven. Golly. Do any of those stick out in your memory?
DL: Do what?
AP: Do any of those stick out in your memory? Same sort of question we had before?
DL: The same sort. The same sort of things happened. We used to say in [laughs] on the squadron, Pathfinders squadron if anybody came back on four engines we used to rib them. We used to joke with them and say, ‘Haven’t you been there? Where did you drop your bombs?’ [laughs] One, one fella I remember he took the ribbing so [pause] so much to heart that on one occasion when he came back he called up for his turn to land and he was given his turn to land. And when he got down to number one turn to land on his downwind stretch he cut one motor [laughs]
AP: Fair enough.
DL: That was the sort of things that happened though.
AP: Actually just ripping off that for a moment. The landing procedure when you all came back from a raid. All your aircraft are arriving at more or less the same time.
DL: Oh yes.
AP: How did that work?
DL: Well, more or less the same time.
AP: Yes. How was that organised because obviously only one can land at once.
DL: Yeah. Oh well, we had to stay while we were over enemy territory we had to stay as we, you know, as the raid instruction said. We couldn’t, we couldn’t drop our bombs and just put the nose down and whizz for home. We had to stay where we were supposed to be. But as soon as we crossed the enemy coast, to cross the English Channel it was everyone for himself. But we would get back. We’d come in on a beam. The pilot’s mostly would come in on a beam and we, we’d get back to our aerodrome and call up with the call sign, whatever it is and say, and say, request, ‘Request permission to land.’ And back would come the control, ‘Your position to land is number six. Circle aerodrome at six thousand feet.’ Something like that. And then he’d gradually bring you down to five, and four and three and two. Yeah.
AP: Yeah, that’s how it sort of how it works today.
DL: That’s how it worked.
AP: The beginnings of air traffic control.
DL: The first in, best dressed, [laughs] the one with the fastest plane.
AP: Alright. Were, you told me about, in your previous or earlier on actually, that’s right. You told me something you used to do instead of going to the pub with your Pathfinder crew.
DL: Well, yes, when I got this Pathfinder crew they were all top blokes. And, but when we had a day off flying and there’s nothing on tonight most of the crews would go down to the local pub. Most of them, if not all of them. And when, the first time we were off flying someone said to us, ‘Look, we’re all going down to the pub. How about coming down?’ Were inviting us to come down. And we said yes. I said, ‘Yes, ok. We’ll be there.’ But just before we left to go down to the local pub the rear gunner came up to me and said, ‘Junior [laughs] how about we don’t go down to the pub till later?’ He said, ‘I’d like to have our crew stay behind for an hour and I’d like to talk to you about, all of you, about aircraft recognition.’ Now, the rear gunner on Pathfinders I had, he was an expert on aircraft recognition. He was a Londoner. But boy he knew every, every aircraft backwards. And I said, ‘Oh yes. Ok.’ So we told all the others that we wouldn’t be down ‘til an hour later. And he put us in a room and showed us shots. How to recognise enemy aircraft and our aircraft. Amazing. He was absolutely amazing. So we had an hour with him, seven of us. And then we hopped down to the pub. Now, on the next time it came up one of the others, perhaps the navigator said, ‘Listen, Jimmy had you back for an hour last time. How about me having an hour?’ So I said, ‘Ok.’ And so the same thing happened except the navigator, he told us all about his equipment and how it worked and everything else. And then the third time the engineer had a go. And we were already, in fact we got quite a name and people used to rib us and call us all sorts of names and laughed and joked. Until one day one of the other, we were going and we were off and one of the other crew’s pilots came over and said, ‘Listen, we know that you stay behind every time,’ to, you know we used to do parachute drill and we did all sorts of things. And the pilot said, ‘Look, do you mind if we join you?’ And I said, ‘No I don’t mind at all.’ But I said, ‘Why join us? Why don’t you do it yourself?’ And so he did it himself. And it wasn’t long before every crew in that squadron was doing exactly the same thing. They would stop behind and an hour later at the pub, incredible, incredible. But oh boy we had, the crew, the crew I had were out of this world. I’ll tell you something funny about that too. Do you know that I flew with them for I don’t know how long and I did not know their names, their surnames, and I don’t think they knew mine. I was, I was Junior and that was it. No, surnames. What names. For, yeah for example, the bomb aimer’s name was Rusty when we were at PNSU, Pathfinder Training Unit. He introduced himself as Rusty. He was a London policeman. He had the DFC. He was Rusty. Now, what the Rusty meant I’ve got no idea. And the navigator was a New Zealander. He was Pat. His name, no I’m sorry we knew their surnames. We didn’t know their Christian names. His name was, he was called Pat. He was Patrick. What his Christian name was we had no idea. The engineer was Titch. A little Canadian. Flying Officer Lloyd. Didn’t know his, didn’t know his Christian name. And there was seven of them. Never knew. Jimmy, the rear gunner, we called him Jimmy but he didn’t have a J in his [laughs] he wasn’t J something Hughes. I knew their surnames. Didn’t know their Christian name. Incredible. And they didn’t know mine.
AP: One of the other, he was a Halifax pilot that I interviewed in Melbourne recently said, I think it was his mid-upper gunner, his surname was Bill so he was always Dingle.
DL: Yeah.
AP: That was it. He never found out his Christian name.
DL: That’s right. I’m the same.
AP: Seventy years later.
DL: Incredible. That’s good you’ve heard that story before.
AP: Yeah, a similar sort of thing to you.
DL: He was on a Halifax. What squadron was he on?
AP: He was 578 and then 462.
DL: 462 was an Australian squadron.
AP: It certainly was. Yeah.
DL: Yeah.
AP: Only on 462 very very briefly.
DL: Where were they?
AP: Oh bugger I can’t remember now. Burn, at 578. I don’t know where 462 was.
DL: No. I don’t. I don’t know where 578, I’ve never heard of 578.
AP: A place called Burn they were.
DL: Yeah.
AP: Anyway. They came out of 51 squadron same way as you.
DL: 462 was 4 Group. Halifaxes.
AP: 466 was the other one.
DL: 466. 461 was too.
AP: Yeah.
DL: But they were 3 Group I think. 461 were 3 Group, I think.
AP: I can’t remember. Alright, so you mentioned something earlier as well. Just going back to some notes that I took down.
DL: That’s alright. No.
AP: Something about as flight commander you could only do one trip a month and there was a reason for that, that you were going to say.
DL: Well the reason for that was when the CO of the squadron went and took all the officers with him an instruction was ordered that flight commanders were only allowed to do one a month. That was interesting too because the other, the other two got a bit of a reputation of picking what they thought might be an easy trip. No trip was easy. But they, some were easier than others of course. I used to put up on the board, on the 1st of the month that Leicester flies on the, well on this case, Leicester flies on the 28th of August. And my crew knew that as well so they could do all of their planning. And when it came to the 28th of August there was no trips that night. No flying. 29th the same. The 30th — Nuremberg [laughs] so that’s how I got to do that. They used to wait until they saw what the others used to wait, well the story thought of. They used to wait until they found out what the target before they decided.
AP: What that might be.
DL: Yeah. Yeah. Take the nearest one, or the shortest one. Or the less defended one or whatever.
AP: What else? Yes, alright. So you have a DFC and Bar I believe.
DL: Yeah.
AP: That’s also unusual. I haven’t met someone with a DFC and Bar before.
DL: Haven’t you?
AP: No.
DL: You know what that is.
AP: It’s a second DFC.
DL: Yeah.
AP: Yeah, so —
DL: Yeah, they don’t give you two medals.
AP: No, just the one little bar.
DL: I’m sorry to ask you that. Of course you’d know. But, you know, I had an interview last Monday, Anzac day and the reporter was a girl. She just didn’t know anything. She hadn’t done her homework. She didn’t know what the questions to ask. She had no idea what a DFC was let alone a DFC and bar, you see.
AP: So why do you have two DFCs?
DL: Why? Well, I think one was given for the Nuremberg raid, and the other was towards the end of, and I can’t think what raid it is now.
AP: So they were both —
DL: They were both immediate awards.
AP: Immediate, they were, both. Wow. That’s also unusual.
DL: Yeah. Yeah.
AP: So we might have to dig the citation out. I’m’ sure it’s there somewhere. Ok, cool. So how did your second tour, well your Pathfinder tour, end?
DL: It ended, well, we had been discussing it for a while. And we thought we had, had done enough. But I applied for a job. The then CO for Qantas was in England and this is early ’45. The war is coming down a bit. And he was recruiting pilots to restart the Australia — England route for Qantas using aircraft called Lancastrians. And I applied for that and was one of eight. They wanted eight pilots. And I applied for that and was actually picked to be one of the eight pilots. But when I got back to Australia I was still in the air force of course. I had to be discharged and I was discharged being deaf in one ear or not, not requiring the, not reaching the required deafness. And the Civil Aviation at that time, Department of Civil Aviation — Federal. Would not accept anybody or Qantas would not accept anybody who had any defect and so I was put out. I had stayed in the air force and I went to all sorts of troubles. But that’s what happened. I just missed out on flying for Qantas. The, it’s always been a bit of a sore point with me. When I joined up in 1941 with the air force medicals we had to go through an ear, nose and throat specialist. Now, when I came out for the discharge five years later, four years later, we had to go through the same medical procedure. Who’s there? The same, the same doctor. And the first words he said to me was, because I came back with quite a bit of publicity actually because of decoration and being a squadron leader at nineteen and all that sort of thing, and the first thing he said to me, ‘Oh you whippersnappers come back and you think you own the world.’ And he just, he gave me a bad report on my ears. And although I, it didn’t show in any other way and my own GP I went to who I saw during the war, before the war, he gave me a test — no. Nothing was wrong. But I went through all sorts of tests and the Department of Aviation said no. Qantas said no, so that was it. But I’m not, I don’t regret that because the fellows that did stay in, none of them liked it. You know, you had to fly straight and level. You couldn’t, you couldn’t spill a cup of tea [laughs] they just sat there and the aircraft did it all for them. So that’s the story.
AP: That’s not so, not so exciting for a bomber pilot, with sixty eight flights under his belt I’m sure.
DL: No. No.
AP: Alright, so your tour in Pathfinders. When did you actually finish flying with Pathfinders? When was your last trip?
DL: February. January ’45.
AP: So, you pretty well, at that point having done well more than the minimum you could pretty well pull the plug yourself.
DL: Yeah. Yeah.
AP: Yeah. Ok. And then go in. Ok, so coming home. How did, how did you get home?
DL: Flew home.
AP: Flew home.
DL: I flew home and as [pause] well we were temporarily, the eight of us were temporarily discharged from the air force and we flew two planes home. A Liberator and a York to Australia. We landed in Perth and then we were back in the air force. And we couldn’t go to be Qantas staff until we had been officially discharged from the air force. So that’s what happened. We actually flew home.
AP: And so you, you flew the aeroplane yourself.
DL: Yeah.
AP: Wow.
DL: Well eight of us did.
AP: Yeah. Nice. So you said something about publicity on your return. I’m just sort of curious as to what that was like for a twenty something year old.
DL: Well just that you know south SA boy makes good. And, you know, that sort of thing. And I still get a bit of that actually. You know on the march on Anzac Day the chap doing the commentating had obviously done his homework and he said, you know, he mentioned my name and said all about, you know, sixty eight trips and all that. My actual log book shows as sixty seven. But there was one trip where we had crossed the coast, enemy coast. And the raid — we were all recalled. It was aborted, officially aborted. And at the time we weren’t allowed to count it as an op. But later on —
AP: It did count.
DL: We could count it. Yeah.
AP: Right. How did you find readjusting to civilian life?
DL: Very, very hard. It was very difficult because, you know, we left home as we were eighteen and we came back we were twenty two, twenty three. All of the jobs had gone that we would have been perhaps been promoted to. Someone else had got those. And it was very hard to get anything. In the six months from the time that I left school at the end of 1940 until I was called up for the air force, or eight months I worked as an office boy for a company. A manufacturer’s agent in the rag trade. And when I came back of course that office boy job was no good. I wasn’t a boy anymore anyway. But he knew someone in one of the retail stores and I got a job as an Adelaide representative of a Sydney company in the rag trade. But unfortunately the chap in Sydney, the owner of the company in Sydney died at the age of forty two and it all fell through. So I then got in to the food trade. I worked for Cadbury’s for four years [laughs] and then worked for other food companies right until I retired in 1988.
AP: I guess the final question, possibly the most important one. How do you think, or what do you think is the legacy of Bomber Command and how do you want to see it remembered?
DL: Well, it’s a hard question but whenever I hear the words Bomber Command mentioned I think of the hundred and twenty five thousand boys that joined. A hundred and twenty five thousand. Plus of a hundred and twenty five thousand. Of which fifty five thousand would die. Forty four percent, you know. It’s a big — and in Pathfinders it was fifty percent. I think of them often. Particularly on Anzac Day and Day of Remembrance and any time I see a Bomber Command bloke has died whose name’s in the paper. It’s hard. I’m a very emotional type and I cry very easily and it really — Anzac Day gets to me. But I consider I was proud to be part of Bomber Command. I don’t know how else to put it. They played their part. They’ve been criticised badly in some areas for what they did and how they did it. I have no apology for that. I did what I was told. I did what I was trained to do. What else could I say? I call them a hundred twenty five thousand heroes. A hero to me, Adam is not the bloke that kicks the goal after the siren that wins the game. The hero is the bloke that stands on the front line and gets shot at. Does that sound alright?
AP: That’s a very emphatic way to —
DL: I’d like to talk about defences.
AP: Go for it.
DL: People often ask me what I considered to be the worst. I always say searchlights. You can dodge fighters, you can dodge flak with a bit of luck. You can be hit by a fighter. You can be hit by flak and get away with it at times, you know. A lot of people didn’t. It depends where it was hit. But searchlights were impossible. They were so bright that a pilot could not see a thing. Could not see a thing. And I can say, and once a plane gets caught in searchlights, one searchlight, well the other hundred and fifty all, yeah and you form a cone like that. The fighters can see you. The gunners can see you on the ground. None of the crew can see you. It’s absolute curtains. So, for that reason I say searchlights were the dangerous things as far as I concerned. And unless you were trained and told really how to avoid them it was curtains. Once you got caught you couldn’t get out of it. But you could fly through them and that’s what I used to do. I mean, I’m doing a hundred and sixty mile an hour. The fella on the ground training the searchlights can’t move that quickly here. So you’ve gone before he can get you. The thing I feared most was an engine failure on takeoff fully loaded. I had that on one occasion. I lost power on one engine. It’s frightening. You know, you think you’re going to not take off and you land with your bombs on, you know. How does that cover it do you think?
AP: That’s pretty good. Any final words before I —
DL: No. I thank you, and I thank you for what you are doing and the work that your committee and everyone else is doing. I think it’s marvellous. I’m glad that Michael did get in it because he you know he went to England for the, me with the Queen there.
AP: Yeah. He’s quite proud to show that photo.
DL: Yeah. I’m quite, very pleased with what you’re doing.
AP: Good. That’s absolutely the least we can do.
DL: You’re on the last Sunday in May are you?
AP: First one in June.
DL: First Sunday in June. Originally it started off to be the first Sunday in June. Why has it changed?
AP: It’s a contentious thing at the moment.
DL: Yeah.
AP: The first Sunday in June is the official day.
DL: Yeah.
AP: That’s in Canberra.
DL: Yeah.
AP: Canberra’s sort of the sort of main one.
[telephone rings)
DL: Can you excuse me a minute?
AP: Yeah. Go for it.
[ recording paused for chat]
AP: That’s alright. What were we talking about? Oh yeah. That’s right, the day that changed. So it was in, in Canberra and it still is the first Sunday in June except if it’s the long weekend when it’s the one before I think. So the concept was the Bomber Command Commemorative Day. You know, supposed to be the same day around the country and around the world.
DL: Yeah.
AP: I don’t know why it changed in Adelaide. Different Groups organised all the different ceremonies.
DL: Yeah.
AP: So it’s RAFA here and in Western Australia. It’s the Queensland University Squadron in Brisbane. I don’t know who does the Sydney one because most of them are in Canberra. And with our Group which is different. Separate to RAFA that does the Melbourne one. I’m of the opinion and our group in Melbourne is of the opinion that we should have them on different days. I think the Canberra one is the big one. That’s what everyone sort of wants to go to and I think all the individual States should be on a different day because that gives you a chance to, I can go to the Melbourne one and then go to Canberra. So it’s a bit like Anzac Day. I don’t know what it’s like in Adelaide but certainly in Melbourne and Sydney Anzac Day, the day itself that’s the day of the big march in the city.
DL: Yes.
AP: The Sunday before is typically when all the little suburban RSL’s hold their services. So that allows the veterans to go to their local one and then also go to the big one in the city. I see it as a similar sort of concept for the Bomber Command Day. However, in Melbourne there’s a long standing booking at the Shrine on the day that we want. So we’re going to have to, we’re still working on that. We’re going to have to negotiate to get the day that we want. But that’s what it is so I don’t know why it changed here. I’m in contact with Dave Hillman who organises it for RAFA South Australia.
DL: It won’t change here you say.
AP: I don’t think. I don’t know. I don’t know why it changed and I don’t know.
DL: I would have thought David would because originally it was the first day in June.
AP: Yeah. Yeah. I know last year the one in Canberra had to change.
DL: Yeah.
AP: Because of the clash of bookings.
DL: Yeah.
AP: So it actually changed after it had been advertised if you like but yeah I don’t really know. It was useful for me because I could go to both of them.
DL: Yeah.
AP: But this year I’m going to Canberra for the Saturday night. Flying back to Melbourne Sunday morning and then going to the ceremony in Melbourne. Anyway, yet more travelling. Now I’ll stop the recording because we are still going here but I’ll cut this bit out.
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
ALeicesterD160501
PLeicesterD1601
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with David Leicester
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
02:04:02 audio recording
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Pending OH summary
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Adam Purcell
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-05-01
Description
An account of the resource
David Leicester grew up in Australia and worked as an office boy before he volunteered for the Royal Australian Air Force. He completed 68 operations as a pilot with 35, 158 and 640 Squadrons and as a Master Bomber with Pathfinders. He describes how he always kept his own parachute rather than hand it back and always asked the same person to pack it for him.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Australia
Great Britain
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Yorkshire
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
158 Squadron
35 Squadron
640 Squadron
Advanced Flying Unit
aircrew
bombing
crewing up
Flying Training School
forced landing
Halifax
Halifax Mk 2
Halifax Mk 3
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Master Bomber
mess
military ethos
military living conditions
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
Pathfinders
pilot
RAF Cranwell
RAF Honeybourne
RAF Leconfield
RAF Lissett
searchlight
superstition
target indicator
Tiger Moth
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/310/3467/PNoyeR1501.2.jpg
2653db561dc3c7ee26ea68bcaca8b1ef
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/310/3467/ANoyeR151022.1.mp3
be6dc302b639364c57f551e47bc43bba
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Noye, Rupert
Rupert Newstead Noye
Rupert N Noye
Rupert Noye
R N Noye
R Noye
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history with Rupert Newstead Noye DFC (1923 -2021, 1332761 Royal Air Force).
Publisher
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
2015-10-22
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
Noye, R
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
RN: My name is Rupert Noye. I was born in February 1923. When the war started I was, er, sixteen and in 1940, when Churchill formed the LDV, I volunteered for that. We were renamed later Home Guard and it came in useful when I eventually went into the Air Force because we had learned a lot of rifle drill, marching, things like that. And in, after just a few days after my eighteenth birthday I volunteered for the Air Force as a wireless operator air gunner. I was accepted in April ‘41 but then put on deferred service and eventually called up in September ‘41 and, er, went to Blackpool on a s— a radio course, failed it miserably and re-mustered to air gunner. We were posted to Hendon then and at Hendon for about six months and then I was posted onto Scotland to take the gunnery course. After gunnery course we did OTU on Whitleys at Abingdon. When that course was finished we were posted to St [unclear] attached to Coastal Command, where we were doing sweeps over the Atlantic and the Bay of Biscay, and one day we did actually see a submarine and attacked it but we never knew of any definite result. After that we were posted on to Wellingtons, went to Harwell to convert from Whitleys, and we were then to posted 166 Squadron at Kirmington and our pilot disappeared one day and we had another pilot, an Australian, starting his second tour. He was very, very good and, er, we finished our first tour at Kirmington when they converted to Lancasters in September ‘43 and I was posted to Operational Training Unit as an instructor. I was recalled in April ’44 to 12 Squadron at Wickenby to replace a rear gunner who had been injured and they, the crew, had already volunteered to join the Pathfinder Force so I went along with them. We went to Upwood and started operating with Pathfinder Force. You had to do so many marker trips before you got your Pathfinder badge and, er, but due to an incident of — we, the crew was broken up. I stayed at Upwood as a spare gunner and during that time I flew with quite a few different pilots and eventually finished up, er, in about September ‘44 with, er, Tony Hiscock. He was what we called a blind marker. He bombed on radar or dropped the flares on radar and we did quite a few, well we did about nineteen trips together, and the last one was over Hamburg, a big daylight raid just before the end of the — 31st March actually, 1945. After that we were all made redundant, went to various stations and different jobs and I volunteered to stay in the Air Force for another three years and eventually was posted back to Upwood on 148 squadron, again on Lancasters, and I stayed there until I was demobbed in 1949. That’s about it. I was very lucky during my time in Bomber Command. I did three tours of ops and was only once was attacked by a fighter. That was on the 5th of January 1945. We were coming back from Hanover and I saw [bell rings] a fighter, a single engine fighter, approaching from starboard side. I told the skipper and he started to corkscrew but the aircraft did fire at us and we were damaged in the tailplane and the wing. The damage to the wing disabled my turret completely because of the hydraulics were damaged and the — but there was no real serious damage. We got back to base quite happily but we did lose about three hundred-odd gallons of petrol. Then in March ‘45 I was again rather lucky and I was awarded the DFC and Tony Hiscock, the pilot I flew with, he was awarded a bar to his and, er, he was a very good pilot and we got on very well together as a crew, which was one of the biggest things you needed, to be a happy crew. I think that’s about enough. When you flew with Bomber Command you were in a crew and the crew — you were trained as crew and you got, generally speaking, you got on very well together and at times, er, when me as a rear gunner would have given instructions to the pilot, having seen possibly an enemy aircraft, instruct the pilot to dive or corkscrew and he would do that without any hesitatation, although I must say we were — that I was lucky in my time that we didn’t have many times when that was necessary but the crew, the crewing up system was a bit haphazard. When you reported to OTU you were all at one time, a varying number of pilots, wireless operators, navigators, bomb aimers and gunners were put in a big hangar or big room and told to crew up, which seemed very haphazard, but the system seemed to work. Later on, if you went on heavies as a crew, you went to a Heavy, Heavy Conversion Unit and got a mid-upper gunner and a flight engineer and, er, I never had that because as I joined from a place of rest to a place as a rear gunner. I think that’s about it. We got up to about to, er, on our training and we went into these Defiants and the — firstly you couldn’t, not allowed to work the turret until the pilot says so, and so he said, ‘OK.’ So, I turned the turret round and you have to raise the guns first, turn round and looked at the tailplane and there’s this little tiny tailplane behind you and you think, ‘That’s all that’s holding us up.’ [slight laugh] But it wasn’t, we had wings built the right way round and a good engine [slight laugh] but it was funny really because I mean that was the first time the vast majority of us had ever flown when we were on training because, I mean, you didn’t fly much in those days unless you paid five bob ride with Jack Cobham when he came round to a local airfield and you could go and have a short trip for five bob or seven and six or something. Alan Cobham that was. He started off doing refuelling in mid-air didn’t he, er, down in Dorset? But funny ‘cause when we were at Blackpool we went to the Pleasure Gardens there had they had what they used to call in those days the scenic railway and got on this thing and then down in almost vertical swoops and up the other side. And I think that was designed to put you off flying. [laugh]
MJ: Did it?
RN: It didn’t. No, Not really. Not when you got on a bit on bigger aircraft with the rest of the crew, you were alight, you were quite happy because you couldn’t do much with a Whitley [slight laugh]. It was quite good fun.
MJ: People don’t realise it was good fun.
RN: Well, it was as you steadily, as you, after you crewed up and got steadily got to know a bit more about the rest of the crew because, er, that pilot we lost when we got on the squadron because I think he went LMF. And — but he was married and had a young daughter. He was a Welshman and later on the wireless operator went LMF. There must have been something wrong with us because the navigator and the bomb aimer and myself finished the tour eventually on, on Wellingtons. But we had a nice picture of the Queen, didn’t we, for our 60th wedding anniversary? And I must get a frame for that. Put it up. But it’s a nice picture.
MJ: That’s the point. It’s — that’s how it works. That’s how you remember things.
RN: On Pathfinders, um, they were all volunteers from various squadrons but we used to have talks on the squadrons from, er, Hamish Mahaddie who was one of Don Bennett’s leading men and he used to come round trying to talk people into joining PFF and, um, he must have been very successful because they were never short of volunteers.
MJ: Did — what sort of training did you have to do for that?
RN: Well, when we went to PFF you went to Warboys because Warboys was the Navigation Training Unit for Pathfinders and you went there and you did so much, about a week or ten days’ course there, training, mainly training for navigators and then you were sent to the squadron and did the ops and marking as the time came [background noises]. You didn’t mark straight away because you were, weren’t considered experienced enough or trained up to the, the standard that they wanted.
MJ: Did you have to go with another crew then?
RN: No, you had instructor pilots that went with you mainly but, of course, all the navigators’ logs were sort of checked by the navigation officers after you came back from every trip whether it was training or an actual operation. [background noises throughout sentence]
MJ: On behalf of the International Bomber Command I’d like to thank Rupert Noye DFC for his recording on the date of — I forget what it is now, 26th? 27th, ah —
RN: 31st is Saturday.
MJ: I’ve got — I’ll see this is on and stays on. 27th of October 2015. Once again, I thank you again and even though I got the date wrong. Thank you.
Dublin Core
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
ANoyeR151022
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Rupert Noye
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
00:12:40 audio recording
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Pending OH summary
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Mick Jeffery
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-22
Description
An account of the resource
Rupert Noye completed two tours of operations as a rear gunner with 166 and 156 Squadrons.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Air Force. Coastal Command
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Lincolnshire
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Christine Kavanagh
12 Squadron
148 Squadron
156 Squadron
166 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
civil defence
crewing up
Defiant
Distinguished Flying Cross
Home Guard
Lancaster
Operational Training Unit
Pathfinders
RAF Abingdon
RAF Harwell
RAF Hendon
RAF Kirmington
RAF Upwood
RAF Warboys
RAF Wickenby
submarine
training
Wellington
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/311/3468/PNuttingS1704.2.jpg
629966ef5e6ac53d82ae6062e6f210c5
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/311/3468/ANuttingS170222.1.mp3
076ea473c2e1d4fc5c8e8075b35f2257
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
Nutting, Sinclair
Sinclair Nutting
Clair Nutting
S Nutting
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with Sinclair "Clair" Nutting (b. 1921, J85055 Royal Canadian Air Force).
Publisher
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
2017-07-22
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
Nutting, S
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
JM: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Jean MacCartney. The interviewee is Sinclair or Clair Nutting. The interview is taking place at Mr Nutting’s home in Banora Point, New South Wales on the 22nd of February 2017. Now, Clair, you’ve written a book called, “A Piece Of Cake,” which documents a lot of your experiences but even so we’ d like to go through some aspects of those and other aspects that perhaps were not covered with —in as much detail. So, let’s go back to the beginning. You were born in 19 —
SN: ’21.
JM: ’21. And where were you born?
SN: I was born in a place called Radisson. R A D I S S O N.
JM: R A D I S S — Yeah.
SN: Saskatchewan S A S K. period. Canada.
JM: And that is where you spent your, most of your youth.
SN: Yes.
JM: Yes. And that’s where you did you schooling.
SN: Yes.
JM: Yes. And you, your family had been in the area there for quite some time.
SN: Yes. They were pioneers.
JM: Pioneers. Yes. And what sort of pioneers? Pioneers in what way? They were farming.
SN: They were the first, among the first settlers as farmers in that area.
JM: Going back how many years would that be, do you think?
SN: To 1900.
JM: 1900. Yeah. And so what was your family farming?
SN: It was what we call a mixed farm of grain, wheat, oats, barley, rye. And animals. Cattle, horses, pigs, chickens.
JM: Right. And so all of those animals — were they raised and then sold or some of it used for home consumption as well? Or a mix again? Or what?
SN: It was rather a mix. They had horses of course were what were used to work the farm
JM: Yeah.
SN: And the cattle and pigs we slaughtered as we needed them. And they were sold on the market when they were ready to sell.
JM: So. Right. So, you sold them as cured stock.
SN: As beef and pork. Yes.
JM: Yes. Yeah. And your father did all the butchery or did he bring in somebody to do the butchery?
SN: No. My father did it.
JM: Right. Ok. And what about the grains? They were all sold. You sent stuff off to silos and that sort of thing or what happened there?
SN: It was, it was a large family farm which included my father, his brothers, my grandfather and they ran it as a unit. It must have been, what? About six sections of land or something like that. It — all of the farms in that area at that time were mixed farms meaning that they were — the people who lived on them were [pause] what’s the word I’m seeking? They were dependant on the farm for their livelihood. For gardens, for grain, for the animals. That kind of thing.
JM: Ok. And so, you would assist in some of the farming duties from time to time when you were a young lad a or —?
SN: Yes. All farm kids that were old enough were expected to earn their keep.
JM: Keep. Yeah.
SN: Yes.
JM: So what sort of things? What sort of tasks were you given?
SN: Oh, there were all sorts of things. In harvest time we would move out with the men. We did all the usual things, I guess. Getting water and wood. Driving horses on wagons and on machines. Binders and ploughs and that kind of thing.
JM: So then again you probably got some sort of basic mechanical, more than basic mechanical training with helping to repair machinery and all of that sort of thing from time to time too, I guess.
SN: All that I wished to have. Yes [laughs]
JM: Right. So, so you were doing this in between your schooling and so what was your schooling? I’m not particularly familiar with the Canadian education system. So would you have gone to school — normal school? The start age in Australia is five. And then through what they call primary school and then transfer to a high school or secondary school. And usually, well, back then, they usually finished about seventeen. Sometimes sixteen. But if they left early they finished at fourteen or fifteen. So how did the Canadian system —
SN: Pretty much the same Jean but this might be interesting. It was during the Depression.
JM: Yes.
SN: And during the Depression they had correspondence courses.
JM: Right.
SN: And I, for instance, went to a country school which had a total of eighteen pupils in all grades from one to ten.
JM: Right. Yeah.
SN: So that was most of my schooling.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And this was caused by the Depression.
JM: Depression.
SN: They wanted to get the kids back to school.
JM: The kids were on the farms basically.
SN: Yes.
JM: I suppose. Yes.
SN: Yes. And I then went into the town for the last, I guess, year and a half I was there
JM: Right. And how far away was town away?
SN: Six miles.
JM: Six miles. Right.
SN: Yeah.
JM: And did you travel in and out each day or did you stay in town?
SN: I boarded with a family.
JM: Right.
SN: For a year and a half during the winters.
JM: Right.
SN: Because it was too difficult.
JM: Too difficult.
SN: To get me back and forward.
JM: Back and forward. Yeah. And was this family friends of the family or —?
SN: Yes.
JM: Yes.
SN: Yes. They were dear people.
JM: They were?
SN: They were dear people.
JM: Dear people.
SN: Yes. And good friends of mine.
JM: Good friend. Yeah. Yeah. That’s good. Yeah. Ok. So. So that, yes, well that in a way is actually quite similar to what country children in New South Wales in particular would have experienced as well because they had, like, one teacher schools.
SN: Yeah.
JM: And you would have had one teacher school there.
SN: That’s right.
JM: Yes. Yes. So, what —
SN: One size fits all.
JM: Fits all. Who had sort of a multitude of different grades in the classroom in one corner and scattered all around the area and he was, he or she would be moving between all the children and helping them with the grade that they were on. So, the teacher was — had a bit of a challenge in those sort of situations as well didn’t they? So —
SN: Yes. I didn’t finish my high school.
JM: No?
SN: I was expelled.
JM: Oh, I see. Yes. Right. Because? You —
SN: I misbehaved.
JM: You misbehaved. Yes.
SN: Yes. What — it might be interesting — when I came back from overseas and was discharged you had to go to the capital of the Province, which was Regina, to be discharged. And I wanted to go to university so I went to see a man called a Registrar who was a small god in charge of education and I was in uniform and I told him my story. He listened, I came back the following day and his secretary came out and said, ‘I’m sorry. Mr,’ whatever his name was, I’ve forgotten, ‘Is unable to see you. He was called away,’ and my face fell. And she said, ‘but he left you this.’ And she handed me an envelope which was a, to the effect that I had fulfilled all of the qualifications for Grade 12 and marks were given me which brought me up to the level to enter the university.
JM: Very good.
SN: Yeah.
JM: Very good indeed. So that gave you the chance to go to university.
SN: That’s right.
JM: After you returned. Yeah. Ok.
SN: That’s right.
JM: We’ll come back to all of that in due course. But so, you, what age were you when you were expelled? Roughly. Do you remember?
SN: I joined up when I was eighteen. I suppose I would have been seventeen.
JM: Seventeen. Right. Ok. So I presume in that year between being expelled and being called up you probably just worked on the farm? Is that? Or did you go and get a job?
SN: No. it was a, it was the end of the school year.
JM: Right.
SN: And I joined up in December of 1940.
JM: Right.
SN: And by that time, because of my birthday, I was eighteen.
JM: Right. So --
SN: So —
JM: So it just happened.
SN: Yes.
JM: Just went through the war in a sequence.
SN: Yes. It did.
JM: Alright. So signed up then for the air force.
SN: Yes.
JM: Any particular reason for the air force or —?
SN: Well the air force was quite [pause] it was, I suppose the, the glamour service at that time. This was where people who wanted adventure or saw the war as an adventure this was where they went.
JM: And so that’s what attracted you. You saw that as an adventure.
SN: Yes. Yes.
JM: And you said, ‘Right.’
SN: That was very good.
JM: If they’ll have me that’s where I’ll go, sort of thing.
SN: Yes.
JM: Yes. Yes. Ok. Actually, I just meant to just backtrack once before we get in to — so this was in 1940 that you enlisted but just before that how, how much of an impact did the Depression have on your family? Because you were on the farm you were a little bit able to cope. A little bit better than perhaps people in town because you had lots —
SN: Yes.
JM: Of resources at hand, so to speak.
SN: That’s right. That’s right.
JM: In terms of food and, you know, meat and chicken and eggs. And you had milking cows too I presume.
SN: Exactly. Yes.
JM: Yes.
SN: Yes.
JM: Yes. So, you were relatively comfortable.
SN: I was.
JM: Yeah.
SN: In terms of the Depression I was — our family came through it pretty well.
JM: Well —
SN: You know there was never a time when I had to think about —
JM: Yeah.
SN: Whether I had any food to eat.
JM: Yeah. Whether there was going to be food on the table. Yes.
SN: Work or what have you.
JM: Yes. That’s right. Ok. So, you enlisted then December 1940.
SN: Yes.
JM: Yes, and where did you do your initial training?
SN: I went to Brandon.
JM: Brandon. Yes.
SN: Which was the manning depot.
JM: Where? Sorry?
SN: It was the manning depot.
JM: Right. And where is Brandon in —?
SN: Brandon —
JM: How far away from Radisson is that? I assume you enlisted in Radisson or did you have to go over to the main —
SN: No. No. I had to go to the main, the largest city.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Which was Saskatoon.
JM: Right. And then so from there to Brandon how far? Where? What sort of distance is that? Just roughly. You know. Sort of a day’s train ride or half a day.
SN: It’s a day’s train ride.
JM: Right. Ok. Yeah.
SN: Yes.
JM: So you were over there. So your parents were happy about you enlisting were they? Or was your father a bit —?
SN: I think so.
JM: I forgot to check. Did you have any other brothers and sisters? Or —?
SN: I had one sister but she was much younger than I am. She was seven years younger. After I was expelled I, and the fellow who was expelled with me, we got one of the freight trains that went into the city and we went to the army, the navy and the air force and nobody would have us because they said we were seventeen and did we have permission?
JM: So, you weren’t able to get in at that point.
SN: No.
JM: No. So then when you turned eighteen, you said to your parents. How did they feel about that?
SN: I think they were pretty well resolved that it was going to happen. It wasn’t something they — like all parents they were fearful but I think they were resigned that this was what most people, like me, were doing.
JM: Ok. So, you’re off to Brandon. Is that right?
SN: Yes.
JM: Yeah. And what —how long were you there?
SN: Oh, I would think a couple of months.
JM: A couple of months. Yeah. So, this is early ‘41 basically.
SN: Yes.
JM: Ok. And from Brandon where did you go next?
SN: We went to what was called guard duty.
JM: Guard duty. Yeah.
SN: Which was another couple of months?
JM: Yeah. And where was that?
SN: And that was in Saskatoon.
JM: Yeah. So back to almost near home. Yeah.
SN: Yes. It was back to a couple of hours away.
JM: Yeah. And that was about a couple of months you think.
SN: Yeah. Roughly.
JM: What sort of things did guard duty — what sort of things were you guarding something? What? I mean guard duty sort of implies you were guarding. What did it actually?
SN: It was really part of the training regime to get people sorted out as to what they were to do. It was compulsory. You had two hours on, four hours off, two hours on, four hours off during which you went — in this instance we were guarding, they were guarding airports. Everybody went through this. And you simply went out with your musket and [laughs] patrolled an area for two hours and they checked that you were there and you were awake. And then they — oh there was continuous inspections and little marches and that kind of thing. It was a training thing.
JM: Thing. Yeah. Ok.
SN: Everybody went through it.
JM: Ok. So this is possibly getting to the — just beyond winter so at least out on guard duty.
SN: Yes.
JM: You were not out in the depths of winter. Out.
SN: No. no. There was danger.
JM: Pacing the perimeters.
SN: No danger involved.
JM: Yes. But I mean, but you weren’t out in the cold and snow and all the rest of it though at this point.
SN: No. No. No.
JM: Because as I I say it had become more or less the end.
SN: Yes, it was —
JM: You were pretty well early spring at this stage so —
SN: Yes. Yes, it was spring.
JM: Yes. So, ok. So what, anything in particular that stands out from there. Things that you realised you could do or things that you were being asked to do that you didn’t like doing or anything like that?
SN: I don’t think there was anything remarkable about it.
JM: About it.
SN: It was [pause] I think there were something like twenty four of us that went through this. Nothing.
JM: In that group.
SN: Yes. Nothing remarkable.
JM: Yeah. Ok. So where did you go to from there?
SN: I went to Calgary.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And that was to do wireless training.
JM: Ok. Yes.
SN: Wireless air gunners.
JM: Yes.
SN: And at that time we all got to wear a white flash in our caps.
JM: Caps.
SN: Which separated you from those who didn’t and I was there for — what? Maybe four months or something.
JM: Right. So, would this be, say, around about May? May ’41 to —
SN: I would say.
JM: To October ’41.
SN: Yes.
JM: Or something like that?
SN: Until, until December.
JM: Until December. Ok so we could work back from there.
SN: Yes.
JM: So, December, November, October. September to December. So, we’ll say August/September to December of ‘41 there at your wireless.
SN: Yes. I would say it was a five month course.
JM: Course. Yeah.
SN: That would be my recollection.
JM: Recollection. Yeah. Yeah. Ok. And so all facets of being a wireless op and air gunner all mixed in together. You didn’t — or did you do blocks of wireless work and then —
SN: No. It was all wireless.
JM: It was all wireless. Yeah.
SN: It was all wireless. And I did not finish the course.
JM: Right.
SN: I went —
JM: For any particular reason? Or —?
SN: Yes. I went on leave for, what was it, it was a long weekend and I caught pneumonia.
JM: That’s right. Yes.
SN: In Saskatoon. And they put me in the hospital and I was in the hospital for nearly six weeks.
JM: Yes.
SN: You know. And I was in an oxygen tent for —
JM: Yes. Because you were not a well person for —
SN: For four days because I had — I was lucky.
JM: Yes.
SN: They brought out the first of the Sulfa drugs and that saved me.
JM: That saved you. Yes. Of course. That’s how bad you were.
SN: Yes.
JM: Yes. Yes.
SN: So when I finished they posted me.
JM: So, this — when, when was, that was when?
SN: That was from the end of November.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Until the end of the year.
JM: Yes. That you were in hospital.
SN: Yes.
JM: Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
SN: In hospital or convalescent leave.
JM: Yes.
SN: It was something like that.
JM: That’s right. Yeah. So therefore, you didn’t actually finish that course. So, what happened there?
SN: I don’t know whether I would, to be very frank. I don’t know whether I would ever have. It was probably a good thing in that I wasn’t particularly — I could do the Morse at speed but I was not particularly — I don’t think I would have been a particularly good wireless operator. So, in any event, at the end of this thing they posted me to Trenton.
JM: Right. Where’s —?
SN: As what we used to call a straight air gunner.
JM: Yeah. And whereabouts is Trenton?
SN: Trenton is in Eastern Canada.
JM: Right. And when would this be? January ‘42?
SN: Yes.
JM: Yeah. And that was for straight air —
SN: Yes.
JM: Air gunner training.
SN: That’s right.
JM: Yeah. So, what stands out about that training?
SN: It was about [pause] maybe six weeks. Something like that. Well I think I had decided that I really had to make this.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And it was a large course and I came second. I think it was probably the first time I realised that I could do something.
JM: Do something. Yeah.
SN: This was, I think, largely attributable, I covered it in this book.
JM: Yes.
SN: This man I met who was much older than I was and he — I was a little ashamed of being somewhat bookish and that it was a bit sissy to excel. And he said, ‘You know, this is foolish.’
JM: Yes.
SN: ‘You do as well as you can.’
JM: You can. Yeah.
SN: [unclear] you can do that. And I did. And the other thing which is also covered in this book was the rather extraordinary thing of this man who was court martialled and, because he thought that he was operating a camera gun when he was not. He was operating a Vickers machine gun.
JM: Machine gun.
SN: And he shot up a parade of airmen.
JM: Airmen. That’s right.
SN: In a row.
JM: Yes.
SN: And he was court martialled. And as I say in there this was an extraordinary spectacle that I’ve never forgotten. He was a little non-descript fella from Newfoundland whose name was Silver and he, the entire station, it was a big station, was out in hollow square.
JM: On parade.
SN: With the, we were all, yes, we were all on parade and we were all there and the band was there and the group captain was there with a table and the man with the leopard skin drum. The whole bit was the drum rolls, everything.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And this poor little man was marched up and his hat off in front of this table, and the drum rolls cut off by [unclear] this corporal. Cut them off.
JM: Yeah. Yeah.
SN: Cut them off.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And threw them on the ground.
JM: Ground.
SN: Marched him off.
JM: Off.
SN: And he got two years in the penitentiary.
JM: Penitentiary.
SN: So, we all remembered that.
JM: That.
SN: And it was for not turning up.
JM: Up.
SN: For an overseas posting. And so, I think, I think we all got the point.
JM: You all got the point. That’s right. Yes. Yes. Absolutely. So, then, so this is sort of becoming a turning point. So, after the air gunning. This training at Trenton. Where did you go?
SN: Well I got, as everyone else did, our air gunner badge.
JM: Badge.
SN: And sergeant’s stripes.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And we all went on embarkation leave. And that was a couple of weeks or ten days. I’ve forgotten. But Canada is like Australia in that train journeys were very long.
JM: Long. That’s right.
SN: It takes —
JM: And of course, if you’re right over in Eastern Canada that’s a long way from home.
SN: Yes.
JM: To get back. Yes.
SN: So then, following embarkation leave I came to Halifax and —
JM: So, you didn’t — did you actually get home in that embarkation leave?
SN: Yes, I did.
JM: Or — yes, you did .
SN: Yes. I got home for about ten days I think.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And then we were back to Halifax and just as things worked out we were the last, there were twelve of us marched down to board ship. And we were the last people aboard.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And the convoy left that about an hour or two later.
JM: Gosh. So this would have been the end of March, early April ’42.
SN: This would have been early March. Yes. 1942.
JM: Yeah. Probably be about mid-March. Oh yeah. Early March. Yeah. Yeah. That’s ok. Yeah. Early March ‘42. Yes.
SN: Yes.
JM: And so so Halifax. So where —?
SN: Halifax is —
JM: So was this a large troop carrier that you were on? Or a small —
SN: A large convoy.
JM: Yes. But there was a convoy but were the boats themselves — was there large troop carriers.
SN: Yes.
JM: Or —
SN: Yes.
JM: Did you have any sense of whether there were thousands there? Or perhaps under a thousand or —?
SN: There were, they were crowded.
JM: They were crowded.
SN: It was a ship called the Andes. Which had run on the Latin American English run.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Not a bad ship.
JM: Yes. No.
SN: But we were in cabins. They were, I think, seven or eight of us in a little —
JM: A cabin. Yeah.
SN: And the the toilets were at the end of the —
JM: Yeah. Corridor so to speak.
SN: Corridor. Yeah.
JM: Yeah. Ok. So where —
SN: But it was good enough. It wasn’t bad. We could —
JM: Ok. So —
SN: Everybody had —
JM: So where did you land in —
SN: We landed in Greenock which is Glasgow.
JM: Glasgow. Yeah. And so, on the train down to —
SN: We had no, yes, we had no adventures. We had one emergency in the Irish Sea where they shot at, where they put down a sub and the convoys were in lines of destroyers.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And ships.
JM: Ships. Yeah.
SN: Following one another.
JM: You don’t remember how many were in that convoy? In that total convoy.
SN: I haven’t the vaguest idea whatever.
JM: No. That’s ok.
SN: What it is.
JM: So you got there pretty uneventfully.
SN: Yes. Now they may have, I think they sunk something in the Irish Sea.
JM: Sea.
SN: But that was it.
JM: That was it.
SN: So we had really quite a good —
JM: Quite. Ok. So then you’re off in Glasgow. You’re on the train I presume to —
SN: We went by train to Bournemouth.
JM: Bournemouth. Yeah.
SN: Where everyone went and that was a manning depot there.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And you stayed in Bournemouth.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Until you were posted.
JM: Yes.
SN: To wherever you were going.
JM: Going. Yeah.
SN: They were, we were a mixture of pilots, observers.
JM: Observers. Yeah. Yeah.
SN: Everything. And that was a very easy thing. The only remarkable thing again, which was in the book, was that we were quartered in formerly resort hotels and we ate in a different building than the one in which we were housed.
JM: Right.
SN: And we came out this one day and a siren went and we tumbled out on the street and I remember seeing these two Fokker Wulf 190s come in and they came under the radar. Just straight over the —
SN: We were right on the end — Bournemouth is a —
JM: Seaside bit.
SN: Seaside resort. And they came under the radar and they came right up and they bombed. Dropped their bombs and went.
JM: Went.
SN: And they hit the building we were to eat in and I can remember we were all amazed. Standing there with our mouths open. And some of them, finally they were digging around in the thing said, ‘Come.’
JM: Come.
SN: Don’t stand there like —’
JM: Yeah. ‘Come and help us dig.’
SN: Yeah.
JM: Yes. Yes.
SN: So, it was a rude awakening.
JM: Awakening to the realities of war. What so now you finally knew what you were about to be part of .
SN: Yes.
JM: Yes.
SN: Yes. It was real.
JM: It was real. That’s right. So, any idea of how long you were in Bournemouth for? So you would have been there. How long did it — I didn’t — how long did it take to get from Halifax across to — It would only have been a couple of days.
SN: About ten days.
JM: Ten days. Yeah. And so then down. So, we’re probably talking about April. Bournemouth was probably about April ‘42 to — how long do you reckon?
SN: Maybe to June.
JM: To June. Yeah. And so where did we, and so —
SN: May or June. I’ve forgotten.
JM: May or June. What sort of — were they giving you any theory lessons there at this stage?
SN: No. It was — you just had a roll call.
JM: Roll call.
SN: Once a day.
JM: Once a day.
SN: And that was it.
JM: Pre. So did you —
SN: And then you did whatever you pleased.
JM: So, did you go up to London or do anything like that or how did you spend your time?
SN: No. You were not, you were I don’t know whether, they must have told us. No. No one went anywhere. I think you were on call.
JM: Call. Right.
SN: That you would be moving out as soon as it happened.
JM: Moving out soon. Yeah.
SN: And I don’t think anybody was —
JM: Right.
SN: You would have had to have leave.
JM: Yes. Yes.
SN: To do that.
JM: To do that. Yes. Ok. So, you were, you were just basically sitting around. What did you —play cards or things like that to pass the time? Or what did you do to pass? So just basically sitting around. Effectively doing nothing. How did you pass, how did you and your mates pass your time? Sit down on the —
SN: We moved around. It was quite a beautiful place with many gardens. We moved around during the day to the beach and so on and the pubs at night.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Nobody had all that much money.
JM: Money.
SN: You know that you [laughs]
JM: No. that’s right. Yeah.
SN: You could —
JM: Basically, sit and watch the world go by.
SN: Yes.
JM: Yes.
SN: There was no, there was no, no attempt to discipline or to —
JM: Right. Ok. So, from, so nothing, no particular experiences stand out whilst in Bournemouth.
SN: No, I don’t think there was anything there.
JM: No. Ok.
SN: There was a Palais dance. A Palais de Dance which they had in most places, you know.
JM: Yeah. Ok. So, where, where to next? Was it to Wales next?
SN: I went to Wales.
JM: Yes.
SN: To a place called Stormy Down.
JM: Down. Yeah.
SN: It was a mining area.
JM: Yes.
SN: Coal mines.
JM: Yeah. And over there you were doing —
SN: To a gunnery school.
JM: To the gunnery school again. Yes. And roughly how long was that?
SN: It wasn’t all that long. I would say that it might have been a month. Pretty full on.
JM: Yes. And so, this was where you came. So, you hadn’t done any gunnery training back in Canada so, this would be your —
SN: Yes, I had.
JM: You had. You did do some.
SN: Oh yes. Yes.
JM: When you were at Calgary.
SN: No. No.
JM: No.
SN: When I was in Trenton.
JM: Trenton. Trenton. Ok. So — oh my apologies. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes, because that’s where you were second. Second. Had the second highest score. Ok so how were the — what were you using? Different guns here now between what you were using in Trenton? Or —
SN: Yes. We were using [pause] what can I remember about it now? In Britain we were using old Lewis guns which were a pan that sits on the thing and it feeds outside and it seems to me that we were [pause] I’m not sure now what? We did quite a bit of target shooting. Drogue shooting where a drogue is dragged.
JM: Dragged. Yes.
SN: And of course in both places you do a lot of — what do you call it? [pause] Where you do — you shoot at the —
JM: Skeet.
SN: Skeet shooting.
JM: Yeah.
SN: A lot of skeet shooting. A lot of target shooting. That kind of thing.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And —
JM: As part of this.
SN: Yes. Yes.
JM: Yes.
SN: And there was a course.
JM: Yes.
SN: Which you, of benefit and I did very well. I got — they said, “A very good air gunner.” So —
JM: Were there particular competitions or something or —
SN: Yes. They would mark you for —
JM: Yeah.
SN: Target scores. How you —
JM: And you were coming out on top a lot.
SN: Yes.
JM: Right.
SN: Yes.
JM: Yeah. So, do you think you would have perhaps back when you were younger, on the farm, I presume you would have been doing some shooting there.
SN: Yes.
JM: So, do you feel that that perhaps gave you a bit of an advantage having sort of been always shooting moving targets. I would presume a lot of the time they were moving so —
SN: Yes.
JM: Yes.
SN: I don’t know.
JM: You don’t know.
SN: No.
JM: Yeah. But nevertheless you obviously had an aptitude for it because you were doing very well there with your skeet.
SN: Yeah. Yeah.
JM: Yeah. And you didn’t retain an interest in skeet shooting at any time. You didn’t do it many years down the track. Just as a little deviation here for a second.
SN: Only once.
JM: Yes.
SN: We were on a transatlantic ship with the family going somewhere. I’ve forgotten where but going. I was Foreign Affairs and we used to go by ship.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And they had a competition on this ship for skeet shooting.
JM: Yes.
SN: And I guess there were about thirty or forty people there and I won.
JM: You won.
SN: And they gave me a cup.
JM: Yes.
SN: And the rather wonderful thing about this was that both the kids were there and watched it. The two boys.
JM: Yeah.
SN: So that brought my [laughs]
JM: Increased your standing in their eyes no end. Did it?
SN: Yes. Yes. Yes.
JM: Ah well that’s very very interesting. So, do you remember how many rounds you had to shoot or was it a decent length competition or did they sort of try to keep it.
SN: It was, it was a pretty, a pretty easy one.
SN: Yeah.
SM: Ordinarily if you do skeet shooting you go through about seven stations.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And that means you’re shooting —
JM: Different heights. Yeah.
SN: At a bird at the height it’s going.
JM: Yeah.
SN: As it’s going away from you.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Up. It’s all the way through.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Whereas this one was there. Had to be done from the back of the ship.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And you didn’t have, they couldn’t.
JM: Have variations.
SN: They couldn’t have done any variations of any sort.
JM: Any sort. Yeah. Yeah.
SN: That amounted to very much.
JM: Yeah.
SN: So, you really did five and somebody, maybe they were five of you shot five each and you won that.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And then those who won competed again.
JM: Yeah. Yeah.
SN: It wasn’t really [laughs] that big a thing.
JM: It wasn’t such a big challenge for you.
SN: No.
JM: Having had all that other experience. Ok. Well that’s all very interesting. Ok. Well you completed the gunnery at Stormy Down. About a month. So, from there. OTU.
SN: I went to OTU.
JM: Yeah.
SN: At a place called Honeybourne.
JM: Yeah.
SN: A beautiful place in the Midlands.
JM: Yes.
SN: Near Evesham and Stratford on Avon. Yeah.
JM: And so how long were you at OTU?
SN: I was there for the fall because I remember we went out to steal apples. I got to the squadron in — maybe in October. Now, I had these. The reason I don’t have these dates here is my logbook was stolen.
JM: Stolen. Yes. I know. From when the book was —
SN: So I don’t have this.
JM: Yes. I know.
SN: I’m really just doing memory.
JM: I know. I’m just trying. I fully appreciate that I’m really testing your memory here but yeah.
SN: In the late summer and early fall I was at the OTU. I would have been —
JM: OTU. So that’s probably —
SN: I would have been there for at least three months.
JM: Three months. Right. So, we’re probably talking about August. September.
SN: Yes, I would say August September.
JM: August September of ‘42 we’re talking about here.
SN: Yes.
JM: Yeah. Ok. Yeah. And what stands out about OTU? Anything in particular. Apart from the fact that there was nice countryside. There were nice orchards where you could scrounge some apples.
SN: Yes. Well they had very nice pubs and you could chase girls.
JM: Yeah. Yes.
SN: And the weather was delightful.
JM: Yes.
SN: And the only thing that — two things happened I guess. One was that you, a lot of OTU is the gunner — each, each — the gunners have their own courses. The navigators. Pilots. Then you form a crew.
JM: Yes. You’re doing your crewing up. Yeah.
SN: And a lot of this was called circuits and bumps.
JM: Bumps. Yeah.
SN: Around and around and around.
JM: Around and around. Yeah.
SN: And one night a German night fighter got in the thing. Got in the — there’s usually four aircraft.
JM: Aircraft.
SN: And they follow one another.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And he got in the line.
JM: Line. Yes.
SN: And shot it down. We were in Whitleys which was an old two engine.
JM: Engine.
SN: Bomber. And he got in the line and shot the —
JM: The Whitley that was in front.
SN: The Whitley, as it was landing. Yes. So that was a big thing for us.
JM: That was. Yes. And, but that wasn’t you.
SN: No.
JM: Were you in, were you in.
SN: I wasn’t, I wasn’t even in the circuit either.
JM: You weren’t in the circuit either.
SN: No.
JM: Right. And what was the outcome with that Whitley. Was it —did he inflict injury as well as damage to the aircraft or —
SN: Yes.
JM: He did.
SN: Yes. He did.
JM: So, what? Killed all the crew or —
SN: No. No. I think they [pause] I think one. I think one man was either, either killed or very badly injured
JM: Injured
SN: And the aircraft was of course.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Runway. Smashed itself.
JM: Smashed itself. Yeah. Right. Ok. So at this point your crew. You’ve now, you crew up as well here at OTU.
SN: Yes.
JM: This is when you form your crew. So, your pilot.
SN: Was — I’ll deal with that I think.
JM: Yes.
SN: He was a man called Stonehill.
JM: Yes.
SN: And he was a squadron leader.
JM: Yes.
SN: And he was from Fighter Command.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And I don’t know what he’d done but he was, he was not happy to be there.
JM: No.
SN: That was not what— he didn’t really want to fly this [laughs] box like aircraft. And he was, we thought he was old. Old would be he was in his thirties.
JM: Late twenties or something. Oh thirties. Yes. Yes.
SN: You know.
JM: Yes.
SN: But he was older than we were.
JM: Yes.
SN: And proper RAF type, you know. Had a handlebar moustache.
JM: And all the rest of it. Yes.
SN: Yes. And he’d, and we saw nothing of him because we were, there were five of us including him.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And he of course he was an —
JM: An officer. And he was in the officer’s mess. In the —
SN: The other four of us were NCOs.
JM: Yes. NCOs.
SN: In our own mess. Ordinarily someone would have had, a pilot would have had something to do with us but he was, he didn’t want to be there.
JM: No. That’s right.
SN: And he, I don’t think he really knew our names. He, and so, we really saw, we saw nothing of him except we would, you know, get in the aircraft and we’d get out.
JM: Yeah. That’s right.
SN: Except for one. We went to a place called Long Marston which is up, just out of Stratford.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And this was for a, sort of, pre-operational thing to work out with the crew and we flew every day.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Cross country’s and things and we saw one night he came. We were at the flights. The flights is where the aircrew wait to get on, to get off.
JM: Yes.
SN: And he came out of the flights where we were and suggested that we come and have a beer.
JM: And everybody —
SN: So, we did this to wherever it was. We went from the flights and he had he must have [pause] I don’t know how we got there. He had a little Austin convertible.
JM: Convertible.
SN: Thing. And he, I think he either had family or him, beside him. And we sat around with him for an hour in the pub and the only thing I remember about it was that he had a dog and the dog was a Spaniel. And the dog would drink beer. The dog drank beer and we sat and we had a beer and he was friendly. But I don’t think he — he didn’t intend to stay and he didn’t stay.
JM: Didn’t stay.
SN: They took him. They took him back to where he came from.
JM: Back to where he came from. Ok. So, he disappeared down the thing. Down the track. But the rest of you stayed together though at this point. So who was your navigator?
SN: Well we had a little, a little crash. A little accident.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Which I deal with there when the aircraft went off the end of the runway.
JM: Runway.
SN: And it broke the leg of the wireless operator, I think. A big tall fellow named Hurst.
JM: Yes.
SN: And the crew packed up then. I think. Now I’m I don’t know which happened first.
JM: First. Yeah.
SN: Whether we had this, this [pause] this accidental crash. Whether we had that and then he was sent off or whether he was sent off when was just finishing up I don’t know.
JM: No.
SN: We never knew. We never saw him. They never said anything. They just called us in and they said, ‘Now, we’re disbanding this crew.’
JM: Crew.
SN: ‘And we’re posting you to other squadrons.’
JM: Squadrons. Yeah.
SN: To squadrons.
JM: Yeah. Yeah. Ok and so and from there you, that’s when you went to 405.
SN: Yes.
JM: Yes. Ok. And so you were landing. You joined 405. How long, how long were you at OTU? August September ’42.
SN: I was about three months.
JM: About three.
SN: A good three months.
JM: Ok. So, you were posted to 405. What? About December. November. December or —
SN: No. October.
JM: October. Ok.
SN: Yeah.
JM: October.
SN: I think.
JM: ’42.
SN: Yeah.
JM: Yeah. Ok. And so here and a couple of little experiences in 405.
SN: Well we went, I went. When I went to squadron I was on squadron for a long time. Longer than most people.
JM: Yeah.
SN: I came in with my kit and there was a note for me and it said something like “Welcome Clair.”
JM: Yeah.
SN: And when you come to the, wherever the, what do you call it? Not a dormitory. We were quartered in an old college.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And he said, when you, “When you come to the quarters come and see me. Stuart.”
JM: Stuart.
SN: And it was Stuart Clark who was from my little town.
JM: Town. That’s right. Yes.
SN: Right.
JM: Yes.
SN: And so, I went up and he and the navigator who was a fella called Elmer [Bulman] from [unclear] Nevada. And they were playing Battleships and so we talked about things and Stuart said, ‘Look,’ he said, ‘We need an air gunner. You come with us.’
JM: Yeah.
SN: In our crew.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And I did.
JM: Yeah.
SN: So, I was lucky.
JM: You were lucky. Yes. So that’s it. You knew the pilot because you had Stuart there as that.
SN: Yes. He was the navigator.
JM: Oh sorry. He was the navigator. Yeah.
SN: And he went to see the —
[phone ringing]
SN: Excuse me a second while I see to that.
[recording paused]
SN: Yes. And so he went to the pilot and said, ‘Look I’ve got —
JM: He went to the pilot. Yeah. Went to the pilot.
SN: And I was in.
JM: The pilot’s name? I should have it.
SN: Weber.
JM: Weber. That’s right.
SN: W E B E R. So I was in.
JM: Yeah. Yeah. And so then you went off and started to do your ops.
SN: We —
JM: Coastal Command.
SN: We were, what we did first is we —
JM: You got linked with —
SN: We were at Topcliffe up in Yorkshire. We had to do, we had to convert. It was called conversion at that time.
JM: Conversion. That’s right. Yes. Yes.
SN: Which was from, we had, they had been on Wellingtons.
JM: Wellingtons.
SN: And the squadron converted to Halifaxes so it was this period of people getting used to this new aircraft.
JM: Halifax.
SN: So that went on for a time. And then maybe a month later. Sometime in November they they were losing a lot of people with this. Losing a lot of shipping with the subs.
JM: Subs yeah.
SN: And they’d lent us to Coastal Command.
JM: Coastal Command.
SN: To cover during the time the North African invasion force went down.
JM: Yeah. Yeah.
SN: And so we were sent down to Southampton to do this, this thing and we spent most of the winter there.
JM: Yes. Yes.
SN: Doing these —
JM: Patrols.
SN: Patrols. Yes.
JM: So you weren’t actually bombing. You were doing surveillance.
SN: It was called air sea warfare.
JM: Yeah.
SN: ASW. I think. And you were looking for, you went out on, it was called a square search and you went out. They were great long things that would go from ten to twelve hours. Went down off the Scilly Islands and Bishop’s Rock and somewhere. A point on the Atlantic or the Bay of Biscay. Whatever it was.
JM: Was.
SN: Depending on what they had decided that day.
JM: That day.
SN: At the briefing where everything is. Where you should go.
JM: Go.
SN: And you flew this course square and back. And you flew fairly low. A thousand feet or something and you looked for submarines.
JM: Submarines yeah.
SN: And evidence of them you see.
JM: Yeah. A bit — sort of a wake from the conning tower.
SN: Yes. There was a great deal of that.
JM: Yes.
SN: It was a separate — Coastal Command it was called. We were lent Coastal Command.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And Coastal Command, all through the war, and Australia. Here as well.
SN: Yeah.
JM: Operated all through the war doing just that.
JM: Yeah.
SN: That was the —
JM: Yeah. So how many [pause] how many missions would you have done in Coastal Command do you think? Roughly.
SN: I can’t remember. You got — what they did is they, they took three of these [pause] ops or whatever you want to call them.
JM: Call them. Yeah.
SN: They took three of these for one op.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Three patrols if you want to call them that.
JM: Yeah. Three patrols were equal to one op in the —
SN: That’s right.
JM: The bureaucrats eyes.
SN: That’s how they did it.
JM: Yeah. Yeah.
SN: I don’t remember just what. Just how many there were. There wouldn’t have been all that many. The weather was pretty duff.
JM: Yeah. So —
SN: During that period so you would be stood down quite often, you know.
JM: Down quite often.
SN: And it was, there is nothing more boring than [laughs] [that sort of?] exercise
JM: Yeah.
SN: And I guess we had. We thought we saw evidence of a sub and we dropped our depth charges once. We thought we saw oil on the surface. And when they came up to charge their batteries and when they did this [pause] the oil — they would dive and they would send up several gallons of oil.
JM: Oil.
SN: So that —
JM: Created a bit of an oil slick.
SN: And you’ll see the oil slick.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And the object was that the attacking aircraft would say, ‘We got him. We saw the oil,’ and he was — they sunk.
JM: Yeah. Yeah.
SN: And of course, it hadn’t that at all.
JM: At all. No. Because they were in fact just doing it as part of their diving.
SN: Yeah
JM: Part of their diving process, so to speak. Yeah.
SN: We had one, I guess — two close encounters. One was [pause] one was that, was with, on these patrols they were so long that you had to carry excess tanks for excess fuel.
JM: Excess fuel.
SN: And that meant that you had the — they had of course to change tanks and you had to watch. The engineer had to watch the gauges to make sure that he changed, while one was still operating.
JM: Operating.
SN: To the new one.
JM: The new one. Yeah.
SN: And in this one case he forgot.
JM: Forgot.
SN: Whatever he was doing and the pilot fortunately noticed this and he said, ‘Mac,’ he said, ‘Change tanks.’ And he made a tremendous huge leap and did it and by that time we were down low enough and I wondered why we were this low that I could see the whitecaps on the waves.
JM: Waves.
SN: Yeah. So we were down maybe roof height by that time [laughs] and it sort of laboured its way up.
JM: Yes. Yes.
SN: And the other one I describe in the book when we attacked the German —
JM: Yes.
SN: E-boats.
JM: E-boats. Yeah.
SN: In the [pause] it’s the harbour near, near Biarritz.
JM: Yes. Yes.
SN: And they threw up a lot of stuff.
JM: Yes.
SN: And we —
JM: You got some flak out of that didn’t you?
SN: I don’t remember whether we did or not. We might have but it — we probably did because you could see the puffs and things.
JM: Yeah.
SN: But the sailors. I shocked them. They were out sunbathing on the deck [laughs] so we were close enough and I swept the decks of this thing.
JM: Yes.
SN: And you could see great activities going on there.
JM: Yes.
SN: But of course they had enough stuff there that they could have blown us out if —
JM: Out of the sky. But you got away before they managed to get to them. Yeah. So —
SN: Yes because I think you you could say our attack —
JM: Was totally unexpected. Yes.
SN: Was aborted.
JM: Yes. Yes.
SN: And depth charges wouldn’t really have done anything.
JM: Done anything.
SN: That much harm.
JM: Much harm.
SN: They told us later.
JM: Yeah. Yeah. So, all up you were doing this for about —
SN: For the winter.
JM: For the winter. Yes.
SN: Yeah.
JM: So, through to early ’43.
SN: Yes. Till maybe it would have been about March.
JM: March yeah. And then you resumed with 405 then.
SN: It would have been March. Yes. It would have been the end of February.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Early March. Yeah.
JM: Yeah. So you resumed with 405.
SN: Yes. So the Squadron. You see we never changed. Coastal Command is — they’re painted white grey.
JM: Yeah you were.
SN: And with us we just —
JM: Stayed black.
SN: Left it and stayed black.
JM: Yeah. And so how long were you back with 405?
SN: This was 405.
JM: Sorry.
SN: The whole squadron.
JM: Yes but with 405 base.
SN: To Bomber Command.
JM: Yes. To Bomber Command because you were down in Southampton.
SN: Yes we were.
JM: With Coastal Command.
SN: We were lent to Coastal Command.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Then we returned to —
JM: Bomber Command.
SN: The end of February we returned to —
JM: Yeah.
SN: To Bomber Command.
JM: To Bomber Command. To —
SN: To Topcliffe which was in Yorkshire.
JM: Yes. So, and so from here you then went on. Started to do some actual bombing raids from here.
SN: Yes.
JM: Yes.
SN: We did, we did several bombing raids from Topcliffe at that time. Maybe three or four or something.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And one of them was Stuttgart which was where I shot down a Messerschmitt 109.
JM: Yeah. Yeah. And any comments in terms of, you know, how close he was before you were able to see him and get, get, you got on to him before he got on to you or was he trying to get to you but your pilot managed to get away. Get at an angle where he was ineffective but you got him or what?
SN: He came up behind and I saw him. And I gave, when he got within range I gave the pilot evasive action and the pilot did it in classic fashion.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And when he was close enough. Six hundred yards. Not all that long. I got a good, a good shot at him.
JM: Yes.
SN: He was coming up like that you see and he, by this time had started to fire at us but he was, he didn’t hit us.
JM: Hit us because the pilot had already started the changing.
SN: He’d already started and he didn’t touch us at all.
JM: Touch us. Yeah. Yeah.
SN: Yeah. And he then went above us and started to turn around and fell.
JM: Yeah. Yeah. And that’s how you know you’d had a — you’d scored.
SN: Yes. Yes.
JM: Yes. So it was confirmed hit for you.
SN: Yes.
JM: Yes.
SN: But I couldn’t see where I was until he was —
JM: Coming past you more or less.
SN: Went down. He was off.
JM: Yes. Yes. I see. And so, and so that, was that was Stuttgart raid. And any other things stand out from these raids at this point?
SN: No. They were —
JM: They were.
SN: They were all on —
JM: Sort of routine.
SN: What was called Happy Valley.
JM: Valley. Yeah. Over the Ruhr. Yeah. Yeah. But routine as such and just —
SN: That might have been a period of maybe three weeks or something.
JM: Yeah.
SN: I’ve forgotten.
JM: Yeah. Yeah.
SN: And then we were transferred to Pathfinder Command.
JM: Pathfinders. Yeah. That’s right. Yes.
SN: Which was down at Gransden Lodge.
JM: Lodge. Gransden Lodge. Yeah. And so, this would have been March.
SN: It was March 13th was when I shot the aircraft down.
JM: Right. Ok. March 13. Ok. So then would that be later March then that you went to Gransden Lodge? That the Pathfinder.
SN: Yes. Or the 1st of April. I don’t know which.
JM: Right.
SN: It wasn’t long.
JM: Yeah.
SN: We just, we just did maybe two or three ops.
JM: Yeah. Ops. Yeah. Yeah. And the decision to move to Pathfinders. What, what’s the story there?
SN: Well 405 was the oldest Canadian bomber squadron.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Which had been operating on the [ unclear] maybe a year in Bomber Command in what was called 6 Group which was the Canadian group.
JM: Group. Yeah.
SN: And because it was the, I suppose, and I’m guessing here because it was the oldest squadron and had the most experience it was the one selected to go to the Pathfinder group.
JM: Pathfinders.
SN: And also, I guess because the CO was quite a remarkable guy. A fella named Johnnie Fauquier and he was a force in himself and he —
JM: Yes. Yes.
SN: Because he was brought back.
JM: Back.
SN: As the head of the squadron and we were sent down as a part of 8 Group.
JM: Yes. But was it the commanders that came to you and said to your pilot, Weber and say, ‘Right, your crew’s a good crew – ’
SN: No. No.
JM: You’re going over to Pathfinders or —
SN: No. Oh no. Nobody was asked anything.
JM: No. No. I’m not asked but just said, ‘Right —
SN: No.
JM: Said to Weber.
SN: There was nothing. They just took the squadron.
JM: They just took it.
SN: As it was with Coastal Command.
JM: Right.
SN: Took the squadron.
JM: Right. The whole squadron. Yeah. Ok. Ok. So, and so no one had any choice in the matter. Everyone had to just comply.
SN: That’s right.
JM: Basically. Yeah. Ok. So [pause] so then began your time at Gransden Lodge and — how many — you did a lot of ops in that time.
SN: Yes. Yes.
JM: From Gransden Lodge.
SN: Yeah.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Now I was, it was quite a time from October to January of forty — January of ‘44 I believe.
JM: Yeah. Ok. Well if the squadron moved over in March/April ’43.
SN: In other words I was with the squadron from —
JM: Squadron from —
SN: October of ‘43 to January of ’44.
JM: Yes, but you said that the squadron moved.
SN: Well in that time it was in Bomber Command to Coastal Command to Bomber Command.
JM: Yeah. Yeah.
SN: To Pathfinder Command.
JM: Yeah. Yeah. But what we had there before was that you [pause] you moved back [pause] to you had your Coastal Command and then —
SN: We went back to Bomber Command.
JM: You went back to there and that’s when you did your, you said the 13th of March.
SN: Yes.
JM: Was when you did your raid on Stuttgart.
SN: Yes.
JM: And you shot down the Messerschmitt.
SN: Yeah.
JM: And that was when you were back at Bomber Command.
SN: That’s right.
JM: That’s right. And so that’s why you were initially indicating to me that it was perhaps late March, early April that the squadron moved to —
SN: That’s right. Moved to Pathfinder Command. 8 Group.
JM: To Pathfinder Command. Yeah. In April ‘43. So, in fact you were part of Pathfinder from, roughly, early April ’43 right through to —
SN: To January.
JM: To January ’44.
SN: Yeah.
JM: Yeah. Yeah. So that’s right. That makes sense. So would you have had leave at any stage? You must have had some periods of leave in between all these bits and pieces.
SN: Yes. We had a lot of leave. We had a week every six weeks.
JM: Yeah. And just before we get into Pathfinders you know, any of the, I don’t, I’m not looking for a sort — because you’ve had so many raids with, or ops with Pathfinders we’ll just pick on a couple I guess but just backtracking up until there you’d had periods of leave and what, did you have a regular places you went to when you were on leave or did you try —
SN: London.
JM: Always London.
SN: Usually. Yes.
JM: Yes. And did you have a particular place there that you always went to for accommodation or did you do different places? Or —?
SN: Different places. Yes.
JM: Right and —
SN: And usually with the, with the crew or at least two of us.
JM: With the crew basically went all together.
SN: Yes.
JM: Yeah. So, so, Weber the pilot went with you and —
SN: No. He was English.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And he, of course, went home.
JM: He went home. Yeah.
SN: And I had a particular, my particular pal was a wireless operator.
JM: Yes.
SN: Who was a fellow called Rickard.
JM: Yes.
SN: And the engineer.
JM: Yes.
SN: Who was called MacLean.
JM: Yes.
SN: So either usually the two of us but sometimes three —
JM: Yes.
SN: Would go on leave together.
JM: Together. Right.
SN: And we went to Ireland once. To Dublin. Which was interesting.
JM: Did you have to go in civvies for that? Or —
SN: Yes.
JM: Yes.
SN: You changed at the border. At a place called Larne. You left your uniform and got, they gave you a civilian suit and off you went. It was the, the, what I suppose the most attractive feature of it was that there was no food rationing and you could get all steak and eggs and bacon and what have you.
JM: Whatever you wanted. Yes.
SN: Yes.
JM: Which made a change.
SN: Which was rather pleasant.
JM: Yes.
SN: For a few days.
JM: Yes. That’s right. Yes. So, it’s what I think a lot of chaps ultimately ended up doing is having a little excursion to Ireland. I think probably just for the sake of getting the food.
SN: Yes. Indeed. Indeed.
JM: Yes. That’s right. So, no other particular events stand out from when you were up onto this point. When you were on leave. Just all, just the usual sort of pubs and shows and —
SN: Pubs and shows and girls.
JM: Girls.
SN: You see [laughs]
JM: Yeah. Yes. Ok. So, looking at Pathfinders. What particular missions or ops do you want to highlight?
SN: I think, I think for Pathfinders, of course, the people who are most affected are the pilots and navigators and bomb aimers. For the gunners and wireless ops it’s really, it’s the same. It’s pretty much the same drill. The only difference is with Pathfinders you are continuously training.
JM: Yeah.
SN: There is very little time off so to speak. There is a training exercise every day you’re not on ops so it’s, it’s a pretty full on thing.
JM: Yeah.
SN: I guess there is another interesting thing about it is, of course, it was a pretty impromptu [pause] I was going to say it was a pretty impromptu move and we were moved and quartered in the village. In amongst the village.
JM: Yes.
SN: The huts and things were all in this village.
JM: Yeah. So, houses were basically just requisitioned to be your accommodation.
SN: No. The village was there and the village was operating in the same way.
JM: Yes. But individual houses might have been requisitioned.
SN: No.
JM: No.
SN: They built, they built —
JM: So, you were billeted. The people lived there and you were all just billeted in —
SN: Yes. And we all —
JM: With families.
SN: We all lived in, what do you called them, huts. What are they called?
JM: Nissen. The Nissen huts.
SN: Nissen huts. Yes. We all lived in Nissen huts.
JM: Oh ok.
SN: The masses were in Nissen huts.
JM: So, they built Nissen huts within the village itself.
SN: Yes. We all lived in the village and we walked to the flights.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Which was about a quarter of a mile.
JM: A quarter of a mile away. Right. Yeah.
SN: Which was rather interesting. It was an interesting time.
JM: Yeah. For what reason?
SN: Well I think you — these villagers, we went back. We had a reunion there. And they regarded us as their people. You know, they knew us all in the pubs and how many didn’t come back. Who.
JM: Yes. And so, they basically felt a sense of protection.
SN: Yes.
JM: Enveloped you guys in a cloak of protection in a way to sort of provide you with, I guess, some stability or something like that is what they felt they were doing by providing that [pause]
SN: Yes. It was quite —
JM: Extending that friendship for want of a better word. Yeah.
SN: It was quite touching.
JM: Yes.
SN: When we went back.
JM: Yes. Yes. And — Ok. So you were doing regular training as well as going out on ops and what? Any, which ops in particular stand out for you?
SN: Well [pause] it’s like anything else I guess. You — it becomes a routine and it’s what you do and you — I think you become a little callous. And I think it takes, it took me a time after I was discharged. I found it [pause] An uncle of mine spoke to me and said, you know, ‘Have a little compassion.’ You became used to death. And people didn’t come back. And the casualty rate was horrendous.
JM: Yes.
SN: And you were, if you survived it’s what you do and it’s your [pause] you can get, you can accustom people to almost anything.
JM: That’s right.
SN: So, you know, we went out and did it and came back.
JM: Back.
SN: We laughed about it.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Drank to the next man to go.
JM: Go.
SN: That was life.
JM: That was life. And what, what particular — I think there were a couple of particular ops that you mentioned in the book that you might just touch on briefly?
SN: Well I think we, we were first occupied with the Ruhr Valley. With Happy Valley.
JM: Happy Valley. Yeah.
SN: Then we went on to — we did one on Hamburg and we did some long runs. Pilsen, I think. And finally, Berlin. I went to Berlin seven times.
JM: Yeah.
SN: They [pause] we got shot up pretty badly several times and I guess what you remember is that your crew changes. Or ours did. For instance, the man I was telling you about. Stuart Clark.
JM: Yeah.
SN: He had a great friend in the squadron and instead of flying down to Coastal Command with us — we flew, you see. We just packed our stuff up and went. He decided to fly with his friend. You know, why not. And I remember he went off before we did. Went off. He just got over the horizon. Whack. The time of stress with an aircraft is when it takes its first turn because it’s got, not only the momentum of getting in but it has to make this turn.
JM: Turn.
SN: That’s it. And it didn’t and they were all killed. Blown up. So, we had an American with us and when the Americans came over and started to operate he went back to his, or went to — the American air force were happy to have them and most of them went back. And I guess the [pause] we lost crew members and I guess that’s what you remember. Who was the first one? [pause] We had, oh the first one we lost was unfortunately the navigator who was a very nice fella. We were good friends and we used to go to the pub at night. And we were at a place called Leeming in Yorkshire and instead of going around by the road we would cross the airfield and you had to be careful because of night flying [laughs] to do these things, you see.
JM: Yes.
SN: But it made it shorter. Anyway, we came back and I guess all had quite a bit to drink and we were at the top of our — they called them married quarters. They were cottages and we were in the two bedrooms upstairs. I, and Ricky, the wireless operator and Gibby. We got, we came back and we got to the top of the stairs and Gibby slipped and he rolled down these stairs and we got at the bottom and his head was bleeding. So, we got the ambulance and he was unconscious. There was nothing — his head was bleeding and the ambulance came and we never saw him again and I don’t know what happened to him. I presume that he perhaps died. And the other two I think I deal with in here. I might have dealt with Gibby as well. We had a thing which was called [pause] what did we call it? It’s [pause] lack of moral fortitude. LMF.
JM: Yeah.
SN: LMF. And that’s really quite a good story actually. We had two of our crew. One was over Essen. A fellow named Gordon Wood. Toronto. And he, how anybody could think of this when we’re over Essen and the bloody kite was —
JM: Bouncing around the —
SN: Bouncing because of the flak.
JM: Flak.
SN: Threw us [unclear ] and he, and we missed, we went over the —
JM: Target.
SN: Target. And we missed.
JM: Missed.
SN: We were off so we had to go around again. Do another thing. Because the bomb aim has to be straight and level to do this thing.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And when we started going around the second time he went to pieces and he, the pilot’s name was Tony. And he said, ‘Don’t go in there Tony. Don’t go in there. They’ll kill us,’ he said, ‘I want to go home and marry Mary,’ he said, ‘Don’t do this.’ He wept and so forth at the pilot, Tony. And Mac, the engineer, went down and take his intercom out and then they had to get him up and put him on — we had a little bench.
JM: Bench. Yeah.
SN: Across from the hatch and tied him up on the bench.
JM: Bench.
SN: And he came and we reported this when we came back that we had this man. The ambulance met him and I never saw him again or heard anything of him. Then the other one was — we were — I don’t know where it was. Nuremberg. Hamburg. I’ve forgotten. Anyway, we’d got an American who was a mid-upper gunner and they did a stupid thing. They thought instead most attacks by fighter aircraft come in from the bottom.
JM: Bottom.
SN: And they don’t see because the rear gunner just sees a hundred and eighty degrees so they said, ‘We’ll put a thing like a tear drop in the bottom of the aircraft.’
JM: Yeah.
SN: And the mid-upper gunner will lie there and he had no guns, will lie there with his intercom, on his belly and report these aircraft that he sees. Stupid thing to have done. And he’d been alright before that but he, they only left the thing on for maybe two or three weeks.
JM: Weeks.
SN: And he went bananas.
JM: He went bananas.
SN: And he saw aircraft all over the sky and he gave evasive action and we’re pitching around [laughs] trying to find these until it finally occurred —
JM: Trying to avoid these imaginary aeroplanes.
SN: That there weren’t any aircraft.
JM: Yes.
SN: No one else saw it.
JM: No.
SN: So, he had to be disconnected, and put on the thing.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And we never saw him again.
JM: Again.
SN: But after the war I learned what happened. And what had happened was they took these people, gave them whatever help they could.
JM: Yeah.
SN: They sent them back to Canada.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And then they gave them a choice. They said, ‘Now we will not discharge you.’ For dishonourable —
JM: Dishonourable discharge.
SN: Put this on your conduct thing.
JM: Yeah.
SN: You will have a choice. You can either join the army or the navy and carry on with the war.
JM: Yeah. Yeah.
SN: Or we will give you a medical discharge.
JM: Discharge. Yeah.
SN: You have a choice and it always seemed to me that that was very fair. And nobody ever reported and said these people were cowards. They were medically —
JM: Unstable or anything like that.
SN: Or anything like that. So it was one of the good war stories.
JM: Good things. Yeah.
SN: Yeah.
JM: Yeah. Now around in this period of time though in September ‘43 you discovered by accident shall we say in as much you and your good friend Drew were in London on, I presume on one of your periods of leave.
SN: Yes. I’d forgotten him but he was, yes.
JM: Yeah. And that he was sitting reading the newspaper and reading the latest list of honours and said that, informed you that you had been awarded the —
SN: DFM.
JM: DFM.
SN: Yes. That’s right.
JM: And the, I haven’t got the exact words of the citation in front of me but it was in terms of a, in recognition of a number of —
SN: Yeah.
JM: Ops.
SN: I remember I said something like, he said, ‘Read this,’ and I said something like, ‘Yeah. They’re going to knight me tomorrow,’ or something. And he said, ‘No. You silly bastard,’ he said, ‘It’s you.’
JM: It’s you. That’s right. But did you was it just simply for a sequence of raids or did you actually get told something?
SN: It was a sequence I think.
JM: Yeah. But did you, can you recall.
SN: The citation.
JM: The sequence that they were actually referring to in terms of particular difficulties on those particular raids or —
SN: No. It was a general citation it seems to me. As I remember it.
JM: Right. So were other members of the crew awarded DFMs?
SN: No. Nobody.
JM: So how did they seem?
SN: Only me.
JM: Do you know why they singled you.
SN: I think it was the aircraft that I shot down.
JM: So, going back to —when? So —
SN: Yes. it went back to —
JM: So, it goes back to the March.
SN: Went back to March.
JM: March. When you shot down the Messerschmitt.
SN: That’s right.
JM: In Stuttgart.
SN: That’s right. I think so, yes. I think that was what it was about because I was the only one.
JM: Yeah. Ok. So, so you didn’t get any further clarification in terms of the citation or anything like that. The commanding officers.
SN: There is a citation. Yes. And the citation [pause] I had or I probably have somewhere here but God knows where I would find it.
JM: Yes.
SN: Yeah.
JM: Right. And then you lined up and received your award from King George.
SN: Yes. I went to Buckingham Palace and lined up with a lot of other people.
JM: And did he have any words to you do you recall? Or did he just walk along and just pin and kept walking.
SN: No. He was on a little dais in the palace and you went up one by one, up just a little, maybe that high or something and the king was slightly higher.
JM: He was slightly elevated by about eighteen inches.
SN: Yes.
JM: Or something like that.
SN: He was there.
JM: Yeah.
SN: With a sort of a lectern or table that had the awards.
JM: Yeah.
SN: That were being passed to him by someone.
JM: An assistant on the side.
SN: Yes. And you were — before you went up they put a little tin thing or something on your tunic.
JM: Yes. On your tunic, yeah, so they had —
SN: And you went up. He shook hands with you.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And said something like I suppose, ‘Well done,’ or something like that and hung these on the thing.
JM: Thing. Yeah.
SN: And then you went.
JM: Yeah.
SN: It wasn’t, you know, he was there were maybe, I don’t how many. Let’s say there were a hundred or something.
JM: Yeah.
SN: There were a lot of them anyway.
JM: Yeah. Yeah.
SN: And that was it, you know. He wouldn’t have had enough time to have said —
JM: Too much to each one. No.
SN: To anyone really because it was a line.
JM: A line yeah.
SN: That went through.
JM: Yeah.
SN: It was a job he had to do. Yeah. That was it.
JM: So then did you have an afternoon tea afterwards and did you talk with any of the other recipients?
SN: No. That was it. That was it. No.
JM: You just received it and you were out the door.
SN: You were told to appear at the palace. You had an order written on the thing. At such and such a time. And you came and they said, ‘Yes, that’s you. Here it is. You go in there. You go there. Get in the queue.’
JM: Almost a sausage line.
SN: Yeah [laughs]
JM: Right. Ok. So so, at this stage we’re getting you’ve been doing the various ops etcetera so you’re building up the number of ops you’re doing. We get towards the end.
SN: Yes.
JM: Did you know you were getting — because by this time, where are we up to? About, January ’44 so this is getting to —
SN: We’re in October I guess.
JM: Yeah. October ’44.
SN: Yes.
JM: Yes.
SN: And at that stage we [pause] our pilot and all except two of us in the crew.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Ricky and myself —
JM: Yeah.
SN: Had completed the magic number.
JM: Number.
SN: Which was forty five.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And so, they [pause] they had done their —
JM: Completed their —
SN: Completed their second tour.
JM: Tour.
SN: And there were the two of us who had not.
JM: So that was you and Ricky.
SN: Ricky. And Ricky went. Ricky decided that he had had enough and he didn’t really want to fly with a sprog pilot or somebody else. So, he said, ‘I really don’t care whether I have that Pathfinder badge or not. I’d rather be alive.’
JM: Yeah.
SN: So, I stayed on to finish and I had three to finish.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And it took a while. November until I crashed because you had to find a crew that was short.
JM: Short.
SN: Of a rear gunner.
JM: Rear gunner. Yeah.
SN: To go with.
JM: Yeah.
SN: So, I went with well they wanted to put, yes, they put you on this crew. Their man had [pause] I’ve forgotten — he’d fallen ill, I think. Whatever he had he wasn’t going to be able to fly again. So, I had, this fella, his name was McLennan. Canadian. So, I became their rear gunner.
JM: Gunner.
SN: For these three trips. And because I had been waiting around the weather was duff.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And we went to Berlin three times.
JM: Right.
SN: And in the end, you’ve seen there. So, and they were three bad flights because I guess they were I guess a sprog crew to some degree. We got shot up very badly and we got lost. And then the last flight we got shot up. The second last flight we were shot up pretty badly. And we were quite lucky. It burnt up the wireless operator’s notes and the navigator’s maps. The whole thing. [unclear] and it was pretty well peppered. So, then the last flight —
JM: So, did you use the same plane? Or did you — or the ground crew repaired it enough. Or did you use a different plane for that? For then? This last flight?
SN: They repaired it.
JM: They repaired it.
SN: They repaired it. I’m sure about that but I should say I don’t know.
JM: Right. Ok. Yeah.
SN: That would be a better answer.
JM: Yeah. Yeah.
SN: And then the last flight we, the last flight I made which was the forty fifth for me. I was — that would finish me off and it very nearly did.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And we got, we got shot up again as we came off the target.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And it was the night before, we were attacked by a fighter. The last night. I’ve forgotten if we were or not. Certainly, we were the second, it was an ME110 that very nearly got us. And we were lost. And the Met people had made a mistake in that they believed that a front was going to come in. They knew this but they believed that there would be ample time for people to get back from Berlin before this front came in. It was a heavy front. Well, they were wrong. And the front came in earlier and aircraft at that time when you’re doing blind landings come down in concentric circles.
JM: Yeah.
SN: It’s like —
JM: So, you stacked up.
SN: A for apple and B for Bertie.
JM: Yeah.
SN: X for X-ray and they’re in a line you see.
JM: In a line. Yeah.
SN: And they come down and you have a different altitude so they don’t get.
JM: Running into each other. Theoretically. Yes.
SN: Yes. And they bring them down.
JM: Down. Yeah.
SN: The operator.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Brings them down.
JM: Down. Yeah.
SN: And the last circle, and when they do this they find the marker that makes the, what is it called [pause] when you have a blind landing you’re looking at your instruments. I’ve forgotten the name. It’s in there anyway. You have to pick up this bar and come in.
SN: Yeah.
JM: And if you miss that you’ve got to go around ‘til you get it again because you’re coming down.
SN: Down.
JM: They’re bringing you down on that bar. They have given you your altitude that you should be at.
SN: Yeah.
JM: They’re following you down.
SN: The pilot is just blind flying into this. So, we had been up. We were lost. We were late and we’d been up a long time and they were bringing us in and the pilot missed the bar and we had to go around again. And by this time, we were out of fuel and he knows we’re very nearly out of fuel and I know that we’re in trouble because I can see the treetops going by the turret.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And I did the luckiest thing I ever did in my life. There was a belt about that wide.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Webbing.
JM: Webbing belt. Yeah.
SN: With buckles on it.
JM: Strapped you in.
SN: And it was on either side and I put that on.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Locked it there and that saved me.
JM: That saved you. That’s what saved you. Yeah.
JM: Yeah. So, you came and so having seen the treetops. It wasn’t too long after that that before —
SN: It was just minutes after that. Yeah. And the aircraft broke off, you see. The tail broke off.
SN: Broke off.
JM: Yeah. So, you were saved but the rest were not.
SN: That’s right. Well, the pilot came through but in a very bad state. And I found him. And I think I say there, things were blowing up. We had failsafe stuff. And it was burning. And I was not in a very good shape at the time. It had knocked me out. I was bleeding.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And in a stupor I think.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And he, he was lying with this stuff popping off and I thought I should move him back a little and I took him by the legs and his legs started to come off and the bone appeared. I couldn’t do that. And I got — we had a little packet of stuff and I don’t know whether I shot him with a hypo. Certainly, I had, when they found me I had the packet but what I did with it I have no idea. In any event when they came back they found me wandering around with this packet. This kid found me who became a friend of mine. And they brought the ambulance out it was thick heavy fog, and packed I and McLennan in and he, he was not conscious through this, through all this, I don’t think. Maybe he was but he didn’t seem to be.
JM: Seem to be.
SN: To me. And he and I went in together and it seemed to me that I wasn’t sure whether, I think he, I think he recognised me as we went in. And then I was in this hospital in Ely maybe a week or ten days. I’ve forgotten. And I asked, when I came too the following day, for McLennan. He was a nice fellow. And he said he died when he got there. So, I was the only one who survived.
JM: Yes, and so do you regret having made the decision to have, to complete those other three ops? Do you feel you would have was there what was the motivation in the first place to do, to do the three? Was it simply that you wanted to have the completed tour or what?
SN: It’s, I signed on for to do the tours.
JM: To do the tours. Yeah.
SN: And I wanted it done. Yes.
JM: You wanted to do it.
SN: It was something I wanted to do.
JM: Do. Yeah. So —
SN: And Ricky, whom I met again after the war, who my particular chum he always regretted that he didn’t.
JM: Right. Yeah. There you go. So people who, despite the fact that it was very very difficult for you for those last three. One thing just very briefly. Did, in Pathfinder, did Gransden Lodge, did any of the various squadrons intermingle at any time or did you stay very much within your own squadron?
SN: Completely within our own squadron.
JM: Within your own squadron. Because, I mean Australian, you know, there were various other, you know like —
SN: Yes, we had all sort of people. Australians, British.
JM: Yeah, yeah, but there was a 156 Squadron at Gransden Lodge too, I think, from knowledge but there was never any intermingling or anything like that.
SN: No. De were the only ones.
JM: You were the only ones.
SN: During my time.
JM: Your time, yeah. Right. Ok. Yeah.
SN: And we didn’t. Yes. No. We didn’t. I didn’t know anybody from any other squadron.
JM: Right. No. Right.
SN: You know the top squadron chief, they would have gone to group headquarters.
JM: Headquarters.
SN: And they knew —
JM: What was going on.
SN: Other people from the other squadrons.
JM: Yeah. Squadrons yeah.
SN: But not at my level.
JM: No.
SN: We never saw anybody.
JM: No. Right. And did — so you were in hospital and then I presume you went on leave and went perhaps to rehab. Like a rehabilitation.
SN: No. I went. I got out of hospital and went back to the squadron.
JM: Yeah.
SN: That was in January.
JM: January ’45.
SN: Yes. And I got back to the squadron on Christmas Eve. I think it was.
JM: Oh. Ok. So that was Christmas Eve ’44.
SN: ’43. ’43.
JM: ‘44 wouldn’t it be?
SN: No. ‘43.
JM: Ok.
SN: In January of ‘44 I was posted.
JM: Yes.
SN: From the squadron.
JM: Yeah.
SN: To a RAF gunnery school for gunnery instruction instructor’s course.
JM: Yeah. Ok. That was in January ‘44. Yeah. Ok. And so how long were you there for?
SN: I would think it would be about a month but it might have been six weeks.
JM: Right.
SN: The only thing I can remember about it is that it was a RAF school at a place called Manby. And they spent all their Sunday, or most of their Sunday on the parade square where they were inspection after inspection and I was by that time commissioned. I noticed that they had a most extraordinary [pause] before they started this buggering about.
JM: Yeah.
SN: They called out, ‘Fall out the Jews and infidels.’ [laughs]
JM: Right.
SN: It’s true.
JM: Right.
SN: It’s true. And thereupon the head of the WAAFs who was shaped rather like a large trout and had a moustache bigger than me and was obviously Jewish and she would fall out and the other one who fell out was an Indian. Indian Indian. A little squadron leader of some sort and he, I guess, was a Hindu or — I don’t know what it was. But I thought this is not a bad lark so the next Sunday I fell out with them. And no one —
JM: Queried it.
SN: No one ever queried me. I think they simply assumed well he’s Jewish.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And well that was the end and I had my Sunday.
JM: Well there you go. That was a way to get a Sunday off wasn’t it? And so, what happened after? Did you complete this course? Or —
SN: Yes.
JM: Yes. And what happened after that?
SN: Then I went back to 6 Group which was the Canadian group.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Up in Yorkshire and I instructed. I guess till the end of the year. Something like that. I’ve forgotten how long it was and then I was posted back to Canada.
JM: Right.
SN: To — they had a huge base near Vancouver.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Which was for [pause] for the Far Eastern campaign. Well the Far Eastern campaign was cut short at Hiroshima.
JM: That’s right. Yeah.
SN: So, nobody went anywhere.
JM: Anywhere.
SN: But there were about five thousand of us there and we were all given Joe jobs of one sort or another to keep us occupied. And that was for I guess for six months in ‘44. And then in August I was discharged.
JM: So that was August.
SN: 1945.
JM: ‘45 yeah.
SN: That’s ’45. Yes.
JM: ’45. Discharged. Yeah and —
SN: The only thing that I did during those six months, you know — there were really so many of us was I went over to Victoria to sell Victory Bonds for a month and this was rather fun. The people who were selling the bonds who were business men in the city I guess and were not the always the same people. And they would pick me up and we would go to factories, plants, offices and they would make a little spiel and I would get up and talk for, you know, maybe a minute or two and then we’d go on to another place.
JM: I see. Well that was different.
SN: Yes. That was the only thing I did when I was there.
JM: And this was when you were in.
SN: In this place. At Boundary Bay it was called.
JM: Near Vancouver.
SN: Yes. It was so bad that in the end the last job I had was to teach people who — no —I did do some work out there. I flew in Libs. They had Liberators.
JM: Liberators. Yeah.
SN: On instructing for three months which was alright. We had something to do. But then this last thing I was teaching [pause] what was it called? When an aircraft is is [pause] has to ditch. Ditching procedure.
JM: Ditching procedure. Yeah.
SN: And I had a sergeant and I had three other fellows and I had to give, I thought I was rather badly used and I had to give — I think I had to work two days a week. That was all I did.
JM: Did.
SN: But —
JM: Put a crew through this ditching procedure training. Goodness me.
SN: And there was hundreds of — well I don’t know how many.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Who were doing [laughs]
JM: Same thing.
SN: The same thing but there we were.
JM: And when you are discharged in August ‘45 presumably you then head back to the farm. To the family.
SN: Yes. I went back to the family and I went down and got myself discharged.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And in September, 1st of September I guess, I went to university.
JM: Right. And there you did, what?
SN: I did General Arts. And I was there for five years.
JM: Five years. Right. And?
SN: I got an MA.
JM: An MA right.
SN: In History and English Literature.
JM: Yeah. And where and then what? What —
SN: Well I then found [pause] I met a remarkable man who — I really started out to take law and I should have done that. That made sense. It was a profession. But he was an historian. Brilliant man. World scholar. Wonderfully — looked like Charles Laughton.
JM: Sorry?
SN: He looked like Charles Laughton.
JM: Right. Ok. And what was —
SN: A wonderful voice.
JM: And what was this chap’s name.
SN: He was a history prof. His name was Charles Lightbody.
JM: Right.
SN: And I was quite fascinated by him and he became a friend of mine and I thought well I would do that and so I —
JM: You’d become a historian.
SN: I ended up with an MA and I realised that there really wasn’t anything I could do but teach and I wasn’t — I didn’t think there was really be much of a teacher. So, I, in the meantime had written. There were three examinations which you had to pass for Foreign Affairs. One was a four hour written hour written exam. Or was it six. I think it was six. It was a half day anyway and then you had to go for an oral examination with people. And then you had a third thing. I’ve forgotten what it was and then you, if you were lucky this was across the country and if you made it you were, you got the appointment. They took you in to the Foreign Service. Well I had written this, I guess, in the spring. I heard nothing from them. So, I had to think what I could do. So I applied for some scholarships and got a fellowship which was a scholarship down in New Orleans at Tulane University. So, I went down there. By this time, I was married but I went down by myself to see. And I was only there for a month, six weeks, something, when my appointment came through. But I was there long enough to realise that this was really not my —
JM: Cup of tea.
SN: Cup of tea. I was put, this was for a PhD and I was put to my chore — you had to teach part of the time was the Tulane football team. And Jesus. They [laughs] recruited these people from the villages and towns not because of their academic.
JM: Their academic ability.
SN: Oh no. That was not [laughs]
JM: They were recruited for their football ability.
SN: And I’m teaching European history to these fellas and they’re going [yawn] so —
JM: So, you were very pleased to have your posting come through.
SN: I didn’t hesitate. I didn’t hesitate a minute.
JM: You didn’t hesitate. You grabbed it with both hands and —
SN: That’s right.
JM: So then —
SN: Happily, ever after.
JM: And when did you actually start your posting. So, I presume you had to do some sort of orientation period but when did you officially start with the — so what is this called? The Canadian Diplomatic Corps is it. Or what was its proper title?
SN: Canadian Foreign Service.
JM: Canadian Foreign Service. Yeah.
SN: Really from the 1st of January.
JM: 1st of January ‘46 would it have been.
SN: No, it was after that.
JM: What are we up to?
SN: It was after Christmas. It was December. I think it was December 27th. Something like that.
JM: So, December 27th.
SN: It had to be that year.
JM: Yeah. So, when would this be. About ‘51.
SN: In Ottawa.
JM: Would it be ‘51? December ‘51 or ’50.
SN: It would be December 1950.
JM: 1950. right. Yeah. So, December 27 1950 and it was, did you say, Ottawa.
SN: Yes.
JM: Ottawa. And so that was where you’re —
SN: So, I spent thirty odd years.
JM: So was that a training — your initial training at Ottawa or that was your actual first posting as —what?
SN: It was a training.
JM: Training. Yeah.
SN: It was before the first posting.
JM: Posting. Yeah. And then where was your first posting?
SN: It was really in Latin America and Bogota but before that someone fell ill in Tokyo. And they needed to send someone out to —
JM: To Tokyo.
SN: This guy didn’t come or I’ve forgotten what it was. In any event they needed somebody and the Korean war was on. So, they were able to send somebody out with military you see.
JM: Right.
SN: They didn’t have to go through the procedure of sending them by sea.
JM: Right.
SN: Across the thing. It was a time factor. So, I flew over and I was there for six months.
JM: To — to —
SN: Tokyo.
JM: Tokyo.
SN: Yes. Things happened and I was kept on.
JM: Yeah. So that became your first —
SN: I suppose that it was my your posting.
JM: Even though, yeah, yeah.
SN: But it was a temporary assignment.
JM: Assignment. Yeah. Yeah. So then did you come back to Latin America after that?
SN: I came back to Ottawa. And then by that time they had posted me.
JM: Yeah.
SN: To Bogota.
JM: Bogota. Right.
SN: And I was, you know, in Ottawa for a couple months.
JM: While they sorted the paperwork out, I guess.
SN: Yeah.
JM: Yeah. So, Bogota and then and then you say thirty years moving around.
SN: Yes.
JM: Various embassies moving around the world.
SN: Yes. That’s right. Yeah.
JM: Presumably changing roles. Moving up into a higher role most of the time. So, what was your —
SN: Yes.
JM: So were you a —
SN: I went through the usual steps of third secretary. Second secretary. First secretary.
JM: Secretary.
SN: Counsellor. Minister.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And ambassador.
JM: Yeah.
SN: So, it was, I guess, about thirty three years. Something like this.
JM: Yeah. And where were you ambassador?
SN: I was [pause] I resigned or — I didn’t resign, I finished as ambassador to Ecuador.
JM: Right. And did you have any other ambassadorial post prior to Ecuador?
SN: I had another Head of Mission is what we called it.
JM: Right.
SN: I had a Head of Mission post before that. I was Canadian Commissioner in Cambodia.
JM: Right.
SN: Which is where I met Shirley.
JM: Right.
SN: And of course, that was an unfortunate thing in the sense of career in that divorce at that time was frowned on and I was unemployable because my then wife had to agree if I were to be posted and of course that was the last thing she was likely to do. And it was a long dragged out affair and very difficult for Shirley. However, we had this time in — well I went to National Defence College which was our half civilian and half military. I went as our departmental candidate. It was a year’s course for top executives so that was good. And then I went. I was farmed out from the department. I did a couple of years in the planning department of National Defence.
JM: Right.
SN: As their foreign affairs rep or advisor. Whatever you’d call it. And then I did two and a half years I think. A very strange business which was because one of my foreign affairs friends was the deputy and he brought me in and I headed up a research planning division in Indian Affairs.
JM: So what sort of, so this is the —
SN: This is when I had time out for divorce [laughs]
JM: So, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So, ok. And that would have been a very interesting exercise as well.
SN: Yes, it was. I learned a great many things.
JM: Yes. I can imagine. Gosh. And then presumably the divorce finally got sorted and you were able to be reappointed as an ambassador then.
SN: The day, the day after, no. I didn’t. The day after our wedding we were posted to Washington.
JM: Washington. Right.
SN: And it was that quick.
JM: That quick. So, when was that. When were you married. What was your —
SN: It was September.
JM: September of —?
SN: Of [pause] We were at Washington for four years. 1978. 1974.
JM: 1974.
SN: We were married.
JM: Yeah.
SN: In September. And the following day —
JM: You were off to Washington.
SN: Off to Washington. And Shirley’s sister was there and my brother in law.
JM: And what was your role in Washington? You were attached to the embassy as what?
SN: As a counsellor.
JM: A counsellor. Right. Yeah. Ok. Yes. Oh well and so —
SN: You there you have —
JM: Yeah. And how do you feel that your air force experiences informed your diplomatic, the way you handled your diplomatic career in any way or or you never really thought about your air force time once you were in as a diplomat. I mean, recognising the fact you had many many roles as a diplomat that you, you know.
SN: Well I think it was useful to me in the sense that the things that I was doing. For instance when I was at national defence. When I was at National Defence College.
JM: Yeah.
SN: For a year and that’s, you know, we lived, at that time there there were only thirty two people and you eat, drink with those people every day for a year and it was useful to me, half of them were military.
JM: Right.
SN: To have —
JM: To have had that close quarter that — A — that background and, B — that close quarter living as you had had to have as part of war service.
SN: Yes. And when I was at plans it was useful because I knew people again. I was accepted. So when I was in Washington I did the political military thing for four years you see so I was always in close touch. So yes, it was useful.
JM: It was useful.
SN: Yeah.
JM: Yes. Well you have had, certainly had an incredibly varied life and when you look back to the fact you started off as a farm lad, for want of a better word of describing it.
SN: Farm kid.
JM: Which is not to put down people who run, who own and feed the nation from their farms but it’s just very different life and lifestyle to — and then, and I guess, as part of that you became a bit of a rebellious child and that rebelliousness came out in some of your early years. In your early air force training and ultimately it clicked and you changed tack and you became — you decided to accept.
SN: Go with the stream. Yes.
JM: Go with the stream and accept the discipline which was probably when you started doing well in your gunnery courses.
SN: Yes.
JM: And that’s when you felt you had a role to play and that was a turning point potentially there. And then as we say you just ultimately going through to then find a totally different course of life and become part of the Canadian Foreign Service for such an extensive thirty three years. That’s an incredibly long time. And were you, have you ever been given any recognition for that length of service from the Canadian Foreign Service.
SN: Oh yes. Yes. Yes.
JM: In what format?
SN: I have no misgivings. I — I’ve been well treated. I have no, it would have been nice to have gotten a little higher up the tree but that was the way it played out.
JM: Was there a system of formal recognition? Awards or anything. Were you given any awards at any time or —?
SN: No. We didn’t have any. We all have a medal or I assume we do. That we get for having served.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And you get a letter from the minister. The PM saying thank you.
JM: Thank you.
SN: And that’s it.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Now, unlike, and this has always been a grievance with, I think some people in the Commonwealth Foreign Services — the Americans, if you become an ambassador you take the title with you.
JM: Yeah. Like a —
SN: You were called that.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And the British usually knight their Heads of Mission and they can carry the title.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And Canadians, Australians or New Zealanders do not.
JM: Not.
SN: Yeah. So that bothered some people and of course it didn’t, it doesn’t bother most people because as long, so long as everyone else suffers with you [laughs]
JM: You’re not on your own in that circumstance.
SN: No. No.
JM: No.
SN: No.
JM: Well I think that you’ve been exceedingly generous with your time and we’ve covered a huge amount of ground there. Simply amazing set of experiences and I just thank you for it Clair. It’s just been really really wonderful and the fact that we’ve got this record now as part to help contribute to the knowledge base about Bomber Command personnel is so important. So, thank you very much for that.
SN: Alright. Well thank you. It’s taken a fair amount of your time.
Dublin Core
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
ANuttingS170222
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Sinclair Nutting
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
02:16:42 audio recording
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Pending OH summary
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
2017-02-22
Description
An account of the resource
Sinclair Nutting Grew up in Canada and worked on the family farm before he volunteered for the Royal Air Force. He flew operations as a rear gunner with 405 Squadron. After the war he emigrated to Australia.
Coverage
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
England--Yorkshire
Great Britain
Ireland
Ireland--Dublin
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
405 Squadron
6 Group
8 Group
aircrew
bombing
crash
Distinguished Flying Medal
Fw 190
George VI, King of Great Britain (1895-1952)
Halifax
lack of moral fibre
Me 109
military discipline
Operational Training Unit
Pathfinders
RAF Gransden Lodge
RAF Honeybourne
RAF Manby
RAF Topcliffe
training
Wellington
Whitley
wireless operator / air gunner