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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1272/17684/BBrookerWHBrookerWHv1.2.Pdf
24729bb5b19388c22accd4ab9136516e
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Title
A name given to the resource
Brooker, William Harry
W H Brooker
Miller James
J Miller
Description
An account of the resource
11 items. The collection concerns brothers in law James Miller (b. 1919) and
William Harry Brooker (b.1920). It contains propaganda leaflets, two photographs, a NSDAP Car flag, documents and a memoir.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Ann Brookfield and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2018-04-02
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
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Brooker, WH-Miller, J
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
[underlined] INTRODUCTION [/underlined]
This is the World War II service history of RAAF Flight Lieutenant W H Brooker, who was decorated with the Distinguished Flying Cross, and also mentioned in Despatches.
After the War Service he was awarded a Diploma of Accountancy and was admitted to the status of AASA and is Certified Practising Accountant. [inserted] AUDITOR 3335 [/inserted]
He was born at Lameroo South Australia on 3rd April 1920. He completed his education in 1934 and was awarded the Dux of the Lameroo Higher Primary School.
Typed for Mr Brooker by Mrs Rhonda Copper
[page break]
[underlined] MY HISTORY WITH BOMBER COMMAND OF THE RAF [/underlined]
I will commence at the beginning of my time on the RAAF, and my World War II service in Bomber Command.
I volunteered for aircrew in the RAAF about June or July 1940, and was called up for the service about 27th February 1941. The entry at that time was called 12 Course: this means the Empire Training Scheme commenced about Jan/Feb 1940, representing an in-take each month. Training took place in Australia, Canada, Rhodesia, Kenya and South Africa. I believe some training did occur in England; but most English trainees were sent overseas, mainly to Canada. I do not think any came to Australia.
The trainees were allotted to specific courses – Pilot, Observer/Navigator, and Wireless Operator/Air Gunner. Certain numbers of Australian trainees were sent to Canada, but after some initial training of about 6 weeks in Australia. The courses for pilots were held at Initial Flying Training Schools. Observers/Navigators went to other places, and Wireless Operators, Gunners went to other places also. The whole course took each category about 6 months. I went to Pearce, WA for initial training – then Ballarat for wireless training, then to Pt Pirie for gunnery, and flew in Fairey Battle aircraft. Observers also went there for bombing training.
I believe that flying training was not undertaken in England, due to the airfields being required for offence, and defensive purposes, and probable to give the rest of the Empire something to do, and of course, the space available.
Of course another reason is the terrible weather in England, especially in the winter months, and the industrial haze. Visibility was very much impaired. In fact, flying training at Operational Training Units (OTUS) could not be undertaken for several days at a time.
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The training in Australia to passing out stage, and the awarding of wings and promotion, took about 6 months. Some were promoted to the Commissioned rank of Pilot Officer, while the remainder became Sergeants.
I believe most of the newly qualified personnel were sent overseas to the United Kingdom, while a lesser number were retained in Australia, to become instructors, or go on to Squadrons, where they would have had to undergo further training on the aircraft, with which each Squadron was equipped, and of course the duties and tactics of the Squadron.
Those who graduated as in gunnery without wireless qualifications, had to go to England, due to Australia not having a need for them. Our gunnery duties were performed by the wireless/air gunner, but only in Beauforts.
Those who went to England were drafted to the Royal Air Force operational training units, for a course of instruction on the aircraft that they would be flying, on operations. These courses lasted several months due to the poor weather. In Australia it would have been about two months or less.
The main OTU for Australians was No 27, located at Lichfield in the Trent Valley. There was also a satellite airfield located at Church Broughton – near Derby.
Bomber Command had about 5 or 6 of these stations. There are located towards the midland, or centre of England, and in Scotland. In fact due to bad weather, several courses were transferred to Lossiemouth, Scotland. I should have said that on arrival in England, we were sent to holding units to live, until vacancies became available and the various OTU. Australians went to Bournemouth on the Channel coast; later this holding unit was transferred to Brighton. I spent about 2 1/2 months at Bournemouth.
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I and several others arrived at 27 OTU Lichfield, in the Trent Valley, on 13th January 1942, but were immediately transferred to a satellite holding camp about 20 miles away. It was a farm called ‘Kings Standing’, supposedly owned by the Prince of Wales. It was very poor, cold, wet and snowed; however we were only there for about 3 or 4 weeks. You can now see that there was a terrific lot of waiting and wasting of time. It would seem that the flow of personnel was quicker, than the absorption rate and getting personnel into operations.
Eventually my group got into real training at Lichfield with classroom subjects on the aircraft, being Wellington Mark IC, being taught the various parts and stations in the aircraft, and of course gunnery. We had a ground rear turret with two Browning 303 machine guns, with belt feed at the rate of about 1150 rounds per minute. The turret could be rotated and the guns elevated, and depressed. We did go to a firing range with turret mounted on a trailer, and being of hydraulic operation, it was powered by a Ford 10HP engine. The ammunition was stored or packed in four containers within the turret. The turrets could be used to measure the wind shift. The guns were sighted on an object on the full beam, and there was a scale on the fixed part of the turret ring, that gave a reading for the Navigator. These engines were widely used for powering searchlights, and as hauling winches for barrage balloons and anti aircraft guns.
Besides being taught gunnery, we had subjects on parachute drill, harness and handling of parachutes, and stowage; entry and exit from aircraft; aircraft identification and recognition; ditching procedure and dinghy drill; how to speak to; and answer the other members of the crew, and the correct patter, or other matters.
Ground subjects would have been aircraft recognition during day and nights. It was necessary to identify between a Messerschmidt 109, Hurricane, Spitfire, Beaufighter Mosquito, V Junkers 88, and later a US Thunderbolt and Focke Wulf 190. We were told of tactics, when caught in searchlights and anti aircraft fire, barrage balloons, and icing of wings (it changes the shape of the aero-foil). Also exits for parachuting and ditching, and getting into the dinghies.
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Also getting into the aircraft on the ground and out, while the engines are running; persons were known to walk into a spinning propeller.
At the end of training at an OUT [sic], the crews were sent on a cross-country exercise. One of the final was at St Tugwell. They flew to St Tugwell, an uninhabited small island in the Irish Sea.
The bomb aimers were able to drop several live bombs, and after that the height was reduced, so that the gunners could fire at the rocks and seagulls.
Reporting to the pilot and crew on what was observed, such as flash, searchlights and attacking fighter aircraft. Of course other categories were undergoing their specialist training, on ground subjects.
After a few weeks, pilots were told to get a crew together. This was done by approaching people they knew. First selection was probably Navigator, and then Wireless operators. At this state [sic] I must say that some navigators became bomb aimers, and had to get used to gunnery at short notice, as they occupied the front turret; and last, the rear gunner, unless he had become known to others. This made up a crew of 5.
Pilots would have had a mixture of ground subject and actual flying, as the latter would have taken longer, especially in the poor weather. The crew of the Wellington would have been made up of instructor pilot, trainee pilot, instructor wireless operator, and instructor rear gunner. The training was what was called circuits and bumps; ie take off circuits and landing taxiing, about 6 times in a lesson.
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[underlined] HISTORY OF BOMBING OR DROPPING BOMBS FROM AIRCRAFT [/underlined]
This had its beginning during the First World War. At the end of the War the British had to decide what direction the Armed Service should go, and in view of the post war reconstruction for the civil population, made it necessary to cut back in finances from the armed forces.
For example, the army commands decided that tanks were only a passing phase; similarly machine guns, and that money would not be spent on those two branches.
Aircraft had been under the command of the Navy and Army, and these two arms would like to continue that way. The Navy and Army were much against aircraft becoming a separate arm of attack or defense, even after WW1, although on 1st April 1918, the Royal Air Force was established as a separate arm. The Army and Navy were against it, probably due to the great expense that was necessary to provide aircraft and all the support activities.
It was after the war that many countries were put under the control of France and Britain. Several of these came to Britain, Palestine, Trans Jordan, Mesopotamia (Iraq) etc. The French got Syria and Lebanon, and we (Australia) got New Guinea. The three armed service were permitted to express their desire and cost. The RAF won, due to the personnel, costs and efforts. This is when aerial bombing both by day and night was developed. It created great opportunities for flying, training, development of aircraft, bombs, and of course the accuracy and development of release mechanism, and the bombsights.
The pilots who took part in these operations [inserted] w[/inserted]ere the same personnel who, on their return and in the 1930’s became the senior officers to command the RAF during World War II. Such names come to mind as, Charles Portal, Arthur Harris, and the Hon. Peter Cochcrane, Lord Trenchard.
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After passing out of the OTU the crew reverted [inserted] were posted [/inserted] to the various squadrons equipped with
2-engined aircraft. This was before the 4-engined machines became available in greater numbers. The type we had were Mark 111 Wellingtons with Bristol Hercules radial engines, with sleeve valves 14 cylinders in two rows. They were faster than we had trained on, and had 4 gunned rear turrets; and ammunition was stored in bins about mid way along the fuselage, and came along in chutes to the turret, up through the floor. These aircraft were also equipped with GEE, a radar navigation aid. This meant that the navigators had to be trained.
On arrival at the squadron at Snaith, Yorkshire, the new crew were sent on short training flights to become accustomed to the new surroundings, and the later aircraft and engines.
At OTU our crew consisted of four Australians, Sergeants and English Pilot Officer. The first operation was for the new pilot to do a second dickie trip with an experienced crew.
It was on this trip that our pilot became very sick, and had to be taken off operations. He later was discharged, but was accepted by ATA (Air Transport Auxiliary). These pilots ferried aircraft from maintenance depots to squadrons etc. Two well-known pilots were Amy Johnson and Jim Mollinson.
These pilots became very expert and versatile and could fly many various makes and types of aircraft.
I was on the tarmac when two ATA pilots came to take two Beaufighters away – one was a woman. But the two aircraft were different; one had Bristol Hercules 14 cylinder radial engines in two rows; the other had Rolls Royce V12 engines. I heard them say, “I have never flown one of those”. So they decided the woman would take the conventional one, with the radial engines. So the man got the manual out and started perusing it; then said “Well, if I get into trouble I will read it then”.
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This resulted in us being a headless crew; however it did not last for long, and we got an English Sergeant, who proved to be very good. He was a spare who had lost his crew when he was off; be he had about ten trips to he credit, so we had him until he clocked up his 30 trips for the tour. He was the pilot who took our next pilot on his second dickie. We were matched with an Australian, he was a Flight Lieutenant who remustered from ground duties and kept his rank.
We have better wireless equipment. All aircraft of the RAF were equipped with an automatic signaling device, known as Identification Friend or Foe (IFF). This was uses over England, and after crossing the North Sea or English Channel, was switched off to prevent the Germans homing on to it. On the return it was switched on when nearing the English coast. Failure resulted in the anti aircraft batteries starting to shoot.
Our first sortie was to Emden on the night of 22nd June 1942 from 23.25 hours, for 6 hours 15 minutes uneventful.
The second sortie: 25th June 1942 from 23.30 hours for 6 hours 40 minutes to Bremen. On the way back we were caught in a cone of searchlight; at about 14,000 ft we twisted etc and lost height and I could fire at searchlights. We were hit by light tracer flak, and sustained a hole in a petrol tank at the top.
The next operation was termed “Gardening”, and consisted of dropping mines in the Kiel Canal, from about 700 feet, on parachutes so as not to damage them and keep them live, until a ship passed over them. We carried two at about 2000 Ibs each. This type of attack was fairly frequent and rendered substantial results. The time was 3 hours 50 minutes after take off at 0145 on 8th July 1942.
All my operations were at night.
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The next trip was on the same day, and with take off at 23.35 hours to Wilhelmshaven for 5 hours 35 minutes. We were chased by a Mersserschmidt 109 but were able to take evasive action.
Still during July we went to Duisberg three times. On one occasion we sighted a Junkers 88 twin-engine night fighter, but we took evasive action. It was the tactic not to allow an attack before the range closed. Of courses we do not fire; the tracer bullets would have shown our position. It was said that the Germans, on identification of the bombers, did not want to take on the four guns.
On another mission on 11th August 1942, we went to bomb Mainz from 2215 hours for a flight of 6 hours 30 minutes. We saw several aircraft go down. One was on fire and we saw 3 parachutes appear. The rest of this story had a sequel. I was sent on a gunnery course, and we were asked to tell of our experiences; so I mentioned the parachutes, and sitting next to me the person said, “I was one of them”.
To continue, he landed safely in France and was rescued by the French, and he was passed on to various locations, and was back in England within 19 days. This resulted in him not being used, to fly over France and Germany again.
Other sorties were to Frankfurt; during the trip I saw a Focke Wulf 190, a single radial engine German fighter. It was the first sighting of this type of aircraft at night. All crews were interrogated on their return. My story resulted in me being called by the Intelligence Officer the next afternoon.
We went to Kassal, Saarbrucken twice, Karlsruhe, Bremen (sustained holes from flak, anti aircraft fire), Duisberg and Bremen again.
Mine laying among the Friesian Isles twice, and St Nazaire (Bay of Biscay)) twice, Saarbrucken again.
Lorient mine laying.
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On 8/11/42 at 1740 hours we went to Hamburg for a flight of 6 hours and 30 minutes. You will notice that take off was quite early and this could be achieved due to the less hours of daylight. This was my thirtieth operation and resulted in me being ‘screened’, the term used for term expired aircrew.
The crews were quite often broken up and sent to operational trainings as instructors for a rest period. I went back to Lichfield, Staffordshire. I was sent on a specialist course at a training unit to do an air gunnery instruction course, which lasted about 2 months. On completion of the course I returned to Lichfield, but after a few days I was sent to the Satellite Church Broughton airfield, as an instructor. The station was not very large, only about ten aircraft, being Wellingtons. It was not very far from Derby. There was one activity of interest there being the testing of Gloster Meteors Mark 1 and Mark 11, being pure jet aircraft. As an aside, there was a Wellington fitted with a jet engine in the tail of the fuselage as test aircraft. Part of the test was to feather the two piston engines, and fly just of the jet, I believe it was quite fast.
The Commanding Officer was an Australian Wing Commander, Ken Baird from Ballarat, an early appointment of an Australian.
On 3/10/1943 I was sent on a short gunnery course of 3 weeks, mainly flying against attacking aircraft.
At the end of October, I was sent to a heavy conversion unit, to meet a new crew of Australian and one Englishman, to be trained for Lancasters. The five Aussies had just passed out of 27 OUT on Wellingtons at Lichfield. The Englishman was our Flight engineer who had remustered from a fitter. This course took about two months; part of familiarization on the ground and flying take off circuits, landing, and later cross-country, mainly at night.
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In fact, our first 4-engined flight was in a Halifax for about 3 trips. It can be mentioned that the instructor pilots were, of course, screened from operations and could fly either Halifax or Lancasters. We were at two stations in Lincolnshire at Skellingthorpe and Swinderby. Our conversions finished on 23/12/1943 and we were posted to 463 RAAF Squadron at Waddington, Lincolnshire about 3 miles south of the city of Lincoln.
We were one of the foundation crews of 463, which was formed by taking several crews from 467 RAAF, and then building up to about 20 crews each. 467 had been stationed at Bottesford, which is a bit further inland, and was a new war-time airfield. Waddington was and still is, a permanent station being built up during the First World War. In fact it was an airfield before WW1. The citizens of Lincoln are very proud of Waddington airfield, and the staff have in more recent times been granted the freedom of the city.
As an aside, Lincoln has been classed as a City for several hundred years. The lord Mayor carries the title of Right Worship; even the lord Mayor of London only has the title of Worshipful. The Australian Sister City of Lincoln is Port Lincoln.
Our operations with 463 Squadron commenced on 2/1/1944; but we did not complete the mission due to icing, and could not gain the height of 20,000 feet, so we returned, as we could only reach about 12,000. So we jettisoned the load safe over Holland. The next trips were to Brunswick, Magdebur, then 4 to Berlin. On the second to Berlin we shot down a Focke Wulf 190 single engine fighter from a range of about 40 yards. The trips took about 8 to 9 hours.
Other targets were Liepzig, Stuttgart twice, Schweinfurt, Augsburg.
After these I went to the Central Gunnery School to partake in a specialist course for gunnery leaders for three weeks during the month of April.
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On my return to 463 Squadron my crew was still there, they had survived about 10 operations; this put us about level in the count. They had to do 30 sorties and I only 20.
The targets now switched from Germany to France.
8th April 1944, we bombed an airfield near Brest. Other targets were Lille (railway yards), Boug Leopold, St Martins camp, gun emplacements at Cherbourg. These were coastal batteries and you can now see we were preparing for the “D” Day landing on the 6th June 1944.
It might be mentioned that larger bombs were capable of splitting the gun barrels, and more accurate.
The strategy was to put coastal batteries out of action and to hamper transport to the French coast. Also to put the Luftwaffe out of action, which was virtually achieved by D Day – done by attacking airfields and destroying the aircraft on the ground, and the facilities.
Another target was the railway marshalling yards at Saumur. We did not drop our bombs, but were ordered to return with the load, probably due to an earlier wave about to destroy the target.
3rd June we bombed a wireless station at Cherbourg. The bomb loads would be increased for those close targets, and be varied to high explosive 500 pound. The load would have probably been 16,000 pounds – 8 tons. The petrol would have been reduced from 2154 gallons to perhaps 1000 gallons.
The weather was very poor in early June; and landing barges etc were loaded, and took refuge from the high seas around Isle of Wight. The weather cleared toward the 5th June and improved further to permit the landings and flights to be made.
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Our target was gun emplacements at Pierre du Mont. Our take off was at 0243 on 6th June and took 4 hours 29 minutes. After bombing we headed southwest to be clear of other operations. On the return, an American Thunderbolt fighter followed for about 10 minutes, probably a bit lost, to access the course home.
Again on 6th June at 2319 yours [sic] we went to a road junction at Argentan, this was to delay the German reinforcements coming to counter the allied armies in Normandy.
Other sorties were to Rennes railway yards and Orleans railways. The latter on 10th June was my last of 52 missions.
Then on leave when returning to Lichfield.
Here I can mention that once aircrew personnel had commenced operations, they were granted leave of 1 week every 6 weeks, and this continued until the end of the war.
Aircrew was given a special flying meal before an operation, and a similar one on return. The menu was always bacon and eggs. Some crew members were given coffee to drink and biscuits to consume during the flight. However this was a bit difficult to handle – take off gloves, pour out into top of thermos flask in total darkness, and minus 40 degrees Celsius. Of course there was always the danger of an attack. The crew had to be on the watch and alert at all times. The gunners rotated their turrets from side to side all the time, and the mid upper could do a complete circle. The only crew member not watching the sky was the navigator, he was the only one in a lighted cubicle. The pilot would also need to watch the instruments, and the Engineer to keep checking the fuel levels, for the amount and transfer and for cross feeding. He had to complete the log.
The wireless-operator stood looking out the astrodome, if he was not required to listen out.
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After take off, the strategy was to climb to our operating height of about 20,000 feet to be above the range of light anti-aircraft fire, and increase the inaccuracy of the fire from larger caliber guns, also perhaps to make it more difficult for fighter aircraft.
Depending on the route to the target, we could still be climbing over the North Sea, but if the route were over Northern France, Belgium, Holland the climbing would have been over England.
The heavy anti-aircraft gun fire was close, when the puffs of black smoke from the shell bursts were at around our level; and closer if you could hear the shell bursts about the noise of the aircraft; and a real close one when the smell of the burst could be smelt even when an oxygen mask was worn.
Oxygen masks were worn all the time, because of the microphone for the intercommunication, within the aircraft. Oxygen was put on at about 5000 feet, although no real effects would be felt until about 10,000 were reached. It was usual for the pilot to call up each crew member about every 15 minutes. If no answer was received it was usually the wireless operator who would go to the position. The mid upper gunner was able to see whether the front and rear turrets were moving.
There were small portable oxygen bottles for use when crew members had to move about.
Searchlights, which I must mention briefly, were used to locate flying aircraft and could illuminate up to 20,000 feet, to aid night fighters and anti-aircraft fire. If searchlights had locked onto an aircraft and then went off, it was sign that a fighter attack may occur. In some instances a large number of lights may lock on; this was disconcerting, as they had a blinding effect and upset the pilots view of the instruments. The most frightening was if the aircraft was under cloud, as each light threw a shadow of the aircraft on the clouds.
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Up to now you may have been wondering how it was decided as to where the targets for Bomber Command would be aimed.
There were Committees of the Chiefs of Staff of the three services, and strategists, as to what would retard the enemy and aid other forces-army-navy. Such targets would be listed. Some that can be mentioned were shipping ports, u-boat facilities, transport, war factories, oil and mining, army, navy and Luftwaffe installations.
There were some targets that may be hard to hit, out of range; others the amount of damage that could be caused and the effort to be incurred to repair it. Bombing an airfield may not be of great result unless aircraft and buildings were destroyed. Bomb craters on the airfield could be reinstated within a few hours.
Alternatively factories could put out of action, or output was substantially reduced for several weeks, or remain as production reduced, for a considerable time.
Oil refineries would have to suffer direct hits and are reasonably small in unpopulated areas.
Populated areas did suffer damage and civilian deaths. This put a strain on other civilian activities, and caused the workers to miss out on work attendance while they attended to home type duties.
Having damaged a highly productive war production area such as the Ruhr Valley. After a series of raids such damage would take some time to repair, and bomber efforts would be directed elsewhere for some time, before it was seen to be useful to revisit those targets.
You will see that the targets that I’ve attacked were an attempt to retard the German war effort, and to take the war to the German people. There were some targets that were attacked that were an urgent nuisance. Like attacking the pocket battle ships as they progressed through the English Channel, and the battleship Bismark as it proceeded in the Atlantic.
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The Chief of Air Staff would have a short list of targets that should be visited provided the conditions were favourable.
The Squadrons would be notified by about 10am that operations were to be prepared for; this would include petrol load, bomb load and types of bombs. Other personnel would be advised of the target and route to be taken. The routes were planned to miss the heavily defended areas, and also to avoid night fighter airfields in close proximity.
The battle order was prepared and posted, so crews knew who were involved. After lunch the pilots and navigators were called to the briefing room for a pre briefing as to target and route. The pilots left early, while the navigators took an hour or so to prepare their charts.
Depending on the time of take off, the timing of the full briefing was fixed when all crew members attended. The Wing Commander named the target and showed the route; the Navigation Officer expanded on the route.
The Intelligence Officer told of the defences etc. The Meteorology Officer (not necessarily an RAF officer) told of the weather for take off etc, along the route, at the target area, the return route and landing.
The wireless operators were given the details of call signs and wave lengths etc on flimsy rice paper so that it could be eaten to destroy it.
During the afternoon an air test of an aircraft could be undertaken, especially if an aircraft had had some special work performed on it. This was limited to some degree due to the petrol being topped up, and the bombs had still to be loaded. The aircraft should be loaded if possible in daylight to observe the blackout.
Security – as soon as the operation was announced some telephone services around the airfield were cut. Public telephones in the base and in the streets and messes were cut.
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All aircraft were dispersed around the airfield to isolate them from an attack and to minimize any damage. It was therefore necessary to have buses or covered trucks with seating, to take the aircrews from the hangars or briefing rooms etc to the aircrafts.
On the return the transport picked up the crews to take them back to the briefing room for interrogation as to their efforts. Every aircraft carried a camera to photograph the result of their bombs. Flares were released to light the target as the bombs dropped, and the camera would run with shutter open until the falling time had elapsed. These photographs were assessed and the crews were told of the result.
In addition photography reconnaissance aircraft were dispatched to be over the target in daylight and take more photographs. Various aircraft were used such as Spitfire, Mosquitoes etc. A Murray Bridge pilot was on one of these units, David Rice. I believe he flew a Spitfire.
Spitfires were specifically prepared, no guns, no armor plate, to reduce weight. The rivets on the fuselage were rubbed down flush to reduce drag and the fuselage polished, no paint.
We were issued with special flying underwear and heated flying suits. The pilot, flight engineer and navigator were in a heated section of the plane, did not need anything special. We were also given an escaping kit to be used in the event of coming down in Europe. The kit contained a compass kit, buttons, war rations etc, money appropriate to the area over which the route took us.
Lectures were also given as to what to say when under enemy interrogations upon capture. The usual period of interrogation was only a day or two before transfer to prisoner-of-war camps.
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If you were able to evade capture, information was given as to how to behave and of course to obey the French Resistance, as to the route to be taken and how to travel. Of course Switzerland was a haven and arrangements were made to repatriate personnel. Another place to head was Spain, but it was further and the mountain range a barrier.
Information was also given to be wary of allied persons who become friendly and quizzed of secrets etc of operations. There were several known RAF personnel who had become stool pigeons, and were given favours by the Germans for information gleaned.
One of these was an RAF man called Flying Officer Metcalf-Freeman. The story of his end was that upon his arrival back in England he was arrested and put into prison for trial. Of course the pictorial media had a field day over this. Fancy a hero, after being in a POW camp for several years, not being allowed to return home to see his wife and family etc. Who saw the film – “The Great Escape” there was an informer in that.
During 1944 Waddington had two crews who become the newsreel photographers. These were both Australian crew. The 35mm camera was mounted in the front turret and the plane carried an extra person who probably gave some instruction to the front gunner. The film was a record of the bombing, and was shown in the London cinemas the next afternoon. One of the pilots was Keith Schutz from Kapunda or Eudunda, and now resides in the Modbury area.
The bomb carrying capacity of the several bombers was:
Wellingtons 4000 Ib crew of 5
Halifax 8000 Ib crew of 7
Mosquito 4000 Ib crew of 2
US Flying Fortress 4000 Ib crew of 10
Lancaster 16000 Ib crew of 7
Stirling 8000 Ib crew of 7 or 8
Now you which aircraft was the most effective for crew number involved.
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[underlined] Aids to Bombers [/underlined]
I mentioned GEE earlier. This was a radar device which had three transmitters in England separated by 100 miles or so. They each sent a signal that was picked up by the set in the aircraft, and the signals inspected on the screen, showed a position that could be plotted on a specifically prepared chart, to give the position over the earth. It was very accurate but its range was only 400-450 miles. The Germans devised a method to partially jam it. We were able to bomb on the position given by GEE.
Later a radar device came into being known as H2S. It was self-contained radar fitted to the underside of the fuselage and it scanned the earth like map reading. It would distinguish between water, land, and gave a picture. It could pick up ploughed fields against trees, forest or meadow. Not every Lancaster was fitted with it, and only squadrons used for making targets.
Talking of special squadrons. There was the pathfinder force made up of well-trained and experienced crews. They went off a few minutes before the main force with the purpose of locating the target, marking it with coloured flares or bomb blasted. They then flew around to assess the marking and report to the main force by RT as the aiming point.
Later developments were for the location and marking to be done by a Mosquito and even by Leonard Cheshire in a Mustang. These were done at lover level.
Another development was to use Mosquito night fighters to accompany the Lancasters, with the aim of getting the German night fighters. This operation was referred to as Intruders, and was quite successful.
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[page break]
Some Mosquito bombers were fitted with a radar device known as Oboc. This was a navigation signaling system to correct the pilot’s course over the target-bombing run. It had a system of lights in the cockpit to indicate bombing run, and bomb bay doors open, and dropped the bombs, After that the pilot closed the bomb bay doors and turned for home.
A few Lancasters in 1943 and onwards were fitted out with extra wireless and media receivers and transmitters.
They carried extra crewmembers that could speak German, and listened out to hear the German ground controllers and night fighters. They were to give countermanding messages or false messages to confound the night fighters and send them off in the wrong direction. They would have known the target and route. This was called A.B.C. airborne cigar.
Another devise was called Tindal and this was a method of transmitting a noise over the German wavelengths so that the WT & RT (Wireless Telegraphy & Radar Transmission) could not be used. The noise was generated by a microphone fitted to one of the engines. Later it was fitted to the wireless operations gene motor, which was just as effective.
One of the most successful devices was called Window. This was a large number of tin foil strips cut to a certain length and about 1/16” wide. The length of the strip was cut so as to jam to enemy radar, to such an extent that the screens were a total blur of colour and could not show a target, and put the ground, night fighter and anti-aircraft radar, out of action. I think the first target was Hamburg and resulted in great destruction. Even the bitumen streets were alight. The wireless operator fed those bundles out through the flair chute when the target was being reached.
The aim was to cause the conflagration caused by the incendiary bombs. The bomb load consisted of blockbusters, incendiaries and high explosive.
19
[page break]
Incendiaries were packed into containers about 50-60 per container.
Just a short portion on the Commander in Chief, Air Chief Marshall, Sir Arthur Traver Harris. Some people did not like him because of his manner in some instances. However, these people in high places had to be very careful what they said about him and to whom.
We must not forget that Churchill and quite a number of others recognized he was a champion. This was even agreed and echoed by Roosevelt, General Arnold etc and later by Eisenhower when he was supreme Commander European theatre.
Bomber Command was divided into five main groups and all the Commanders were well-known and proven officers and had served with Harris for many years overseas and at home.
With the defeat of the Dutch, Belgians, and French etc and after the evacuation of the British Army from Dunkirk in 1940; only one force carried the war to the German people. This was Bomber Command, especially from 1942 to D Day, commanded by Harris.
METRIC CONVERSION
Feet to Metres x 0.3048
Miles to Kilometres x 1.609
Gallons to Litres x 4.544
Pounds to Kilograms x 0.4536
20
Dublin Core
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Title
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World War II service History of Flight Lieutenant WH Brooker DFC
Description
An account of the resource
WH Brooker volunteered in June or July 1940. He was called up on 27 February 1941 and trained in Pearce, Western Australia. On transfer to UK there were delays in further training.
Initially he served on Wellingtons at Snaith. He describes individual operations starting with Emden. After 30 operations he was transferred to an Operational Training Unit as an instructor, firstly to Lichfield then to Church Broughton. He then transferred to a Heavy Conversion Unit, training on Halifaxes and Lancasters, based at Skellingthorpe and Swinderby. He was then posted to Waddington with 463 Squadron, RAAF. After several operations he transferred to a specialist gunnery course before returning to 463. Bombing operations were switched to France to assist in hampering German reinforcements after D-day. He describes the various roles of the crew during a flight and how targets were decided by the High Command. He concludes with aids to bombers -GEE, H2S, Oboe and Pathfinders. Also he describes counter measures such as ABC, Tidal and Window.
This item was provided, in digital form, by a third-party organisation which used technical specifications and operational protocols that may differ from those used by the IBCC Digital Archive.
Creator
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WH Brooker
Format
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20 typed sheets
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Text. Memoir
Identifier
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BBrookerWHBrookerWHv1
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Australia
Western Australia
Victoria--Ballarat
Great Britain
England--Bournemouth
England--Brighton
Germany--Bremen
Germany--Kiel Canal
Germany--Wilhelmshaven
Germany--Kassel
Germany--Karlsruhe
Germany--Friesland
Germany--Hamburg
England--Lincoln
Germany--Magdeburg
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Leipzig
Germany--Schweinfurt
Germany--Augsburg
France--Brest
France--Lille
Belgium--Leopoldsburg
France--Cherbourg
France--Saumur
France--Orléans
France--Rennes
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Braunschweig
Germany--Mainz (Rhineland-Palatinate)
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Saarbrücken
Germany--Emden (Lower Saxony)
Victoria
France
Germany
Belgium
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
England--Hampshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Sussex
France--Saint-Nazaire
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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.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
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Georgie Donaldson
27 OTU
463 Squadron
467 Squadron
Air Transport Auxiliary
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
Beaufighter
bombing
Fw 190
Gee
H2S
Halifax
Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984)
Heavy Conversion Unit
Hurricane
incendiary device
Ju 88
Lancaster
Me 109
Meteor
mine laying
Mosquito
Oboe
Operational Training Unit
Portal, Charles (1893-1971)
RAF Bottesford
RAF Church Broughton
RAF Lichfield
RAF Skellingthorpe
RAF Snaith
RAF Swinderby
RAF Waddington
Roosevelt, Franklin Delano (1882-1945)
searchlight
Spitfire
training
Wellington
Window
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1274/18682/EPortalCAirMin400610.2.jpg
2a1be51dcc569657abbc21c2229fe39b
Dublin Core
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Title
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Nevill, Edward
Edward Greville Nevill
E G Nevill
Description
An account of the resource
Nine items. Collection concerns Sergeant Edward Nevill DFM and includes correspondence and newspaper reports about the award of Edward Nevill's Distinguished Flying Medal.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Guy Nevill and catalogued by Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-05-11
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Nevill, EG
Transcribed document
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
HEADQUARTERS,
BOMBER COMMAND,
ROYAL AIR FORCE,
c/o G.P.O.,
HIGH WYCOMBE
BUCKS.
[underlined] SECRET [/underlined]
Reference: - BC/S.23191/P. 10th June, 1940
[underlined] Grant of Decorations and Medals during the War – Immediate Awards [/underlined]
Sir,
I have the honour to refer to Air Ministry letter S.58915/S.7. (d). dated 24th February, 1940, and to forward herewith the attached proformas in respect of the Immediate Award of the Distinguished Flying Cross to 39055 Acting Flight Lieutenant Robert Hector BATT, and the Distinguished Flying Medal to 580466 Sergeant Allan SPENCER and 610339 Sergeant Edward Greville NEVILL all of No. 40 Squadron, R.A.F. Station, Wyton.
I have the honour to be,
Sir,
Your obedient Servant,
[signature]
Air Marshall,
Commander-in-Chief,
[underlined] BOMBER COMMAND.[/underlined]
The Under Secretary of State,
Air Ministry (S.7. (d) ),
Adastral House
[underlined] Kingsway, W.C.2. [/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
Letter awarding DFM to Edward Nevill
Description
An account of the resource
A letter from Air Marshall, Bomber Command HQ to Edward Nevill, Robert Batt and Allan Spencer awarding them DFC and DFMs .
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1940-06-10
Format
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One typewritten sheet
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Text. Correspondence
Identifier
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EPortalCAirMin400610
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Temporal Coverage
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1940-06
Creator
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Great Britain. Royal Air Force. Bomber Command Headquarters
Contributor
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David Bloomfield
40 Squadron
aircrew
Distinguished Flying Cross
Distinguished Flying Medal
Portal, Charles (1893-1971)
RAF Wyton
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1274/18683/EPortalE40Sqn400609.1.jpg
563cf9a883a9ed14984df212f2f71b62
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
Nevill, Edward
Edward Greville Nevill
E G Nevill
Description
An account of the resource
Nine items. Collection concerns Sergeant Edward Nevill DFM and includes correspondence and newspaper reports about the award of Edward Nevill's Distinguished Flying Medal.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Guy Nevill and catalogued by 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
2016-05-11
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Nevill, EG
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
Telegram to Edward Nevill
Description
An account of the resource
A telegram sent to Edward Nevill from Bomber Command Headquarters congratulating him on receiving a DFM.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1940-06-09
Format
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One typewritten sheet
Language
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eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Correspondence
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
EPortalCAirMin400609
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940-06
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
40 Squadron
aircrew
Distinguished Flying Medal
Portal, Charles (1893-1971)
RAF Wyton
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/559/8826/PStephensonS1608.1.jpg
52f47ebba3be09356c1defc18313a953
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/559/8826/AStephensonS160315.2.mp3
0b67961bc8438304de61a0d561cc6db6
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Stephenson, Stuart
Stuart Stephenson MBE
S Stephenson
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Stephenson, S
Description
An account of the resource
20 items. An oral history interview with Stuart Stephenson MBE, Chairman of the Lincs-Lancaster Association, and issues of 5 Group News.
The collection was catalogued by Barry Hunter.
In accordance with the conditions stipulated by the donor, some items are available only at the International Bomber Command Centre / University of Lincoln.
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DE: So, this is an interview for the International Bomber Command Centre Digital Archive. My name is Dan Ellin, I am interviewing Stuart Stephenson MBE, it is the 15th of the third 2016, we’re in Lincoln at his home address and it is twenty past one. So Stuart, can you tell me some of your earliest memories to do with —
SS: I was obviously born in 1935, which meant that when war broke out I was five-ish. When I was six-ish, I think it would be — in 1941 I think — my father had gone in the Army, I was at home with my mother and sister. We lived in Boston, it was the middle of the year so it was very light early in the morning and we heard a low-flying aircraft of some sort. We slept downstairs because of the bombing, had black-out curtains, I leapt out of bed, I went to the front window, whipped the blackout curtains. To my amazement, in front of me crossing the road from behind to in front, was a very low flying German twin-engined aircraft with a, with a gun turret that pointed its guns down the road, and they fired down the road across as, as we were coming, as they went over. I later discovered that they was actually shooting at a lorry that was parked up the side of the road, and I seem to remember it belonged to a gentleman called Mr Ingoldmells, who was one of the very few haulage drivers in the area at that time. A month or two later, when there was heavy rain, next door but one — a Mr Parker — he said his spouts were overflowing with water, so he got a ladder and he climbed up, and I was lucky enough to be presented with a whole handful of spent German cannon, ammunition shells, cartridge shells that he’d rescued from his gutters. I don’t know what happened to those but this was at Boston. As the, within a couple, maybe a few months — it was a Saturday morning and there was my mum was talking to the lady next door across the fence, and there was an aircraft up there droning away, and I came out and I was looking up in the sky, and I could just see this dot. Little dot of an aircraft. And I watched it and the women talked on, and suddenly, something fell off it, and I said to the women, I said, ‘Look mum. There’s something fallen off that plane’. ‘Stuart, don’t interrupt, we’re talking. It’s rude to interrupt’. And I’m watching this coming down, and I’m saying, ‘No. Look, it’s coming down. Look’, and I finally got them to stop talking, and I looked and I saw this thing coming down and it was getting closer and closer and closer, and I wonder what’s happened. And it fell behind the house, maybe a quarter of a mile away, near a place, a tower, Rochford Tower Hall it was called. Rochford Tower. There was an enormous explosion, at which point we decided it was a bomb, but to our, to my amazement, as a child I saw a row of very large trees. I saw some of these trees flung up in the air with a massive bang and bits coming down all over the place. The two women — ‘Stuart, get in the house’, and we immediately, I immediately, ‘I don’t want to go in the house. The plane’. ‘No, you’ve got to go in the house. We have to get under the table in the kitchen’. Having been under the table for five minutes and I wanted to go outside again to see what was going on, but the plane had droned away to the east and lo and behold, the air raid warning went, which, which encouraged my interest in aviation. Later we moved away from Boston. My father was in the Army and he was stationed near Bakewell in Derbyshire, so we moved to Bakewell and I went to school at Bakewell for a time, and I well remember, and people that have been to Bakewell who will remember the street. The street sort of divides, the main street divides two as you go towards the bridge over the river, it divides into two, with a sort of building in the middle, which was the main one in front of you was the Post Office. And we were waiting to cross the road, there was little traffic, but there was a lot of women and a lot of kids, and they were all talking and I was that bit older then, and suddenly, there’s a strange whistling noise, and there’s women looking up and I’m looking up, because I’m thinking, ‘Oh this is another aeroplane’, and to everybody’s amazement this plane flew over. Well, they all thought it was going to crash because it’s got no propellers on it and it’s, it’s going to crash. And it didn’t crash, but it flew straight over and the panic was gone, and they was all saying, ‘Shhhh. You’ll hear a bang in a minute when it hits the ground’, or something, but it didn’t and it went away. And again, I’m not sure what year, I have a feeling this would be maybe 1944, but by what I recall, there was only the meteor that was flying at that time, and that was my first introduction to a jet. I went to school of course in Boston, I went to school elsewhere. Eventually, having sort of grown up into my twenties, I was still interested in aircraft and the time came in the 1970s when a Lancaster came back to Waddington, and this was PA474 which is currently with the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight. This aircraft had been recovered from Henlow by 44 Squadron, who had been given the task to, by their CO to locate a Lancaster to bring to Waddington as a gate guardian. They, they had struggled to find a Lancaster and by chance, one of the officers, who I won’t mention but I know him very well, he spotted this Lancaster through a hole in the hedge at Henlow, and it was sitting in a grass field with a Lincoln standing beside it, which the Lincoln was the later development of the Lancaster. 44 Squadron then having made some enquiries, it was discovered that it belonged to the Air Historical Branch of PA4. Well both aircraft did. They, they sent a working party to go out to have a look at it, to ascertain whether it was — how much it would take to dismantle it to bring it, to road it back to Waddington basically, in bits. The ground crew that went to look at it — they’d all been ex-Lancaster ground crew types during the war, because the gap was comparatively short between the two and they were coming up to retirement age. Anyway, they spent several weekends down there and they would go on a Saturday morning or a Friday night with a tent, sleep in a tent under the aircraft, and work on it on the Sunday, doing whatever checks they had to do. After a time, it was decided that it was better than they thought, it might be. So they, they decided that they would take a bowser and put some petrol in it or fuel in it, and see if they could get it to run. Bearing in mind the engines hadn’t been inhibited or anything, it was just standing there. So anyway, they went and then they got this fuel and put in to it, and within another week or two, they suddenly got four engines running. So at this stage, the commandant of Henlow — a college I believe it was, or air, air base — he came along and he said, ‘What are you doing?’ and they said that there was, they’d got permission to move this back to Waddington. So he said, ‘Well we thought — we had this message but we understood you were going to dismantle it and take it by road’, and they said, ‘Well we’ve checked it over, and we decided that it, it is a runner. So it is going to take an awful long time to dismantle it and we’ve got to bring cranes and fittings up here to do it, so we will come and we will hopefully fly it back’. So he was somewhat upset by this, because he wasn’t expecting them to say this and this meant he’d got to make a decision I suppose, but anyway the decision was made that yes, they could fly it back but on one must-not-do. ‘When you take off, you must not fly over the college buildings. The airfield buildings. You must go away from the airfield and the base, so if the wings fall off it, you’ll not fall on to the —’ So anyway, they duly reached that stage. They found a pilot who I believe was a Polish gentleman, they then began to look at the field itself. Working parties were brought to walk the field to fill in holes and generally check it over. They spent several weekends doing this, and the day came when it was to go, so they — it was crewed up and they did all the engine run ups and all the usual pre-flight checks, and off they went across the grass, gathering speed. Reached the point of tail up, and lo and behold, there was a hole in the ground, which they think it was maybe a fox had dug. But our Lancaster hit this and it, with one jerk, it was airborne. The pilot gathered it and kept it flying and it duly flew back to Waddington. I believe the navigator, it was claimed the navigator made a slight error, because the press were waiting at Waddington, and it didn’t initially go back to Waddington. It made a circle around and flew over Scampton, who’d got R5868, which is now in the RAF museum as their gate guardian, with a sort of two fingers up sign, ‘We’ve got one that flies at Waddington’. Anyway, that was done and he duly came in to land at Waddington. So I was told that the press were there in great numbers, and it was all very exciting. He came in to land, and it was one of those landings where he touched down and then took off again, and he touched down and then he took off again. The camera lenses were seen to be going up and down with the long lenses on the cameras, and it duly came to a standstill. Taxied around and was, the engines were switched off and it was back at Waddington. It was only then that they learned that the pilot, who was Polish, he was a test pilot for, I believe it was English Electric in those days, and he was a test pilot flying Canberras, and he’d basically landed it — done a Canberra landing in a Lancaster, which a Canberra has a nose wheel and it lands on a nose wheel configuration that, it doesn’t sit with its tail up or anything. It goes down, whereas the attitude of a Lanc is completely different. Had they known they wouldn’t have let him fly it but — because there were other pilots who were qualified to fly in that, that format of a tail wheel aircraft. We, we were living at Bracebridge Heath and for a year nothing happened. The Lancaster went in the hangar and it was thought that it was being prepared as the gate guardian, however, it then appeared on the airfield from time to time and were doing engine runs and then it, it occasionally took to the air, and it was very pleasant to sit in one’s front garden and see a Lancaster, or have it fly over, virtually over your head, fairly low. At a time when there wasn’t another one in the world flying, the Canadian one was not flying at that stage, and gradually the flying time that it was putting in was increased, and then it sort of appeared at Biggin Hill or Farnborough, and this was really building into something. The officer commanding RAF Waddington, the group captain, he tended to fly it, I think his name was Stanley, along with several others who were qualified to fly that aircraft type. The time went on, and having extended it then the — it was taken for granted by the population that it would stay at Waddington, and that was it, and we were all quite happy. And then suddenly, it was in the Lincolnshire Echo in 1973 that Waddington’s Lancaster was to be moved to RAF Coltishall in Norfolk. Obviously, there was a great deal of muttering and everything, because the thought was, why take the bomber away from where it was, came into service, because Waddington was the very first Lancaster station where it was introduced in ‘41. Anyway, it was duly — something had to be done. A letter appeared, or a piece appeared, in the Lincolnshire Echo, and it said that there’s a Mrs Buttery who had written a piece and made a statement to the Echo, to say that there should be some effort made to retain this Lancaster in the county. It belonged to the county, it didn’t belong on a fighter station. Anybody interested, would they please contact her. I went and contacted her on the, this was on a Friday, I contacted her on the Monday morning at work, which was the only address she gave which was in Guildhall Street opposite the old Post Office in those days. I was the first one there and I introduced myself, and her name was Hilda and we got on very well. There was various other people turned up as the next week or two went on, and we gradually sort of came together. Alderman and Frank Eccleshare decided that there was public interest in this and he would form a — there would be a meeting held in Lincoln for everybody that was interested to come and have their say. So, needless to say, our little group had got together. We called ourselves the Lincolnshire Lancaster Committee, because we was just a committee, we weren’t thinking of anything else. We, we went to the meeting which was well attended. There was a thing in those days on the radio at lunchtime that — Jimmy Young who was a broadcaster, broadcast every day, and if you’d got a problem, he would, I’ll say fix it, but nothing to do with the fix it that we all hate today. However, I wrote to Jimmy Young, and this was before the meeting, and I said this is a problem, and to explain that the local population didn’t want this aircraft moving and, ‘Go on Jimmy. Fix it’. I received a nice buff pre-printed card from the BBC to say Mr Young will — is looking in to this and he’ll be in touch. It’s now forty-three, forty-four years since I got that card and I’m still waiting for his reply. He didn’t come back to us. However, the meeting was held and various — we stood up and made our piece, and amongst the people in the audience, a gentleman stood up who I, we got to know quite well, his name was Eric, Eric Gledhill. I’m sure anybody that knew Eric will not be upset when I say that Eric, he was a crew chief, he was obviously, I don’t know, flight sergeant I guess in those days, but he had what we called a lavatory brush hairstyle. His hair was spiky and it looked very much like a lavatory brush. Eric stood up. ‘I’m the crew chief that looks after this Lancaster, and I can assure you, it will not fly for another couple of years, then it’s going to be on the ground. It can’t go on, it’s on its last legs and this would be the end. So we’ve got two years to try to do something’. Anyway, the, the meeting ended, and we decided that we’d got to sort of try to put a mark on this aircraft, to try to get it kept in to Lincolnshire. So again. I’d had the idea that the Lincoln City, the mayor and his, his attendants were very often seen in the local newspaper in the, in the ward room of the then HMS Lincoln and having the odd drinkies, and so I thought, well if they, this was Lincoln’s adopted warship and I thought, ‘Well come on, Lincoln shouldn’t be adopting a warship, they should be adopting a bomber’. So, I brought this up at the committee meeting and said, ‘Look, we should be making advances to the council to get the bomber adopted’. Our chair lady, she knew the mayor and the message was passed to the mayor, and the council looked at it and the question, I believe, was asked, ‘What’s it going to cost to do this?’ And the answer came back, ‘Very little’., and they seemed to like that idea, and so it was arranged that the, the aircraft would be adopted. It was duly adopted. I’m sorry, I can’t remember the date exactly but it coincided with a visit from 463, 467 Squadron, Royal Australian Air Force, their big reunion. They were coming over to, to Waddington for this event and they were duly to be treated with full ceremony, and the adoption would be on the same day as they came to see the Lancaster. I said, again I raised at the committee that if, if we’re going to have it adopted, we should ask that they put the Lincoln City badge on to the nose of the aircraft to illustrate to all and sundry that it was Lincoln City, Lincoln City’s aircraft. This was agreed, that would be done, and the RAF were contacted and they were warm to the idea. I learned later that we’d actually asked just for the badge, but I learned, I learned later that the, this was came in after it’s been moved to Coltishall. But they, they sent somebody from Coltishall, an officer came from Coltishall to Lincoln with a camera, to get a photograph of the Lincoln City badge. Of course, today it would be done by email and it would be in a flash, but he came to Lincoln and he wandered about the city, I’m told, looking for the badge. And in the end, he saw the badge on the side of a Lincoln City Corporation bus, and it had the Fleur de Lys coat of arms. Below it was, in gothic script, “City of Lincoln”, so he took a photograph of this, took it back to Coltishall. It was duly, it was hand painted on to the aircraft by a gentleman who was an expert in this type of work. He had not understood what was asked of him, so he painted the badge very nicely and he’d put City of Lincoln underneath it, which was an idea that we hadn’t have thought of but it was better than we’d thought of, so we got this thrown in as a bonus. So she had a very large badge on her nose in those days, with City of Lincoln in gothic script, and that was put on the nose then. She’s been repainted several times, but it was made, it was officially pronounced that this aircraft was named City of Lincoln, and it would remain that. Whatever paint job they put on it, that would remain on it, and it’s still on it today, although in reduced size on the opposite side to where it was first put on. Coming back to the, the Australian visit, this was a remarkable event, because they, they came to us and they said that — I live in Waddington village — these Australians were coming over and would — when they came to Waddington during the war, there was not enough space for them to live on the camp, so they were billeted out throughout the village. People took them into their homes, the aircrew, which was very traumatic for some because obviously, they didn’t all come back. However, all these years later they’re coming again. ‘Would you like to take a chap and his wife for a week while they’re over here?’ So we said, ‘Yes, we would’, and we were duly allocated, if that’s the right word, the gentleman. Buchan comes to mind. He was the gentleman that flew the Lanc that flew the longest mission ever, when he flew back and he, the BB for the royal aircraft or the Crown Film Unit, to film the Tallboys going down on the Tirpitz, that finally sank the Tirpitz — that’s a famous bit of footage. He was told - they were told they were flying back to Lossiemouth. He said — stuff Lossiemouth or words to that thing, and he would fly back. ‘I didn’t want to go there, I want to come back to Waddington’, so he flew back to Waddington, landed and I don’t — he hardly had enough fuel to get back to his dispersal, it was sucking air. So I was looking forward to, to this visit, because it was obviously somebody that was very interesting to me and I was liking to talk to him, however, at the last minute, unfortunately his lady wife got ill and he couldn’t come, so we had it changed around and lo and behold, I got a fella and his wife called Bill Berry. Bill was a — not a tall man, shall we put it like that, and he was very nice and he talked in a real dinkum Australian accent. That was very good, fitted the Bill Hancock’s Half Hour voice very nicely. They came to stay with us, and of course, we talked. Now, he said to me, he said, ‘Do you know, Stuart’, he said, ‘My best mate ever’, he said, ‘He lived here, he lived in Lincolnshire. He was a farmer’, he said, ‘And we used to go shooting with an old car with the headlights and’, he said, ‘It was a marvellous time between flying’. And he said, ‘I’ve lost touch with him’, and he said, ‘I’ve no idea. I can’t remember where he lived now’. So I said, ‘What was his name then?’ So he said, ‘His name was John Chatterton’. I said, ‘I know John Chatterton’. ‘You don’t’. I said, ‘I do’. So he said, ‘Well blow me down’, or words to that effect, so he said, ‘Can we make contact?’ I said, ‘Well hang on a minute’, so I got up and I dial the number, and he answered, and I said, ‘Hello John. Is that you?’ So he said, ‘Yeah, it is. What do you want Stu?’ I said, ‘Well I’ve got an old mate of yours here’, I said, ‘Who wants to talk to you’, so he said, ‘Have you? Who’s that?’ I said, ‘Does the word Bill Berry mean anything to you?’ ‘Bugger me’, he says, ‘I can’t believe it, put him on’. So they talked, and it was agreed that within the next night or two, they’d, they’d come together in our lounge at Waddington, to meet after all these years, and it was a suitably emotional evening and they brought their logbooks with them. And of course, I’d known John Chatterton for quite a while, his son, Mike Chatterton, was, I believe, at that time currently the Lancaster pilot with the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight. So, Bill, he said this was fantastic and they compared log books, and I wish I’d had Dan’s recording machine with me because they were going through all these anecdotes and comparing one night. Where did you go on so and so, and so and so? ‘I went to Dusseldorf that night’. ‘How long was you there? How long was you airborne for?’ ‘I was airborne for three hours twenty minutes’. If you like. ‘No, no. What was you messing about at? We did it in three hours and ten minutes’, and there was a lot of verbal going on like that. So they came, after they’d ceased, they’d done their ops and they went to Syerston together as instructors, and they told me a little story. He said they were in the crew room at Syerston, and he said it was, had been a horrible few days and there had been no flying, and there was a lot of blokes hanging about and we were waiting for the weather to lift. The cloud base was still fairly low but it was going up slowly, and he said, ‘We were there’, he said, ‘And we were bored and’, he said, ‘Suddenly, John Chatterton stood up and he said, ‘Right, my lot, we’re going flying’. ‘Are you’re going flying?’ ‘Yes, I’m going flying. I can’t stand this any longer’. So they got up, and they went charging off to their aircraft, and fifteen, twenty minutes later it taxies out on to the runway, comes trundling down the runway, and they all go outside to watch it go past, and it goes past, and it’s — if you look at a map of Syerston, you will see that the River Trent is at the far end of the runway. So he goes, this is Bill telling this story, and he said, ‘He goes down the runway and his tail wheel’s up, but he’s not, his main wheels are still on the ground, and he gets to the end of the runway and he disappears in to the Trent, and we thought, ‘Oh my God, he’s crashed’. So there was bicycles, there was people running, there was vehicles, there was fire engines, they were all, they were all charging down to the end of the runway to see the wreckage in the Trent and hope these fellas are still alive, and he said, ‘We got there expecting to see oil on the water and all sorts of wreckage. Nothing. There’s no marks on anywhere. We can’t — we’re looking around. We can’t believe. Where is he? He’s vanished. It’s magic’. And he said, ‘We just stood there and then we heard a sound, and it was Merlin engines and’, he said, ‘They were, they were behind us and he turned around, and here’s this Lanc coming at ground level and its straight for us, and we all threw ourselves flat, and he comes almost through the middle of us and then climbed up and went away’. And he said, ‘that was John Chatterton, and somehow he’d managed to turn to starboard or port, whichever one it was, and he’d managed to get away without us realising where he’d gone and he’d gone around the back of us, and we was all, we’d all been covered in mud. We’d all thrown ourselves flat on the ground and, and,’ he said, ‘That was a moment I remember’ And I looked at John Chatterton, who’d got, I’m sure if he was here, he would agree with him, Mike would agree with him, that he had a baby face. He looked a rounded baby-faced chap, and I said to John, I said, ‘John, would you do a thing like that?’ And he said, ‘Stu, could you imagine me doing anything like that?’ I said, ‘Yes’. So there was laughter and that was a moment to remember, but I put that, I was lucky to be there with these two guys to hear all these stories, and what a pity. There was a lot more I can’t remember, but there was a lot was forgotten forever I’m afraid because I couldn’t record it.
DE: Sure.
SS: The, the story. I think I’ll have to pause now a minute if you don’t mind.
DE: Ok.
[Recording paused]
DE: Right, so we’re recording again. There we go.
SS: The Lancaster moved to Coltishall but she’s crewed by aircrew from Waddington and Scampton. Jacko Jackson had been allegated to, allegated, is that the right word? Allocated as officer commanding the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight in 1972. I believe that’s correct although the thing at the Battle of Britain Flight might tell you wrong. But —
DE: People can find that out. Yeah.
SS: I’ve got it on. They don’t know at Coningsby yet, I’ve not been over since I found out. I’ve a letter from, inviting me to Jacko’s leaving party, and Jacko was, it says in there when he was made officer commanding. I’ve got it in the other room but we can find that out in a minute. Anyway, this was causing them a lot of problems, because they were having to travel by coach to Coltishall and back again at weekends, in all the seaside traffic because it’s a very busy road. This was wrong. We’d been petitioning to the, well the Lancaster Committee we’d, we’d had fun and games. We didn’t realise it but when the Lanc was about to leave Waddington for the very last time, one of our members, who wouldn’t admit doing it but we know he did, he went around all the local pubs where the airmen gather, and he put around these stories that these freaks at Lincoln were going to go to Waddington and they were going to sit on the runway to stop them flying the Lanc out. Well, bearing in mind, Lincoln was, Waddington was a Vulcan base much connected with the Cold War, and the nuclear weapons that were stored thereabouts so the RAF didn’t want a lot of people on the airfield, and the Echo put out statements from the RAF that no public person would be allowed on the, on to the camp while this was taking place. And this was all to be sorted. Come the day, there was police galore in land rovers, patrolling the Sleaford Road. There was more dogs than, than you’ve ever seen. I think they’d brought extra people in from other bases. There was a lot of people on the roadside along there, but there was no trouble and it flew out, and that was the end of the story, but there was a little, little bit of a kink in the tale of it all, that before it went, they’d had a press thing to let the press come on the airfield through the guardroom to take photos and interview the captain and whatever. One of our committee members — he’d got, he’d been driving around the camp, he usually carried about six cameras around his neck, he, he noticed that there was a group of press people gathered in a little group near the guardroom, so he left his car quickly in the officer’s mess car park, walked across to the guardroom and just joined up with these newspapermen. Within minutes a coach appeared, they all gathered on the coach. Nobody checked who they were. They all got on the coach, they were all taken onto the airfield, to the aircraft, and they all took it in turns to get in the aircraft. Well the captain on that day was, we called him Uncle Ken but his name was Squadron Leader Ken Sneller, who was the nicest man you could ever wish to meet, and of course, he knew Trevor, who was the guy that had smuggled himself in, and it came to Trevor’s turn to get in the aircraft to take pictures. And he duly clambered in and came up to the front end, clambered over the main spar to, to see Uncle Ken there. Uncle Ken said, ‘What are you doing here?’ And he said, ‘Don’t tell anybody. I’m a, I’m a spy got on the airfield where nobody’s supposed to be getting’, so he duly took photographs in the cockpit and that was, that was that little moment of when we had the last laugh, but nobody in the RAF knew it had happened. The, the story about the Australians that I repeated a little earlier, that happened a few years later, after the aircraft had been at Coltishall for a time.
DE: Yeah.
SS: So, so it’s not out of context.
DE: That’s fine. Thank you.
SS: The, the time went by and we started collecting signatures to get the aircraft brought back to Waddington, or to Lincolnshire. I think we — but we thought it would be Waddington. We gathered signatures, within a matter of, I think it was fifteen weeks, we got some nineteen — seventeen to nineteen thousand signatures, including every MP except the MP for Grimsby — Mr Crossland who refused to sign. Everybody else would sign for it, signed the petition. From Australia came signatures like Hughie Edwards, who was a VC from Bomber Command’s earlier years. A lot of famous people signed. A meeting was arranged and we met the minister for the Royal Air Force who was — Labour were in power at the time, a little Welsh gentleman called Mr Brynmor John, and an appointment was made for him to meet us at Swinderby, which was a very active RAF station in those days. We were told we would meet at, in the officer’s mess at Swinderby at 2.15 I think it was, and he would have to be leaving by 2.35, so we weren’t given very long to make our point to him. We duly got all the signatures bundled up and tied up with red ribbon, and Mrs Buttery, who was chairman, she came and she made a speech and photographs were taken, and we talked to the minister. It was noticed a little bit later that the group captain in the background who was, I think it was Group Captain Green, I’m not sure, but he seemed very agitated and he kept looking at his watch, and he was pacing up and down, and we were talking to the minister and the minister was talking back to us, and the time schedule that they’d set went completely wrong. I don’t know what happened to his — where he was going after he finished with us, but he ended up about an hour late. Anyway, the bottom line, we got the promise that they would look at it but they couldn’t make any promises and it was wait and see, which we really thought we were just being fobbed off to be honest. Within a few months, Jacko Jackson had taken over. He was then OC of the Battle of Britain flight at Coltishall and Jacko came to me and he said, ‘Stuart, I’ve got some news for you but this is, this is something that is so hush hush that you’re not — you can tell the committee, but you’re not to tell anybody outside the committee, and it’s not to get out because this information will have to be released by the ministry or the Royal Air Force. Not by — not come from outside. So you’ve got to, before I tell, you’ve got to tell me that you’ll make sure that you’ll not pass it on other to those that are sworn to secrecy’. So I said, ‘Yes Jacko, I’ll do what I can. I’m sure they’ll —’ Anyway, we duly had a meeting, I’d made a little bit of a gesture beforehand and we had, I think it was two or three bottles of champagne were put on the table at the meeting, and the rest didn’t know what it was all about, and there was three bottles of champagne or whatever and some glasses and, ‘Well? What have you got? Tell us’. So I said, ‘Well the story is that I’ve been told that the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight are going move back lock stock and barrel because we’d lost the Lancaster. We were now going to get the Lancaster complete with Spitfires and Hurricanes returned to the county but unfortunately, it wouldn’t be to Waddington. It would be to Coningsby. The reason why it’s not to Coningsby, we discovered later, er why it’s not at Waddington, we discovered later was the fact that the Waddington, the group that controlled Waddington in those days, were a different group that covered Coningsby. Our group at Waddington had given the Lanc to the other group where the Merlin spares were, and so that other group were not prepared to give the whole of the Battle of Britain Flight back to the group that it had — the Lanc had come from. So, it went to Coningsby. So in due course, all the aircraft came back to Coningsby and of course, this made them within much closer range and LLA — oh we’d gone through the ritual war dance of setting, of A) stopping being a committee any more. Becoming an Association, because people was wanting to, to join up. We had a thing going to raise the money, and have the deflection can made, so that it could put the upper turret on to the Lancaster, because in those days, she was a flat back and it was missing this mid-upper turret which they’d got. It had been sent from Argentina by the Royal Navy, it arrived at Tilbury docks or somewhere, and the phone call was sent to Waddington. ‘We’ve got a big crate here for you Waddington. Do you want to come and fetch it?’ ‘What is it?’ ‘It’s from the Argentine Air Force and it’s a piece of a Lancaster’. So it was fetched but they couldn’t fit it, because it was, they didn’t have the metal work to fix around it, to stop the guns from pointing in to the —shooting the tail fins off or shooting the back of the cockpit, so we — they came to us. And they said, ‘Would you like to — could you get this made?’ So we said, ‘Yeah, well of course. Why not?’ So again, our chairman, she had contacts within the engineering companies in Lincoln, which in those days were very big, and the plans were brought to us. She went off to see them and they’d agreed. ‘Yes, we’ll do that’, but when they saw the plans, because not only is this a strange shape but it tapers as the, as the fuselage narrows, as it goes down towards the tail, they suddenly decided they’d got too much work to do with oil rigs and they couldn’t, they couldn’t do it. So it was eventually came back. She said, ‘Well I’m sorry, I’ve failed with Lincoln completely. Anybody else got any ideas?’ So I said, ‘Well I was’, my task, I was an insurance broker, so I said, ‘Well I’ve got a company that I deal with in Grimsby called Marionette Engineering. I’ll talk to Peter Wild’, who was the boss who I’d known, again, for some years. I went and saw Peter, and I said, ‘Pete, I’ve got these plans. Can you, can your lot make this?’ They, the Marionam Engineering — basically their role was repairing trawlers that came back with damage, which is a bit, slight heavier metal than is used on an aircraft, so he looked at it and he said, ‘Well I don’t know Stu’, and made all sorts of — anyway I seem to have got this ability to keep talking non-stop, and I talked him — eventually he agreed to it, on the basis that it was to shut me up. I took the plans to them which, I’m sorry, which I’d got and he said, ‘Well come back in a month and see how, how we’re going on’, so I said, ‘Alright, but I bet you’ll have forgotten about it as soon as I’ve gone out the door’. ‘No I won’t, I daren’t face another barrage like I’ve had’. So I went back a month later and there, laid on the factory floor, was a large sheet of metal, which must have been measuring about twelve to fifteen foot square. A huge square. And upon it was spot welded various pieces of metal with the tops cut off at funny angles, and it represented something like a thing that you’d expect in one of these Indian type gentlemen who climb ropes and eat fire, that he would lay on a bed of nails. It looked like one of those. So, he, I said, ‘Well, I’m sorry. I think you’ve got that wrong haven’t you? Because it doesn’t make any sense’. ‘Oh we’ll make sense of it to you’, and he whistled up some of the fellas and they brought brown paper out and they draped brown paper around all these things, and suddenly it made the shape of what’s wanted, with the hole in the middle and it was, and suddenly it made sense. And I said, ‘Well that’s marvellous. I don’t know how you’ve done that’. ‘No, I don’t really’, he said, ‘But we’re trying’. Anyway, the, the flight had moved then, had moved back to Coningsby, and it came the day when this, this piece of metal would be transported to Coningsby to be fitted on the aircraft and of course, I went to watch this happen, and the lorry appeared from, from Grimsby. And the fellas that had made it came with it and they drove in the hangar, and they looked at the aircraft and they looked at what they’d done, and they said, ‘Good heavens, isn’t it big?’ And that was the general consensus. Anyway, the RAF had got some, some special platforms at each side of it so that this thing was lifted up by hand. The hole was made in the top of the fuselage where the turret was going to sit, and so the piece that they’d made was then fitted in the exact place where it would be when it was actually screw riveted or whatever they were going to do to the fuselage, and suddenly it looked right. It was — it was — the guys, the guys that had made it couldn’t believe that it was, it was so right. They discovered then that when, after they’d all looked at it and felt duly, duly pleased with what they’d done, the RAF were happy. They couldn’t get it off because they couldn’t get their fingers underneath the edges of it, where it fitted to the fuselage. It was such good a fit. They had to put their hands down the inside and lift it off, up, to get it off and that was duly fitted, and that was a few weeks later, the mid-upper turret that had been in storage for so long was then placed into its position on the bomber and she was no longer a flat back. So she had that on her and she had the City of Lincoln on the nose, which was a good tie to the county. Part of our other project when we’d started was that we wanted to get the Lancaster back to the county, but we realised if we got her back, we should maybe have to do something towards housing her, which would be an horrendous type job requiring a lot of money. So we set to and to raise funds by producing postal covers and appearing at air shows and doing anything we could to raise money, which we were, all in all, quite successful at. The job that we’d done on the Lancaster had made a lot of people say, ‘Can’t anybody join your committee?’ Well, a committee’s a committee, it’s not — it’s not for a lot of people, a huge lot, so we decided to call ourselves Lincolnshire’s Lancaster Association. Hence the LLA which it’s become known as today. We applied for charitable status, which we were granted on an educational. We were classified, as far as I can remember, as an educational charity because we were educating people as to what had gone on, and we was trying to extend the life of this aircraft as long as possible. The flight, the two years that Eric Gledhill have given us four years before, had long expired but she still continued and continues well to this day. The problems that Eric had outlined to us, which were unsurmountable in the, those days when it first started, were not on. Not on at all. But modern technology and the fact that the flight had now become very publicly known, and I think it was thanks to our efforts that it was put so well publicly known, that she had gathered a following of her own people. Initially there was not too many. All the ex-World War Two aircrews were interested, their families were interested, but the grandkids in those days didn’t seem too interested. And there was a lot of, ‘Well, maybe. Is it worth doing it?’ And whatever. We did have exciting moments like a royal visit was coming along, and it was decided that we should have the aircrew who, in those days, wore — they called them “growbags.” They were sort of browny coloured baggy flying suits with zips. Lots of zips in the front for pockets and maps and things. We decided the Red Arrows, who didn’t live in Lincolnshire in those days, they wore these fancy red flying suits, and it would be nice if we could get some for the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight bomber. Well we were only thinking about the bomber crews in those days. Get some black ones. I was told that Marks and Sparks were the firm, that was the firm to approach. So bearing in mind that was, it would be nice to think we could maybe, dare I say, scrounge them or persuade them to donate half a dozen flying suits for these Lancaster aircrew chaps to wear, but if need be, we would pay for them. So I duly went and saw the management of M&S to outline to them what we needed. They listened to me waffling on about, about what they did for the Red Arrows and could they do it for the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight etcetera, and was greeted with, ‘Well I’m sorry, but everybody’s heard of the Red Arrows, but nobody’s ever heard of the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight. Good day’. So I’m afraid we drew a blank, but the Queen was coming and Philip on a certain day in a month or two’s time, so I managed to get the blue prints for these “growbag” flying suits, and the Bracebridge Heath Ladies Sewing Circle made five flying suits to the measurements. Inside legs were taken for the manufacture of five black flying suits. These were duly worn when the royal visit came, with their badges of rank on their epaulets and the pilot’s brevets or whatever, whatever they were. And this went off very well, and photographs were in the papers of these black suited people standing in front of the Lancaster, and that was the first time anybody at the BBMF had ever had a black flying suit. We were not asked after that to, to repeat the thing, but somebody somewhere must have taken notice because suddenly black flying suits became available. Strange how these things can happen, but we think we maybe lit the touch paper with that one. So all in all, our efforts continue. We, we’d always been on the lookout for spare parts, there’s always an outcry for spare parts, and I remember a chicken farmer, I believe it was, somewhere in the back woods of Woodhall or that area. I got a phone call to say, ‘Is that Mr Stephenson’, and I said, ‘Yes, I was’, and he said, ‘Well, you don’t know me, but my name’s’, and I’ve forgotten his name, but he said, ‘We’ve just been put on the electric over here and’, he said, ‘I have got a Lancaster generator that’s been used since the war, ended for lighting up our chicken huts’. He said, ‘Now this is now surplus. We don’t need it ‘cause we’ve got the electric fitted on from the electric board and would you like it as a spare part for the Lancaster?’ So we said, ‘Yes, we’d be delighted’. So I duly went and collected this from the gentleman and it was handed over to them, and it had been driven by a tractor with a belt from a pulley to light — to make the electric for the chicken huts, but it worked alright and I think it was put into their stock, and it’s maybe still there or maybe not. Exhaust stubs, I was, each engine has got, I think it’s — is it six or eight of these down each side of the engines, so there’s all these exhaust stubs and they are always on the lookout for these things. And a sub aqua, a sub aqua club from up in Humberside contacted me. They had discovered an aircraft in the Humber that had been submerged for a long time, they’d managed to retrieve an engine which, when they’d sprayed all this mud and muck off it, it turned out to be a Merlin and they were going to clean it up to be put on display. Would we like — it looked new — would we like the exhaust stubs in exchange for some burnt out ones from the Lanc? So we said, ‘Yeah. We would be delighted’. So that was arranged, but the strange thing was this particular engine — research was done on it and it turned out to be, from all things, a Wellington that had crashed in the Humber in the very early part of the war. Now, we never discovered why, what it was doing up there but it had, it had crashed and it had sunk and it was recognisable from the serial numbers on the engine what it was from. The strange thing was that there was still oil in the sump and everything, of this engine so oil samples were taken out and sent to Conoco up there, who did some research on this oil and they came back and they said, ‘It’s as good as new. If you’ve got a lot of it, you can use it’. And it had been under water for I don’t know how many years, but I suppose oil doesn’t rot away does it? Anyway, that was another little offshoot that happened about this time. I think I’d like another break Dan, if you don’t mind, while I gather my wits.
DE: Ok. I’ll press pause again.
[Recording paused]
DE: Ok. It’s recording again.
SS: As far as the LLA side of things were concerned, we became a, we stopped from being a committee to the Lincs Lancaster Association. We became a limited company as well because we felt that this was — as we were attracting members, it was a way of not leaving responsibility for things in the hands of a few. It was to spread the thing about and to keep it on a proper company way of dealing with these matters as far as bookkeeping and the like. Charitable status was confirmed, we then had to make reports annually to Company’s House with regards to all the affairs of expenditure and what we’ve been doing. Likewise to the Charities Commission, which had to be approved by both of those. As I said, we continued to raise money, in those days with a great deal of help from the Battle of Britain flight themselves because we were — we were the only people of our type. The Red Arrows didn’t have a following like we had. We gained, we gained steadily a thousand, two thousand, three thousand. I think in my period as chairman which lasted for some, from about thirty six/seven years as chairman. I were chairman all that time mainly because no one else would do it, we gathered up to five and a half to six thousand members and it seems to have stuck at that level-ish, in that area. It’s fallen away, it falls away from time to time. Basically, finding volunteers to do the work that’s needed to be done is difficult. The roles of treasurer, of membership secretary and chairman I suppose. I don’t tend to think of it in my own terms, but these, these are roles that do take a lot of time, and as volunteers you don’t get paid and it’s — particularly the, the membership secretary who has to deal with members paying, members getting behind and dealing with cheques and sending out renewals. It used to be done by hand. We had a lovely lady called Sheila Wright who did it. She had big old fashioned — this was really before computers had got going, big old fashioned manuals that she used to do it all in the old fashioned way. She’d been an accounts lady for one of the local newspapers. Sheila used to do it and she was very reliable. She was retired, she gave her all seemingly all the time. There was never any problems. She decided she would go on holiday and she went. She was going on a bus trip, I remember they told me, she went to Unity Square in Lincoln, got on the coach, sat in the chair with her friend and died. She just sat there and passed away and that was shock. She was Sheila, and she’s dead. I’ve no idea what the cause of death was but this was a disaster for the LLA, because she’d been running this thing and picking it up from the bottom is very difficult when there’s so many things that is day to day running. She’d written to people to say you’ve not paid for so many months and either pay up or you’ll get nothing else. This has been an ongoing problem. With the advent of computers, one would think that this sort of becomes easier but we’ve had, we had, in my day, a series of membership secretaries who tend to find it, for some reason, more difficult to keep up with things when it’s on computer, then when it’s done in the old fashioned way. So I guess adding the columns up is easier when it’s done on a computer in Excel, but to do it as far as all the entering up is concerned and the typing in of names and the details., this is what takes a lot of time and identifying who’s due for renewal. And unlike other organisations, when we started we only had small numbers, and we decided that if somebody joined in January, his renewal would be in January every year, and if he joined, if somebody else joined in February, his renewal would be in February, so that means all the renewals are spread out over twelve months. Which again is very, yes, that’s good, but we find that other — since this and it still operates like this today I’m told, but since then other organisations, we find they’ve got one renewal date which is the day of the financial year ending, or in some cases the end of a year.
DE: Yes.
SS: So that then means you’ve got maybe, have five thousand coming in at once, but if you’ve, if you’ve got to deal with the banking side of five thousand, well that’s, that’s the easy bit in some senses but you can imagine that to handle all these things. This was before Pay Pal and direct debits and things as we know, know them so well today have come out. It, it was difficult then, but I’m told that it’s still difficult and it’s not a job that people want. If there’s anybody out there who is in to accountancy and wants a, one’s has got a volunteer spare time job, then this, their approach to LLA would be very much appreciated. Having said that, there’s recently been a piece in The Times following the lady’s — Childline was it called? The, the children’s charity that broke.
DE: Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
SS: A report on that and the, the, it’s, to me it’s opened my eyes a lot, because the result of that is that there was an official statement made — that for a charity to be successful, it must be run properly, which means that in a case of expecting volunteers to do everything is not acceptable if that doesn’t make, if that is failing to make the thing run below what it should be doing. It needs, if needs be, it must — the people must be paid to do the work on a normal footing, as if it was a proper job. They would be paid and this has to be paid out of the subscriptions or the money that’s raised, because if it’s not the whole thing, the bubble will burst, as it, as it, did in this recent one. So that is something for the future for them to look at now. I keep feeding these bits of advices to them, but whether they take any notice or whether they’ve got time to, because I’m afraid with all committees, you find that you’ve got one or two people that are very active and they can’t really do enough, and you’ve got a lot of people that like to sit back and do very little and throw criticisms and block everything, and generally cause mayhem, when it shouldn’t be like that if you’re all in for the same thing. The excuse that was, is usually given was, ‘Why are you saying this all the time?’ Is — ‘I’m playing devil’s advocate’, is a much used word, but I’m getting off the point. LLA continues today, it seems to be very successful. There was a time, a few years back, when the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight decided that they wanted to take over LLA, but when you’re a charity, you can’t really be taken over because you’re responsible for all that money in the kitty as the charity, and you can’t sort of give that over to something that’s going to be run as a business. A charity is a charity, and so the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight, in their wisdom or not wisdom as I see it, have gone into partnership, or, or — is it partnership? They have a firm that produces their club they call it which you may see advertised, which is a, the reason for the club was given to me that, when it was started that the reason that that club was formed was that it was, it was to allow them to give money to other charities that were not necessarily involved with what the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight normally would be. To whit, the things like the Battle of Britain Memorial, sorry the Red Arrows John Egging Trust or whatever you call it. That was started by the widow of the Red Arrows pilot that was killed. They wanted us to give a chunk of money to them and we felt that, as trustees of that money which was raised for the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight’s benefit, it wasn’t right for us to do that. And this, because we wouldn’t do it, this seemed to cause a fracture which is, was completely uncalled for as far as we were concerned. But they, we wouldn’t be taken over and we wouldn’t do those sort of things, and so this caused them to form their own club. We continued to support them and when they want money for various projects that they’ve got which they invariably, if they get a budget for so much in a year, they want something that’s maybe beyond the budget or - at the moment, I’m speaking now today that there is a project next year for the anniversary of the Berlin Airlift. And the Lincs Lancaster Association will be or have been asked if we will pay, pay for the painting of the Dakota, to be painted into the colours used by the, during the Berlin Airlift, which I’ve been told they’ve agreed to pay, which is obviously the sort of things that’s needed which their club A) hasn’t got the money for and B) is not for that purpose. So as a retired chairman of many years, it’s left me feeling somewhat disappointed to find that they’ve made this sort of split. The charitable side of the fence seems to be quite disturbed because the flight seemed to publish as much as they could, “Join our club. Join our club”, there’s never any thought that the charity really needs the same. It’s due the same backing as the other one because over, over the years while I was chairman, I did try to work it out, and we’d donated for various projects, I think it was just over a half a million pounds for various things that would have been done over the years. Some quite expensive. We put all the, all the engineering books manuals which they’ve got — a huge collection of manuals on their airframes and all their aircraft all in wartime issue type books. We had all those put on, digitised, which I’m sure Dan knows all about. We provided them with a very big printer so that, when you’ve got a fold out document within a book that was scanned, so that it could be printed the size of the unrolled thing out, unfolded out of the book so that they could go in the hangar. If they wanted to know about Lancaster tail wheel, all they’d got to do was type in Lancaster tail wheel, it would come up, all the references they wanted. They could go to that page, print it off. Whether it was an A3, whatever. The biggest size you could think of, it would print it. The, I did receive a letter from the chief of the air staff thanking me for this that we’d done for the Flight, and by producing that book and putting it all on to, on to discs, I think it was in those days, that we’d saved them the equivalent of one and a half men a year in time saved looking for things, trying to find things in books. Today’s age, I’m afraid, those years have slipped by and it’s all forgotten, which is very sad I find. I’m sorry. I’m going off on a tangent.
DE: No. No. That’s fine.
SS: Now.
DE: How do you feel about the LLA supporting other aircraft other than the Lancaster?
SS: Well as far as I’m concerned, I’ve learned today that — I’ve been making some enquiries which — I get bees in my bonnet, being eighty years old now and I’m thinking, well I wonder why that is? And so, I sort of went through the very difficult task of googling a question and I find myself on to a website, a government website, which tells me that one charity with similar aims, can support another charity of similar aims so long, so long as the trustees of that charity agree that it can be done. Basically that’s the precis of what it says in a lot of language and it maybe needs somebody with a, with a lawyer’s degree to read that, to make it as easy as I’ve read it, but it does not, it means the door is open. And it means that in the case of, if we’re supporting the Lancaster, we read we’re set up as an educational charity so to my mind that leaves the door open that A) we can support the Bomber Command Memorial, which is educational with its Chadwick Centre, and it also means that if need be, we can support East Kirkby and its Lancaster, even though, in both cases they’re both charities in their own right, and the fact that they’ve got similar aims means what it means. This brought to mind because there was a piece, the Vulcan to the Sky people — there was a piece on their website which said they have come to an agreement, they’re now supporting the Typhoon Restoration Group. Not the RAF type of today but the wartime Typhoon aircraft, to rebuild one to put back in to the skies of Britain, and this has been supported by the Vulcan to the Trust and they’re both charities, and so I thought if they can both do it I will, I will check up on that see if that’s true and that’s what I’ve come out with this very day. So there’s, there’s hope for LLA to be able to help in other fields, but it still just amazes me that when we started, there was nobody doing anything like we’ve done for anybody else. We were one off. We were completely one off and then gradually, one can see that it’s fostered other ideas amongst other people who have come up with similar sort of things to what we’ve been doing. But as per this BBMF club that they’ve got — it’s, it’s been operated by a money-making firm who are producing various booklets and magazines and things for them, but all on a financial basis. Ours is basically all the administration is done, or has been done up till now, has been done by volunteers, and obviously, with what we’re learning now, since this kiddies thing went into bankruptcy and the results of what the enquiries have come up with, it means that maybe there’s a time to come before too long when it should be run on a proper fashion by employed staff. Only time will tell with these things I’m afraid, it’s a developing scene. I must admit that I got, I got poorly and had to retire, it would be four or five years ago now. The time flies by. I’d been doing the job too long I must admit, I was really getting tired with it. But it’s in my blood and I can’t get it out of my blood, and even though I’ve, I’ve got Parkinson’s and I’m still struggling to get about quite a bit, I’m dealing with about four projects that I’ve dreamt up myself, because nobody is, nobody’s thinking about doing these sort of things and by generating things that are home produced by the charity, that’s a lot more from a financial point of view. It’s a much better bet than buying something in for ten pounds and selling it for fifteen. If you can have it printed yourself and sell it for fifteen, you’ve got it a lot cheaper. Somebody else isn’t making a profit out of it before you get it in other words
DE: Sure.
SS: So I still keep doing, doing that and we’ll just have to see how long I last for, and how long it — how the situation develops, but I keep proffering my advice to the present chairman and whether he takes any notice of me, time alone will tell. But I maybe won’t be around to know whether he has or not, so I can’t think of anything else I can say at this stage Dan. Unless you’ve got any questions.
DE: I’ve got, I’ve got a few questions.
SS: Yeah.
DE: If you look at my page. Could you go back again to why it was you that you wanted to get involved in the first place, when you saw the thing in the paper about — ?
SS: It was just a gut reaction. Completely. Basically, my thought was, and I aired this in, I think I wrote a piece for the Lincolnshire Echo, and it was, I can’t remember the wording, but it was saying things like the next thing you know, officialdom will want to move Lincoln Cathedral to London. We felt it was such a, such a — the link between that aircraft and, in particular, in Waddington, which, Waddington — when the Lanc arrived at Waddington, three were delivered on Christmas Eve 1941. Three airframes for 44 Squadron, which was the first squadron to set up and with those three airframes came, I’ll not say a little army, but a group of people from the Avro factory, who were there to do modifications to these aircraft while they were, while they being put in to service almost. It was, it was an absolute — it must be done, and those people that came — a lot of them married local girls and there’s a lot of families in the Waddington area whose ancestors came from Cheshire and Woodford and Stockport and those places around. So the tie is not just — to a certain extent, it is sentimental but not a hundred percent. There is family links there that’s unbreakable. And by chance the same — another one of my projects which I’d better mention, is that we’re doing this booklet, myself and Toucan are producing this booklet to honour Roy Chadwick, who was the chap that designed the Lancaster and the Vulcan and Roy — he worked tirelessly to do it. But this business, the Lancaster was delivered to 44 Squadron and its first operation that it ever did, was mine laying. They divide the area of the sea around the cataract the North Sea in to areas, and all these areas were named after vegetables so these mining sorties were known as, as gardening sorties. Gardening was the first sortie that was undertaken by Lancasters from — well I was going to say from Waddington, but was it Coleby Grange? Because there was some stories that they would possibly had moved to Coleby Grange for some reason. Whether some work was being done at Waddington, but they were done basically from Waddington, because that’s where the headquarters was. Years later, when the Lanc finished, it of course went on past the end of the war, and in the mean — before, I think before it had finished, the Vulcan had been accepted into the RAF. It came into service at Waddington as well, so there’s another link between Avro and Waddington. The first, the first sortie for the Lanc was a gardening sortie. The last one of the war, on the last day of the war, believe it or not, was a gardening sortie. They’d started off gardening, they’d ended up gardening, and it is said that the Bomber Command sank more ships than the Navy during World War Two. I haven’t seen an exact figure to that but it is spoken about quite openly, and I don’t know whether your researchers have found anything to that effect.
DE: I’ve not looked at that. I think we might have to find someone to have a look at that.
SS: I think there’s a certain mythology about it, because if they’d put, put mines in the North Sea they’re not, they wouldn’t be aware that one of these had struck a ship and sunk it on that spot. How would they know? That’s something that doesn’t add up but that’s, that’s often said. And coming back to the Vulcan in service with Waddington, well the Vulcan went out of service and what squadron took it out of service? It was 44 Squadron — Rhodesia Squadron who took it out of service, who brought the Lanc in years before. They flew the last Vulcan bomber practice mission and then a valedictory flypast, which will all be in this new thing that we’re producing and there’s another coincidence that 44 is involved twice with the two different airframes, though 44 didn’t bring the Vulcan into service. Next question?
DE: It’s another one about how do you feel about how the Lancaster and Bomber Command is remembered today?
SS: Yeah. Bomber Command is — has been very badly treated over the years. I was a great believer in Winston Churchill. His speech, his speechifying shall we say, was second to none when it came to the war and keeping the morale of the country high, but the fact that he, he cut himself off from Bomber Command following the Dresden raid, which is infamous, and he fell literally, we fell or our authorities fell for the propaganda that was put out by Dr Goebbels and his people at the Ministry of Propaganda within the Nazi party. They put this out and we swallowed it hook, line and sinker basically and this, this made that, this changed Bomber Command were upset. There was no medal issued, which has been an ongoing thing for all these years and still, still despite what they did, it still there’s still people complaining about it even though I’m afraid the veterans are getting very long in the tooth, and going back to the Dresden thing, Harris was, was vilified almost for allowing it to take place but what they seem to forget is that Churchill had gone off to, I think it was Yalta, on a conference. The command of the Royal Air Force as such was in the hands and the decision making was in the hands of Portal. Portal was the one that decided where they were going to bomb. The Russians wanted Dresden to be bombed because they felt it was being used as a railway junction for supplying arms and men to the Eastern Front. They wanted it wiping out. I’m told, reading, and I forget who wrote the book, there’s a very good book on Dresden, and when it turned out that the, this raid, this day and night attack thing that took place originally there was three choices I believe. And Dresden was the one that was chosen because when they wanted to start it, was best from the weather point of view. The weather was the restricting thing. It was Portal that gave the order, not Harris. Harris did as he was told. He was outranked, and yet the ones that made the decisions at the top have sort of turned their back on it and left the lower ranks to carry the can as you might say. And the can was carried right down to the fellas that flew on those missions, because they was the ones that was made to feel like they were murderers, and there was no medal issued and there was just a pathetic silence from the government. Which to me over the years, the number of these fellas that I’ve met was beyond my dreams, that I would ever meet so many of them and to a man, this was always something that has created a lot of heated expression and the fact that Winston changed — turned his back on Bomber Command has never been forgotten. I can’t really say much more on that one then I can think of at the moment. It’s been a tricky subject I’m afraid, but the strange thing is that the Americans — one would think that they took no part in Dresden. They, they have not been treated the same way as our lads did. One, I think it was day, the RAF went at night and the Americans went by day, which was the way things were run in those days, and the RAF went by night as they did and the first raid took place and it was calamitous. It was fire storms was soon going. The Americans went back the next day, they saw a lot of smoke rising and they bombed, and it was later discovered that they had actually bombed Chemnitz, which was not the target. Dresden. They’d gone to the wrong place. So that, that says it all to a certain extent. Sorry Uncle Sam, you’ve, you’ve — their side of it has been forgotten. One would think it was only an RAF event, it was not a joint services thing. And I’ve never heard any, any words from the American top brass, commanders of the 8th Air Force, if it was the 8th that was involved in that event, that they’ve never had anything really to say about it. It’s just been another day and the RAF seem to have copped for the, to use an old country expression, the sticky end of the stick. Next question Dan.
DE: I think on a happier note, you’ve talked a little bit about the people that you’ve met. Could you go into, you know?
SS: Well yes, I’ve been very lucky that I’ve met, I’ve met so many. I’ve got a book here, I’ll just have to open it up to get my memory. I’ve carried this book with me and if I’ve met people who, who —
DE: So it’s, “The Lancaster at War”.
SS: “Lancaster at War” volume one. The first thing, when I open the pages, I’ve got a letter here from RV Jones at the Department of Natural History, Aberdeen University dated 18th of January 1979. RV Jones doesn’t mean a lot to Dan, I can see he’s wrinkling his eyebrows. Jones was one of the brains of — he was the man that bent the beams. He was, well all I can suggest is he’s so, he’s such a nice fellow and he’s so knowledgeable. Unfortunately, he’s no longer with us like so many of these people aren’t. I’ve got two or three letters here from him, but there are, he’s written. He did write books and I’ve got a copy of his book which he’s duly signed for me, and that is one of my treasured possessions because it’s such a fascinating book. That he flew, he was, he was involved in coming out with these scientific ideas. He was, he was a confident of Churchill and the top. A boffin as they were called in those days and he was — he was a great guy. I’ve got Crumb, Henry. Henry Crumb. Augsburg raid to you. I was lucky. Bert, Bert Doughty. These were the guys that went to Augsburg. I’ve got letters from Henry Crumb, Bert Doughty, David Penman. Where are we? Oh, that’s another one from Henry Crumb. There’s another one. Augsburg raid. The chap, John Nettleton got the VC on the Augsburg raid. When the Lancaster was moved to Coltishall in Norfolk, there was a young WAAF officer who he met and he married, called Betty, and Betty Nettleton was a WAAF at, at Coltishall of all places when I went to, we did a postal cover and I had to try to find these people, and I thought well I’d like to try and find Betty Nettleton. So I made some enquiries and did some detective work, and I discovered — I’ve got a letter here from her. She worked for the National Westminster Bank Company Limited at Lombard Street, London. When I had to contact her, she didn’t know me from Adam so I thought well the best thing, is to ring her up and I got the telephone number from somebody, which was a different number on the letter she wrote to me, because I had a number of communications with her, but I’ve got this letter and the strange thing was, she said that if her husband had still be alive, he’d be turning in his grave if he’d got one to think that the Lanc was moved to Coltishall. To a fighter base from a bomber base. She wouldn’t like that at all and made that point very strongly, and the strange coincidence was that her telephone extension number at this National Westminster Bank was 474, and she didn’t realised the significance of her extension number on her telephone. It was 474 was our Lanc’s PA474 which was a coincidence. So that was Betty Nettleton. What have I got here? Oh, another one of the — Patrick Doorhill, he was another Augsburg raid survivor. There’s two letters from him. Sorry, three letters from him. What have I got one here. Oh, this is one from — “Dear Stuart”. This is very nice green-headed paper from Air Chief Marshal Sir Peter Squire KC. Oh, he’s got so many titles after his name, Ministry of Defence, Chief of the Air Staff. “Dear Stuart, I’ve just heard of the magnificent effort of Lincolnshire’s Lancaster Association in scanning the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight’s servicing manuals on to cd rom. Such a practical initiative is not only a great help to the BBMF but also displays, in a very material fashion, your interest and support for a most important part of our nation’s heritage. I would be most grateful if you would pass on my sincere thanks and congratulations to your members for a job well done. My very best wishes for your continued success. Yours sincerely, Peter Squire”, and that’s addressed to me. So that’s, those are just some letters that are tucked in the first page of the book. Well I turn the page over, I will see some names that will maybe ring a few bells with people. Page one, believe it or not, the one at the top of the page is Bob Stanford Tuck. Bob Stanford Tuck, in case you don’t know, was not a bomber pilot but he was a Battle of Britain ace. He was the original brill cream boy I’m told. He was always a very flashy type. If you, if you google Bob Stanford Tuck, you’ll see what I mean. But looking down the page we’ve got Gus Walker. Now I met Gus at Swinderby. Gus was a famous man. He was, he was a one-armed man, he lost an arm at Syerston when he was — well the story was, one story was that he walked into a propeller that was — and it took his arm off. The other story was that he’d gone to try to rescue someday from a burning aircraft, and it exploded and he’d been thrown out, so I’m not quite certain of that one. Looking down the list is Mr Chandler, 170 Squadron. We’ve got various, various names. We’ve got David Penman, David Brotherick, Bert Doughty of course. We’ve got Mary Chadwick which is — Mary Chadwick was Roy Chadwick’s widow, the mother of Rosemarie Lapham, nee Chadwick, and Margaret Dove who was his other, Roy’s elder daughter. She has been in the forefront of it, well while she was alive, parading her dad’s name around the world. Rosemary was the, some nine years younger and she’s really kept in the background until her sister died and then she’s come a little to the foreground, but they are getting, she’s getting a very old lady now as well of course. I’m sure she wouldn’t be upset if she knew I was saying that. Looking below it, would you believe it or not, I’ve got John Chatterton KMY, 44 Squadron and I’ve got underneath him is Bill Berry and he was, he’s got VNG which is 50 Squadron so they were good friends but obviously on different squadrons at the time when, when they were in operations. Some of these names that I’m struggling to read are the names of some of the chaps that survived the dams raid who are no longer with us. Now looking on the next page, the one at the top of the page is Lord Lilford. Now Lord Lilford won’t mean much to anybody except Mrs lilford, but Lord Lilford was the chap that, that bought NX611 which is now today Just Jane at East Kirkby. He bought it when it was put up for auction at Blackpool, and having left it at Blackpool for a while, he then said to the RAF, ‘You can have it as a gate guardian at Scampton providing you’ll remove it to Scampton and possibly refurbish it before it goes on the gate’. So he was responsible for it being on the gate, until it was eventually he decided to get rid of it, and the Pantons, who’d, who’d bid for it in the early stages and hadn’t bid enough, they then bought it. So it then moved to East Kirkby. Now we come to some dams people. We have Geoff Rice, Basil Fenera, Jack Buckley, they were all people that had survived the dam’s raid. I met them at Scampton and I’m not sure which one, but he had he showed me his car ignition key with a chain, a little bit of chainy stuff on it, and on it was a thing that I could say was something like that you bleed the air out of a radiator. A little key. And when they came back from the dams raid, he walked around under the aircraft and that was dangling on a lanyard and this was the key that was pulled out of the bomb when it fell off, the spinning bomb, when it fell off to make it live and as it fell away from the aircraft, it was only when that was pulled out that it became live, and he’d seen that and he just took it off and put it in his pocket, and he’d now got it on his [unclear]. I often wonder what happened to that. If somebody realised what they’d got and maybe threw it away when it was — [pause]. Underneath that, we have Ken Sneller, who I’ve remarked about before. He was the Lancaster captain when it was at Coltishall before Jacko took over. He’s put Lancaster, he’s put Lancaster captain PA474. November 1974. I’ve got Mary Stopes Roe, daughter of Barnes Wallis signed there. Somebody Smith, that could be anybody couldn’t it? I’m not sure who he is. Somebody Johnson or something. BE Johnson. HI Cousins. There’s a famous name which Dan’s looking as if he’s never heard of. Air Commodore Cousins as he was, part of the Sneider Trophy outfit. But he was, I’m not quite sure of his role, but he made a lot of, he scrounged colour film from the Americans to make a educational, not an educational — a thing to educate the RAF up and coming aircrew as to how to go about things. And the film that was slowly cobbled together, was issued on DVD and is still available today. It’s called, “Night Bombers”. You see all those Lancasters taking off from Hemswell in a row, he was responsible for that film. I did say, I said to him, there was one particular shot if people have seen that film, where they, they’ve got a Lancaster and the camera runs from the navigator, whatever, behind the pilot and it trundles through to the pilot and it moves up and down the fuselage, and I said to him, ‘How did you get that?’ And he said, ‘Oh it’s quite simple Stuart. We just took a Lancaster and carved it in half’. So they cut a Lanc down the middle and then they put, sat the man in his seat as he would be in his half and then they filmed that. And that was, that was something else. The BB — sorry — the BBC — our government didn’t have any colour film in those days, and he had to scrounge it from the Americans he said. But some of the films that were shot by him at that time were quite unique. Like Fido, lighting Fido. At that, Fido was something that hadn’t really been heard of, but Fido was the fog dispersal, whatever it was called. It was the way by burning petrol down the side of the runway to clear fog. That was the theory, but what it cost in miles per gallon I hate to think. Looking down, oh here’s one, Barnes Wallis. Barnes Wallis. Next to him, we’ve got Jacko Jackson had signed it. Below him, we’ve got one of the forces sweethearts of those days, Anne Shelton. Next to Anne Shelton, we’ve got Michael Redgrave, the actor who played Barnes Wallis in the film, so I’ve got Barnes Wallis and Michael Redgrave close together. Below Michael Redgrave, I’ve got Richard Todd who I became very friendly with. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get Guy Gibson because he was wasn’t around to sign. Pat Daniels, he was quite famous. 35 Squadron, 83 Squadron and 97 Squadron. He was — Pat Daniels I think was one of the Augsburg guys, again, I’m not, I can’t remember this. My memory’s fading a little. David Shepherd the artist has signed here, “After a memorable”, let me just get this, “After a memorable day of pure nostalgia in with PA474. Kind regards. November the 4th 1976. Coningsby”. That was the day then, David came and took photographs on which he based the painting that was, was his famous Lancaster painting, which you’ve, you’re people will have seen and I can claim that on that picture, you’ve got a fuel bowser trailer to the right — an oil bowser trailer to the right of the picture which I located for them. Belonged to a farmer, that he used to, he put diesel in it and he used it for tractors that were ploughing well away from roads and everything. And there was, what was it? A bomb trolley with no bombs on it, but the bomb trolley that I’d got collected up from a local scrapyard or some similar thing for that particular painting. But the, it was all done outside the BBMF hangar, which doesn’t appear on the actual painting because it’s, it’s David’s. The way he’s portrayed it. He wanted, I remember on the day, he wanted — he suddenly decided he wanted reflections, so they had to get the fire service. The Coningsby fire section had to attend and they had to pour gallons and gallons of water on the concrete below the Lanc and in front of it, so that he could get the reflection off the concrete of the bomber. That’s the sort of power you’ve got when you can draw out the fire service to do those sort of things. Turning the page again, well I’ve got best wishes from Brian Goulding. Good old Brian. I don’t know. The last time I heard of Brian, he wasn’t very good. Mike Garbutt his co-author has signed as well. We’ve got Johnny Johnson who’s become quite famous these days. “Best wishes Stuart”, that was John Pringle who was the engineering officer who was in charge of the refurbishment of NX611 when it went to Scampton. John Searby is another one, Air commodore, he was a master bomber on amongst the Pathfinders who put himself at risk. He was the master bomber on the raid on Peenemunde for instance, and many other big raids. I met him two or three times. Arthur Harris, Marshall of the Royal Air Force. He did sign for me when I was, when I got to speak with him down in London. Did I mention the meeting with Barnes Wallis? I was introduced to Barnes Wallis down at the RAF Museum and, ‘This is Mr Stephenson’, and he looked at me and bear in mind, he was ninety plus, and he said, ‘Oh I’m pleased to meet you. I’ve heard of you’, he said. And just imagine, how you meet somebody that — I mean Barnes Wallis to me, with his designs of the bombs, going up to the Swallow, his supersonic aircraft —to have him say that was just — took my breath and I couldn’t, I was lost for speech, which is unusual for me as you maybe notice. And I said, ‘Well how on earth could you have heard of me?’ And he followed that up with an even more strange thing. He said, ‘Not only have I heard of you, Mr Stephenson, I owe you a debt of gratitude’, and I thought, I don’t know what this is going to come out as but I shall going to dine out on this one forever, because this is, this is God talking to me in person almost. So I said, ‘Well you’ve got me on two. How on earth can you have heard of me and how on earth do you owe me a debt of gratitude?’ He said, ‘Well’, he said, ‘You’re the fellow who got that deflection can made so they could put the mid-upper turret on the Lancaster, aren’t you?’ I said, ‘Yes. Yes. You’re right’, he said, ‘Well the debt of gratitude is A) that you got it done and B) that if you hadn’t got it done, they told me they were going to ask me to organise it’. I said, ‘I didn’t realise I was in competition Sir Barnes, otherwise I would maybe have surrendered’. He said, ‘Good job you didn’t because all the people that I know in sheet metal work, unfortunately they are no longer any of them with us. I have no contact with anybody at all. So’, he said, ‘I would have been in real trouble if you hadn’t done it’. So that was a good one. Unlike Sir Arthur Harris, who I met on the same day who unfortunately, and I’m not exaggerating when I say he was a very difficult man to talk to, because he appeared to be somewhere else though I was talking to him. It was very difficult to try to make a conversation, a meaningful conversation with somebody when they don’t answer any questions, and they just say yes and no and as little, seems as little as possible. I must admit I was rather overtaken by, he was wearing his best blue, which with his ranks and decorations and things that he’d achieved over the years. I think he maybe had two best blues but this one must have been a spare or something, because I was trying to talk to him and try to keep this conversation going, which wasn’t really a conversation, and I was transfixed by his blue which had an assortment of holes all over it, onto which had his various badges and ribbons and stars and clusters and things were obviously meant to fit through the holes on his coat, and have little pins in the back to hold them in place, so that when he was dressed properly, he would have all this tin work on his chest and down but he didn’t. He hadn’t put them on or he’d put the wrong coat on when he came, and I thought he’s been attacked by a fleet of killer moths. That just came in my head and I’ve remembered that ever since. Sorry. Sorry Sir Arthur, that’s mean of me to say that. Right. We’re on to Searby down. Looking down the page, I’ve got Don Bennet who of course, Don Bennet was the leader of the Pathfinders and the AOC of the Pathfinders. Next to him, just underneath Bomber Harris, we’ve got Hamish Mahaddie, who was a broad Scot of course who was likewise famous in his own right as a Pathfinder I believe, but he was the guy that put all the aircraft together for the famous film The Battle of Britain, which was a major job that. Getting those vintage aircraft together to make that film. Underneath his name is one that I’ve just told you earlier on, the letter heads, Betty Nettleton has signed the book. Now hang on a minute. Hamish Mahaddie, I’ve done Don Bennett, I’ve said him, and the last one that page is Tony Iverson, 617 Squadron. Those are the front cover pages, but I think I should have to go through the book, but some of the pictures inside the book — there’s the odd one or two that’s maybe got the odd autograph on it, because it’s something they were connected with, but I should have to have a good search for that to find it, but I really must get a note made of all these signatures because you’ve had a look at them and you know how difficult it would be to interpret some of them, because I have a struggle to interpret them some of them — who they are — myself. But there’s enough names to keep somebody with google going for quite a while to sort out who they were. These, these are just the ones sometimes I’ve not had the book with me. I’ve met. I’ve met through business, as well as the Lancaster Association, quite a few of the German side of the fence and one of the interesting ones I met was Hajo Hermann or Hajo Hermann, who was the head of German night fighters. He was asked to form a group equivalent to the Kamikaze amongst the German night fighters towards the very end of the war, but that never got going. I guess they weren’t as, quite as fanatical as the Japanese. He was, he was, he told me a good story. Before the war, well before the war started, the 1930s, he was an officer in the Army would you believe, and he, he was with his soldiers and they were trawling through a swamp, he called me, he told me and lo and behold, there was two or three chaps came up on horses and they sat on their horses watching these fellows crawl through the sludge and muck and general mess, and they were covered in it and eventually one of these people on the horse said, ‘Did you enjoy doing that?’ Not in. I’m not going into “Allo. Allo” German but, ‘Do you enjoy doing that?’ And he said, ‘No’. He didn’t really — he could think of better things to do, and this gentleman said, ‘Well why don’t you join my Luftwaffe instead? We’re just reforming’, and it was Goering. So he, he said, ‘Oh yes. I’ll bear that in mind sir’, or something. Anyway, he went back and he thought well he was due for a change, he was fed up of these swamps, so he joined. He sought out Goering and reminded him and he said he’d be pleased to, and they became friends and he joined the Luftwaffe. He was involved in the war in Spain and then later, he bombed Hull would you believe, amongst other places. He was involved in the bombing of Norway, the Blitz in London, he was involved in the Mediterranean war. He told me a story. He was — they were tasked to attack ships in the harbour, a big harbour in Greece, the name’s gone from me at the moment and they were told they’d got to drop mines in the, in the harbour. That was the task and he said he didn’t want to drop mines, he wanted to drop a bomb. So he duly disobeyed orders and he took a bomb with his mine load, and when he came to dropping the bomb, he dropped it and there was a ship moored out in the, in the harbour. I’m sure the name is going to come back to me in a minute but it won’t at the moment. It hit this ship and the resultant explosion was enormous. Apparently, it was an ammunition ship that was waiting to be unloaded, and it was called the Clan Fraser I believe. He told me. It blew the windows out in Athens which was five or six miles away. A long way away anyway. It wiped out the airport, sorry the harbour, it wiped the harbour out, and as a result, it had a dire effect on British resistance, because it was our ammunition that they’d blown up. And his aircraft was very badly damaged and he coaxed it back to his home base, and was immediately got into trouble for disobeying orders, but when it was discovered what had happened, he got a medal. But he was the only officer in the Luftwaffe, he gained equivalent rank to group captain as I understand it, and he was the only one who could walk in to Goering’s office without an appointment. He could knock on the door and walk in and nobody else could do that. He was made the chief of night fighters amongst his other, because he’d been on bombers. He’d been involved with the invasion of, I think it was Salerno, or Anzio, I’m not sure. Anzio or Salerno when they first used the Fritz X wire guided, I think it was wire guided missile which was used to great success there, and he went to Goering and he said that he’d had this idea. They’d built, Blom and Voss had built some massive flying boats, which were already flying, and his idea was that they would use these flying boats, arm them with a whole load of these Fritz X missiles, which at the speed they fly, they could sort of climb out and reattach to the wings. They would fly out in to the Atlantic, find convoys and with these things they could play havoc in a convoy. They would pop ships off left, right and centre and that would, that would be a — these aircraft were comparatively cheap to make in comparison to the cost of a submarine and its crew. The, the expenditures would — for one submarine, they could maybe build a squadron of these flying boats and Goering thought it was a brilliant idea, and he’d go and see Doenitz. So he made an appointment and he went to see Doenitz. Goering made the appointment for him I think, and when he got there, he met Doenitz coming out of his headquarters, walking down the steps and he saluted him and he said who he was. ‘Oh, you’re the gentleman that has got this idea’. And he explained it all to him and he said that he felt that this would save an awful lot of people’s lives, on submarine crews, who were having a bit of a beating by this time, and it could maybe turn the war even, because we were relying so much on these ships bringing food and arms across the Atlantic, plus building up for D-day. And apparently, having listened to it all, Doenitz reaction was, ‘So you want to be my corporal do you?’ Or something, and he said, ‘I’ll think about it’, and he turned away and it never got thought of again, because Doenitz didn’t want to lose his position as commander of U-boats. Well that was Hermann. There was another guy who was shot down, a German pilot, fighter pilot who was shot down in the Battle of Britain, whose name again eludes me, but I think I’ve got a print that he signed for me. He was shot down and he came down unconscious and he landed on a road, and he was laid on a road, when he came to and there was a crowd of people around him, and he didn’t know whether he was in France or in Italy or where he was in the UK. So there was a guy tending to him, and the guy in German said, ‘Don’t move’, and started reassuring him that he was alright and he thought, I’m in Germany or I’m in France at least, and it turned out that the fellow that was looking after him was the son of, was it Gerald Henderson as it, who was the British ambassador in Berlin when war broke out, and the son was a doctor, who was British of course, and lived in this country and a million to one chance he, he looked after this German guy who was shot down. His daddy had been the ambassador in Berlin. So that was, that was a good one. There was Winkle Brown of course, I met him a few times. Cats-eyes Cunningham. Again these, these are not bomber names. There was the guy that flew Boxcar. It doesn’t mean a thing to you does that? This was the American that dropped the bomb, was it Hiroshima the second one? Or Nagasaki?
DE: Nagasaki was the second one.
SS: Yeah. Well Boxcar was the one that dropped the bombs. I met the pilot of that who was a very nice fella, and he told me this story that they’d had, they’d gone to one place and it was covered in mist and they couldn’t see the target, so they’d gone somewhere else and by the time they’d done what they had to do to get into position, dropped the bomb and then fly back they, they was virtually running out of fuel and they literally got back and they didn’t have enough fuel hardly to get off the main runway before it stopped. But that was — his aircraft was Boxcar. Which was, which was a good one. Jimmy Dell, there was another good name that I met several times. Jimmy Dell. Little fella. Jimmy Dell was, he was a test pilot for English Electric as it was. He test flew Lightnings in their early stages. He took over or he joined Roland Beamont who I’d met, to fly a TSR2. And TSR2 Beaumont, he was the lead, he was the chief test pilot. He was, our man was second. He — the promotion occurred and our man moved up to first position. They were, they were flying test flights from Boscombe with it. He — he was involved when it was flown from Boscombe up to Wharton. The TSR2 was flown up there to demonstrate it to the people that made it, to show how good it was, and they decided that he would fly it up over through the Welsh mountains, the TSR2, at low level. Jimmy would follow him in a Lightning as a chase plane, just in case there was anything went wrong because they were taking telemetry from it, which was in its early stages in those days. They set off and he followed. The TSR took off, he followed. He tried to follow him and he couldn’t stay with him. He had to climb up to — I don’t know — some big altitude to get because it was so much buffeting in those mountains that he couldn’t live with that. Apparently the TSR2 flew through it like butter through a knife you might say. It arrived at Wharton and had landed when Jimmy comes over with the Lightning, just caught up with him. That was a good story, but Jimmy again he told me they were, they were doing a test flight and they went in the morning, and the crew chief said, ‘We’ve got a snag. You can’t fly today I’m afraid, but come back after lunch’. So they said, ‘Right’. So him and the navigator guy that he had with him, they went off to a local pub and had a pub lunch and was playing bar billiards, and the landlord said, ‘It’s the budget day today. Do you mind if I put the radio on?’ And they said no, and they were playing, and they was making the announcements, and they announced the TSR2 was cancelled, so they grabbed their flying helmets and everything, got in their car, rushed back to the airfield, ‘Are you ready to go chief? We’re ready’. ‘Sorry. It’s all cancelled’, and they couldn’t believe, he couldn’t believe it was. They’d been told it had, was cancelled immediately apparently, so they went back to his office where he’d got all his records and everything, and his office had been ransacked. They’d took all the, all the, all the records that he’d kept of the test flying and observations, and everything on it had been taken away, leaving very little on the shelves, because that was his job as chief test pilot by that time of course. And he said it was, that was the worst day of his life. And again, he was such a nice fella. They went, they broke all the jigs and everything to make so if there was a change of government, it was Labour because Denis Healey was the man. He’d apparently said it wouldn’t be cancelled before the election to keep the unions on side, and then immediately when they were voted in, it was changed. Never forgive Denis Healey for that. Nor can I forgive Lord Louis Mountbatten, because apparently the Australians were up for buying TSR2, and Lord Louis Mountbatten bad mouthed it like crazy and they backed out, and that really helped its demise. But they’d even got to the stage that they’d got a firm making these big models of TSR2 for recruiting office windows, and they, they broke, they went into the factories where they were making these models and smashed them all up. They destroyed everything on it, and Jimmy was telling me all this and he’d got this big model, and I said, ‘Well hang on. You just told me they smashed them all up’. He said, ‘Years later this was presented to me’. It was, it had been separated from all the rest. It had a dustsheet or something over it and it survived and that was, that was that one. It came to his retirement — Jimmy, and it was his last day and there was a knock on his office door, and this fella came in with a box and some stuff in it, and he said he said Jimmy said, ‘Hello’, you know and the fella introduced himself and he said, ‘Look, I’m one of the guys that had to go in your office and extract all the paperwork on the TSR2’. He said, ‘We were instructed to take it to so and so and it was all to be burned. Shredded. Destroyed’, he said, ‘But I couldn’t do it all, so I’ve brought you this’. This is what — and he had a box full of stuff that he’d kept. Gone against orders. So Jimmy, he hasn’t said what he did with that, but I guess he gave it to some museum somewhere. But he’s not with us anymore unfortunately. He banged out of a Lightning aircraft and there’s a famous picture of a tractor in a field and a Lightning coming down nose down.
DE: I’ve seen it. Yeah.
SS: That’s Jimmy Dell banged out of that. Sorry, I’ve gone on again.
DE: That’s quite alright. That’s some wonderful stories. Been talking for over two hours and that’s two hours on the tape. There was more when it was on pause. So —
SS: Have you got any more?
DE: I’m just looking. I think we’re going to have to, going to have to call it a day there anyway, but I think we’ve covered most of the questions I’ve got written down.
SS: Yeah.
DE: Yeah. No. That’s absolutely wonderful. Thank you very much. Have you anything else that you’d like to add?
SS: Well no. Personally, I’ve done my bit to help Nicki. I’ve given her quite a lot of stuff from my own collections to sell, and I’ve arranged, before we knew that charities couldn’t give to charity, I made an arrangement with the chairman of LLA that I bought stock that was maybe worth a thousand or two for twenty five quid, which I presented then to Nicki. It cost me twenty-five quid but that’s that was my donation again. That went to the LLA to pay for these things, so that it wasn’t — can’t be logged as a gift, but we maybe needn’t have to bothered with that now, if that’s — it’s on the government website if I’ve read that correctly.
DE: Yeah. We’ll have to have a look at that.
SS: But we’ve got, we’ve got this booklet coming out on the Chadwick thing.
DE: Yes.
SS: And I told you about the university and the picture.
DE: Yes.
SS: If you, if you google Roy Chadwick and go on pictures, you’ll find there’s a picture of Roy, the Lanc and the Avro badge on a landscape type painting, which we’ve got permission to put on the, use in this book.
DE: From Manchester University.
SS: Yeah. And I would imagine that’s maybe going to be a good money spinner, because it will be a book that’s only going to cost five or six quid. I sent her an email back, thanking her so much. She’s not mentioned, I asked if there was any charge when I sent the question, if there’s any charge, please let me know. She’s not mentioned that so I sent her a message back, thank you so much for your help and we were just wondering if there was going to be a charge made for us to use this. I don’t suppose there will be though.
DE: Hopefully not. Hopefully not. Well thank you for the interview. Thank you for all you’ve done for the IBCC and the things that you’ve donated, donated for us to scan.
SS: I’m pleased to help Dan, and if I can do anything else to help while I’m mobile, I will.
DE: Smashing. Thank you very much. Right. I shall press stop.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Stuart Stephenson MBE
Creator
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Dan Ellin
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-03-15
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AStephensonS160315
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Coverage
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Second generation
Language
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eng
Format
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02:16:01 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Stuart was five when war broke out and recounts some of his early memories.
In the early 1970s the Lancaster PA474 was flown to RAF Waddington from RAF Henlow ostensibly to be a gate guardian. In 1973 the Lincolnshire Echo announced that it was to be moved to RAF Coltishall. A group gradually formed to oppose the move because of the Lancaster’s connections to Waddington; the Lincolnshire Lancaster Committee. A public meeting was held and the City Council agreed to adopt the Lancaster. The Lancaster moved to RAF Coltishall. The committee collected over 17,000 signatures in 15 weeks and eventually the Lancaster returned to RAF Coningsby.
The committee became Lincolnshire’s Lancaster Association so funds could be raised. While Stuart was Chair for c. 36 years, £½ million was donated to projects, including the digitisation of manuals.
Stuart describes how unfairly he felt Bomber Command and Sir Arthur Harris were treated.
Stuart lists a large number of people he has met, received letters or signatures from.
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Norfolk
England--Lincolnshire
Contributor
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Sally Coulter
Vivienne Tincombe
Bennett, Donald Clifford Tyndall (1910-1986)
bombing
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
Chadwick, Roy (1893-1947)
childhood in wartime
Goering, Hermann (1893-1946)
Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984)
Lancaster
perception of bombing war
petrol bowser
Portal, Charles (1893-1971)
RAF Coltishall
RAF Coningsby
RAF Waddington
service vehicle
Wallis, Barnes Neville (1887-1979)
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1368/23113/PThomasAF20050044.2.jpg
f8f40716b1e0d4efc903737be0c257e2
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Thomas, Arthur Froude. Album 4
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2020-02-11
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Thomas, AF
Description
An account of the resource
42 items. An album containing photographs of 149 Squadron aircraft and personnel as well as pictures taken in 1946 of some of the bomb damage to German cities.
Transcribed document
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
[photograph]
297 Squadron R.A.F. [indecipherable word] 1947.
[indecipherable word] L to R. P/O [indecipherable letters and name] D.F.C. D.F.M.
F/Lt. J. [indecipherable name], W/O Rowlands, F/O Price,
F/Lt [indecipherable name] D.F.C., F/Lt Downing,
P/O [indecipherable name], F/O [indecipherable name], F/Lt ?,
P/O Staves, P/O Powell, F/O [indecipherable name].
[page break]
[inserted] D/TELEGRAPH. 1/10/91 [/inserted]
Dresden protest over ‘Bomber’ statue
By Robin Gedye in Bonn and Jenny Rees
DRESDEN’S Lord Mayor appealed to the British Ambassador to Germany yesterday to press for the scrapping of plans to erect a statue in London of Sir Arthur “Bomber” Harris, who masterminded wartime air raids.
Officials in other German cities which suffered bomb damage have also protested at plans to put up the statue in the Strand next year.
A spokesman for the German Foreign Ministry said it had “no position” on the honouring of a man known in Germany as “Butcher Harris”, and did not wish to become involved.
Herr Herbert Wagner, Lord Mayor of Dresden, said the memorial did not belong in the Europe of 1992. “I do not wish to mitigate Germany’s war guilt, but Harris’s carpet bombing against civilians was not militarily justifiable.”
He said that on Sir Arthur’s orders, Dresden, Würzburg and Pforzheim, bombed in the last months of the war, were turned into “skeleton cities”, with the loss of 35,000 lives over two nights in Dresden, and 20,000 lives over several days in Pforzheim.
A campaign to lobby the British Embassy was started by the mayors of Würzburg and Pforzheim, who appealed in letters to Sir Christopher Mallaby, British Ambassador, to help stop the erection of the memorial “in the name of countless victims of bombing attacks against civilians”.
The £100,000 statue was commissioned by the Bomber Command Association, and the money raised by its members and those of the RAF Air Crew Association. It is to be unveiled by the Queen Mother next May and will stand opposite an existing statue of Lord Dowding, wartime commander of Fighter Command, outside the RAF Church, St Clement Danes.
Group Captain Ken Batchelor, 77, chairman of the Bomber Command Association, which has 7,500 members, said yesterday: “Quite frankly, why does Dresden think they were the only people bombed during the war? What about our own towns and cities, such as Coventry?
“It is sheer ignorance to suggest that this is honouring retaliation. We are not erecting this statue to glorify war, for the members of our association are the ones who never want to see war again.
“It was not a question of retaliation. The Ruhr was full of armaments and industry from one end to another, and we had to bomb urban areas, with Dresden as the focal point, to destroy the German war potential. We were fighting for our survival.”
Gp Capt Batchelor said the erection of a statue of Sir Arthur was “long overdue”. It was intended to be a memorial to the 55,000 air crew of Bomber Command who died.
He added: “We regarded Sir Arthur as a forthright commander, who was carrying out the orders of the British War Cabinet. We want this memorial to him because the post-war government denied him his peerage, and we were denied our campaign medal.”
[Photograph]
Sir Arthur: Germans called him ‘Butcher’
[New article]
“General Sir Arthur Harris”
Dear Sir, 6th April 1982
I would like to say what should have been said many years ago. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for giving me courage and hope after we had suffered the devastation of the ‘May Blitz. Bombed out, no light or water in the house, windows broken, shelter useless, our family evacuated to Blackpool but there was no telephone out of Liverpool, no postal service and no direct railways working. We went to the Cinema and heard you on the newsreel giving your sympathy and promising that what we had had would be as a little zephyr to that which you would inflict on the enemy. The tears rained down my face and my despair vanished, I said to my husband, at least someone cares. After that my courage never flagged. Mr. Churchill’s blood, sweat and tears didn’t affect me, but your words I have never forgotten although I am now 83 and my husband 84. Thank you once again.
E. A. McKnight (Mrs.) Great Crosby.”
Ed: Such was the boost to civilian morale in the darker, hopeless days of war.
[New article]
[inserted] DAILY TELEGRAPH. 2/10/91 [/inserted]
Remembering Bomber H
THE PLAN to erect a statue of Sir Arthur “Bomber” Harris, wartime C-in-C of Bomber Command, outside the RAF church of St Clement Danes in the Strand has incurred the wrath of the Lord Mayor of Dresden, who has appealed for the project to be abandoned. Herr Herbert Wagner’s view may command some sympathy even in Britain, among those who today regard the RAF’s strategic bombing offensive against Germany as a serious blunder or even a war crime. Yet it would be ironic if Sir Arthur, by any standards a notable wartime commander, were to be denied a public memorial, while Whitehall, for instance, remains dominated by equestrian statues of Earl Haig and that 19th-century military booby the Duke of Cambridge.
Sir Arthur was not the architect of “area” bombing. Churchill, Lord Cherwell, Sir Charles Portal and others embarked upon the air offensive when Britain possessed no other means of carrying the war to Germany. Sir Arthur was appointed to execute the policy, and did so with extraordinary, even obsessive, single-mindedness. If his superiors judged that he exceeded his orders, it was in their power, and was indeed their duty, to remove him. This was never done.
Although Dresden featured prominently on Sir Arthur’s target lists in February 1945, it was Churchill, rather than Bomber Command’s C-in-C, whose concern to impress the Russians before Yalta precipitated the devastating attack.
Just as killing British civilians in the Blitz did not break Britain’s will to fight, so killing or “de-housing” far larger numbers of German civilians did not break that of Germany. But it is not good enough, half a century later, to seek to equate, for example, the mass murders in Germany’s concentration camps with the RAF’s bombing of Germany. There was no doubt then, and there remains none today, of the strategic military purpose that underpinned the bomber offensive, however uncertain its achievement.
Sir Arthur was tough, even ruthless; but also a formidable leader of great forces. He passionately believed that his men’s efforts were bringing Germany to defeat. He deserves to be commemorated, not least for the satisfaction of his surviving aircrew, who revere his memory, and whose courage and sacrifice were beyond praise. The Lord Mayor of Dresden may be forgiven for uttering sentiments that might be expected of his office. But he should not be heeded.
[New article]
[inserted] 2/10/91 [/inserted] Bombing was justified
SIR – While appreciating the feelings that have prompted the Lord Mayor of Dresden to call for the plans for a statue of Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris to be dropped (report, Oct. 1), I am afraid that he does not realise the context in which the bombing offensive was launched.
The decision was a political one made by the War Cabinet and backed by the Americans. Without it there would have been no re-entry into Europe in 1944.
Back in 1940 Europe was conquered. The British Army had been defeated. The Royal Navy could only just keep the crucial Atlantic lifeline open; it could not conceivably blockade Germany which, with access to all the raw materials he wanted, Hitler was building into an impregnable fortress. The war had to be carried to Germany, and the bomber was the only means available.
As a result of the vast quantity of resources and manpower diverted to the defence of Germany – 900,000 men for searchlights and ack-ack alone – it acted as the equivalent of a second front from 1941. Most important of all, together with the U.S. 8th Air Force, the bomber offensive forced the Luftwaffe to come up and fight – leading to its final defeat.
When the Normandy invasion began, there was not one German aircraft over the beach. Had their bombers been there, I doubt it would have succeeded.
Of the 55 million lives lost in the war, 35 million were those of civilians. The bomber offensive accounted for about 500,000. Every day that the war lasted, an average of 10,000 innocent men, women and children were exterminated by Hitler in his concentration camps; and as it progressed, that extermination programme accelerated, a very different story from Dunkirk.
Inevitably, in a life and death struggle of such magnitude, mistakes are made. One of them, in my view, was Dresden. But it was a mistake made in good faith, because it was based on intelligence reports, some of which proved to be false. The city lay only 50 miles from the advancing Russians, who had asked for maximum bombing along the whole line.
At the same time the appearance of the German jet Me.262 signalled to us that the tide of the air war could be turned if it were produced in large numbers, and brought an added sense of urgency to finish the war as quickly as possible, in Germany’s true interests as well as that of the Allies. Had we not returned to Europe in June 1944, I shudder to think what would have been.
All the same, everyone in Bomber Command regrets the mistakes and wishes, to this day, that some other means of prising open Fortress Europe could have been found.
Group Captain the Lord CHESHIRE
London SW1
[inserted] D/TELEGRAPH [/inserted]
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
Four Newspaper cuttings
Description
An account of the resource
Item 1 refers to a protest from Dresden over a statue to Sir Arthur Harris.
Item 2 is a letter thanking Sir Arthur Harris from a couple bombed out of their home in Liverpool.
Item 3 is an article titled 'Remembering Bomber H'.
Item 4 is a letter from Group Captain Lord Cheshire arguing the bombing was justified.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Daily Telegraph
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1991-10
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Four newspaper cuttings on an album page
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
PThomasAF20050044
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
United States Army Air Force
Wehrmacht. Luftwaffe
British Army
Royal Navy
Royal Air Force. Fighter Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany--Dresden
Ukraine--I︠A︡lta
Great Britain
England--Liverpool
England--Coventry
Germany
Ukraine
England--Lancashire
England--Warwickshire
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1991-10
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
David Bloomfield
Anne-Marie Watson
bombing
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
Cheshire, Geoffrey Leonard (1917-1992)
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984)
perception of bombing war
Portal, Charles (1893-1971)
searchlight
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/86/775/E[Author]BeltonSLS400724-020001.jpg
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/86/775/E[Author]BeltonSLS400724-020002.jpg
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Belton, Spencer Lewis
Spencer Lewis Belton
Spencer Lewis Smith Belton
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. 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
Belton, SLS
Description
An account of the resource
34 items. Photographs, correspondence and newspaper clippings concerning Sergeant Spencer Lewis Belton (1919 - 1940, 581261 Royal Air Force). Spencer Lewis Belton flew as an observer/ bomb aimer with 144 Squadron from RAF Hemswell. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Medal after an operation to Wilhelmshaven in July 1940 and was interviewed about it by the British Broadcasting Corporation. He was killed 10/11 August 1940 when his Hampden P4368 crashed in the Netherlands, during an operation to Homberg. <br /><br />Additional information on Spencer Lewis Belton is available via the <a href="https://losses.internationalbcc.co.uk/loss/101634/">IBCC Losses Database.</a><br /><br />The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Denise Carr and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-11-20
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
Postagram from Charles Portal congratulating Spencer Lewis Belton on Distinguished Flying Medal
Subject
The topic of the resource
World War (1939-1945)
Great Britain. Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Postagram from Charles Portal to Sergeant Spencer Lewis Belton RAF Hemswell congratulating on Distinguished Flying Medal.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1940-07-24
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940-07
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Charles Portal
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One postagram with envelope
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Correspondence
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
E[Author]BeltonSLS400731-01
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
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.
144 Squadron
Distinguished Flying Medal
Portal, Charles (1893-1971)
RAF Hemswell
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/144/1389/PPOConnellDA16010035.1.jpg
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/144/1389/PPOConnellDA16010036.1.jpg
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
O'Connell, Desmond
D A O'Connell
Des O'Connell
Description
An account of the resource
32 items. The collection relates to Flying Officer Desmond Anthony O’Connell (b. 1919, 754811 199137). He was badly burned when his 502 Squadron Whitley crashed in Northern Ireland and he became a patient of Archibald McIndoe and a member of the Guinea Pig club. The collection contains an oral history interview, two telegrams, four religious cards and Royal Canadian Air Force photographs taken at a formal the inaugural Guinea Pig Club dinner. Guests at the dinner include Charles Portal, Archibald McIndoe, Harold Whittingham, Alec Coryton and Albert Ross Tilley. The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Desmond O'Connell and catalogued by IBCC staff.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-08-09
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Archibald McIndoe addressing the dinner guests
HQ1545
Archie
Description
An account of the resource
Archibald McIndoe standing and speaking. The top table guests are seated. In the foreground are the backs of several airmen seated on one of the long tables. Captioned 'HQ1545' and on the reverse 'Archie'.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One b/w photograph
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PPOConnellDA16010035
PPOConnellDA16010036
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 Canadian Air Force
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Sussex
England--East Grinstead
Is Part Of
A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included.
O'Connell, Desmond. Guinea Pig Club Inaugural Dinner
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Canada. Royal Canadian Air Force
Guinea Pig Club
McIndoe, Archibald (1900-1960)
Portal, Charles (1893-1971)
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/144/1386/PPOConnellDA16010030.2.jpg
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/144/1386/PPOConnellDA16010031.1.jpg
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
O'Connell, Desmond
D A O'Connell
Des O'Connell
Description
An account of the resource
32 items. The collection relates to Flying Officer Desmond Anthony O’Connell (b. 1919, 754811 199137). He was badly burned when his 502 Squadron Whitley crashed in Northern Ireland and he became a patient of Archibald McIndoe and a member of the Guinea Pig club. The collection contains an oral history interview, two telegrams, four religious cards and Royal Canadian Air Force photographs taken at a formal the inaugural Guinea Pig Club dinner. Guests at the dinner include Charles Portal, Archibald McIndoe, Harold Whittingham, Alec Coryton and Albert Ross Tilley. The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Desmond O'Connell and catalogued by IBCC staff.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-08-09
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Charles Portal addressing the dinner guests
HQ1531
Lord Portal
Description
An account of the resource
Sir Charles Portal speaking, on his left Archibald McIndoe and Sir Alec Coryton. On his right an unnamed civilian. Captioned 'HQ1531' and on the reverse 'Lord Portal'.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One b/w photograph
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PPOConnellDA16010030
PPOConnellDA16010031
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 Canadian Air Force
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Sussex
England--East Grinstead
Is Part Of
A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included.
O'Connell, Desmond. Guinea Pig Club Inaugural Dinner
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Canada. Royal Canadian Air Force
Guinea Pig Club
McIndoe, Archibald (1900-1960)
Portal, Charles (1893-1971)
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/144/1384/PPOConnellDA16010027.1.jpg
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/144/1384/PPOConnellDA16010028.1.jpg
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
O'Connell, Desmond
D A O'Connell
Des O'Connell
Description
An account of the resource
32 items. The collection relates to Flying Officer Desmond Anthony O’Connell (b. 1919, 754811 199137). He was badly burned when his 502 Squadron Whitley crashed in Northern Ireland and he became a patient of Archibald McIndoe and a member of the Guinea Pig club. The collection contains an oral history interview, two telegrams, four religious cards and Royal Canadian Air Force photographs taken at a formal the inaugural Guinea Pig Club dinner. Guests at the dinner include Charles Portal, Archibald McIndoe, Harold Whittingham, Alec Coryton and Albert Ross Tilley. The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Desmond O'Connell and catalogued by IBCC staff.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-08-09
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Alec Coryton's speech
HQ1523
Mac Lord Portal
Description
An account of the resource
Sir Alec Coryton delivering a speech with Sir Charles Portal, Archibald McIndoe and Wing Commander Albert Ross Tilley seated at the top table. Captioned 'HQ1523' and on the reverse 'Mac Lord Portal'.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One b/w photograph
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PPOConnellDA16010027
PPOConnellDA16010028
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
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 Canadian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Sussex
England--East Grinstead
Is Part Of
A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included.
O'Connell, Desmond. Guinea Pig Club Inaugural Dinner
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Canada. Royal Canadian Air Force
Guinea Pig Club
McIndoe, Archibald (1900-1960)
Portal, Charles (1893-1971)
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/144/1383/PPOConnellDA16010025.1.jpg
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/144/1383/PPOConnellDA16010026.1.jpg
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
O'Connell, Desmond
D A O'Connell
Des O'Connell
Description
An account of the resource
32 items. The collection relates to Flying Officer Desmond Anthony O’Connell (b. 1919, 754811 199137). He was badly burned when his 502 Squadron Whitley crashed in Northern Ireland and he became a patient of Archibald McIndoe and a member of the Guinea Pig club. The collection contains an oral history interview, two telegrams, four religious cards and Royal Canadian Air Force photographs taken at a formal the inaugural Guinea Pig Club dinner. Guests at the dinner include Charles Portal, Archibald McIndoe, Harold Whittingham, Alec Coryton and Albert Ross Tilley. The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Desmond O'Connell and catalogued by IBCC staff.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-08-09
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Alec Coryton, Archibald McIndoe and Albert Ross Tilley
Description
An account of the resource
Archibald McIndoe and two airmen seated with Sir Alec Coryton standing giving a speech. Captioned 'HQ1522' and on the reverse 'McInoe [sic] Ross Tilley (RCAF)'.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One b/w photograph
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PPOConnellDA16010025
PPOConnellDA16010026
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 Canadian Air Force
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Sussex
England--East Grinstead
Is Part Of
A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included.
O'Connell, Desmond. Guinea Pig Club Inaugural Dinner
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Canada. Royal Canadian Air Force
Guinea Pig Club
McIndoe, Archibald (1900-1960)
Portal, Charles (1893-1971)
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/144/1382/PPOConnellDA16010023.2.jpg
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/144/1382/PPOConnellDA16010024.2.jpg
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
O'Connell, Desmond
D A O'Connell
Des O'Connell
Description
An account of the resource
32 items. The collection relates to Flying Officer Desmond Anthony O’Connell (b. 1919, 754811 199137). He was badly burned when his 502 Squadron Whitley crashed in Northern Ireland and he became a patient of Archibald McIndoe and a member of the Guinea Pig club. The collection contains an oral history interview, two telegrams, four religious cards and Royal Canadian Air Force photographs taken at a formal the inaugural Guinea Pig Club dinner. Guests at the dinner include Charles Portal, Archibald McIndoe, Harold Whittingham, Alec Coryton and Albert Ross Tilley. The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Desmond O'Connell and catalogued by IBCC staff.
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Date
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2016-08-09
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IBCC Digital Archive
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Archibald McIndoe and Charles Portal seated at top table
Description
An account of the resource
Sir Charles Portal, consultant plastic surgeon Archibald McIndoe, Air Chief Marshal Sir Alec Coryton, Wing Commander Albert Ross Tiller RCAF (plastic surgeon) seated on the top table. Captioned 'HQ1526' and on the reverse 'Portal'.
Format
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One b/w photograph
Identifier
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PPOConnellDA16010023
PPOConnellDA16010024
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Canadian Air Force
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Photograph
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Sussex
England--East Grinstead
Is Part Of
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O'Connell, Desmond. Guinea Pig Club Inaugural Dinner
Creator
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Canada. Royal Canadian Air Force
Guinea Pig Club
McIndoe, Archibald (1900-1960)
Portal, Charles (1893-1971)
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/888/11127/AHughesWH151021.1.mp3
33613f53da69484a983e122f2ed1e463
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Hughes, Harry
William Henry Hughes
W H Hughes
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Flight Lieutenant Harry Hughes DFC DFM (- 2023, 159079 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a navigator with 102 Squadron and then with a Mosquito Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-09-21
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Hughes, WH
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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HH: It’s all in the book, I think, mainly, isn’t it?
AS: Most of it is, but we need to get it on tape. I think. This is an interview with Harry Hughes, flight lieutenant Harry Hughes DFC DFM, a navigator in wartime Bomber Command on 102 Squadron and then later on Mosquitos. My name is Adam Sutch and the interview is being conducted at Harry’s home in St Ives. Harry, thank you ever so much for agreeing to this interview. Perhaps we can start by going over a little your early days. I believe, you were born in Dorset.
HH: Yeah.
AS: Okay. Did you have brothers and sisters?
HH: A sister, yeah. But I went to school in Sherborne, the Grammar School in Sherborne not the big school, not the public school. And, it was a good school but there we are, I think it was a good school anyway but they’ve, in their wisdom they’ve closed it down now and they amalgamated with the Lord Digby school, ‘cause the Lord Digby school is gonna cost too much to repair or something and I think some builder wanted to get hold of their building anyway and make flats out of it. You know, usual thing.
AS: Yeah. How did you get on at school? What were your subjects? What did you do well at in school?
HH: Mainly in maths. I got a distinction in Maths and a distinction in Physics and Chemistry. Otherwise I got all passes except English language in which I got, I didn’t fail, I got a pass, just got a pass so I didn’t get my ‘tric. Did so⸻
AS: Sorry.
HH: Anyway that’s beside the point. Anyway I left there in 1940 and my very first job was a night watchman for some lady at Lewisham Manor near Sherborne, who lost all her staff and she wanted somebody to be in the house at night and to patrol the grounds. While I went round the grounds once, no, never again, it was too bloody scary [laughs].
AS: Things that go bump in the night.
HH: Yeah, there was hooting and things [laughs]. Anyway that’s beside the point.
AS: But this was 1940. Was this, was the Battle of Britain going on over your head or had that finished?
HH: Yes, yeah.
AS: What, was that what pushed you towards the air force or?
HH: No. Well, I think. Well, what pushed me towards the air force was the fact that I went, my father wanted me to join the navy and I, I went down to Portsmouth to sit an exam to be a writer or a supply probationer [unclear] his own clerk, and I didn’t fancy that, but anyway they gave you twelve blocks of pounds, shillings and pence to add up that way and then you had to add up that way and then you had to add them all up across and then the figure you got down here and the figure you got down here should have been the same. Mine was nowhere near. Anyway.
AS: But your maths were good so, you threw it really, didn’t you?
HH: Pardon?
AS: Did you deliberately mess up, because your maths were good.
HH: Yeah. Yes, I know, but not the accountancy type [laughs]. Anyway, we then, coming back on the train, I was pretty certain I’d failed, so, coming back on the train, I had to change at Salisbury and I had about an hour to waste, wait at Salisbury so I went in the town and I saw an RAF recruiting office. So I went in there and saw a sergeant there and I signed on for aircrew.
AS: Just like that?
HH: Yeah. And they took me on as a pilot or navigator and then I had to go to Oxford for attestation and I went there and with all the gunners from South Wales and what have you became gunners rather, from the mines, you know, and so that’s how I came to be in the air force.
AS: Okay. Did you go through the aircrew recruiting centres in London at Lord’s and?
HH: Yes, I was the first one there.
AS: Really?
HH: Very first one to go there, I think. In July ‘41, I suppose, yeah.
AS: That’s pretty early. What, what happened then? They’ve taken you into the air force at that stage, I suppose, you didn’t know what you were going to do.
HH: Well, we went to ITW and⸻
AS: Where was that?
HH: Down Torquay, which is very nice and, I’ve got my bloody reading glasses on, no wonder I can’t see, and then I was sent down to America to train.
AS: Okay.
HH: In the United States Air Force.
AS: Straight from Initial Training Wing.
HH: Yes. Straight from ITW. We didn’t get a chance. Later on they used to, they did a little course on Tiger Moths up on somewhere in the world, somewhere up that way.
AS: So, you hadn’t actually flown in an aircraft when you went to.
HH: No.
AS: How did you, obviously they wouldn’t fly you over, but how did you get across the Atlantic, in a convoy or?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Okay. What was that called?
HH: I went out on a ship called the Highland Princess, which I ended up selling. I sold the Highland Princess, the Highland Brigade and the Highland Monarch.
AS: Presumably not during the war when you got there.
HH: No. Four of them, I sold them in about ’51, or ’52, something like that
AS: Okay. So, you’re going across the Atlantic in convoy. Was the ship crowded? What was the conditions like?
HH: Well, we were in hammocks, you know, on meat hooks in the, you hung your hammock on meat hooks in the lower hold, you know?
AS: Gosh.
HH: And we are right up on the stern of the ship because every time the, I think she was twin screwer if I remember rightly, because every time the ship rolled the prop shoot [mimics a sound] [laughs].
AS: Is that the prop coming out of the water?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Gosh! Gosh, and so, there must have been hundreds of men on the ship with you.
HH: Yeah.
AS: All [unclear]
HH: The one thing you found out, you had to hang on to your four and a half hat because one went missing, what did he do? Go and pinch another one. So, it went all round the ship [laughs]. [unclear]
AS: Like measles, isn’t it? Yes, yeah, absolutely.
HH: Yeah, I remember that so, I hid mine, anyway.
AS: So, you went across in uniform with
HH: Yeah.
AS: Hundreds of other people.
HH: No, when we got to, we were being issued with, at Wilmslow I think it was in Cheshire, we’d been issued with a grey flannel suit to wear in America, ‘cause we all had to go down grey worsted suits, you know.
AS: Ah, ‘cause America wasn’t in the war then.
HH: ‘Cause they weren’t in the war then, yeah.
AS: Right.
HH: So, and so we went down to Maxwell Field in Alabama first of all for acclimatization.
AS: Wait, where did the ship come in?
HH: Halifax.
AS: Oh, so you landed in Canada.
HH: Went to Canada first, yeah.
AS: Okay.
HH: And then, I think, yes I think we were there, we were trained down to Toronto, I think, and then we went from Toronto down to Alabama, to Maxwell Field, to Montgomery, Alabama.
AS: Okay. Was the whole journey really well organised⸻
HH: Oh yeah.
AS: Or was is the usual service mess up?
HH: No.
AS: No. It was good?
HH: It was good, yeah, everything seemed to go to plan I think, pretty well.
AS: How were you received at Montgomery, at Maxwell Air Force base?
HH: Oh, pretty well. In fact, the very first Sunday we were there, first weekend we were there, the American officer came round and, when we were having lunch, and he said, there’s a fair in town at the moment and they’ve heard that you boys are here, so we’d like you, they’d like you to come along and be their guest. So we thought we were going there but no, it was a scam, we were all scammed out of our money. Yeah, so we woke up in the morning, everybody had lost all their money, it was a real American type scam you know and I saw a coach loading up with American service people all in uniform. So I said, ‘Where is this coach going?’ ‘Oh’, he said, one of them said, ‘We are going to a little village called Prattville just outside of Montgomery and we’re going to church and if we’re lucky we will get invited out for lunch afterwards.’ So, I said, ‘Can we come along?’ Then the three of us got on board anyway. And we went in and sang all the hymns [laughs] and, real gospel stuff too it was, yeah.
AS: Deep South, isn’t it?
HH: You know, happy happy-clappy type of fellows, kind of stuff, you know, and anyway afterwards all the American were all invited out to lunch and we were there, standing there, wondering what the hell to do, because it was a long walk back to Maxwell from Prattville ‘bout twelve miles I should think and then suddenly this lovely blonde comes up, she says, ‘You all from Maxwell?’ I said, ‘Yeah, as a matter of fact, we are.’ ‘Oh’, she says, ‘Matter of fact what sort of language is that?’ she says. ‘Well’, I says, ‘Well, you probably wouldn’t understand but we are English’ [laughs]. ‘Oh’, she says, ‘English, you are English?’ And she rushed around and she got all the Americans to cancel so that we were all invited to and she was a daughter of a, she collared me anyway and the other two were taken off somewhere else, I don’t know where. And then, we had lunch and her father was the local judge and he said afterwards, after we had lunch, he said, ‘I guess you would like to take my daughter out for a drive, would you? We gotta a nice Buick in the back. Buick with a steering column for your change’ and I didn’t even have a licence [unclear] never mind [laughs]. Never mind, and I got in anyway and I drove her out, bit of snogging and came back. And that was that and I never saw her again, she, I heard later she married an American navy pilot, who got killed in the Pacific. Yeah. So I could have followed it up if I wanted to but I didn’t but by that time I was back in Canada anyway.
AS: So when did the serious business of learning to fly start and how did that go?
HH: Pardon?
AS: When did the serious business of learning to fly start and how did that go?
HH: Well, when I go to, we went down to, we were posted from Maxwell Field down to Albany in Georgia to an aerodrome called Darr Aero Tech, that was the owner of the aerodrome, I think, Darr Aero Tech. And it’s still there, I was there not long ago. And so, I suddenly had to do a flight commander’s check and he decided, he decided to wash me out so I went back up to Canada and trained as a navigator.
AS: On the flying piece, how much flying did you do? Do you think it was fair that you got washed out?
HH: No.
AS: How did that come about?
HH: Well, they wanted, they, the Air Ministry wanted as many people washed out as possible who could train as navigators, bomb aimers and gunners and what have you. They weren’t too short of gunners but they.
AS: I believe you had an instructor with a German sounding name.
HH: Oh yeah. Schmidt.
AS: Schmidt.
HH: Yeah, that was a joke really. That was in the book, wasn’t it? Yeah.
AS: So maybe he sabotaged your flying career, your piloting career. So, I presume that a lot of people were washed out at this stage.
HH: They were, but [unclear] was never washed out.
AS: Wow.
HH: Over eighty percent. I know it was a whole lot of us came back. And on Pearl Harbour, the day of Pearl Harbour we were giving an exhibition rugby match in the town. And suddenly over the tannoy came an announcement that Pearl Harbour had been attacked by the Japanese and so everybody went home, they all packed up and went home. So we went home as well. And that night, I had a place I used to get under the wire and go into town at night, you know [laughs] and when I came back to get under the wire there was a man there with a gun [laughs]. And he was trying to shoot me because he thought I was a Japanese. He said, look mate, I don’t like your look, you look like a bloody Japanese [laughs].
AS: Did you go out of through the gate after that?
HH: No. Well, I didn’t bother after that.
AS: So.
HH: I went back, well, the following day we were on the train to go back up to Canada.
AS: Is that quick?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Flight commander’s test and then pack your kit and off you go.
HH: About for, about a week later I suppose I was back, I was on the train going back up to Canada. And it’s quite an experience travelling by train out in America, isn’t it? In those days with the dining cars and everything, and the bars and but we had to change, we were on what was called the Chattanooga Choo Choo, but going the wrong way [laughs]. We were going there, were going north but the Chattanooga Choo Choo goes, comes south, doesn’t it? But we were on that line anyway. And I remember we stopped off in Boston and we had a bit of a wait there so we decided to go into town, we never did see Boston because we got on the way into town, we got attacked by these Irish Americans.
AS: For being British?
HH: We had taken them into the war.
AS: Okay.
HH: It’s our fault but [laughs]. And they were at war now. And they’d be getting called up and be killed. And then anyway we got away with that alright.
AS: You were physically attacked?
HH: Yeah, yeah. They had knives and God knows what. They weren’t very nice people. Anyway, I say Irish American but I imagine they were Irish Americans, being in Boston, wouldn’t you?
AS: Big population there, isn’t it?
HH: So, then I went to Trenton where I was interviewed by a group captain and he was Raymond Mass‘s brother.
AS: God lord, Raymond Mass of the Agfa?
HH: Yeah. It was his brother. He looked just like him too. Yeah. And.
AS: Was that a sympathetic interview?
HH: Yes, yeah.
AS: You wanted to be a pilot and then suddenly that stopped. Was the system generally sympathetic to you?
HH: Oh yes. So they were quite keen to take me on as a navigator. And so then I went from there to Quebec City, L’Ancienne-Lorette. And from there up to Rivers in Manitoba. Which was a dry town, that was, Prohibition there.
AS: Oh dear. Good lord.
HH: Yeah.
AS: Were you in uniform by this time? RAF uniform?
HH: Yeah. Wearing a Canadian uniform in fact [laughs]. They issued us with a Canadian uniform, which were quite smart actually. And they were very similar to ours but the cloth is a little kinder, shall we say?
AS: So, you’re in Prohibition and you went out, presumably looking for a drink, do you?
HH: Well, we knew that Mont-Joli was dry but there was a little, there was a port just down the river called Rimouski, which was a timber port mainly. I remember when I took my Institute of Chartered Shipbrokers exams, one of the questions was, could you explain what were the, how many and what sort of cargo was exported from Rimouski, well everybody else thought it was in Russia, didn’t’ they? [laughs]
AS: But you had a clear mental picture.
HH: Yeah, I’ve seen it. Anyway, we were trying to, we were drinking some, we went to a bar and we were drinking this clear liquid, we had asked for whiskey but they served us up with this clear whiskey, clear liquid and when we were coming back in a taxi we were, we’d had about two each of these, we were all very sick we had to stop the taxi we were really sick and we saw afterwards that [unclear] don’t drink anything that is given to you because there is a stuff called alcool which is made from wood alcohol and it’s can make you blind.
AS: It’s like drinking anti-freeze, isn’t it?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Gosh, lucky escape!
HH: And so that was that. So then from Mont-Joli we went to the staff end course at Rivers in Manitoba which was astronavigation, advanced navigations course it was.
AS: What was the basic navigation course? What was your basic navigation training like? Was it mostly classroom or?
HH: A lot of in the air.
AS: What were you flying in?
HH: Ansons. Yeah. Mark 1 Ansons you had to wind up the undercarriage, you remember?
AS: Yeah. Did you take to it easily, to the navigation, because of your maths proficiency or?
HH: Oh yes, yeah.
AS: And you found it easy to be an accurate navigator?
HH: Yes, I mean, you’re training all the time of course and right the way through when I came home from Rivers, came home over on the Union-Castle ship, called the Cape Town Castle, which I didn’t sell. And, what’s the time?
AS: Now.
HH: [alarm clock rings] The taxi, yeah.
AS: Okay. We’ll pause at there, shall we? [recording paused]
HH: Yeah. Astronavigation course A and it was mainly a flying by using star shots yeah. But when I got on the squadron, I mean you had to carry about three sets of books, you know, and a naval almanac as well. Had to work out your star shots. But when I got to the squadron they had a marvellous bit of equipment, a little projector over the navigator’s tail [unclear], which about that high off the table and you had to measure it up with a special stick to make certain it was in focus and on this astrograph there was three stars you could use and, two stars rather, two stars plus Polaris you use to get a three star fix, and you worked out a datum point for the time before you, before you got airborne and drew it on your chart and then you lay your chart down on the table and lined it up with the astrograph and then this projected the position lines of these stars onto your chart. So all, so, the bomb aimer, all the bomb aimer had to do was to take the star charts, he was, my bomb aimer was a trained navigator anyway and I think he’s still alive, I’m not sure, and.
AS: So it was very much team work.
HH: Yeah.
AS: Between you and the bomb aimer but actually on astros. So, you, we jumped straight on to being on the squadron. Did you know, as soon as you started navigator training, that you would be going to Bomber Command?
HH: Well, it’s pretty obvious I would be. Yeah.
AS; Okay. And, so, you finished your training in Canada, came back to the UK by ship, and what happened next before you got on to the squadron?
HH: I went to [unclear], is it Cumberland?
AS: I think Scotland.
HH: Up near Carlisle, north of Carlisle then, between Carlisle and Keswick I suppose. And a little aerodrome there and we learned to fly in wartime conditions, you know, where the balloon barrages were et cetera. Where to avoid them.
AS: And is this when you stepped up from Ansons to bombers?
HH: No, no, this is still on Ansons. And then from there we went down to Hampstead Norris still on Ansons and then we went to Harwell, Hampstead Norris was a satellite of Harwell at the time and then we crewed up with our pilot and wireless operator, I think we already had a wireless operator and we crewed up with bomb aimer and engineer, no, no, we didn’t have an engineer at that time, this is on Wellingtons and.
AS: What were they like the training Wellingtons, were they in good nick, were they ropey old kites or?
HH: No, no, pretty ropey, they were draughty as hell, oh God they were draughty. The wind used to whistle through that fabric, you know. [unclear] construction, wasn’t it?
AS: What was, was there a step up in gear going on to heavier airplanes and operational tactics?
HH: Oh yeah, yeah.
AS: You are moving much more quickly in your calculations and navigation than perhaps when you were training?
HH: We did quite a lot of cross countries and Bullseyes we did in OTU.
AS: What’s Bullseye?
HH: Bullseyes we did down, we’d go down to, say the Channel Islands and experience a little bit of flak there and then we’d come back up again and fly across to Portsmouth or somewhere and fly across the coast there or else we’d fly, out to the North Sea towards Denmark and come back into Hull.
AS: So this was almost a simulated bombing mission, was that?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Training, for training. Okay.
HH: They were called Bullseyes anyway in cooperation with the army, I suppose, with the the ack-ack.
AS: So, when you’re at OTU, you’re on Wellingtons.
HH: Yeah.
AS: Okay.
HH: Then we went up to a place called Riccall in Yorkshire, near Selby, and we had to, we trained, we converted onto Halifaxes.
AS: What, can you remember what year, what month this would be when you?
HH: Well, that would be about Christmas of, just around Christmas in ’42, I suppose.
AS: Wow, so what type of Halifax would this be? The Merlin one or the?
HH: The Merlin one, yeah.
AS: Okay.
HH: Yes, so the Hali, Hali 1, what’s his name? Not Gibson, what the hell was his name?
AS: Cheshire?
HH: No. Gus Walker.
AS: Gus, oh yeah, yeah.
HH: He was a lovely man, Gus was, and he’d taken out, all the mid upper turret and the front nose cone as well, there is a very big heavy turret in the front nose and like the Lanc was, you know. And then, it’s pretty useless that front turret was but anyway. Then, eventually we got the Hali II.1 A which had a four gun [unclear] turret on the top, yes, same as on the Hali 3.
AS: So your mid upper then got his job back.
HH: Yeah.
AS: So, Gus Walker he took these turrets out to save weight, to carry more bombs?
HH: To save weight, yeah. Just to save weight, to make it improve performance a bit. And get a better height. I better ring up my taxi.
AS: So, by taking the turrets off, Gus Water was giving his aircrews more of a chance really, wasn’t he?
HH: Yeah, but then later on they improved the, we still had the Merlin 22s, same as the Lanc had, you know. Merlin 22s, but the Mark II.1 A was a much better aircraft, you could get up to, you know, eighteen, twenty, twenty one, twenty two thousand.
AS: Loaded?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Which is, you were at the same height as the Lancs. And the Lancs had the habit of dropping their bombs on you. Which happened on our very first trip. We went to, we were waiting to have a nice easy trip but no, we got Essen. And then, when we were over the, when we were over the target on our bombing run but a whole lot of bombs dropped on us, a whole lot of incendiaries dropped on us and the engineer and myself had to go back and kick them out the door [laughs] and which is good practice actually, because it happened to us again over Wuppertal.
AS: Really?
HH: But that time there was a, I think it was a two thousand pounder or a thousand pounder, I don’t know, and it came and took our port rudder right off, and the port tail and the port tail blade yeah.
AS: And what sort of problems did that give the pilot?
HH: Mh?
AS: What sort of problems did that give the pilot?
HH: Well, we found, she was, it was still flying alright but I found that we were crabbing a bit. And I remember seeing a light below and I said, take a drift on that, would you? And anyway we found that we were crabbing quite about ten degrees to port, I think, yeah.
AS: So you do all your sums again and take that out by adjusting the.
HH: No, I just took ten degrees off every course [laughs]. Yeah.
AS: That must have been quite a hairy landing I would think.
HH: No, [unclear], yeah. I can’t remember it being anything but normal.
AS: Wow.
HH: And when we got back, the little corporal in charge of our ground crew, he came out, what the bloody hell have you done to my aircraft! [laughs] as if it was our fault, you know.
AS: Did you fly your own regular aircraft that you got attached to?
HH: Yes, yeah. D, we always flew in D, until one time we let, we were on leave and I think it was an Australian pilot took it and he was very conscious of saving fuel. So he throttled right back coming back and the result was that the, when we went to run the engine up the following day, the engine started to shake, port engine started to shake and suddenly the prop came off and went right through where I’d be normally sitting and sliced my table in half, but I was in the rest position now for take-off you know.
AS: Wow. So that was one of your nine lives gone?
HH: Yeah. I tell that story I say, as you can see I’m still here [laughs]. I wasn’t sitting there at the time.
AS: So, did they repair the aeroplane or was that the demise of D-Dog?
HH: But that was it finished, D-Dog was finished then and we got the Mark 2.1 A then.
AS: Still as D-Dog or was there a superstition about that?
HH: No. We were still with D, yeah. But, Jackie Miles, he was our mid upper gunner, he was really pleased to get that. We got four guns, he was really happy [laughs]. But it was much safer to have somebody in a blister looking down underneath.
AS: Is that what he used to do before he got the target?
HH: Yeah. Yes, and he used to put it in his log book, duty, rear gunner’s me [laughs].
AS: Yeah. On, when you were on ops, had the idea of the bomber stream come in by then?
HH: Oh yes. Yes, we were on the very first time they dropped, the Pathfinders used Oboe on the Essen raids. I think it was first used on the 5th of March, wasn’t it?
AS: I don’t know, 1943. This was.
HH: Yeah, ’43, ’43 by this time, yeah.
AS: So, it was quite early on in the idea of the Pathfinders.
HH: Yeah.
AS: So, you went on ops just as the stream and the concentration were starting to take place. I know you were deep in the bowels of the aeroplane at your navigation table. Did you, did the crew see other aircraft around them, feel the other aircraft around them?
HH: No, you are in the slipstream the whole time. Especially when you got near the target, when you’re on your final run, you sort of you feel the slipstream and you have got to remember that five percent of our losses were due to collisions, it has been estimated.
AS: That’s a high percentage.
HH: I think we were told that at the time to be extra vigiliant, you know.
AS: Against the dangers of collision. What about enemy aircraft on your first tour? Did you have any encounters with the German night fighters?
HH: Oh yeah. [unclear], he shot down two, he shot down a Ju 88 and an Me 110 I think it was, yeah.
AS: And this, this was your rear gunner.
HH: And he had a problem as well. A lot of Battle of Britain pilots would have given their eye tooth for a score like that. Probably would have gotten a DSO and a DFC.
AS: [laughs] there are a lot of unsung deeds in Bomber Command.
HH: Anyway then we finished up in October ’43 and I got sent up to 6 Group, it was a Canadian crew.
AS: With the Canadians. How did you?
HH: And they wanted everybody to be Canadians, you know. They didn’t want an English instructor so I got, I quickly got posted down to 3 Group. And
AS: Somewhere along the way you, you picked up the DFM. Was that during your first tour?
HH: Yes, was the first tour.
AS: And what was the story behind your DFM?
HH: I don’t know really. It’s not in the book even, not even in the, my citation is not there, there’s a book of DFMs in the RAF, book of DFCs and DFMs. And I think there was an Australian, called Cameron, he found this book of DFMs but I don’t know, I think Gus Walker probably. You see, I’d broken my left foot, I’d broken a bone in my left foot and what with having leave, we were due for leave I went on leave on with my foot in plaster, came back and had the plaster taken off and then I fell off my bicycle [laughs]. Didn’t help. So, the doc said, ‘Right, I’m going to keep you in hospital until your foot’s cured. I don’t want any arguments.’ And the following day Sam came in, he said, we are on tonight, [unclear] and they want me to take a spare navigator and I said, ‘No way, Sam, let’s go and see the doc.’ The doc was in a good mood ‘cause he was going on leave. So, have you read all this before?
AS: No.
HH: So, [pause] he said, ‘Alright you, you can go this time, but’, he says, ‘Provided you come back into hospital as soon as you get back. If you get back’, he said, ‘If you get back.’ So, he then went on leave. Anyway, I duly arrived at main briefing, done my navigation briefing, I think we came at main briefing and Gus Walker was on the door. And Gus said, ‘Where are you going?’ I said, ‘I’m on crutches you see. I’m going on ops.’ And he said, ‘Why?’ ‘I don’t where my crew is going, I don’t want them to go without me.’ ‘Well, oh alright then.’ So I went in and we went to Berlin that night. And when I got back, Gus was still on the station. ‘Cause he was in charge of three squadrons, wasn’t he? Up there. And he said, ‘Right, young Hughes,’ he says, ‘I’ve been hearing all about you, he says, ‘It’s alright, I’ll take you back to the hospital myself.’ And then I got in his car and he tore me off a bit of a mild strip for being irresponsible and some of that and then as I got out, he said, ‘Bloody good show anyway, Hughes.’ And I think it was he who recommended me for a DFM, I don’t know, probably.
AS: Excellent. It’s a wonderful, wonderful story. What happened, you said, you tried the book in the RAF club to find your citation. Have you explored anywhere else, to try and find the DFM citation?
HH: I did write to some time ago, I don’t know, I think they did, you get from RAF records I think.
AS: Okay.
HH: Because I wrote to them the other day and asked them if, ‘cause I had a letter from them to say that I could retain the rank, substantive rank of flight lieutenant when I finished in the reserve and use the courtesy rank of squadron leader. But I’ve never used it. So I thought it would be a nice thing to have on my tombstone, so I wrote and asked them if that still pertained, shall we say.
AS: And you are still waiting for a reply.
HH: Well, they wrote back to me and said that I’d have to give them some more proof of who I was, you know, passports, et cetera so I sent them up a copy of my, one of my utility bills and my council tax demand.
AS: Well, hopefully that’s good enough.
HH: It only went off last week, so we will have to wait and see.
AS: You mentioned briefings. I know the targets were different and the weather was different, but could you give me some idea of an average preparation for a mission from waking up in the morning to taking off. Is that possible, that sort of things that?
HH: Yeah, because you went down to the, you went down to the flights and you stood in the apron outside the squadron offices and at ten to ten on the dot, if you were on that night, the phone would ring. You knew you were on that night then and then, but if you waited and waited until ten past ten the phone would ring again to say the squadron’s stood down by which time we had all disappeared ‘cause we’d all. Didn’t want to go to on a bloody route march or something [unclear].
AS: So it was all incredibly secret but the routine gave it away.
HH: Yeah [laughs].
AS: So if the phone call came at ten to ten, you knew you were on ops that night, what would happen then?
HH: Well I did, we’d go down to our aircraft and check all the equipment in it and then if necessary you take it up on an air test and then you were back on the ground again by, about eleven, eleven thirty, and then you’d either come back and go to lunch and or else you’d and then after you’d had lunch you’d go on for navigation briefing at about two o’clock.
AS: So the navigator was the first person in the crew to know where you were going, what timing was.
HH: Yes, we knew where we were going, yeah.
AS: Was that a very full briefing, with weather? Is this when you drew up your courses, you got your turning points and what not?
HH: Sorry?
AS: Was this a very full briefing?
HH: Oh yeah, well, the navigation briefing, yes, you got your various tracks you had to go on to and hopefully they’re taking you around the defended areas you know.
AS: The flak and the searchlights, yeah. Was there a lot of work involved for you to prepare your charts?
HH: Yes, it took quite a time. You were mainly with your bomb aimer to help you, you know. Harry Hoover, my bomb aimer was a trained navigator, he trained in South Africa I think.
AS: So, you two were the only ones that knew at the navigation briefing the target. Was it difficult to keep it secret from your skipper and your crew?
HH: Oh no, you didn’t have to keep it secret but you just told the rest of the crew where we’re going so all this business about being a gasp when they, when the curtains were pulled across from the map.
AS: Probably you already knew.
HH: We all knew where we were going by that time, at least my crew did.
AS: So, you’ve done your navigation briefing and what happened then? Just sit around waiting for the main crew briefing or did you have duties to do?
HH: No, we just, by the time you finished doing the nav, it’s about time for the main briefing and then having done the main briefing you then went for an ops breakfast. The ops breakfast, which was bacon and eggs, baked beans, all the things you shouldn’t eat.
AS: Baked beans?
HH: Yeah.
AS: And you’re flying at twenty thousand feet.
HH: Yeah.
AS: Oh, that could have been interesting. What was the atmosphere like? Was there a lot of tension? Was there a lot of horseplay? Was there a lot of fear? What was the atmosphere like?
HH: I don’t know, I can’t remember now, there was a feeling of are we gonna make it or not, you know.
AS: Was that a personal thing or something that you talked about with the crew?
HH: I would never, never, never, never, my mid upper gunner, he, one day, we were in our room, I shared a room with him and he packed up all his biscuits on his bed and folded up all the blankets and sheets. What are you doing that for? And he said, ‘I don’t think we are gonna come back. So I’m putting the things in order now.’ And he got all his paperwork out and everything, letters and everything to his wife and things.
AS: What did that do to your morale?
HH: Well, I wasn’t, I wasn’t very happy about it but it was a scrub that night anyway. Then he said, afterwards he said, ‘God, good job we didn’t go to [unclear] because we weren’t going to come back.’ He knew.
AS: But after that on future trips he was fine.
HH: Well, I said, ‘Don’t you ever do that again, Jackie, I said, ‘You never do a thing like that again.’
AS: Tempting fate. What about off duty, what sort of things did you, you guys get up to that you can talk about?
HH: Sorry?
AS: Off duty, did you get much time off to yourself? Or to yourselves as a crew?
HH: Yeah. We, I used to go out with, mainly with another crew ‘cause all our crew, our skipper was commissioned, so we were all and the rest of them, Jackie Miles he lived in Leeds so when he had an evening off, he went back to Leeds and the rear gunner was the same, he was somewhere just outside Leeds. Sam was from Leeds as well, the pilot, so it was only the engineer and myself.
AS: So you latched onto another crew for the,
HH: Yeah.
AS: The social element.
HH: Yes, [unclear] crew, yeah. I was pretty friendly with his navigator but he got killed.
AS: And did the rest of the crew come back?
HH: Yeah.
AS: And brought him back?
HH: They brought him back, yeah.
AS: Your, we were talking about your navigation training and astro, during your time, your first tour on ops, did you start to get Gee in the aeroplane or any other navigational aids that you used?
HH: We had Gee.
AS: You had Gee.
HH: Right from the start, yeah. We had the Mark 1 Gee which was, used to have to tune it, the narrow knobs on the side and you had to tune it to get a signal and it’s like tuning one of those. Televisions, you know.
AS: Keep wandering off. Did you, was it as a big revolution in navigation as people say?
HH: The Gee was, yeah.
AS: The Gee was, it really did make a difference.
HH: Yeah, well, it did make a difference because, but you didn’t get it beyond the Dutch coast, it wouldn’t work beyond the Dutch coast but you had we, well, you had LORAN later, in Mosquitos we had Gee and LORAN. In fact, it really annoys me now to hear the met men talking about the jet stream because we found the very first jet stream. I found a wind of a hundred and ninety five knots at thirty thousand feet.
AS: Tailwind.
HH: Hundred and ninety five knots and when we got back, I told the met man, I said, ‘I got a wind of a hundred and ninety five knots and you were forecasting forty five to fifty knots.’ He said, ‘I don’t believe it, I don’t believe it!’ So he went to Group headquarters and the Group headquarters said we don’t believe it. They went to Command headquarters and the met people up there said they didn’t believe it either. But then everybody else came back with these winds and they suddenly realised what was called jet streams but now they talk about jet streams all the time. And what they mean is where the warm front, the warm tropical front meets the polar maritime front and all the way along that you get depressions form and then, and with it you get this so-called jet stream would form as well. Ah, so which comes first? The frontal systems or the jet stream?
AS: Must be the fronts, must be the fronts. So, when you are doing your tour, you’d had the nasty experience of being bombed twice by your own people, probably 5 Group above you.
HH: Yeah.
AS: Was that the limit of the difficulties you had? Was the aeroplane mechanically reliable or did you suffer?
HH: Oh, we, came back on three engines more times than we came back on four.
AS: Really?
HH: Yeah. I think we came back on three engines eleven times out of our tour.
AS: And what did your ground crew chief say to that?
HH: Well, it wasn’t their fault, necessarily, well, he didn’t think it was anyway.
AS: It’s just overstraining them, is it, full fuel, full bombload climb to heights. Coming back from the raids, what was your pilot like? Was he one of those that, wanted to pour on the coal and get home early or did he stick to heights and courses as briefed or?
HH: Well, he couldn’t do much else with a Halifax. But when I was on Mosquitos, with our New Zealand pilot, we were always first back [laughs]. Yeah.
AS: Becomes a matter of pride. On your first tour still perhaps we can talk a bit more about that. As you got towards the end, did the, you knew presumably you were going to stop on, what, thirty trips?
HH: Well, I did twenty six in fact.
AS: Okay.
HH: Which we were screened two trips early. I would have done twenty eight for my first tour, ‘cause the pilot had already done two second Dickey trips to start with. [door bell rings] That’s my taxi now.
AS: Okay.
HH: So I’ll just pause this. [recording paused] We were just talking about your tour length. The question I was going to ask is did you feel a real rising tension as you got towards the end of your tour?
HH: But we didn’t know we were towards the end, we thought we had another two trips to do.
AS: Okay.
HH: But, I remember Sam coming in and he says, ‘I have some good news for you, we’re screens and you’re off on leave from tomorrow. You are all going on leave tomorrow.’
AS: What did that feel like?
HH: Mh?
AS: What did that feel like?
HH: Ah, it was good feeling but I forget what happened now. When I was on Mosquitos I think when I was doing my last trip on Mosquitos ‘cause you had to do fifty on Mosquitos you see for a tour.
AS: So, you finished on 102 Squadron and were there many crews that went all the way through like yours did?
HH: No, not a great deal, I wish I had the [unclear] I’ve got it somewhere, might be in that case there, book of all the losses, you know. 102 Squadron losses.
AS: Oh, perhaps we can look at that tomorrow or now if you like.
HH: Well I, it might be in that case, I’m not sure.
AS: Let’s pause this and we’ll go and have a look. [recording paused]
AS: Harry, good morning, it’s day two of our interview sessions. It’s very good of you to agree to this interview. Can we start by going back to your first tour of operations during the Battle of the Ruhr on Halifaxes. Were you conscious at the time that this was a major battle or was it just one job after another?
HH: We were trying to hit Germany where it hurt, ‘cause we didn’t only go to the Ruhr and we went to places like Pilsen, and then we did Nuremberg and Munich and.
AS: Were you briefed on specific targets in these cities and told what you were going after?
HH: Oh, we knew that Essen was the Krupp works, yeah, and we were given a good, pretty good briefing by the intelligence officer what we were gonna hit because one time we went, we were going to. There was almost a mutiny one day because they were sending to some place I forget, Gelsenkirchen or somewhere, I forget where it was now, and [pause]
AS: What happened then? What was the mutiny all about?
HH: Well, the intelligence officer said that he didn’t know why we were going there, there was nothing there, there was just a spa town that we were going to hit but what we didn’t know, of course, it was a leave centre for the Gestapo and the place was full of the Gestapo officers and but you know initially we said, no, why are we going there, you know? And there was almost not exactly a mutiny but it was a fear of you know, why are we bombing this place, we probably would just hit a lot of women and children.
AS: So, this was 1943. So even at that stage.
HH: This is ’45. ‘43 rather.
AS: So, even at that stage there were some concerns amongst the crews about what you were doing and where you were going.
HH: Yeah, we didn’t, the Hamburg raids for example. That’s the first time there was a real firestorm and we went on three or four of those raids, I forget now, it’s in the book, Hamburg in July ’43. That book is falling to bits, isn’t it?
AS: Well, it happens to all of us, doesn’t it? As we get older. Here we go, 24th of July ’43 and the 27th of July ‘43. Ops Hamburg, yeah. And then the 2nd of August.
HH: Yeah, the 2nd of August when we, we’d already realised that the firestorms, you know, in then, we were dropping our incendiaries first and setting fire to places and then dropping four thousand pounders, two and four thousand pounders on top of the fires which, that’s why it’s called the firestorm, the blast from the comparatively thin-cased two thousand pounders and what have you, would suck in the air and the oxygen, you know, and cause these firestorms.
AS: So, the thin-cased bombs would blow the roofs off and then the incendiaries would go inside and.
HH: Well, you know, in that, wish I could find that, you could sit and watch that, the CD I’ve got somewhere in there of.
AS: Is it of a Hamburg raid?
HH: Pardon?
AS: Is it of a Hamburg raid?
HH: Yes, the first or second of the Hamburg raids which caused the firestorm. And I remember watching this from over the bomb aimer’s shoulder and watching these fires spreading and I remember saying, I felt very sorry for the people down there.
AS: At that time.
HH: At that time, yeah. In fact I said a little prayer for them.
AS: Is this something you discussed with the crew or any of your friends?
HH: Not really, no. I just said a prayer to myself, yeah.
AS: And was that really specific to Hamburg or to?
HH: Just to Hamburg, yeah. ‘Cause that was where the firestorms first started. Well, it was worst then Dresden actually.
AS: I believe so in the numbers lost. So, your first tour was absolutely in the thick of what we call the Battle of the Ruhr and extremely, extremely difficult and dangerous missions.
HH: The people who came after me, they’d done Hamburg and the Battle of the Ruhr, and then they had to follow on doing the Battle of Berlin. You can find my very last trip was to Berlin I think, no, it was Hanover. It was one of my last trips was to Berlin, that’s when I went on crutches, yeah.
AS: Home on three engines, that one?
HH: Was that Berlin?
AS: Yes, 23rd of August. And then you did a Munich and a Hanover. What was Berlin like? Was it special, was it the
HH: Pardon?
AS: Was Berlin perhaps the best defended target? What was Berlin like?
HH: It was the length of the trip really. You know, on heavies, on Lancs and heavies it took us eight and a half hours there and back. What’s it say there? [paper rustling]
AS: Seven hours fifteen, that’s still an incredible time. People talk about eight hour days, and that was a full day’s work at night.
HH: Was a full day’s work was being shot at too.
AS: And, I mean, was Berlin the best defended target, do you think or was that the Ruhr, perhaps?
HH: No, I think, I don’t think it was as bad as the Ruhr but it was, there was plenty of activity there but mainly a lot of fighter activity there over the target, over Berlin.
AS: And you, you could see the enemy?
HH: Oh yeah. They were coned and searchlights one time I was on Mosquitos, there was two Mosquitos, an Fw 190, and an Me 109, all on the same cone.
AS: Wow!
HH: And there is a painting of that somewhere. I described it, you know. And there is a painting somewhere that is called Berlin Express. And [unclear] have got the original.
AS: Okay, I’ll look for that.
HH: [unclear] then.
AS: Okay. Some trips to France as well. Le Creusot. You weren’t after a saucepan factory there were you, what was, can you remember what that trip was about?
HH: Oh yes, that was, they were manufacturing parts for tanks and things, I think.
AS: Gosh, here, after Le Creusot, Muhlheim, home on two engines.
HH: Yeah [laughs]
AS: What’s the story behind that? Did they just pack up or was it flak or?
HH: Yeah, they just packed up on us yeah, these Merlins were you know they were way overstressed on the Halifax and we came back on two on that occasion, yeah.
AS: After a lot of, after the Hamburgs that we talked about and Berlin, Munich. Now, can you remember that trip? September ’43 to Munich.
HH: Yeah.
AS: First off, first back, in your log book, eight hours, fifty five minutes. Did the stream hold together, the bomber stream hold together over these long distances?
HH: Yeah, you we were all given certain times, you know, you had to be at certain times on all the way along the track, at the various turning points, you know. And I think it did help, you know, no doubt about it and then with the advent of Window of course, it just threw their ground tracking, we had a little device, did I tell you, a little device called Boozer in Mosquitos.
AS: No, you didn’t, no.
HH: We had a little device which, when they were tracking you from the ground, a little yellow light used to glow. But when they were tracking from the air, a red light used to glow. And one night, we were coming back, and somewhere around about the Hamburg, sorry the Bremen Hanover gap, and this red light came on very bright and we knew the red light meant we were being tracked from the air you see. And then suddenly over the top of us, about the height of this building, just came two, I think they were Me 263s,
AS: The jets?
HH: The jets, yeah. Right over the top of us. And they didn’t see us. I got a photograph of a Mosquito somewhere I don’t know what she’s done with it now. I meant to ask her that when she was in last night.
AS: No worries, maybe today. So, this, the 262s had the speed, they were the only ones with the speed to catch you, really.
HH: Yes. They were doing about a hundred knots faster than us. Fifty to a hundred knots faster than us. And they just sailed over the top of us and disappeared in the distance. There were four jets, two of them.
AS: So they had radar airborne in the jets.
HH: Yes.
AS: That is a pretty dangerous development, isn’t it? That was another one of your nine lives gone, really, wasn’t it?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Your slices of luck. Back to your first tour, you, when did you come off ops?
HH: I went to a conversion unit, at a place called Wombleton.
AS: Okay, was that Stirlings?
HH: No, it was Halifaxes actually but.
AS: Okay.
HH: Canadian group, they are mainly on Halifaxes.
AS: In 6 Group, how did you get on with the Canadians?
HH: Not very well.
AS: Really?
HH: No. They are very, they didn’t want to know us, you know, they just wanted to get rid of us as quickly as they could.
AS: I’ve heard this that they were running,
HH: They wanted to run their own show.
AS: [unclear] as part of the Canadian.
HH: I remember getting one crew and I said, I wanted to send them back for further training because the navigator was absolutely hopeless. He really was, he couldn’t, it was like putting, I don’t know, he was thick as two planks, he couldn’t. So, I said if you’re sending this crew with this navigator they don’t stand a chance of getting through, not a chance at all. They’ll be shot down on, within their first five operations, they’ll be shot down.
AS: And do you know whether that came to pass?
HH: No. They didn’t like this, you know, the fact that I’d criticised one of their Canadian crews and I was posted down to 3 Group and, which suited me, and the crew got to squadron, got to a squadron and they did one trip and got hopelessly lost and I heard it afterwards that the CO of the, I think it was Lane, what was his name? Lane. He said, what the hell are you doing sending us crews that are, they should have been send back for further training. And I had recommended that.
AS: Had you been commissioned by this point?
HH: Yes, yeah.
AS: Okay.
HH: I was commissioned at the end of my first tour, I think.
AS: What sort of process what that? How did that take place?
HH: Pardon?
AS: How did, what sort of process what that? How did that take place?
HH: I just had an interview, I don’t know, who I had an interview with now, I can’t remember. And I mean after the interview I was then a pilot officer but I was a flight sergeant before and my pay was sixteen shillings a day as a flight sergeant but as a pilot officer I was only going to get fourteen and four pence a day. So they said, oh, we can’t have that so they gave me a six pence rise, six pence a day rise so I was getting fourteen and six a day as a pilot officer. And then eventually when I was a flight lieutenant after a couple of years, I was out in India by that time, and I got, well I was on Indian rates of pay anyway so, it didn’t factor.
AS: Back to the instructing. You finished an operational tour, had some leave and presumably your crew dispersed.
HH: Yeah. Pilot went to Rufforth converting many French Canadians and to go to Elvington, French, I mean French crews rather, French crews to go to Elvington, to 77 Squadron.
AS: Did you keep in touch with any of your crew members after?
HH: I came up to York a couple of times and met Sam, Jackie Miles I used to see and my gunner and Harry [unclear] the, the last time I’ve heard from him, he was up at near Shrewsbury.
AS: You all went to instructors jobs, do you?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Did they teach how to be an instructor or did they just send you off?
HH: No, I just went in and just talked to them and told them where they were going wrong, you know, and how to waste time and things like that.
AS: In the air this is.
HH: Yeah.
AS: So, did you do any formal classroom training of these chaps or was it just, what, supervising in the air and on the ground?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Supervising?
HH: Yeah, just going through their logs and charts individually with them and showing them where they’d gone wrong.
AS: And I believe the same sort of thing used to happen on ops, that when you came back your nav leader would go through your charts, is that right?
HH: Yeah. Yeah.
AS: Okay.
HH: They’d assess your, that’s the assessment on each one there.
AS: That we saw before.
HH: The little design on his wall, Charlie had, he had sort of a little square beside each one of you and you had two dots for very good, one dot for reasonably good, no dots at all for
AS: Average.
HH: Just average. Yeah.
AS: That’s his way of keeping track. So, on 3 Group, is this when you went to Stirlings? When you were training?
HH: Pardon?
AS: When you left the Canadians and went to 3 Group, that was, what was that, Stirlings, was that the Conversion Unit there?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Okay.
HH: Yeah, it’s down at Chedburgh.
AS: Okay.
HH: And, yeah, Chedburgh, near Bury St Edmunds. There was a beer drought down at that time and we used to cycle miles to find a pub with beer [laughs]. Then we’d keep very quiet about it [laughs].
AS: It’s not too bad.
HH: Me and a Canadian called Connors and we wanted to, we’d heard about that 8 Group wanted Mosquito pilots and navigators, so, we both applied to go, we both applied to go back on ops together. So, our first application, we were turned down because, being in 3 Group on Stirlings, you know, they were rather short of crews, and so we were turned down anyway. So we waited a couple of weeks and we applied again and we got turned down again. So that night, I got a tin of black paint from the stores and I wrote a message, a letter on the ceiling of the mess to the group captain, quite a polite letter, would you kindly pull your finger out and get us posted back on ops. We’re fed up with this instructing so could we please get back in so and so and signed it Connor and Hughes. The following day we were up in front of the old man and he said, ‘Right, you’re both going back, no way you’re going on the same crew or on the same squadron. In fact, you go back first, Hughes. Connor will follow you in about two- or three-weeks’ time.’ And this is what happened.
AS: It’s amazing. So you weren’t actually instructing for very long, were you?
HH: No, from October until July, so I suppose six months.
AS: Okay.
HH: And you’re supposed to have six months, at least six months rest, you know? From operations. Between tours.
AS: Okay. And then, in July having arranged your own posting really, you arrive at 1655 MCU. What’s MCU?
HH: Mosquito conversion unit.
AS: Okay.
HH: At Warboys, yeah, and Weston [?].
AS: I imagine this must have been a completely different sort of navigating. Was it?
HH: Oh, just very quick, but you, you wouldn’t think it now but I was very, very neat and tidy in what I did. I knew exactly, I used to keep my pencils in my flying boots, my dividers as well, [unclear] my Douglas protractor I kept in my hat with my dividers, which was behind me and my Dalton and, and then we used to take as your [unclear] fix, as soon as you got airborne, you got to operational high I’d take fix, fix, fix, every three minutes, then work out a tracking ground speed wind velocity and then another three minutes later another fix, a nine minute tracking ground velocity plus the sixth, the latest sixth one and another one, further on, six, and I can tell you exactly which way the wind was going, how far out the met was on their winds.
AS: And these fixes would be visual fixes or Gee fixes or both?
HH: Gee fixes.
AS: Gee fixes.
HH: So I’d take fix, fix, fix, you worked really hard to get the timing, you know, of the.
AS: Whereabouts was the Gee screen in the aeroplane? You were sitting on the right in the [unclear]
HH: I was sitting on the right and the Gee was behind me and LORAN as well.
AS: Okay. So.
HH: Gee and LORAN which was behind me.
AS: So, could you operate the equipment with your harnesses done up?
HH: Oh yeah.
AS: ‘Cause you just turned your head and⸻
HH: I just turned my head. It was just like there, behind me, there, but I could turn easier then and it was there, you know, just behind about there, about that angle to me.
AS: And it is just, as you say, second nature, three minutes, three minutes.
HH: It didn’t take long to take the fix but it took a long time but we, we had charts with the letters, lines of the Gee chart superimposed on top of it. So, this really worked very well.
AS: So, what came up on the Gee screen? What allowed you to compare the screen to the map?
HH: Pardon?
AS: What was the presentation on the Gee screen? What actually came up? Was it numbers or?
HH: Yeah. Well, you just, you could, you worked out, you knew what, you strobed the whichever signal you wanted to take, you know, and then you, you strobed the two of them and then fix and then you just read it off.
AS: I guess it’s, so you gotta an alphanumerical printout did you virtually.
HH: Yeah.
AS: Wow. So that could be done quickly.
HH: It’s quite, it’s very quick to work it all out, yeah, to work it out to get, to actually calculate the winds on your Dalton.
AS: How did you operate at night, because I imagine you had no lights in the cockpit?
HH: Well, we had enough.
AS: Okay.
HH: We had a red light and then, what’s his name? Anderson, our group navigation officer, he found that red, you couldn’t see the red markings on your chart. So, that was all orange and green.
AS: Which was easier to see.
HH: Yeah.
AS: Okay. So, when you’d done your Mosquito conversion unit or at the Mosquito conversion unit, you must have crewed up with a pilot, how did that go?
HH: Well, I had already wanted to fly with this Australian so, when this New Zealander came along, I thought, he’ll do, I crewed up with him.
AS: As simple as that. And did you do, did the aeroplane Mosquito take some getting used to it, so different from a heavy bomber, with different performance and.
HH: Oh yeah.
AS: What was she like to fly in?
HH: It was nice and reasonably fast. And I don’t think you really noticed it until you were doing some low flying.
AS: Shall we take a pause there? Okay. [recording paused]
HH: The Mosquito was, it was terribly difficult for a navigator to get out of.
AS: Why was that?
HH: Well, you had to, first of all you had to get hold of your chute and you kept that on, then you had to jettison two hatches to get out,
AS: Underneath.
HH: Underneath, yeah. Slightly forward towards the nose, yeah. And but by which time your pilot probably gone out of the top and you were spiralling down and the chance of you getting out was pretty slim.
AS: This hatch underneath must have been very close to the starboard propeller.
HH: Yes, we, yeah. Yes, it was quite close, yeah.
AS: Did you practice this on the ground a lot?
HH: No. I don’t think they thought you were, it was worth the risk. But the, a friend of mine used to fly with a man called Gill and he went down, got killed, Ronnie Knaith went down with his aircraft, and Gill got out and came home and he went to see Ronnie’s parents and they just slammed the door in his face, they wouldn’t talk to him. ‘Cause they had thought that he’d should have stayed onto the controls until Ronnie got out. Which is really what one was supposed to do.
AS: I hadn’t realised that the drill for the pilot was to go out of the top.
HH: Yeah.
AS: Because there’s a tailfin behind.
HH: Yeah, you jettison, you jettison the hood I think, the whole hood went. And theoretically the navigator could’ve gone out after him, I suppose, but.
AS: I think overall the losses were less on the Mosquito.
HH: Oh yeah.
AS: I think you were safer flying in a Mozzie than in a Halifax.
HH: Yes, I mean, there’s somewhere I got the losses in Hamish’s book, in Hamish Mahaddie’s book, all the losses in 8 Group and you will see that 692 do feature quite regularly, you know.
AS: Yeah, so you were posted to 692 Squadron after the conversion unit. You’d had, I suppose, eight months away from ops by then, ten months, had things changed a lot in that time?
HH: I don’t think they’d changed all that much for the heavies, no. And we operated separately and we used to do Window opening for the heavies, we used to do, we used to fly out with the heavies and used to meet up with them at Reading, they’d all congregated there, what’s that? There is something squeaking, did you hear?
AS: I don’t know, let’s pause the tape.[recording paused] Well, Harry, we discovered what the squeak was, it was the smoke alarm. We were talking about Window opening and you meeting the heavies over Reading.
HH: Yeah. We used to fly down with the and meet up with the heavies and then we’d weave in and out of them, stream, you know, and you could see the strength of the stream then because, you know, there was just a whole block of them all over the horizon.
AS: And these are daylights.
HH: Yeah, in daylight, yeah, it would be. And then somebody in one of the heavies would be signalling to us, you lucky bastards or words to that effect. So I was sent back, been there, done that [laughs].
AS: Fair do’s. Because you could fly a lot faster and a lot higher than they could.
HH: Well, we used to be, weave in and out of them, you see. And then, then when you got to the coast, you climbed very rapidly above and you got to your operational height. If we were going to say, if we were Window opening say for Stuttgart, we’d probably do a, you go to Cologne first and drop a few bundles of Window there making them, making them think that was the target, you see. And then we’d go along to wherever, Stuttgart, and where the main force were going, and we’d, we’d do Window opening for the first wave of Pathfinders going in.
AS: Okay. This was the, was this the main role of 692 Squadron?
HH: Pardon?
AS: Was this the main role of 692 Squadron?
HH: Yeah, well, we were the light night striking force, yeah.
AS: Okay.
HH: But our main role was to bomb Berlin every night.
AS: Oh, you were involved in this Berlin shuttle?
HH: Yes. So, we used to drop our cookie, we used to drop Window for the heavies and then we’d go along to Berlin and drop our four thousand pounders, keep them awake.
AS: Ah, so, did you have those special Mosquitos then?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Those with the pregnant bomb bay?
HH: That one there, isn’t it?
AS: Yes. Yeah.
HH: Yeah.
AS: So, who got to drop the bomb? Was it you or the driver?
HH: Me.
AS: You.
HH: Yeah. Unless we were doing low level. And even then it was me up on the front, up in the nose.
AS: How did you, how did you drop Window from a tiny little aeroplane like Mosquito?
HH: We had a chute, little wooden chute which used to go through the two doors and we just dropped bundles of Window through that. Remember to grab the string as it went down, otherwise you’d just drop bundles [laughs].
AS: You don’t want them falling on someone’s head and hurting them, do you?
HH: No [laughs]. So, it’s a nice day now, isn’t it?
AS: It’s wonderful out there. It’s great. So, sometimes you were operating with the main bomber stream and sometimes as 8 Group by yourself or squadron by yourself?
HH: Individually, yeah.
AS: Individually too?
HH: We used to fly, we used to sing, I made up, there was a song going round at that time sung by Hildegard, I walk alone, to tell you the truth I’ll be lonely, I don’t mind being lonely, when my heart tells me you are lonely too. So, I made up the words for our squadron, we fly alone, when all the heavies are grounded and dining, 692 will be climbing, we still press on, it’s every night, though they never will give us a French route, for the honour of 8 Group, we’ll still press on.
AS: That’s fantastic.
HH: It’s always a [unclear] no matter how far, one bomb is slung beneath, it’s twelve degrees east, one engine at least [laughs]. It’s a pretty horrible little song.
AS: it’s brilliant. It sums up what you felt.
HH: Not as good as some of the songs, you see, erks used to make up in India and down in Burma, you know. One they used to sing, rotting in the jungle, on a [unclear] marshy shores, dysentery, malaria and bags of jungle sores, living around in a bloody great heap, our beds are damp, we cannot sleep, we’re going round the corner, we’re going round the bend, two trips to Meiktila, maybe three or four, AOL’s a keen type, he thinks we’re doing more. When we get back as you can guess, we’ll put this effing kite US [laughs] and we’re going round the, and there’s about two more verses to that, I can’t remember, that’s when the mail arrives, and there’s two for you and f.a. for me you know [laughs].
AS: I think we will have to try and get you a recording contract. This could be an excellent CD on the wireless.
HH: I don’t think they’d allow it to be broadcast.
AS: Probably not, probably not. But see, you, it sounds as you had very high morale on the squadron.
HH: Oh yeah. But, yes, this was when I was on ferrying.
AS: And on 692, as you say, opening with Window and then lots and lots of trips to
HH: Berlin.
AS: To Berlin. Did you ever get involved in a double trip, I believe some people, some crews did two trips to Berlin in one night.
HH: Yeah, we did, on one occasion we did. I think we did Duisburg in the morning and Berlin that night. Came back, and refuelled and bombed up again and we were away again.
AS: There must have been, I would expect, a cumulative tiredness at that level of operations. I’ve seen your ops on your second tour are very close together.
HH: Yeah.
AS: First of October, third, fourth, fifth, two on the fifth, very, very very close together and then Berlin followed the next night by Cologne. Did you, were you conscious of getting tired?
HH: Well, no, because when you’re off, you went into town and into Cambridge and I met up with my girlfriend and she was lovely, my girlfriend, I must have a picture of her, I did have a picture. She was beautiful, she was lovely red hair and creamy skin, you know, and green eyes, oh, she was beautiful. I used to walk down the street with her and everybody would stop and stare, at her, not at me [laughs].
AS: I was going to ask that. And you met her when you joined the squadron?
HH: When I joined 692, yeah. Yeah, we were walking, you remember, do you remember the Red Lion in Cambridge?
AS: I don’t know Cambridge well. I know where the airfield is.
HH: There used to be a passage where you could go through, you’d start off in the Baron of Beef, down by the river there and, and then you go from there to the Bun Shop and to get to the Bun Shop you have to walk through the Red Lion right, right the way through there, the foyer, there is a bar, two bars there and when I walked through there one night, there was Red sitting there with two of her friends and as I walked through, I said, ‘Cor’ to who I was with and I caught red hair and no drawers, and I said, ‘I’m in’ [laughs]. And she followed me through to the Bun Shop and that’s how I met up with her [laughs].
AS: Excellent. Probably best not pursue that story too much further, I think. So, you’ve got here on a trip to Berlin, landed Woodbridge. Now⸻
HH: Yeah.
AS: I know that Woodbridge is one of the emergency landing grounds.
HH: Yeah, well we, very often we had to land, when we took S-Sugar, which is a bloody awful aircraft with a terrible fuel consumption, if we took that to Berlin, we would end up, always end up landing short of fuel at Woodbridge. In fact, one night, when Harris was on this station, we were the only squadron operating that night, so he came to our briefing. [phone ringing]
AS: I’ll pause there. So, after the phone call, we were talking about S-Sugar and its ability to drink fuel.
HH: Yeah, on this night Harris was at the and [unclear] Northrop, our CO was reading out the battle order, you know, and he said, came to, flying officer Mormo, S-Sugar, ‘S-Sugar?’ said Roy, ‘What’s wrong with our Robert?’ ‘Well, that’s got a mark drop on the starboard engine, you’re going to have to take the spare.’ ‘But S f for Sugar, sir, that bloody kite flies like a brick shithouse!’ [laughs] and old Harris was standing there, and he was trying his best not to laugh, you know, his moustache had a twitch and [laughs] you could he’s gonna laugh every minute, you know. But he didn’t, he held it in [laughs]
AS: What was Woodbridge like? Is an emergency landing ground very different from a normal airfield?
HH: Oh yeah, you, huts with the roof off, you know, half off and snow would come in, on a snowy night, yeah.
AS: Not finished?
HH: No, they had just blown off. That’s a nuisance that thing, isn’t it?
AS: Your smoke alarm, yeah. As we got to this time or you got to this time in the war, this was late 1944.
HH: Yeah.
AS: Had the scene changed in terms of aids to navigation, things like Sandra lights and Darky and ground organisation, was there a lot to help you?
HH: [unclear] Much on the ground I think, mainly H2S, Oboe, things like that, you know. And G8, wasn’t it? G8.
AS: G-H, yeah. I didn’t, I don’t know how that worked, I never had that but we were quite content with LORAN. In fact, I got a wind over, going down to, I forget where I was going, Berlin I suppose, but yeah, we were going over to Berlin I think and I got a wind just north of the Ruhr, a hundred and ninety five knots.
AS: Wow!
HH: And what we’d done, we hit a jet stream, you see, and but when I came back, I said to the met man, I got a wind of a hundred, impossible, impossible, impossible, and it went to Group and Group said impossible as well, went to Command and Command said impossible well then when everybody started to get them, they suddenly realised there was something in this jet stream. Now they talk about nothing else but the bloody jet stream and it annoys me that because they ignored their existence during the war, the met people did and we kept telling them, look there is something up there and it didn’t last very long, you see, you were in it and then you were out of it, you know. So you couldn’t use it as a general wind to carry on to Berlin, shall we say for example, and nor could you use it when you were coming back. You might hit it again but it’d be in a different place slightly and.
AS: It must have meant that you had to be on your toes with your fixes all the time.
HH: Yeah. Anyway we,
AS: In your logbook, it suddenly goes from duty as nav to duty nav b. What was the significance of?
HH: Well, I stood in as bomb aimer as well.
AS: Ah, okay, that’s what it was. Tremendous number of operations over the winter of ’44-’45.
HH: Yeah.
AS: So I presume you must have flown in most weather with the nav aids that you had.
HH: Oh yeah, I remember one night, I don’t know if I should say this because it’s a bit derogatory to somebody who’s now dead, and that’s to Don Bennett. He was in the control tower on this particular night and we were getting hoarfrost all along the wings of our, as we taxied out we were getting hoarfrost develop all along the wings, so Roy got onto control and he says, ‘Could we have the de-icing bowsers out, please?’ And Bennett said, ‘Never mind about the de-icing bowser, just get off the deck.’ Well, we didn’t go, we said, ‘No, no. It’s too dangerous.’ Anyway, another aircraft came after us and they ploughed into the end of the runway and they were both killed of course when their bomb blew up. And Bennett never said a word to us afterwards, he was, we came back for briefing that night and he’d left the station. We came back and got the de-icing bowser and got cleared of the hoarfrost. He literally left, you see. And then we went to Berlin that night, I think.
AS: I should think, with fuel and a four thousand pounder you must have needed all the runway to get off.
HH: Yeah, well, there is another tale attached to that, the, you see, we started off with four thousand pounders, I think we were the first squadron to have four thousand pounders, and then they put fifty gallon drop tanks on each wing which were increased eventually to seventy five and then a hundred and then, and then we ran out of four thousand pounders and we had to borrow four thousand pounders from the Americans, which were four and a half thousand pounds. So another five hundred pounds to get off the deck. But the old Mozzie just used to take it all in its stride. No bother.
AS: You had no concerns.
HH: No, and I remember one day when I’d finished tour. I was sitting in the crew room minding my own business and the CO, a Canadian called Bob Grant came in and he said, ‘You doing anything Hughes?’ I said, no. He said, ‘Grab yourself a ‘chute would you and I’ll see you out at the aircraft.’ I said, ‘What do you⸻’ ‘Just bring a local Gee chart and local maps, would you?’ So when I got out to the bay, they were loading a four thousand pounder and I said, ‘Well, what fuel have we got?’ ‘You’ve a got full load of fuel and two hundred gallon drop tanks.’ And there’s a wind blowing right the way down the 330 runway which was fourteen hundred feet or something compared with two thousand feet on the main runway. I said, ‘What are we gonna do then?’ He said, ‘We’re gonna see if we can get off with this wind, the scale blowing, see if we can get off on this, on the fifteen hundred runway.’ So, we got to the end of the runway, and he waited until there was a gust of wind blowing, until the airspeed indicator was indicating about fifty or sixty knots. And we went. And I dropped the cookie on the live bomb target in the Wash and then we came back. And he got a report and said it wasn’t possible. I said, ‘Well, thanks for telling me.’ [laughs] it wasn’t possible. And he said, ‘No, no, no,’ he said, ‘I don’t think the crew, you could expect the whole crew to wait’, the whole squadron rather to wait until there was a lull, that’s turned till there was a gust of wind which would get them off the deck.
AS: It’s a good example of leading from the front though, isn’t it?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Doing the test himself.
HH: It was old Bob Grant, he’s dead now, he married a Yorkshire, he was CO of 105 Squadron, amongst other things and he was, when he got back to Canada, of course he was made up to brigadier, I think. He was a group captain here, so he was a brigadier. That was equivalent to air commodore, wasn’t it?
AS: I think so, yeah, yeah.
HH: I don’t know.
AS: And, ah, there it is Group Captain Grant, 19th of March 1945, bombload take off fourteen hundred yards. That was pretty much the end of your operational flying, I think, wasn’t it?
HH: Yeah.
AS: On the Mosquito. Last trip, February, February ’45.
HH: Hanover, wasn’t it? Or Hamburg, Hanover.
AS: Frankfurt, I think, Frankfurt in your log. And did you know that that would be your last trip or you’re just told you’re screened?
HH: Yeah. You knew you had to do fifty on Mosquitos. So.
AS: And what did happened after that? Did you go back instructing or?
HH: No, no, we were sent on leave and when we came back, we’d been posted, several crews had been posted down to Pershore to ferry Canadian built Mosquitos across the Atlantic. And I crewed up with a different, Lloyd had gone back to New Zealand and he used to fly with Air New Zealand after the war. And thanks to me, because someone had put a bottle through his hand and all the tendons had gone. And so he couldn’t, when we were taking off at Whiten once doing a cross country, we got airborne and suddenly the throttle went back and he grabbed hold of them and held it with his hand and because you had to keep the throttle up so loose ‘cause of this weakness in his left hand. So I said, ‘I’ll tell you what we’ll do, Roy, from now on I’ll tighten the throttle knot for you when you’re ready. As soon as you want, you just say, throttle knob and I will reach through and grab the throttle knob and turn it and tighten it for you.’ And we did that every trip. And but I, ‘cause I had to reach over, I couldn’t strap in, so I did all my trips without strapping in [laughs]. I never strapped in again, not with Roy flying. So he’d of never, I mean, he was flying with Air New Zealand afterwards he’d never have passed their medical if he’d of disclosed it, you know.
AS: But eventually, not in a Mosquito, but he’d be flying with throttles on the other hand, wouldn’t he? So the problem,
HH: Yeah.
AS: The problem would go away. So you’d had some leave, you were posted to fly to Pershore to fly Mosquitos.
H: Yeah. And we were sent on indefinite leave, Pershore sent us on indefinite leave. And I thought, oh God, I’ll be grounded for sure. So, I got on a train and went up to Air Ministry and saw a wing commander there and I said, look, there is a war going in in the Far East [unclear] aircraft ferried out there, coming back for maintenance and what have you. And he said, what a good idea, you know, come back in the morning, will you? And I got the whole lot posted out to the Far East. Fifteen or eighteen, I think I told you this before, didn’t I?
AS: I think so but we didn’t get in on the tape, I don’t think, no.
HH: No.
AS: I bet you were popular.
HH: Fifteen, oh God, when I got down to Lyneham they were moaning, ‘I’m just due for demob for God’s sake, why the heck do I have to, due for demob any day now.’
AS: I bet you kept quiet.
HH: And here I am, so I kept very quiet. And so, I mean I wasn’t due for demob for some time.
AS: So here we are, Lyneham in July ’45. A huge trip as a passenger on a deck. Thirty two hours flying.
HH: Yeah, back to Karachi, yeah.
AS: So by going, going East, you, did you, before you went, did you see, did you go on any of these trips over, over Germany to see all the destruction?
HH: No, no.
AS: Okay.
HH: I missed all that.
AS: You’d said earlier that you said a prayer for the people of Hamburg. What, at the end of the war, did you reflect at all on the, or during that, on the bombing? And what were your feelings about being involved in it in the war?
HH: Well, I’ve spoken to our vicar about it, you know, and said, do you think Saint Peter’s gonna let me through the gates? Or not. So she sat and he said a prayer for me. Lady vicar of course. Anyway, but I was invited out to Hanover as a guest of the mayor and the local newspaper to commemorate the 60th anniversary of when we bombed them.
AS: And you went?
HH: So I went over, yeah, well, I was asked to volunteer and I remember, at the Bomber Command meeting they said, did anybody go to Hanover, I said, well, I did. When I got home, I found out I’d been to Hanover about eleven times and [laughs] so I was well qualified.
AS: And are you pleased you went, did it turn out well?
HH: Yes, they were very, very, very nice, I like German people.
AS: So do I.
HH: I got two of them coming over now. Here any day now. I think. They stay up at [unclear] castle, ‘cause he’s paraplegic, he can’t get down my steps.
AS: Yeah.
HH: He’s, he had polio when he was a youngster. But they come over by air this time so he couldn’t bring his invalid scooter with him so I don’t know whether he’s gonna hire one when they’re here or not, I don’t know what they’re gonna do to get around.
AS: That should be possible, I think.
HH: Yeah.
AS: And these are friends you made when you went to Hanover?
HH: Yeah. Well, they were both reporters with the Hamburger Allgemeine. And anyway I was, the last day I was there in Hanover I was there for about three or four days, I had to attend a meeting of all the survivors from the raids and all the students from university there and the colleges and what have you and a little girl gets up and question time you see and she gets up and says, can I please explain what was the duty of the navigator? Well if you ask me a stupid question like that, I’m gonna give you a stupid answer, for sure. So I said, ‘Well, the reason why we carried a navigator, because we had to have someone on board who could read and write’ [laughs] and their mouths fell open, he went like this, everybody, so I said to my interpreter, I said, ‘Tell them, it was a joke, will you?’ ‘Ah, a joke, yeah, we got no sense of humour, we Germans, we’ve got no sense of humour at all.’ [unclear] So then, later on somebody, one of the survivors said, ‘Why did you bomb the city?’ So I said, ‘To be perfectly honest, we couldn’t hit anything smaller but just remember this,’ I said, ‘Right in the centre, almost within half a mile from the centre of Hanover there was the biggest rubber factory in Germany, so it made Hanover a very legitimate target.’ ‘Yes’, this man says, ‘But you didn’t hit it, did you? ‘Cause it’s still there!’ [laughs]. I said, ‘Well, and you tried to tell me that the Germans got no sense of humour?’ [laughs] And then I was on their side from then on.
AS: I’ve lived there for eleven years. I’m with you. I’ve lived there for eleven years.
HH: Have you?
AS: Yeah. They’re great people, great people. I think.
HH: In which part were you?
AS: I was in Munich for five years.
HH: Yeah.
AS: And then in Bonn and Cologne, in the Rhineland for about six altogether. Some of the places you visited by air, in fact. That’s the feelings of the Germans. How, there’s been a lot of controversy about how Bomber Command were treated after the war. Have you got any views on that?
HH: Well, I think, first of all, we should never, never have bombed Dresden, I think that was the biggest mistake we made. And Portal should have stood up and said, no! But he didn’t have the guts to do it, he didn’t have the guts to stand up to Churchill and it was Churchill who, on his way to Yalta, he stopped off at Malta, And they’d agreed to bomb five cities within reach of the Russian lines, you know, and I think Dresden was one and what’s that? And Leipzig and one other I think. Anyway he sent back this signal to Portal saying, from Malta saying, where is my spectacular, get on with it. So, Portal looked at the charts and he consulted the Met people and the only target available that night was Dresden. I didn’t go to Dresden, I went to Magdeburg, Magdeburg that night, you can see it on there, in that book there.
AS: You believe it was, that Dresden was the turning point and that?
HH: Mh?
AS: You believe that Dresden was some sort of turning point?
HH: Yeah.
AS: How Bomber Command were treated?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Did you, do you feel now that it’s changed with the memorials and the clasp?
HH: Yeah, I think so. I think, there was a time just after the war, when the people who were against us were the people who were in the Air Force or in one of the forces and they felt that we were, they didn’t want us to have any publicity, you know.
AS: After the war.
HH: Yeah. And then, and then since then, they’ve suddenly realised that you know, we had the highest losses of any unit in the, our forces, fifty five thousand killed, which is quite a lot, wasn’t it?
AS: Yeah. Fifty five thousand, five hundred and seventy three.
HH: Yeah.
AS: And you’ve seen a, well, or you see a change in attitudes now.
HH: Yes, I think, younger people are much more inclined to want to hear about it and talk about it and understand why we did it and there is no good saying, well, we were under orders to do it, because that’s what the Germans excuses were, you know, for their treatment of the in the concentration camps. We were under orders.
AS: And you did it because it was right?
HH: Well, we did it because we thought we were, ‘cause we were shortening the war and therefore less people would be killed.
AS: Is it, I agree, you say, that now people want to hear about it, is it good for you and other veterans to be able to talk about it after all this time?
HH: It’s getting more and more difficult, there’s so many books have been written on there, now.
AS: And you are actually in one of the books.
HH: Yeah.
AS: Steve Darlow’s book. How did all that come about? Did you get involved with him?
HH: I don’t know. He wanted, I think I was recommended by probably Bomber Command, you know, Dougie Radcliffe.
AS: Oh, the Bomber Command Association.
HH: Yeah.
AS: Have you always played a big part in that?
HH: No, no, I was mainly in the Pathfinders Association.
AS: Oh, okay.
HH: We were separate from, we were separate from the Bomber Command Association, but I’d already joined the Bomber Command Association when we disbanded. I’d already been a member for several years.
AS: And do you belong to your squadron or 102 Squadron association as well?
HH: Yeah. Yes, it’s, I’ve written a letter to, when I went to the VJ-Day celebrations⸻
AS: Yes.
HH: We had to fill out a form travelling expenses and I got three hundred pounds from the Lottery Fund.
AS: Excellent.
HH: And my son Jeremy, who’d driven me up there and then he got three hundred pounds as well. And I don’t, I hope he hasn’t. So I wrote a letter to the Big Lottery and said, thanking them for their, I said, so, twice a year I’ve got to go to, up to Pocklington in Yorkshire, which is rather expensive for me now ‘cause you got to go up Virgin cross country you know, right the way up to York and it’s a long journey that. It’s an interesting journey but there’s no, there was a little old lady pushing the tray along, pushing the trolley along, you know, that’s all that you get to eat with some coffee and a fruitcake or something.
AS: It’s not the same as a full dining car.
HH: I like the dining cars on, I’m going up on the 22nd of October I think, coming back on the 23rd, I always travel back down on the dining car which, on a train with a dining car which leaves at seven o’clock in the evening.
AS: Do you still have wartime comrades that you’ll meet in Pocklington?
HH: Oh yes, yeah. Most of them are dead now but.
AS: So, a lot of reminiscing and’
HH: Yeah. There’s a friend of mine, who was a previous chairman, Tom Wingate, who, he wrote a book called Halifax Down, ‘cause he was shot down on his second tour, and I used to have a copy but I can’t find it now. I don’t know what I have done with it, I lose things all the time now.
AS: I have a copy at home, I can send you one.
HH: Pardon?
AS: I have a copy, I can send you one.
HH: You got a copy of that?
AS: Yeah, I have.
HH: Halifax Down, yes, it’s not a bad book, actually. Except that he joined the squadron the same time as I did, his crew did. And he’s quoted in his book, as if he was there three or four months before me. He’s quoted various trips and he’s got these out of those old war diaries, wish I could find that. I wonder where I put it?
AS: Well, you’ll have to take your logbook the next time you meet him.
HH: Oh no, he’s dead now.
AS: Okay.
HH: That’s why I’ve taken over as chairman.
AS: After you came off ops, you did this trip out to the Far East, did you then get involved in ferrying aeroplanes?
HH: In what?
AS: Did you then get involved in ferrying aeroplanes?
HH: Oh yes, yeah.
AS: Okay.
HH: It’s quite a lot really. My very first trip was down to Akyab, on the Arakan coast. I think I told you, didn’t I?
AS: Yes, but not into the tape. So, what happened on that trip?
HH: I don’t think that particular trip’s in there, actually, I looked for it the other day and I can’t find it. I must have left it out for some reason.
AS: This was the trip with the Japanese.
HH: Yes, all the way around us were Zeros, you know. We could hear them yacketing away and then this Indian crew comes on with their Hurricanes and the Japanese just disappeared.
AS: What was the radio conversation about with these Indian squadrons, red flight?
HH: Pardon?
AS: What was the radio conversation story about the?
HH: Oh, well, the Indian crews? ‘Yes, red leader to yellow leader, how do you read me, over? Yellow leader to green, you are not red, you are green, you know? Red leader to yellow leader, I am not green, I am red. And this Aussie voice comes up by the blue, you are black, you bastard’ [laughs].
AS: So, it’s still a combat area that you’re flying replacement aircraft I suppose in to the squadrons?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Did you get involved in flying damaged aircraft for repair?
HH: Oh, I used to fly back from say Kamila or with two Pratt & Whitney’s engines in the back and a load of ENSA girls as well amongst them [laughs], sitting where they could and trying not to get greasy, ‘cause these, and yeah.
AS: Yeah. Shall we, pause there I think?
HH: Yeah.
AS: And wind it up. Thank you that, It’s been absolutely wonderful to hear.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Harry Hughes
Creator
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Adam Sutch
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-21
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AHughesWH151021
Format
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02:28:15 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Harry Hughes volunteered for the Royal Air Force in 1940 and trained in America, where he was washed out as a pilot and then retrained as a navigator in Canada, flying Ansons and Wellingtons. In 1942 he converted to Halifaxes and flew operations with 102 Squadron over Germany, being awarded the Distinguished Flying Medal for flying an operation to Berlin whilst on crutches. He recounts the routines of preparing to go on operations and his use of navigation aids including Gee, LORAN and later, Boozer in Mosquitos. He was bombstruck twice during operations. He completed 26 operations including the bombing of Hamburg which he describes as a firestorm and recalls saying a private prayer for the people of Hamburg below. After his tour finished, he then instructed before applying to go back on operations with 8 Group, flying Mosquitos with 692 Squadron and dropping Window for Pathfinder forces in 1944/45. In 2004 he visited Hanover and discussed the raids with survivors of the war. He was a member of a number of post war service associations and kept in contact with his crewmates.
Contributor
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Peter Schulze
Carolyn Emery
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Canada
Germany
Great Britain
Southeast Asia
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Dresden
Germany--Essen
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Hannover
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
United States
Alabama--Montgomery
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
1943
1944
1945
102 Squadron
3 Group
6 Group
692 Squadron
8 Group
aircrew
Anson
Bennett, Donald Clifford Tyndall (1910-1986)
bomb struck
bombing
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
bombing of Hamburg (24-31 July 1943)
briefing
Distinguished Flying Cross
Distinguished Flying Medal
faith
Fw 190
Gee
ground personnel
Halifax
Halifax Mk 1
Halifax Mk 2
Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984)
incendiary device
Ju 88
Me 109
Me 110
Me 262
medical officer
meteorological officer
military service conditions
Mosquito
navigator
Operational Training Unit
Pathfinders
perception of bombing war
Portal, Charles (1893-1971)
promotion
RAF Chedburgh
RAF Harwell
RAF Riccall
RAF Wombleton
Stirling
training
Wellington
Window
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/257/3404/PFraserC1501.2.jpg
1b37fb0db87bcc24ea45c3ca9410d737
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/257/3404/AFraserC151113.1.mp3
c25ed2496f5e21b68df313bc38956864
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
Fraser, Colin
Colin Fraser
C Fraser
Description
An account of the resource
Four items. An oral history interview with Colin Fraser (Royal Australian Air Force) an account of his being shot down, a crew photograph and a piece of parachute memento. He served as a Lancaster navigator on 460 Squadron. His aircraft was shot down in April 1945 and he was a prisoner of war.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by XXX and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-11-13
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Fraser, C
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AP: This interview for the International Bomber Command Centre is with Col Fraser. A 460 Squadron navigator. The interview is taking place at Camberwell in Melbourne. My name’s Adam Purcell. The date is the 13th of November 2015. Col. I believe you have got something prepared. Let’s go.
CF: Yeah. I was born in Melbourne on 5th of November 1922. My air force number was 435111. And when the Japanese came into the war I decided to join the air force but they had many volunteers and the army wanted me so I went into the army on the 31st of December ‘41 and it took me ‘til March ‘43 to get back into the air force at Number 2 ITS Bradfield Park in Sydney. Where I was then classified as a navigator which is what I wanted. By changing Australia where the system was to have a observer, which means you could be a navigator, a bomb aimer or both depending on the size of the crew. I graduated in February forty — oh sorry. It was ‘43. ’44 sorry. Yeah. I graduated, sorry, in February ’44 as a navigator and had leave and then lived in the Melbourne Cricket Ground grandstand for seven days before I sailed off to England. I arrived in Brighton where the Australians were — had a reception centre, in February, sorry in March ’44. And we were told then immediately that there would be a delay because the fact is that the Bomber Command was not losing the people and aircrew were surplus for the moment there. I took leave courtesy of the Lady Ryder Scheme at a farm in, outside York. And I then returned to the new area of the instruction things at Warrington in Lancashire. And I and my mates spent a lot of time from there looking around various parts of England while we were waiting and we had some leave. At that time the RAF stopped the number of pilots being trained and there were empty airstrips and aeroplanes. So they said the pilots had been waiting a long time, for three weeks down to these airstrips and an empty backseat. They sent the navigators and bomb aimers to learn about map reading in English conditions. I finished up at Fairoaks which is in the Windsor Castle area. And we arrived there in early June ‘44 and we could see with flying at only a few thousand feet around the area that the invasion was well and truly on. And a couple of nights later we were not surprised at the amount of aircraft flying around for the invasion date. The — and then about ten days later we woke up to the sound of the V2. The flying bomb. We were not on the direct route from France to London, but the stray ones often were within our sight and two at least came over our area. We went back to Padgate and there we were split up into navigators and bomb aimers and I, being a navigator went up to West Frew in Scotland. And there we were joined by a section from New Zealand boys and I did my first DR navigation for six months while there. Then we were sent to 27 OUT at Lichfield which was the Australian OTU. And there we met up with our bomb aimer mates who we’d trained with, and I crewed up with Dan Lynch for the following day. We discussed having a pilot and decided we wanted one who was big and strong and had to be mature. About twenty three or twenty four [laughs] so we mixed with the pilots and picked out two pilots who seemed to fit the bill a bit. And we were at the same meal table as them that evening and the following morning when we decided that we wanted as a pilot Harry Payne. Known as Lofty because he was six foot three. So later that morning when we all got in the big hall we sat behind Lofty and were chatting to some gunners who’d also paired up. And when the chief flying instructor said, ‘Righto boys. Crew up,’ we tapped Lofty on the shoulder and said would he like a navigator and a bomb aimer and he said, ‘Yes. Do you know any others?’ and we said, ‘There’s two nice gunners over there. So we had them. They in turn knew a wireless operator from the night before so we finished up with a crew which was Harry ‘Lofty’ Payne from West Australia. Dan Lynch, the bomb aimer from Tasmania and myself, Colin Fraser from Melbourne. Our wireless operator was Bill Stanley from Melbourne. And then we had two Sydney boys as gunners. Jack Bennett, upper, mid-upper and Hugh Connochie known as Shorty, as the rear gunner. We then did ground subjects for a couple of weeks. Everybody. And I was then introduced into the mysteries of Gee. The radar navigation aid. We were taken out to the Wellington aircraft with a instructor pilot and he showed Harry how things were done and then said to him, ‘Now you can take off for three landings and take offs and then call it a day.’ Well, we took off and landed twice and the third time as we reached height the port engine failed and we went into emergency drill which for my position was in the middle of the aircraft where I couldn’t see anything. As we went around I pulled a nacelle cock to get rid of some petrol from the plane. And when Lofty turned in to make the landing he instructed me to pull the air bottle which I did and down came the undercart. The original Wellingtons that would also blow all hydraulics. But the pilots had all been advised that all planes on the station had been adjusted. That this would not happen. However, as Harry went to put down the flaps nothing happened. And he finished up banging the aircraft down halfway down the strip and he ran through the fence, across a road, a fence the other side, a bush or two, and finished up in a ditch with the back broken and up in the air. We all managed to get out of the escape hatches with any trouble, no injuries except a few minor cuts. And we took on, went back to flying the following day. And the only one there the one night the heating failed just after take-off and I had to navigate around with frozen hands. Putting them in gloves and out again. Navigation was a bit sketchy. And when I handed the log in, the instructor said to me it wasn’t too good. I maintained that in the circumstances it was quite ok. His comment back was, ‘In Bomber Command there are no excuses,’ which stayed with me for the rest of the tour. We finished there on the 11th of December and then we went in to Poole which meant sitting around for nothing for a couple of months because it was winter and there wasn’t any flying going on anyway. And we took leave to several places such as Edinburgh and there. Then on the 2nd of February we then went to Heavy Conversion Unit at Lindholme and met up with the mighty Lancaster bomber. As the navigator I met up with the H2S which allowed you to look through cloud and pick up the signals from the ground. It was good on the coast but not too good with towns. And one night when we were flying on a decoy raid which meant you flew within a few miles of the enemy coast and then turned back to make them think you were going to attack them. And that night it turned out that my oxygen tube got twisted and I was only getting half the amount of oxygen, and as such I got — cut out a dog leg we should have done and got back earlier to be noted that they were bandits in the area which was code for German fighters. Anyway, we got down. The last crew in to land while a mate of ours at 460 Squadron, Binbrook was shot down on a training flight and two of his crew were killed.
AP: Col.
CF: There were about a hundred JU88s came back with the bombers.
AP: Col. I’ll stop you there for a minute.
Other: I’ve heard this story.
AP: I haven’t yet.
[recording paused]
CF: Ah yes.
AP: Now where weren’t we?
CF: That’s how it goes. Now, where was I in this?
AP: We were talking about bandits returning from your decoy trip I think. Bandits. You were returning from your decoy trip.
CF: Oh yeah.
AP: And there were bandits.
CF: Yeah. Which meant that therefore we landed. I think we said we landed. And got, Binbrook. That’s right. Yes. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yes. So we’re as we said before any former on there. We finished on that at Poole, there we’ve got the — ah that’s right we’re at Lindholme. Ok. So Ok. Now where do I start from now when.
AP: Say again. Alright. Have you finished.
CF: Yeah.
AP: Your prepared statement shall we say. Ok. You said you were picked as a navigator and you said you wanted to be a navigator. Why?
CF: Because I’m good at figures. I’m not very good with my hands. I never wanted to really drive a car like all the other kids were fighting to get the steering wheel and I’d say, ‘Give me the map.’ So [laughs] yeah. I haven’t got the co-ordination with my hands. Well the obvious thing is my wife very nicely said to me, ‘You know dear if we lived on what you made with your hands we’d be below the poverty line.’ [laughs]
AP: Fair enough.
CF: No. I’m good at maths and I enjoy doing the figures. And secondly to stare, to sit with your steering column in front of me for five, six, eight, nine hours. That’s deadly. I like, I’ve got figures in front of me. I’m working on this time . Doing it there. So all in all the idea of being a pilot, although I had all the things. In those days my eyes were good for landing and everything. I was pilot/navigator category only because I was six feet one and they would not make you a gunner if you were over six feet.
AP: That’s why you’re —
CF: When I went in for my interview as to what I could be and they said, ‘What do you want to be?’ I said, ‘A navigator.’ And they probably looked at each other and said well that’s a change because ninety percent or more say a pilot. And they had a look at my figures that I had done pretty well in the exams. The mathematics and so forth. So yeah. So I was happy with being a navigator, yes. I wouldn’t have liked to have been a bomb aimer. Again, you would be steering there on a bombing trip for hour after hour whereas, you’re working on it. Mind you, at the same time you have a lot of pressure on you because if you’re not there and where you should be the crew look upon you. I always remember reading memoirs of some fella that when he said they got there and he said, ‘But we’re there,’ and the pilot and the rest of the crew said, ‘There’s no markers down. No, nothing. Are you sure you’re right Bill?’ You know. And then all of a sudden some markers went down and the pilot said, ‘Oh well done. The markers are down.’ He said, nobody apologised for all the queries and suggestions that I’d stuffed up really [laughs] yeah. No I enjoyed being a navigator. Yep. Yes.
AP: Very good. Can we — we might backtrack a little bit actually. Your early life when you were growing up. What, what did you do before the war?
CF: What?
AP: Yeah.
CF: Well I grew up at, in Hawthorn you might say. Down near the Quay on tennis courts on Scotch College where we had the Gardiner Creek winding around and like all the little kids along the Gardiner Creek we played down there when we shouldn’t have probably. We even had a bit of naked swimming there when we were six or seven or eight sort of business there in the creek. And somebody asked me once what was the, your memory of childhood? And I said, I thought for a while and I said, ‘Freedom.’ We were free. There was never any worries about anything sort of business there. Admittedly in the Depression I never gave my parents enough credit for the way they looked after us four kids during the Depression sort of business then. But the point was that as I said at my elder brother’s funeral my first memory of him was mother calling out, ‘Take you little brother with you and look after him.’ And that was the way that it acted in those days. Big sisters and big brothers looked after little brothers and I had what you might — and of course there was no TV. And we played games within the family and with our mates, sort of business, there. I had a great mate who died only a few months ago with a sudden heart attack and I went out my back gate and up a couple of houses in his back gate and vice versa and he was just as much — had two sisters he didn’t [pause] but he was just as much an elder brother as I was for the girls. They just treated me like a brother. He was over so often, he was always with us. Yeah. But the freedom was that was it. I could do what I sort of liked. Mother never said ‘Where are you going?’ Or something or other. I would just say, ‘Oh I’m going down to see Bill Jones or something like that.’ There was no worries that there were going to be any strange men or odd people around about. I had the — and there weren’t that many cars on the road either sort of business. That was it. It was freedom type of business that I had on there. And I was in the, one of the higher ones up in class. Again fortunately I had brains. I had nothing with the hands but the brains. I had the brains. And I can remember at state school you had two, what you’d call, very smart bastards, and I was one of the next three or four after that to get fired over two or three or four of us. But those two were outstanding and then we three or four or so were varied from time to time as to who was the smartest bastard shall we say. But that was it. We had freedom type of business of it there. And what was more. To do it there, more we had security ahead of us. It was obvious that if we’d ever thought about it we would grow up and get married and have kids and have a house. And that was, you know, the feeling was there was life ordained and certainly anybody who took a job in the public service would be, assume that they would see their life out in the public service. Again, if you joined a big company like BHP or something like that you would again, would assume that you’re there. So that was also better. But on the other hand of course as you were growing up you didn’t think too much about security. You just assumed I suppose that there was a instruction. And living in Hawthorn black was black and white was white. It was only when I went into the army I found there was a lot of shades of grey, depending on circumstances and the viewpoints of people etcetera. But in Hawthorn where I was, as I said we had all those. We had all that creek and the open land to run and play and fished and so forth etcetera there and I can remember the actual Quay on tennis courts there being built shall we say on it there. But that was it. It was the freedom of doing things. We might, as I say, Depression we might have had a second hand football or cricket bat or something or other. You had something. That was it, sort of business there. You weren’t looking for much sort of business there, and as I say you had a lot of, a lot of kids in that area I suppose moved at the same time and there was always. You walked out the house and walked around to the next over or you’d run into a couple of kids and you sort of business there. Yeah. Yes.
AP: Yeah. [unclear]
CF: A good childhood really. As I say not a very, not a rich one in any way or form sort of business there but a good childhood of freedom. Yeah.
AP: What— was the army your first job. Was the army your first job?
CF: What?
AP: Sorry. Sorry. Your first job. Was, was that — did you come straight out of school and straight into the military or did you do something?
CF: At that stage, Year 10, the intermediate was where everybody except the, the title used recently — only the swots went past Year 10 and they would be the future doctors and so forth there. The only the very, very smart ones you might say, the top ten percent or something went past Year 10. The rest of but again, looking, you went to work in a big company and when you started out they had — shall we say half a dozen new boys started at the end of January or something and you worked in the mail room. And for twelve months you delivered papers and picked up papers all around and you got to know what happened in the company. And then after that or sometime during it perhaps you then got a job of doing — writing something up or doing something and you stepped up your attitude. And you also went to work — you went to night school to learn book keeping accountancy. Or whatever was the thing of it there. So for two nights a week and maybe a bit of time to do a bit of study you were occupied shall we say. You didn’t have much money so you couldn’t go out much sort of business there. You did the things. Yeah.
AP: So why did you want to join the air force? Why? Why did you want to join the air force?
CF: Well I’d never had much to do with the water so the navy was out for a start. The idea of being on a ship sailing around on water had no appeal. The army — well I had read a few books about World War One. In the trenches and such and again the idea of face to face, shall we say, bayonet and so forth didn’t appeal much to me and so I couldn’t see a place in the army for my clerical skills shall we say. That type of business. So the air force and being a navigator appealed to me. Yeah. Yeah.
AP: Fair enough. You were, I think you said ITS was at Bradfield Park. Your Initial Training School was at Bradfield Park?
CF: Yes. Don’t ask me why they sent a Melbourne boy, like a fella said to me when he went to do his initial training as a pilot, he lived in Adelaide and thought he’d go to Padfield or something.
AP: Parafield.
CF: And no. No. No. They sent him over to Wagga.
AP: Ask not. Just do.
CF: The mysteries of postings. Yes.
AP: What happened at ITS? What, what sorts of things did you — were you taught. What sort of things did you do?
CF: Well you learned the theory of flight was the main thing there. Why did a plane stay up shall we say. You did mathematics for your because later on your skill. You did plenty of PT to keep yourself in good fit there. Incidentally, the fittest I ever was after the army induction because we did marching, drill there. PT. And then we’d finish up at four in the afternoon with a swim in the [Goulburn River?] And at the end of six weeks of that or something like that we, at nineteen years of age you were very fit when you’d been doing all this exercise every day for six weeks sort of business there. Yeah. The [pause], I can’t really think what else you did in there as I say the theory of flight. The theory of there and as I say mathematics. And PT. Yeah. I can’t think of really much else you did in that sort of days. I didn’t ever keep any records of what we did but certainly when you were on the reserve they would send you homework to do on mathematics. Do that there. So we had a reasonable amount of mathematics in there. Teaching up at there. But now I can’t remember really much other than the fact that we did the mathematics and the theory of flight etcetera up at there. Yeah. They might have had something else up at there. I don’t think if that was the question when you know they would ask you how you got up there. Yeah.
AP: So the first time that you ever went in an aeroplane what aircraft was it? Where was it? And what did think?
CF: It was an Anson aircraft at Mount Gambier which was Number 2 Air Observer’s School. So that was where I go on from ITS to Mount Gambier. And we went on [pause] I think it was an initial flying thing. We flew over the land and we flew over the ocean. And I think that was, you might say, showing us what flying was about. I don’t think we did anything other than fly around and see what was there. Yeah. And the Anson. Yeah.
AP: Did you —
CF: And what was more you had to wind it up a hundred and six turns because you were the, you were there. The pilots wouldn’t wind it up. You were part of the crew who had to wind it up. Yeah.
AP: That’s the undercarriage. That’s the wheels.
CF: That was the navigation. Yes. And you flew two to a crew. Two to a crew. One was the navigator and the other was the secondary one who had to take some notes about the countryside. Yeah.
AP: Did you, did you encounter any accidents or incidents in that early training? Did you, did you see any or —
CF: No accidents in the early training.
AP: No.
CF: Australia had none of the training actually till I was a sergeant and I didn’t actually get involved in any accident that time at all. Sort of business there. No.
AP: Alright. Once you got your wings you passed out as a qualified navigator. You then went to the UK somehow. How did you get there?
CF: We actually went to Brisbane and we caught a American twelve thousand dollar victory ship. They were the ships that they were welding for the first time. They had the, what was the seven thousand tonnes was called the something or other. And I was on a twelve thousand tonne called the Sea Corporal. And we went from Brisbane to San Francisco. And the two things I remember was A) I could see a rain storm and I could see a rainstorm had length and it had width but living where I was in the sort of valley a bit really of Gardiner Creek you only ever saw the rain coming at you sort of business there. You could never see the width or the depth of it but then all of a sudden there you had the ocean. Look across there and there is a rain going across and it’s got width and it’s got length. And the other thing. One day we went into the doldrums when the sea is perfectly smooth. There was no waves crashing. Smooth. There’s no, not a ripple on the water. This was what the old time sailors with the sail used to dread getting. I can imagine. That’s it there. I saw that one day. Yeah. It was eerie to watch this, shall we say, waves — not raising high obviously but, you know, up in the air, yeah.
AP: Very nice. You got to the States. Did you spend any particular time in the USA or was it straight across?
CF: Oh we had six hours. We went to a place called Angel Island in San Francisco Bay which was an American camp and we were given six hours from 6 o’clock in the evening till midnight to see San Francisco. That was our time in San Francisco. Then the next day we caught a train. A train across America. And the great thing about that — on the Pullman carriages they had sleepers. Great thing. Yes. We had to sleep sitting up in Victoria. Well in Australia and in England and then we got to outside New York and we got three days leave in New York. And then we went down to the harbour to there and on one side was the Queen Elizabeth of eighty four thousand tonnes and on the other side was a boat, I’ve forgotten the name, fifty five thousand tonnes. And we had never seen a ship bigger than twenty thousand tons. So eyes opened up big and wide. We didn’t know actually we were going to go on, you see. We actually slept in the Queen Elizabeth. In the third class cinema with bunks three high. And they had something like twelve to fifteen thousand troops on. I understand the American soldiers had eight hours each to sleep. That was it. There was only one bed for three American soldiers when they were taking them across. Six were there. So that was — you had two meals a day. And you had about, I think about half an hour you were allowed up for fresh air once a — once a day you got half an hour on the deck to get a breath of fresh air or something. Because the Queen Elizabeth had done that trip, you know, how many times they had the work down to a fine art. You had to wear a colour patch on your uniform and you weren’t allowed to move outside that colour patch except to go down and have your meal. It was a highly organised thing of it sort of business there. Yes it was. Yeah.
AP: How long ago — sorry, how long did that take. That voyage.
CF: Five or six days it took us to get across. Yeah. Yeah.
AP: Not much fun. Not much fun.
CF: Yeah.
AP: Alright. You get to England. This is the first time —
CF: Actually you finish up in the Gourock in the Clyde. Firth of the Clyde.
AP: Ok.
CF: Yeah.
AP: You get to the UK though.
CF: You take the train down and in actual fact you get in the train and you go to Glasgow and then you come to a city that’s got a big castle. And it’s got Waverley. That’s when we asked where we were. ‘You’re at Waverley.’ We couldn’t find Waverley on the map. And of course later on, some a month or two or so later somebody went up to and said, ‘Hey that was Edinburgh.’ Waverley is the station like Flinders Street.
AP: Certainly is. This was the first time you were overseas.
CF: Yes. First time. No. Sorry the army was the first time I was outside Victoria.
AP: Really.
CF: Yeah.
AP: Ok. So as a young Australian, the first time you were overseas wartime England would have been fairly confronting I suppose. What did you think of wartime England when you first got there? What was it like?
CF: Well, wartime. We got there in April which was spring you might say. And we had seen many pictures of England. Of the green land and so forth there. And coming down from Scotland the land was open shall we say and pleasant and the main memory I got down there seeing, for instance all the poles to stop planes landing from the invasion and other matters that indicated there was a war on around the place and England, I read a book. The same thing. It seemed to fit in pretty clearly of what you’d seen in the papers shall we say because you weren’t looking at the slums of London or anything of that nature. We were at Brighton which was the big as you probably know was the big holiday resort with the pubs all along the front. Like something, you might say, like the Gold Coast or something or other like that. And plenty of, actually in peacetime B&Bs behind that, also around places etcetera there. But no England was comforting I would say. There was no problem in there and of course they spoke the language [laughs]
AP: What did you think of the people?
CF: Incidentally, going across to America we had one naive nineteen year old saying to some American officers talking about America and he said, ‘Won’t they think it funny we haven’t got an accent?’ Took the Americans about five minutes to calm down with their laughter.
AP: Fair enough. What did you think of the people in England? Did you, did you have much to do with the civilian population?
CF: Well as they said in the book of, “No Moon Tonight” the author said if there was ever a Commonwealth spirit it was in England during the war. There were no — the Canadian, the English and such and one of the great things about being an Australian was that there were no Australian army troops to stuff it up in England. The air force by and large were ground crew admittedly as well. But by and large the Australians over there were, shall we say middle class and educated and were very popular with the locals and with the girls. That’s it. Yeah. And we were pretty well paid shall we say. Not as well paid as the Americans but we had — yeah.
AP: What — what sort of things, when on leave and these could be at any point when you’re in England. When you’re on a squadron or when you’re in training. What sort of things did you get up to when you were on leave or when you were off duty?
CF: Well, I went on leave with Dan Lynch who — he’d been doing the first year of a medicine course so you might say that we, on leave looked at seeing what we could of England, Scotland and Wales sort of business of it there. So we were always looking for the views and what was there and the old castle and all those types of things of it there. We had a few drinks but basically we didn’t hang around the pubs etcetera there. We, we wanted to see the actual country and as a tourist shall we say there. Yeah. That was my particular little group of, shall we say half a dozen mates and so forth you mixed. In other words you soon found out who wants to, you know, we were friendly with a couple of older blokes who, you know. They were shall we say twenty five or twenty seven or something like that. They’d like to, and they were married they liked to just go down to the pub and just have a drink and a talk. That was fair enough. Whereas we would possibly pop into the pub for one or two drinks and then on to the dance or something of that nature of it there. Yeah. So, like, how things go, when we were at OTU we got a week’s leave and Dan Lynch and I went out and went to hitchhike a ride with the Americans trucks to Brum. Birmingham. And we –they pulled up and, ‘Where do you want to go.’ I said, ‘Birmingham,’ and, ‘That’s ok we’re going to Oxford.’ ‘Could we come to Oxford?’ ‘Oh yes. Hop in the back.’ So we finished up at Oxford. And the following night we went and saw a George Bernard Shaw play which I had never seen one before. But that’s, as I say, a mate of mine. Dan Lynch. He was, that was his culture more so than mine, shall we say, etcetera. Yeah there. Again it was mixed up with you that for instance out of hours, 7 that was what we had to go to get back by the way that we picked up with the English. Bill Stanley and Dan and I would often make a three and go to the dance shall we say. Whereas the navigator Jack Bennett would then be he was a bit of a, he had a couple of other blokes or something. He was chasing the girls and so forth there. And he would, he’d go there and go sometimes with Shorty and the pilot. They tended to do other things shall we say. Yeah. But that was it. You, you soon found the people that wanted to do things that you wanted to do. Yeah.
AP: Did you spend much time in London? Did you spend much time in London?
CF: No.
AP: Not at all.
CF: No. We thought, having had a good look around London on a couple of occasions when we were there. No we didn’t spend, we spent some time there but no we wanted to, when we went on leave we would head down to either Cornwall and Devon or John O’Groats up in Scotland. We never made either place, or land. We didn’t make Lands End. We didn’t make John O’Groats but we would head off with a pass and went off with a thing and we’d stay one day, two days, three days and then all of a sudden realise that we’ve only got two days left. Perhaps we had better in that case make a firm plan where we’d go but that was it. Yeah. We went we made the opportunity. The one little group I sort of mixed around in was to see as much of England, Scotland and Wales as possible in the time. Yeah. In fact, Ireland as well. When the war was over, over there I actually went over to Ireland. Yeah. Where my Irish grandfather came from.
AP: Excellent. What did, what were your thoughts when you finally got out of that Wellington? Or the Wellingtons that kept having engine failures.
CF: Yeah.
AP: And you’re now on four engine aeroplanes. You’re looking at a Lancaster for the first time.
CF: Well, wait a second. When I, when after the Wellington crashed or when we moved in to the Lancaster.
AP: Sorry. In general. When you moved on. So you’ve left the Wellingtons behind.
CF: Left it behind you. Yeah.
AP: Yeah. Thank goodness for that.
CF: The old story was that the following day we went flying and that crash was they rolled the Wellington. That’s what happened. We didn’t suffer any and our main thought then was we’d got a bloody good pilot who didn’t panic. He did everything he could to keep the aircraft going and so forth. Safety sort of business of it there. Because as I said they found out that aircraft somehow had not been modified. I never found out why and so forth. Anyway, no, you, we were young. You got on with it and when you got to a Lancaster well let’s face it, let’s say the Lancaster at the Heavy Conversion Unit might have been a little battered but it was better than the Wellington. At the OTU sort of business there. Yeah. And you had four engines too. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. No. You didn’t worry too much about that.
AP: Can you, can you describe for me what the navigator’s position on the Lancaster is like? What? What’s there when you’re sitting at your desk. What’s around you and what’s it like?
CF: Well a Lancaster you had first of all you were the pilot and the flight engineer stood alongside of each other with the great things in front of them. You, then there was a big black curtain could be pulled across there where [unclear] and you actually faced sideways with a desk in front of you and therefore in front of you you had a compass which theoretically agreed with the compass in the — [paused]. You had to check that there because sometimes it didn’t. And you then had a set for the Gee which you used frequently. You read the thing and you got two, and two things on that and then you plotted on a special sheet which curved and let there. And then you had a, then a thing for the, on the side, for the H2S when you had that equipped on it there. And the rest of the thing of course your tables had your log and most of all you had your flight plan which you drew on as you went along and filled the detail in it there. So you had a couple of pencils and a compass and you had then a, the calculator. I’m trying to think of the name that is that you put your thing on and drew a couple of things on. It was a calculator for navigators to use. I’m trying to think of the name of it now. Yeah. That was it. At that stage you hadn’t, the navigator didn’t have a drift recorder and the ones we had which you had in the Anson and so forth to get there but when you had the Gee in the aircraft you didn’t need that. You had your map on there. Yeah. So as I say you sat on the side and then as I say you had a curtain between you and the, really, flight engineer and then you had a curtain on the other side to keep the light going out that way type of business of it there. So you were in your little cocoon with the light going on. As they said one navigator came out of the second or third raid and had a look at it, and said, ‘Bloody hell,’ and he said he never looked, he never would come out of his cocoon again. He didn’t want to see it.
AP: Did you ever have a look at a target? Did you ever come out and have a look?
CF: No. I went out and had a look. As one navigator said if you’re coming this far let’s have a look. But as they say in my thing that I had down there that on my first trip we were down for a place near Cologne which is in the Ruhr. Where the ack ack is pretty severe and the point was that we got there. We — ok there. Everything was going nice and easily and you’re thinking it’s a nice and easy sort of business there and then you see what’s there. But the bomb aimer’s there and he says everything and then all of a sudden he says, you know, ‘Bomb doors. Bomb doors closed.’ That’s the thing and then he called down a rather, ‘Let’s get the hell out of here.’ I must admit that the rest of the crew including me were feeling much the same way as he was feeling. This is no, no place to be for us nice blokes. That was straight out of there and say, as we were flying across occupied France and Germans had —half an hour later something after we’d dropped the bomb or something, maybe there, a shot come up and went through our wing and kept on going thank God. And it was dark. You couldn’t see outside and our pilot, having already done one trip as a second pilot said, ‘Oh it’s alright boys. A near miss.’ And about twenty minutes later when daylight appeared the mid-upper gunner said, You’ve got a bloody big hole in the wing,’ [laughs]. But that’s it. We got back home and we felt a bit guilty that, bringing back an aircraft another crew normally flew with a hole in the wing. As if we had been a bit careless about the whole thing. Yeah.
AP: That sort of leads on to the next question. The ground crew. What sort of relationship did you have with your ground crew?
CF: I didn’t have much of a relationship because as the navigator I was working up to the last minute finishing the plan we’d been told and so forth. And I was taken out to the aircraft just before it was time to — I never, never really saw the ground crew at all. And of course when we got back there was a no talk for the crew. So I had no relationship with the ground crew for the simple reason, as I say, that I didn’t — I was not there like the rest of the crew had been out doing a check and so forth etcetera there. But I was a late comer because I was there and sometimes you got you had to then finish your flight plan because you hadn’t had time to finish it beforehand. Yeah. So our pilot had a good relationship with the ground staff. I don’t know about the other crew members that were there as to whether they did or didn’t. I have a feeling that we only did seven trips so we weren’t there a long time and I don’t think, I think basically our flight engineer and our pilot had a good relationship with the ground crew but the other members I don’t think they really had much relationship with them type of thing.
AP: Alright. I’ve done that. Were there any superstitions or rituals that you, either that your crew took part in or that you saw in the squadron? Hoodoos or anything like that?
CF: No. No. I heard of various rituals and odds and sods but as far as I know there was no rituals about you always wore a blue tie or a certain hankie or something or other. As far as I know, in our particular crew, there was never any particular ritual, as you said. Some crews there was a ritual something or other but with our crew as far as I know there wasn’t any.
AP: Did you have any nose art painted on your aeroplane or were you not there long enough? Did you have anything painted on the front of your, on the nose of your aeroplane.
CF: No.
AP: You weren’t there long enough.
CF: No. No.
AP: That’s alright. Just thought I’d ask the question. So oh that was what I was going to ask you. As the navigator you’re working pretty hard when you’re flying. I believe it was fixing a position every six minutes or something along those lines. Can you remember much of the process of the actual physical what you were doing?
CF: Well when you were in England and you had the Gee which gave you your position, as you, I think you mentioned, every six minutes. You had to get a reading where you were and from that you had to work out the wind that had blown in the last six minutes and then readjust your flight plan as to whether to tell the pilot to change course if so what to change to. And you also had to check your estimated time of arrival likewise. Every six minutes. Which meant that you were working steadily shall we say? Yes. Yeah. As I say that was the great thing as I was good at mathematics I could, I could meet those six minutes all right shall we say. Yeah. Yes.
AP: And when, when you were no longer —
CF: And then once you, once you got over Germany and your Gee was jammed or you had difficulty getting a good reading because Gee lines were curved and over a certain distance they tended to merge into each so you could you know could be a half an inch deciding where they actually crossed sort of business there. But when you, after that you were dependant on if the bomb aimer can tell you something and sometimes the Pathfinders would drop a light to say this is the turning point to something of that nature there which I don’t remember ever having that myself. And basically we were flying on what information we’d had and anything we’d had in the first half hour or so or an hour or so of flying. And that’s one thing. When we started operations the [pause] see this was the — we started in March ‘45 the actual operations and the, that stage they were getting into the German border which meant that you possibly had a couple of hours of what the actual wind was that you could do yourself, sort of business a bit there. Other than that you flew on your flight plan and if you were over cloud, well, there and there were at times a wind direction might be come over from the Pathfinders. They might send it back if the wind was so and so and you might get a thing from them. Very rarely we did that but I heard it happened at times. We basically flew on DR. Dead reckoning. Once you got past the, into the German jamming and so forth there. Yeah. And of course it was always nice to see the Pathfinders drop the markers and you got off the course. Or you could see them ahead of yourself. Yes.
AP: The [pause] alright, what was the drill if one of your gunners spotted a night fighter and said, ‘Corkscrew. Port. Go.’ From your perspective as a navigator what happened next?
CF: Never happened to us fortunately there but as a navigator you mean when they said, ‘Go.’ Well, as a navigator you just sit there and grind your teeth or something or other. Or say, that there is nothing you could do and the only great thing what you had to do was to make sure that the, your gear on your desk when they flew into a steep curve didn’t go flying anywhere. And particularly because I remember the first time when we’d been practicing doing it for the first time when the pilot flew it down and the bomb aimer for some reason was having a rest on the bed, the rest bed which went along the aircraft. And my compasses flew up in the air and was flying towards him. And he was trying to push away this compass coming at him. At that — so I learned from that that if there was at any time the first thing I would do would be yes to put my hand on my gear and hold it there.
AP: Hold on for dear life.
CF: But fortunately I didn’t have to do that. Yeah.
AP: Ok. You mentioned something when we were at the RSL at Caulfield the other day. At the EATS lunch. You came up and you said something happened on Anzac Day 1945.
CF: Happened on —
AP: Anzac Day 1945. You haven’t told me that story yet.
CF: Well that’s what I’m getting on to later on. That was the, in actual fact that’s the day we got shot down.
AP: That’s what I was hoping you’d say.
CF: Yeah. Yeah.
AP: Please tell me about that experience.
CF: Yeah. Well I’ll tell you about the whole story. That’s part of my story.
AP: That’s part of your story.
CF: Yeah.
AP: Well ok.
CF: In actual fact I did that for this group, did one and I got for what turned out to be would I have my photograph taken and I said yes and I turned up like this and the, I found out that there was a team of five or six people. Not just one from the publicity. And one wanted the story and one wanted a photograph and so forth there. And I finished up getting my medals out and having a photograph taken and then they said, ‘Would you say a few words?’ I said, ‘Well a couple.’ A few words turned into, ‘Will you make a ten minute speech?’ So I finished up making a ten minute speech which described what happened from the day before when we were on the battle order which was the, picked like lead teams. That was the team that picked for the following day which was Anzac day. And my story lasted from there till the time that [pause] where does that go? Till the time we got to the Stalag. That’s right. Yeah. Ten minute speech. Yeah.
AP: Well I’ve got to the point in my questions now where we’ve been talking about operations so this is probably an appropriate time to carry on with your story if you —
CF: Yeah.
AP: If you’re happy to do so.
CF: Yeah. Yes. Well as I say. Right. Ok. Well now. Where were we? We’d got [pause] oh we got to Heavy Conversion Unit. I got introduced there, that I forgot to mention the fact that we picked up a flight engineer there. English flight engineer at the, when we got to Lindholme we picked up a English engineer. He had been, he was one of those fellows who’d been trained as a pilot and been sitting around for eight or ten weeks doing nothing and therefore he volunteered to go to go to a six weeks to be flight engineer and therefore get into operations. So we finished up, as I say a bit there that he was happy to fly with an Australian crew and we were happy to have him as a second pilot shall we say because he was a qualified pilot on it there. And he did a little bit of flying of the Lancaster while we were there and while we were at 460 so that he could take over if anything happened to our pilot. It was reassuring to have him. Yeah. Yeah. So then we get to, let me see, then we get to the 460 in March. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Ok. We start on that now?
AP: Yeah. Go for it.
CF: While at the start of our Heavy Conversion Unit we met up with our new flight engineer required for a Lancaster. He — name of Rick Thorpe and he came from Sheffield in Yorkshire. He was happy to join an Australian crew and we were happy to have him as a flight engineer and second pilot if necessary. We finished our training at HCU in March ‘45 and was transferred to Australian squadron number 460 at, near the village of Binbrook in the Lincolnshire. We did a training trip and the [pause] our skipper then did a second dickey trip with an experienced crew over Germany and after he came back about three days later we were on the battle order for that night. And we had the briefing. Found out we were going to bomb [Bruckstrasse?] which was a town close to [pause] what was it? Cologne. Everything went well. We took off at about 1.45 in the morning. Flew to [Bruckstrasse?] Started our bomb run. Everything was going nicely along. Nobody was saying anything. There was radio silence except for the navigator. The bomb aimer giving directions. And then the bomb aimer said, ‘Bombs gone. Bomb doors closed. Let’s get the bloody hell out of this,’ in a rather excited voice. And the rest of the crew felt that they had the same feelings. It was time to go. And on the way back across occupied France the plane got a shudder and the pilot told us that it was a near miss but it was dark at the time. Twenty minutes later when daylight came they found out that they had a hole in the wing that the shell had gone right through. We went back somewhat shamefaced that we’d injured the plane that was usually flown by one of the more experienced pilots. We then did several more trips and went ok. And then we went to Potsdam which was our longest trip to that date and as we dropped our bombs on Potsdam we were grabbed by the searchlights circuit and that’s very dangerous because the guns keep following those searchlights. And we dived very, very smartly and very steeply and heaven knows what speed we got to but we got out of the searchlights and flew back home. We did a trip to Bremen and as we were starting our bomb run the word came over, the code word, ‘Marmalade,’ which means cancelled. No bombs. So we had to dodge over Bremen to miss the flak and come home and land with a five or ten tons of bombs. Then on the 24th of April we were on the bomb order for the following day which would be our seventh flight. And wake up time was 2.15 am. So an early night. Up next morning, breakfast, flight plan, briefing and we were going to Berchtesgaden area. Not the town. In two waves. The first wave of a hundred and eighty planes was to bomb the houses of Hitler and all the Nazi leaders who’d also built their holidays home there and the communication centre and administration buildings. The second wave, of which we were one were to bomb the barracks of the Gestapo and the army that were looking after the Nazi leaders and their communication centre and administration quarters. That was one hour later. We took off just after 5 o’clock in the morning and flew down to the meeting point, joined the gaggle and were flying over The Channel and along over the French countryside. It was a lovely day. Beautiful blue sky. No clouds. Green fields, lakes and rivers down below and on the right was the majestic Alps and with the snow shining on the snow tops. Absolute picture book. We got near the target area and I left my table and moved behind. Ten inches behind the seat of the engineer because on the floor was a parcel of metal strips for [pause] we looked ahead, the flak looked light-medium so no worries. And the bomb aimer took over and he said, ‘Left. Left.’ And then, ‘Bombs gone. Bomb doors closed.’ And as he finished that word we were hit and something flew up past my face and out over the roof. And I looked down and in the centre of the parcel there was a jagged hole. In the meantime the pilot and the engineer were closing down the starboard engine which was a mess and the two inner motors which had also gone. So we were flying on one engine and an empty Lancaster will fly on one engine. The pilot checked the crew and found that everybody was ok. And he then said that the port outer engine, the remaining one was not giving full power and perhaps it would be best if we jumped while he had full control. Nobody wanted to jump. And the flight engineer said, ‘But we can’t do that Lofty. We’re over the Germany.’ At the time I thought that was a very sensible remark. Then we decided that we would try to reach the line of the allied army but very quickly the port, the remaining engine stopped and we were gliding and we had to go. And the drill was to all escape underneath the plane so you wouldn’t get hit by the tail plane. And the bomb aimer was the first to go and the four others all followed in due rate. And then the rear gunner appeared with the parachute in his arms. It had caught on the way up and opened. The pilot told him to get the spare parachute. He came back to say it wasn’t there. Later we found that they had taken it out to repack it and not — failed to replace it. The pilot then made a very very brave decision that rather than leave the rear gunner to his fate he would try and make a crash landing. At this time there was petrol floating around on the floor of the cockpit. His chances weren’t too good but he found that with the five men gone, the petrol also gone and such the plane would glide much better. And he saw a field down below of what looked like wheat and he glided the plane down. Dodged some wires close and put it down on a cornfield. They then both got out of the plane. Ran forty or fifty yards. Threw themselves down on the ground, looked back waiting for the explosion but nothing happened. The earth they’d driven into had apparently put out the flames. But appeared four Hitler youth boys aged about fourteen or so carrying a couple of machine guns which they pointed at the two Australians who were pretty worried. The boys were very excited. Talking to each other. And then along came the Volkssturm. The German Home Guard who took over and took the two Australians back to the regular army. Harry, the pilot, Harry was interrogated by a very high German officer there who said to him, ‘Why are you Australians here? We haven’t got any argument with Australia.’ Harry didn’t attempt to explain it but — meanwhile I had parachuted down to the ground and landed near a couple of houses in which the housewives were standing. Presumably looking at me coming down. And I hastily unbuckled my harness and parachute and left it there and went, walked quickly over to where there was a large clump of trees. The Volkssturm didn’t take long to turn up and no doubt the ladies pointed out where I was. And they were — I thought they said, ‘Pistol? Pistol?’ and patted me. I said, ‘No, and shook my head very vigorously. They said, ‘Parachute.’ and I just raised my eyebrows there and I assume that the couple of German ladies would be wearing silk underwear in the future. They took me to an army camp where there were my, the [unclear] were, was there and in the next couple of hours along came the mid-upper gunner and the flight engineer. And two or three hours after that again the pilot and the rear gunner appeared. The remaining member of the crew, the bomb aimer dropped first. He landed in the snow in the foothills and was captured by the mountain troops who took him deeper into the mountains and he actually didn’t get out of there till two days after the war ended. On May the 10th. The Americans turned up there. We were taken from the camp into the town where they had taken over the hotel as a headquarters and we were put in a room and finally given a piece of dry bread and it was covered in honey and ersatz cup of coffee. There was no hostility there. They were, but they were treating us as prisoners but not close guard. And came the evening light was there and we were put in the back of a covered wagon with the parachute of the, we think, the flight engineer. And we left there with a couple of guards. You might say nominal. Nobody was taking it too seriously. And we drove into the mountains and through the night. There was lots of traffic both ways on the roads. The Germans were using the darkness to avoid the allied fighters who were everywhere. And we then changed over half way across. We changed over to an open truck and we got under the parachute to open the parachute. Yeah. And at 6 o’clock we arrived at the Stalag 7a. Moosburg. Where they opened, a couple of the allied troops actually opened a couple of Red Cross parcels and fed us some breakfast which was very welcome. They then drove us further on to a communication centre at [Mainwaring?] about twenty kilometres away. And that afternoon the interrogating officer had Lofty, our pilot, in and asked him the questions and they got the usual answers there. And they said where, ‘Where do you come from?’ Lofty said, ‘West Australia.’ And the interrogating officer said, ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I know that quite well. I was an agent out there on several occasions for German firms buying wheat and wool.’ And Lofty said we then had a chat about the west Australian back countryside of which he knew more than I did. And then he said, ‘Well you’d better get back to your crew.’ So he said that was the interrogation. The Germans had given up. And the next morning, we stayed the night there and the next morning we were taken back to the Stalag on a tray, a horse tray with two horses to carry us back to the thing and we did a mixture of walking and sitting on the truck. And we talked to various Australians along the way who had been working on the farms. Where was the question? And we got back to the Stalag and the chief Australian officer said, ‘Do you know what’s going to happen to us prisoners when the allies arrive?’ And our pilot said, ‘Oh yes. We’re going to be taken back to England in the back of bombers.’ ‘Oh,’ said the group captain, ‘How would you know?’ Our pilot said, ‘Well the day before we got shot down they marked twenty five places on our plane where people could sit.’ ‘Oh.’ That was the end of that. The, on the 29th of April the American 14th Division came in and we were free. But it was some time before we got back to England.
AP: And you did go back to England in the back of a bomber. Did you go back to England in the back of a bomber?
CF: Yes. I think that’s about enough there but in actual fact what happened was that was the 29th of May. On May the 1st, yeah the 29th of April, May the 1st two days later General Patton arrived sitting on the front of a truck and at least a hundred correspondents and photographers if not a thousand were there and he announced that we would all be home in two or three days. Back in England in two or three days. And the, some of the Americans would be back in America in two to three weeks. At which the old timers such as me and such were a little bit cynical because of the amount of numbers. And we, yeah, so we sat in the Stalag with the — somehow or other the food was still coming in and the Red Cross parcels were being tapped and so forth. There wasn’t much difference under the Americans than there was under the Germans shall we say because I wasn’t going to go out into the town that I couldn’t speak the language and there were some wild people around. And, yes, I stayed in camp. But the long term prisoners who could speak German went into the town and in actual fact slept in some of the houses because the German, the German civilians liked to have you sleeping in their house if you were well behaved. There was no, any wild men turned up in the middle of the night sort of business, there. On the 7th of May. The night of the 6th of May we were told the following morning at 5 o’clock we would be taken by semi-trailer to air strips where we would be loaded on DC3s. A Dakota who would take us to the main ports, airports where we would then get into either American or British bombers. On the 7th of May we got up at 5 o’clock and duly got on the back of semi-trailers there and we were driven, I reckon forty odd kilometres if not more to an airstrip, a grass airstrip and quite a few. A big crowd. Only a few planes turned up. And therefore that night we were taken back to the German, at Ingolstadt the German. And we did some souveniring of some German wear and tear. And they took us back to the airstrip again the following day. And that was May 8th. Everybody was celebrating. One plane turned up, don’t ask me how they got to one plane there. So at lunchtime, by then the fella in charge of the shipment out said, ‘Go away and have a swim in the river or whatever you do. There’s nothing. Nobody is going to come in today and get it there.’ So an, sorry English long term prisoner who slept just near where I was in the hut said, ‘Oh come into town.’ I said, ‘ Oh ok.’ He said, ‘We’ll go and get, go in to the house and get some hot water for which we’ll give them American cigarettes,’ which were a very strong bartering tool and we’ll take some coffee in. He said, ‘I’ve got some of the stuff that the Americans who got taken out yesterday left on the ground. And let’s put it this way. A long term prisoner never threw anything away. You could, if you didn’t want it you could barter it for something else. And, ‘Yeah. Ok,’ and we went in and I don’t know whether he’d sized it up before we went in this house and we saw them and said you know could we get some water for a wash and a shave and we got some American cigarettes. And yes that’s ok. So we had a wash and a shave and then we said we’d got some coffee and they said yeah. So we were there and two daughters appeared aged, well they might have been nineteen, twenty, twenty one. Some like that age. And we found out that they had married some local boys who had then been grabbed by the army where ever it was. They were taken into Stalingrad. Do you know? Have you heard of Stalingrad?
AP: Yes.
CF: And as such they wondered whether they’d ever see their husbands again, sort of business, there. So that was their message. That we were celebrating the end of the war and they of course weren’t celebrating. And the two daughters were wondering you know just what the bloody hell was going to be the future of them. Anyway we had some nice cup of coffee with them. We having produced the coffee grains there to do it. Yeah. And we went back to the camp and we were taken to a jail that night and there was a bit of a fire about four in the morning or something or other. Some screaming. We got out of that and went and spent the rest of the night back at the airfield and using the overcoats that had all been abandoned by the, because they wouldn’t let you take overcoats on planes. It would make the load too heavy. And that was the 8th. The 9th and the 10th a few planes came in and the English bloke with the German language and so forth managed to wangle himself on one of the planes. So we didn’t go back to the house again and we just filled in the day just walking around. It was nice warm weather and such. So on the 11th there we were having breakfast. Oh we slept out those two nights using the overcoats and so what shelter there was and such so the following morning we’re there and the whole bloody plane, DC3s turned up. So we have to grab what breakfast we could and go and get ready, ready to go and you know make up plans. You had to go and list. Before you got on a plane you had to list everybody who was getting on the plane so if anything happened you knew what was happening . So we got taken to Rheims. To the small aerodrome and then we were taken by semi-trailer across to the major airport which of, was Juvencourt which was, you know, had about, probably had about five runways. Whatever it is. Anyway, we got there and I was allocated to a New Zealand Lancaster crewed by new Zealanders. And the pilot — I’d been in advanced flying unit with him six months before. He looked at me a bit surprised. ‘What are you doing here?’ ‘What the bloody hell do you think I’m doing?’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘Come and sit alongside me.’ So I, I didn’t sit in my designated spot but sat alongside him and got quite a nice view as we flew back. So anyway I was back on the 11th but the rear gunner, the bloke in there, he got back late on the 7th. He was the only one that came through on the one day where we were at the whole five thousand were supposed to do or something or other. Don’t ask me who was doing the statistics and everything around the place. Anyway, he got through on the night of the 7th and he was tired and they slept at some English ‘drome near London. Were there when fighter ones probably saw it and in the morning he and the other blokes hopped in a bus or something or other. He said, ‘What’s all the people wandering around shouting and jumping and everything else.’ ‘Oh the war’s finished. They’re celebrating.’ They said, ‘Oh is it?’ Oh. So he said he got down to Brighton on the 8th. The mid-upper gunner and the wireless operator had got as far as Holland no the 7th in other words but there was no plane to take them back to England that night. And so they got back on the 8th. That’s three. We don’t know what happened to the English engineer, he, after that he didn’t reply to any mail or anything etcetera. That was four. That’s right. So I got back on the 11th when, as I say, I got back to England on the 11th and the pilot actually stayed another four days after this. He didn’t leave the Stalag until about the 11th. Then he got flown to Nancy and then he took the train to the [pause] somewhere near the English Channel. And then flew across The Channel. He got back about the 15th. So if you get the idea that all your POWs are going to be flown back home in two days [laughs] — but I will say this much. We got very well treated when we got back to Brighton. In England. There, we got special treatment from there and when I went on leave I got, I think quadruple rations, I think, to take to the people I stayed with etcetera. Yeah. I got very well looked after. So that was the story of there. That as I say and that’s one thing on the DC3s you get quite a nice view of the Maginot and the what’s the name, the Siegfried Line. And all the debris of war was still spread out across the countryside shall we say. Nobody had had time to clear it up. It was, it’s out of the way, just leave it there and we’ll do it next week or something or other like that. The debris was and the bridges had been blown up and you could see what war had done to the countryside. You know. Yes. Oh yes. So that’s the story.
AP: Well I have three more questions.
CF: Yeah.
AP: Alright. So after that experience you came home to Australia. What did you do? How did you adjust back to normal life again?
CF: I had very little time adjusting back shall we say. And for instance my mate, Dan Lynch, who I, he was Tasmanian but he’d come over to Melbourne and he stayed in Melbourne and did the, went to the Melbourne University and got a degree in biology and then joined the fisheries and game department as their first biologist actually. And I formed a lifelong friendship and so I for the next few years while we were batchelors we saw a lot of each other. As we did with another couple of fellas who we trained with — Frank Kelly and John Hodson etcetera there. Yes. Four bachelors played around and one went up to The Northern Territory and then three bachelors played around. Yeah. So we all, as far, we all seemed, we all seemed to get pretty much, Frank actually I know started to do a course on something. I forget now. But he gave that away and then he got a job with a international there. The motors and so forth with them and from there he moved on to the South Melbourne City Council. I got a job back with a small building firm that I’d worked with and went back there. And went and did my accounting studies and then moved to a job with what was then Vacuum Oil which is now Mobil oil there. And Dan, as I say, got this thing and then he got a job. Those three of us, none of us had any, well as I say Frank had got shot down. And Dan and I had got shot down. And in actual fact the other fellow, John Hodson, he was sick one night. Didn’t fly. His crew didn’t return. So he had to get another crew etcetera. He, he, he sort of felt the war, shall we say, more than he did because he’d been pretty friendly with that crew and did a lot with them whereas we didn’t lose over there the same feeling as he got. And we also adjusted quite well to doing it there and I don’t quite know. By and large aircrew seemed to adjust pretty well back to there. Maybe the fact that we did it at remote distances as distinct to fellas that were there but on the other hand there were like the other day one fellow who didn’t do too well. And I know another fellow who didn’t, for thirty years did nothing because his best mate had got killed on 460 Squadron. I don’t know much about it. His third of fourth trip the plane crashed and killed the whole lot. Now why the plane crashed about twenty miles from base I don’t know. It could have been that something had been frayed and wear and tear over those next hundred miles might have caused something and all of a sudden some control might have snapped and the plane went in before the pilot could do anything about it. If he was flying at only a couple of thousand feet ready to land you don’t know. But that fella wouldn’t just come, for thirty years he wouldn’t come back to the air force. So there were people who were affected by the things but in my immediate knowledge of the people I trained with and saw a lot of in the next few years, none of them suffered from any kind of mental stress that showed in any way at all, sort of business there. So it did appear that being possibly a little bit away from it and so forth there but that’s how it goes on it there. In actual fact my biggest loss was a friend I grew up with who joined the air force before I did and went up to New Guinea. And on his first flight was shot down and he was injured and captured by the Japanese and the bloody Japanese sergeant then bloody murdered him. Which was a nasty one at the time but you know that one of your boys had not only not killed in action but bloody murdered sort of business there and we were told like, and the family afterwards said that they were told that they, that sergeant had been killed and they couldn’t do anything about it as a result sort of business. But that was the only, really he was the only one that was, really hurt me shall we say. My brother was in the army in the anti-aircraft in New Guinea but he was ok. And the other as I said this mate of mine. This is the odds of course. In Berkeley Street which is the next street to where I was in Kooyongkoot Road, Hawthorn. My mate did the thirty trips. The one that was there. Next door to him was a fella called Bob Benber who later became a big dealer in the insurance industry. He did a trip and got his DFC. And exactly opposite them was where Alec Wilde who did two trips — two tours. A tour and then another tour with 460. They all survived. And Kooyongkoot Road where I lived there was this lad I was telling you about got killed by the Japanese. I was a prisoner of war and a little further up the street was a fellow who was captured in the army at Crete. So two streets, three blokes all had tough luck. Next street three blokes who lived as close as you could possibly get all survived Bomber Command which was a dangerous place. Don’t ask me about the statistics. Yeah.
AP: Someone. One of my interview people said, ‘That’s the important thing in war. To have good fortune,’ he said.
CF: Yeah. Yeah.
AP: That, yeah. That’s exactly what you just explained.
CF: Yeah.
AP: I’m getting closer. I have two more questions. You mentioned when, I think it was your pilot, Harry, was being interrogated or when he was captured the German asked him, ‘You’re Australian. Why are you fighting us?’ I’m just curious. If he had attempted to explain why Australia was there what might he have said? What I’m interested in is why was Australia there?
CF: Well Lofty was not shall we say a well-educated man. He was a country boy. Grew up in the wheat fields and then moved into Perth. As such his, I don’t quite know what he might have said actually with his background of it there. It’s a little hard to say what you would say on it there. And whether he might have said, you know, we were fighting for the king or something. I can’t quite, can’t quite imagine him saying kind of thing that er. We were fighting. The best thing I could say he’d say we’re fighting because you Germans are threatening the rest of the whole of the world. Something of that nature is about all I think he might have said at that stage. But as I said he was not well educated in the sense of the word. He was a doer rather than a thinker type of business there. But as for a man in an emergency he comes out much higher than anybody else I know.
AP: I guess he was tested there.
CF: In other words, we said on his eightieth, so much so that both Dan and I worked it out that we would be in Perth around his eightieth birthday and we then took him up to Frasers restaurant, by name. Which is the big restaurant in Perth overlooking the township from what’s its name there? Have you been there at all? Anyway, we went there and we said, I said, ‘Except for picking our wives — Dan’s wife was there so she said, Thank you Colin.’ Picking Harry as a pilot was the best personnel decision we ever made. And he said, ‘Yes. I agree entirely. It was the best personnel decision that we made.’ And as you heard before we just about picked his crew for him. But as I said he was, we were right he was a solid citizen and that was it type of business of it there. He’s the type of bloke thank you want in your back line I suppose, at football. Sturdy. Dependable. And always be there. Yes. Yes a real bloke. A pity of it that they only had one daughter who was a smart lady. In actual fact she didn’t get married. Yeah. You could pass some of his genes down shall we say but there it is. Yes. Yes. He died some years ago and I flew over for his wedding [laughs] for his wedding — for his funeral and made a speech on there. Yes.
AP: The final question and probably the most important one. In your opinion what is Bomber Command’s legacy? What is the legacy of Bomber Command and how do you want it to be remembered?
CF: Well I’m not too sure where Bomber Command stands at the moment as you said. The thing is that hurt most of all that Churchill deserted Bomber Command. In fact he did it there and the — Harris, the one said he was sitting with on May 8th listening to, with the head of the American bombers and they listened and he mentioned Fighter Command and Transport Command and Coastal Command. Not one word one way or the other was Bomber Command in the Churchill’s speech of the victory over Germany mentioned. And in actual fact a couple of there before that after he was the man who agreed with Stalin that Bomber Command would bomb Dresden and he then sent the message back to the head of the air force — Portal. Who then passed the message down to Harris. And as Harris said all he said was the decision was made by somebody much more powerful than me and he was quite aware that no doubt he had a good relationship with Portal. He was probably mentioned of it there and he [pause] that, that hurt most of all. That later on there but that was it. When the war was close to finishing and all of a sudden shall we say the bishops and the [unclear] were saying oh we shouldn’t have bombed. Oh no. Look. Bombings nothing supposed to be like that. It’s just supposed to be drop a little bit in their garden or something. Look. Look at all the houses you’ve knocked down. Look at all the [pause] No. So in England there was great horror that those nice German people they used to see on holidays had been. Yeah. Anyway. The point is that it should always be remembered that the amount that Bomber Command did for the — well they sunk more capital ships then the navy and as Harris said didn’t even get a thank you [laughs] The army in the war in Europe would go back, instead of calling up the artillery they would call up Harris and say would you drop a few bombs on something or other on the business of it there. And while the, for instance the Americans got — grabbed a lot of praise for stopping the advance the Germans made in December, January sort of business there. Nobody ever mentioned that Bomber Command went and, in the, where there were the roads, two very important roads crossed. That Bomber Command just blasted that crossing out of action and nothing could move through there for another twenty four to forty eight hours. Reinforcements and so forth etcetera. That sort of thing never got talked about. Yeah. Well the thing is that in more recent times they have come around to realising that Bomber Command did a lot of things there. And one of the things that they did was that they bombed the artificial petrol factories there and the German fighters basically from the invasion on, or before the invasion were short of their hundred degree err hundred octane petrol because of the artificial petrol being made from coal — I think it was about eighty seven where they wanted a hundred. So they had to add things to it to make it a hundred and the, from before that the German fighters were not sent up anywhere near as often because they were trying to save petrol and of course the funny thing was that [pause] what is really never said and that is both against the Japanese and the Germans that the code breakers were able to get the messages that had been tracked on the wireless and they could then tell you what was going to, they could then tell you what was going to happen, sort of business of it there, and they never got the accolades. It did sort of business of it there. Because anyway they got the message and Churchill and the head of the army, the head of the navy and the head of the air force and I think about two other leading politicians etcetera there. I’m not too sure. They were the only ones that were allowed to be given the information that was coming through and they knew how it got there. So Portal, as the head of the air force knew that the Germans were short of petrol. Not only for their planes but for their tanks and so forth etcetera there. And he’s wanting Harris to really bomb the artificial factories more, more, more, and Harris who’s been told over the years it’s ball bearings, its gear boxes, there’s something else that was going to win the war was getting this message about it, about this. And in fact that it got to the point when Harris said to Portal, ‘Well if you don’t like my bombing programme I’ll hand my resignation in and you can get somebody who will do it.’ Portal couldn’t say, ‘I’ve got this information.’ You could understand why Harris was irate. So it was a bit tricky for some months there as to a bit of a chill between them because one knew all the information he was right but on the other hand he could understand why the other one was arguing against it there. But oh well it’s like there and I think in the last few years that the Bomber Command has been done there but it will never get the credit because it certainly did the damage and I must admit when you see the damage that Bomber Command did they did it, sort of business. And probably this is the old story of course people say oh they should have stopped it much earlier and you ask people in January ‘45 how long would the war last? You know. January February. Could go on for twelve months or so. And they say well why didn’t they stop doing it etcetera there. They probably could have stopped it a little earlier but it’s very difficult to say. Nobody knew that Hitler was going to commit suicide. If they knew that Hitler would commit suicide. Ok. Sort of business there. But as I say our raid that we got shot down on was completely unnecessary because Hitler was never going to come back to Berchtesgaden but a lot of people thought he was and he did sort of the business of it there. Ah yes I was quite glad as several leading people have said there, said the main character is that, I’m trying to this of his name. He said — he was a farmer in the Wagga area and he and another fella in Wagga further on he said, the war as he saw it was it’s like how you are at home. If there’s a fire or a flood on a neighbours territory you down tools and go over and help him. And he said, that’s what we were doing. Australia. England was in trouble and we were going over to help it sort of business of it there.’ And he [pause] Bill Brill and Arthur.
AP: Doubleday. Doubleday.
CF: Yeah. Yes. They had amazing bloody careers on there and I read somewhere that neither ever had to bring back an injured crew member. Absolutely amazing the fact that they had flown. Each of them had done sixty trips or something or other. Or more. Just one of those things. Yeah.
AP: Well that’s all the questions I have so unless you have anything, anything else to add to the discussion just before we wrap up.
CF: I don’t think so. The business of it there. The great trouble was of course after the war here as you probably knew that the fellas who came back from Europe were blackballed a bit. In fact some of them were accused of running away and actually anyway when the war was over the people who were out here were very annoyed when the people who’d been in Europe came back and told them what a real war was about. And as the fella who later became chief of the air force and the actual Governor General — sorry, the Governor of New South Wales he said he was in the mess and he said and somebody was saying, ‘There must have been forty planes, forty guns firing at me. It was terrible.’ And as this fella said, ‘I didn’t say something but I had had four hundred guns shooting at me sort of business of it there. And that was the thing. The reason there and they appointed the wrong bloke as chief of the air force during the war. They got the wrong diagram or something or other. I forget what it was. Anyway. Yeah. So that was a pity that it took ten years after the war I think to sort of get that nexus between those who had been in the war there. The fella I was telling you about Eric Wilde did two tours now he’s a bit of a character but he went to having got the DFC and the DFM and a flight lieutenant and all the rest of it. He was, went to an OUT, up I think to Mildura or somewhere like that and he was classified as not suitable for flying in The Pacific. And he promptly got a discharge and went and got a very nice job with A&A flying planes and he was made for life and that sort of business there. But some other fella came back, he’d been a wing commander over there and the best they could offer him was a flight lieutenant’s job or something or other. Those sorts of thing. Yeah. There was a bit of a nastiness as well as difficulty that fellas who had handled miles of stuff — when they came back here they would say the people who had the bit of power they’d fought in The Pacific and that was, ‘oh we had to do it. We didn’t have brick buildings to go back to at night time.’ And we had to do that and so forth there. One of the interesting periods of that incidentally was the fact that the fella came over as a wing commander at Binbrook and in that period in December, January when the big war was on. The Battle of the Bulge. And the air was there he said Binbrook when the snow came down he looked at the amount of equipment they had and he thought well in The Pacific we had one ‘drome and that was it. One big strip. That’s all we could make. So he told the bloke in charge of the ‘drome that he was to put his all equipment pick out the main one that was used and keep that one strip open. The other two strips don’t worry about them. Keep that main strip open and keep your, all the equipment on that and as he said at one time, or something or other we had seventy planes come and landed there and he said, ‘Where did you put them?’ And he said, ‘We put the one on strips we weren’t using.’ That was it. In other words where the one fella who had only ever been in England always had three strips tried to keep three strips open. Whereas he had been in The Pacific where, you know that was it. A few little things like that appeared here and there. On their, on the business side of it there. Yes. Yes. Of course there were a lot of politics on it. On the business of it there. But it’s there and the point is that’s true about Lofty Payne on there. That was in various magazines over the time and even in The Sun and it’s in the bomber what’s the name there, Bomber Boys. Lancaster man. Yeah. And I asked Lofty. He said, ‘I have never talked to anybody.’ I think he did talk to the fella who wrote the history of 460 Squadron during the war. He was Australian. I think he might have talked to him. But he said all the others — no. I’ve never talked anybody about that. Where they’ve got the information from I don’t know. But none of them ever come or ring me up or talk to me about it sort of business there. Yeah. It’s irritating slightly shall we say. Sort of business. Yeah.
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AFraserC151113, PFraserC1501
Title
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Interview with Colin Fraser
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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02:10:16 audio recording
Creator
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Adam Purcell
Date
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2015-11-13
Description
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Colin joined the British Army in December 1941, and eventually moved to his preferred Royal Air Force in March 1943. He went to Number 2 Initial Training School at RAAF Bradfield Park in Sydney as a navigator, graduating in February 1944. His first flight was in an Anson at Number 2 Air Observers’ School at Mount Gambier. Colin then sailed to Britain.
There were some delays as Bomber Command had surplus aircrew. He spent some leave through the Lady Ryder Scheme and went to RAF Padgate. He was sent to RAF Fairoaks and witnessed V2 flying bombs before returning to RAF Padgate. Colin was sent to RAF West Freugh and did dead reckoning navigation. His next destination was 27 Operational Training Unit in Lichfield. Colin describes how they crewed up. He was introduced to the Gee radio navigation system and Wellingtons. He went to a Heavy Conversion Unit at RAF Lindholme and encountered Lancasters and H2S.
Colin discusses his impressions of England and his activities. He also outlines how he carried out his role as a navigator.
They transferred to 460 Squadron at RAF Binbrook and started operations in March 1945. Colin describes some of their seven operations, which involved damage to the aircraft on a trip to Saarbrücken; being caught in the searchlights at Potsdam; cancellation mid-route of their trip to Bremen. On 25 April 1945, they flew in the second wave to Berchtesgaden and were hit, losing all but one engine. Some of the crew baled out but the pilot crash-landed the aircraft with the rear gunner because of a missing parachute. Colin was taken to Stalag Luft 7 at Moosburg. They were freed on 29 April 1945 by the American 14th Division, although it took some time to return to England and ultimately Australia.
Colin gives his views on the treatment of Bomber Command and the politics involved.
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
England--Staffordshire
England--Surrey
England--Yorkshire
Scotland--Wigtownshire
Germany
Germany--Saarbrücken
Germany--Potsdam
Germany--Berchtesgaden
Germany--Moosburg an der Isar
Germany--Ingolstadt
Poland
Poland--Opole (Voivodeship)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1943-03
1944
1944-02
1945-04-25
1945-04-29
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Sally Coulter
27 OTU
460 Squadron
aircrew
bale out
bombing
C-47
crash
crewing up
Gee
H2S
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
military service conditions
navigator
Operational Training Unit
perception of bombing war
Portal, Charles (1893-1971)
prisoner of war
RAF Binbrook
RAF Fairoaks
RAF Lichfield
RAF Lindholme
RAF West Freugh
searchlight
shot down
superstition
training
V-2
V-weapon
Wellington