1
25
14
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2330/43393/LClarkHA532059v2.1.pdf
5b3fb05ff0650d27a3ac2e68c5cf300c
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
Clark, Herbert Ashton
Description
An account of the resource
Two items. The collection concerns Wing Commander Herbert Ashton Clark (b. 1911, 532059, 43414 Royal Air Force) and contains his log books. He flew operations as a pilot with 37 Squadron from the UK and North Africa.
The collection was loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Wayne Clark and catalogued by Nick Cornwell-Smith.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2021-12-02
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Clark, HA
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LClarkHA532059v2
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Title
A name given to the resource
Herbert Ashton Clark's pilots flying log book. Two
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Description
An account of the resource
Pilot’s flying log book for Flight Sergeant Herbert Ashton Clark from 8 March 1937 to 20 August 1956. Detailing operational posting in Iraq with 70 Squadron. On return to England further training with 215 Squadron. Conversion to the Wellington at 11 OTU followed by posting to 37 Squadron in August 1940. Posted to the Middle East in November 1940. Promoted to Squadron Leader and then Wing Commander during this posting. Awarded DSO and DFC.
Stationed at RAF Hinaidi, RAF Driffield, RAF Manston, RAF Honington, RAF Bramcote, RAF Bassingbourn, RAF Feltwell, RAF Shallufa. Returned to England post-war staying in the RAF. Aircraft flown were Valentia, Harrow, Wellington, Magister, Lysander, Maryland, Fiat CR42, B26, Harvard, Auster, Proctor, Anson, and Prentice.
He flew 1 propaganda leaflet drop with 11 OTU, 1 day and 21 night operations with 37 Squadron in Europe. Targets were St Omer, Eindhoven, Soest, Osnabruck, Frankfurt, Stockum, Bottrop, Hannover, the Black Forest, Gelsenkirchen, Hamm, Flushing, Bitterfeld, Rotterdam, Mannheim, Leipzig, Kiel, Hamburg, Berlin.
12 day and 18 night operations with 37 Squadron and 257 Wing in the Middle East. Targets were Benina, El Adem, Derna, Berca, Bardia, Tobruk, Benghazi, Rhodes, Brindisi, Halfaya, Marble Arch landing ground, Heraklion, Misurata, Homs, Palermo, Gabes, the Mareth Line, El Hamma, Kourba, Pantelleria, Villa San Giovanni, Vibo Valentia, Adrano, Cape Peloro. Posted to HQ RAF Middle East where carried out 28 day supply dropping operations.
Post war career included postings to Air Division Control Commission Germany, Flying Training Command, 41 Group, 22 Maintenance Unit and RAF Negombo, Sri Lanka.
Log book also contains Form 3921 – Aircrew Qualification Record, a 1949 calendar and Form 2745 Record of Service, Educational and Professional Qualifications.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940-08-09
1940-08-10
1940-08-15
1940-08-16
1940-08-17
1940-08-18
1940-08-19
1940-08-20
1940-08-24
1940-08-25
1940-08-26
1940-08-27
1940-08-29
1940-08-30
1940-09-01
1940-09-02
1940-09-04
1940-09-05
1940-09-07
1940-09-08
1940-09-12
1940-09-13
1940-09-14
1940-09-15
1940-09-20
1940-09-21
1940-09-29
1940-09-30
1940-10-02
1940-10-03
1940-10-05
1940-10-08
1940-10-09
1940-10-10
1940-10-11
1940-10-14
1940-10-15
1940-10-16
1940-10-17
1940-10-21
1940-10-22
1940-10-23
1940-10-24
1940-10-25
1940-10-26
1940-12-08
1940-12-10
1940-12-11
1940-12-13
1940-12-14
1940-12-17
1940-12-18
1940-12-20
1940-12-21
1941-01-02
1941-01-05
1941-01-13
1941-01-14
1941-01-20
1941-01-22
1941-02-16
1942-11-07
1942-11-08
1942-11-25
1942-11-26
1942-12-02
1942-12-03
1942-12-22
1942-12-23
1943-01-08
1943-01-16
1943-01-17
1943-02-03
1943-02-04
1943-02-24
1943-02-25
1943-03-17
1943-03-19
1943-03-20
1943-03-25
1943-03-26
1943-04-13
1943-04-14
1943-06-10
1943-06-27
1943-06-28
1943-07-15
1943-07-16
1943-08-01
1943-08-08
1943-08-09
1944-02-29
1944-03-02
1944-03-25
1944-05-05
1944-05-15
1944-05-31
1944-06-01
1944-06-02
1944-06-09
1944-06-10
1944-06-16
1944-06-27
1944-07-03
1944-07-12
1944-07-25
1944-07-27
1944-08-03
1944-08-15
1944-08-17
1944-08-19
1944-08-22
1944-08-25
1944-08-29
1944-09-07
1944-09-12
1944-09-16
1944-10-13
1944-10-21
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
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Yorkshire
England--Kent
England--Norfolk
England--Suffolk
England--Warwickshire
France
France--Saint-Omer (Pas-de-Calais)
Germany
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Bitterfeld-Wolfen
Germany--Black Forest
Germany--Bottrop
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Hamm (North Rhine-Westphalia)
Germany--Hannover
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Leipzig
Germany--Mannheim
Germany--Osnabrück
Germany--Soest
Greece
Greece--Ērakleion
Greece--Rhodes (Island)
Iraq
Italy
Italy--Adrano
Italy--Brindisi
Italy--Palermo
Italy--Pantelleria Island
Italy--Vibo Valentia
Italy--Villa San Giovanni
Libya
Libya--Al Adm
Libya--Banghāzī
Libya--Bardiyah
Libya--Darnah
Libya--Miṣrātah
Libya--Ra's Lanuf
Libya--Tobruk
Netherlands
Netherlands--Eindhoven
Netherlands--Rotterdam
Netherlands--Vlissingen
Syria
Syria--Homs
Tunisia
Tunisia--Mareth Line
Tunisia--Qābis
North Africa
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Nick Cornwell-Smith
11 OTU
215 Squadron
37 Squadron
70 Squadron
9 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
B-26
bombing
Distinguished Flying Cross
Distinguished Service Order
Harrow
Harvard
Lysander
Magister
Operational Training Unit
pilot
Proctor
RAF Bassingbourn
RAF Bramcote
RAF Digby
RAF Driffield
RAF Feltwell
RAF Honington
RAF Leconfield
RAF Manston
RAF Shallufa
RAF Silloth
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2330/43392/LClarkHA532059v1.1.pdf
34f731f18c75804f18c2d90e896025bd
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
Clark, Herbert Ashton
Description
An account of the resource
Two items. The collection concerns Wing Commander Herbert Ashton Clark (b. 1911, 532059, 43414 Royal Air Force) and contains his log books. He flew operations as a pilot with 37 Squadron from the UK and North Africa.
The collection was loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Wayne Clark and catalogued by Nick Cornwell-Smith.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2021-12-02
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Clark, HA
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LClarkHA532059v1
Title
A name given to the resource
Herbert Ashton Clark's pilot's flying log book. One
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Description
An account of the resource
Pilot’s flying log book for Flight Sergeant Herbert Ashton Clark from 7 November 1934 to 26 February 1937. Detailing flying training as a pilot at No 2 Flying Training School and then operational posting to Iraq. Served at RAF Digby, RAF Andover, RAF Hinaidi. Aircraft flown were Tutor, Hart, Fury, Virginia, Valentia. Posted to 9 Squadron as pilot and then further posted to 70 Squadron in Iraq. Operational flying in Iraq included transport of personnel and stores in addition to further training.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Hampshire
England--Lincolnshire
Iraq
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Nick Cornwell-Smith
70 Squadron
9 Squadron
aircrew
Flying Training School
pilot
RAF Andover
RAF Digby
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1921/41091/PHenningtonAJM17060004.2.jpg
ed84b5f20f63ff75e718c611911c1246
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1921/41091/PHenningtonAJM17060005.2.jpg
7d481b8e232bd6495cbf22b35a68bb75
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
Henington, A J M
Henington, Albert John Maurice
Bertie Henington
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-08-10
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Henington, AJM
Description
An account of the resource
32 items. The collection concerns Flight Lieutenant Albert John Maurice Henington (1604946, 154960 Royal Air Force) and contains his log book, diary, photographs and documents. He flew operations as a navigator with 106 Squadron.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by John Tim Henington MBE and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
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
Relief Map of Lincolnshire's Bomber Airfields
Description
An account of the resource
A relief map with bomber command airfields marked with their elevations. There are two copies.
This item was sent to the IBCC Digital Archive already in digital form. No better quality copies are available.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Map
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Two copies of a coloured relief map
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PHenningtonAJM17060004, PHenningtonAJM17060005
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
RAF Balderton
RAF Bardney
RAF Barkstone Heath
RAF Bottesford
RAF Coningsby
RAF Cottesmore
RAF Cranwell
RAF Digby
RAF Dunholme Lodge
RAF East Kirkby
RAF East Retford
RAF Finningley
RAF Fiskerton
RAF Grantham
RAF Harlaxton
RAF Hemswell
RAF Kirton in Lindsey
RAF Langar
RAF Lindholme
RAF Manby
RAF Metheringham
RAF Newton
RAF North Coates
RAF North Luffenham
RAF Peterborough
RAF Saltby
RAF Scampton
RAF Skellingthorpe
RAF Spilsby
RAF Strubby
RAF Swinderby
RAF Syerston
RAF Waddington
RAF Wigsley
RAF Winthorpe
RAF Wittering
RAF Woodhall Spa
RAF Woolfox Lodge
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/630/30877/MPotterPL1878961-150914-050001.1.jpg
4631463ceecd700415b4c9052616c943
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/630/30877/MPotterPL1878961-150914-050002.1.jpg
fbb3a6341fe3ada6e6a7e7f4a8262070
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/630/30877/MPotterPL1878961-150914-050003.1.jpg
306891de4b1dd13e83487a0c25e810d5
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
Potter, Peter
P Potter
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Potter, P
Description
An account of the resource
39 items. Collection concerns Peter Potter, (1925 - 2019, 1876961 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a rear gunner with 626 Squadron. Collection contains an oral history interview, his logbook, memoirs and photographs
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Peter Potter and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-09-14
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
[underlined]Fotheringay-Jones[/underlined]
Told by a Flight Lieutenant from Digby.
Fotheringay-Jones was posted to a Spitfire Squadron
and reported to the Flight Command Squadron Leader,
"Fotheringay Jones, eh? Jolly good show old chap, get
yourself genned up on Station orders, routine orders,
Flight order book etc." .
"Actually, I want to get in the air, Sir". “Hey”! “want to fly
a Spitfire". "All in good time Fotheringay-Jones". "No,
No Sir, now, there is one due for an air test in the
hangar, can I take it up?" "Oh, very well Fotheringay-
Jones, it's good to see you're so keen, do the office
work later".
Fotheringay-Jones was airborne in minutes and after a
couple of circuits, began to beat up the Admin. Area at
very low level. After the Spitfire passed his window,
the wing tip just a few feet away for the fourth time,
the Flight Commander tried to get him recalled, but
Fotheringay-Jones hadn't turned on his radio
transmitter and had no joy. At this time Fotheringay-
Jones changed his attention to the Station
Commander's Office. The Commanding Officer ducked
each time the Spitfire, now upside down, flashed past
his window, shaking the building and blowing his door
in and scattering papers everywhere. He picked up the
phone to the Flight Commander and tore him off a
strip, asking for an explanation.
When Fotheringay-Jones eventually landed he was told
by a white faced mechanic to report to the Flight
Commander. When he swaggered into the office, the
Flight Commander snarled at him, "You think you're
clever, you're not, you're bloody dangerous, you've
broken all the station rules. Your foolish behaviour has
incurred my serious displeasure and also that of the
Commanding Officer."
Fotheringay-Jones calmly, "Have you finished, Sir?"
"Yes, for the moment." "Then you can go and get
stuffed." "l beg your pardon." "Go and get stuffed."
"Get out." The Flight Commander called the
Commanding Officer reporting Fotheringay-Jones was
insolent and the Commanding Officer demanded the
words of insolence. "Well, he told me to get stuffed."
"Did he, send him to me, bring him here yourself." The
Flight Commander with Fotheringay-Jones duly arrived
at the Commanding Officer's office, he was given an
angry dressing down by the Commanding Officer. As
he finished, Fotheringay - Jones said "Go and have a
good shit." Fotheringay -Jones was turned out and the
Commanding Officer sent for Fotheringay-Jones's
documents. The Adjutant brought them in and the
Commanding Officer told the Flight Commander to
read them. "Elementary Flying School- a highly
proficient student. Basic flying School- well above
average. Advanced Flying School- Extraordinary.
Operational Conversion Unit - Fotheringay-Jones will
make an exceptional Operational Pilot. Further
remarks - Pilot Officer Fotheringay-Jones is a nephew
of H.M. Secretary of State for Air. The Commanding
Officer knocked out the ash of his pipe "That's all Flight
Commander. I'm going to the lavatory, you can make
your own arrangements.
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
Fotheringay-Jones
Description
An account of the resource
Apocryphal tale of a spitfire pilot's misdemeanours on arrival at a station and after rudeness to authorities was found to be nephew of secretary of state for air.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Three page printed document
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
MPotterPL1878961-150914-05
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Fighter Command
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
David Bloomfield
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
RAF Digby
Spitfire
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/529/28307/BReddishDEReddishDEv1.1.jpg
56a49e84cbc382065d2d9d132dd3bf27
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
Reddish, Doris
Dorris Edith Reddish
D E Reddish
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Reddish, DE
Description
An account of the resource
14 items. An oral history interview with Doris Reddish (1925 - 2017) a memoir, correspondence and photographs. She served in the Royal Observer Corps.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Doris Reddish and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-01-31
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
My Work in the Royal Observer Corps by Doris Edith Reddish
The object of the exercise was to plot every aircraft that was flying. Around the country there were outposts, in clusters of 3, where the men were spotting and listening for aircraft. They were the eyes and ears and called names like: Dog 1,2 and 3, Jig 1,2 and 3, Able 1, 2 and 3, Baker 1, 2 and 3. They reported any aircraft to the Ops Room; every plane. There was a big table in the Ops Room, with about 16 to 20 people around. On this big table all the aerodromes of Lincolnshire were mapped out. The 3 outposts would plot the same aircraft to get an exact position as to where it was, and they would relay that information to the plotters in the ops room. We
put a disc on the table, showing what the aircraft was and how high it was. We would plot that aircraft wherever it went until it landed, when the disc was taken off the table. If an enemy aircraft came in over the coast off our RDF board, an officer would relay it to Digby and fighters would be scrambled from Digby. Then the two
aircraft would be plotted, one chasing the other, so we knew exactly where they were. Our aircraft aimed to chase the enemy plane back out to sea, to shoot them down. We knew every aircraft that was flying. None could get away from the outposts. Several officers were at a higher level to us within the room. One officer was in radio contact with aerodromes, mainly Digby, at all times, reading the table and sending them information. Sometimes we went off the table to the higher level, to speak to Digby. The awful part of the job was plotting the aircraft setting out, going on a raid, and not the same amount coming back. Sometimes we waited for ages to see if any came limping back. We knew a lot of the crew, as they came into the Ops Room.
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
My Work in the Royal Observer Corps
Description
An account of the resource
Doris' experience in the Royal Observer Corps. She explains how they would record an aircraft. They recorded all aircraft.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Doris Reddish
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One typewritten sheet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Memoir
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
BReddishDEReddishDEv1
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
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
David Bloomfield
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
civil defence
RAF Digby
Royal Observer Corps
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1591/27753/LHarrisPI19061214v1.1.pdf
a72dbeae0d180eff9761d5b9d5d07bb0
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
Harris, Paul Ivor
P I Harris
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
2020-02-03
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Harris, PI
Description
An account of the resource
One item. The collection concerns Paul Harris (b.1906) and contains his log book. He served in the RAF as a pilot from 1932 to September 1937 in Great Britain and the Middle East.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Tim Harris and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
P I Harris’s pilots flying log book
Description
An account of the resource
Pilots flying log book for P I Harris, covering the period from 12 January 1932 to 29 September 1937. Detailing his flying training and pre war flying duties with 35, 6 and 47 squadrons. He was stationed at RAF Digby, RAF Bircham Newton, RAF Ramleh, RAF Haifa and RAF Khartoum. Aircraft flown in were Avro Lynx, Atlas, Hawker Hart, Gordon, Fairey IIIF, Victoria, Avro Tutor, Vickers Vincent, and Gordon Floatplane.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
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Mike Connock
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LHarrisPI19061214v1
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
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Israel
Sudan
England--Lincolnshire
England--Norfolk
Israel--Haifa
Israel--Ramlah
Sudan--Khartoum
North Africa
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1932
1933
1934
1935
1936
1937
35 Squadron
47 Squadron
6 Squadron
aircrew
Flying Training School
pilot
RAF Bircham Newton
RAF Digby
training
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1073/24391/PPickeringE1604.2.jpg
27e86e50a6466d3a32ae5d136fcfaa11
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
Pickering, Eileen
E Pickering
E Gascoyne
Description
An account of the resource
27 items. An oral history interview with Eileen Pickering (b. 1922, 483863 Royal Air Force). She served as a signaller in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force at 5 Group Head Quarters at Grantham and at Bletchley Park. the collection includes memoirs, a poster, photograph, bible, drawings and mementos. Two sub collections containing cards and drawings.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Eileen Pickering and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-04-22
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Pickering, E
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
Sector operations room Digby
Description
An account of the resource
Pen and ink drawing of operations room with raised platforms to the left and tables in front. Men and women working at tables and on platforms. map on wall to right and squawk boxes high up on walls. Titled 'Sector Operations Room, RAF Digby 1939'.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Ron Downing
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1939
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Pen and ink drawing
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Artwork
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PPickeringE1604
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
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1939
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.
arts and crafts
military service conditions
RAF Digby
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/501/22571/MCurnockRM1815605-171114-018.2.pdf
016c5b36e006bb2bf9b025c8d8d14b3a
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Curnock, Richard
Richard Murdock Curnock
R M Curnock
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Curnock, RM
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-04-18
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Description
An account of the resource
92 items. An oral history interview with Warrant Officer Richard Curnock (1924, 1915605 Royal Air Force), his log book, letters, photographs and prisoner of war magazines. He flew operations with 425 Squadron before being shot down and becoming a prisoner of war.
The collection has been licenced to the IBCC Digital Archive by Richard Curnock and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Ex-RCAF The Camp Jan 1990
Description
An account of the resource
News-sheet of the ex-Air Force POW Association. This edition covers POW's in Perpetuity, the Red Cross, a new memorial at Plymouth Hoe, Geoof Taylor -author, advance notice of a reunion in Vancouver, lost members, ex-POW histories, Obituaries, a message from the President, Gen from around the circuit and photographs from the 1989 Ottawa reunion.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
The RAF ex-POW Association
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1990-01
Format
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16 printed sheets
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Identifier
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MCurnockRM1815605-171114-018
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 Canadian Air Force
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Plymouth
France--Dieppe
Canada
British Columbia--Vancouver
Ontario--Ottawa
Germany--Koblenz
Germany--Dresden
Germany--Leipzig
Germany--Luckenwalde
Ontario--Toronto
Alberta--Edmonton
Belgium
France--Fresnes (Val-de-Marne)
France--Saint-Nazaire
Alberta--Hinton
Germany--Berlin
England--Cambridge
England--Oxford
England--Southampton
Germany--Cologne
France--Le Havre
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Lübeck
Manitoba--Brandon
Switzerland--Geneva
United States--Mason-Dixon Line
England--Skipton
France--Falaise
Manitoba--Winnipeg
Germany--Essen
Virginia--Norfolk
Italy--Sicily
Italy--Calabria
Italy--Naples
Italy--Florence
Austria--Spittal an der Drau
Poland--Toruń
Poland--Gdańsk
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Europe--Elbe River
Germany--Osnabrück
Germany--Bad Fallingbostel
France--Bordeaux (Nouvelle-Aquitaine)
Germany--Mühlberg (Bad Liebenwerda)
Italy
Poland
France
Virginia
Ontario
Alberta
Germany
Austria
Switzerland
United States
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Devon
England--Hampshire
England--Yorkshire
England--Oxfordshire
Manitoba
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.
10 Squadron
214 Squadron
4 Group
40 Squadron
405 Squadron
408 Squadron
415 Squadron
419 Squadron
420 Squadron
424 Squadron
425 Squadron
426 Squadron
427 Squadron
428 Squadron
429 Squadron
431 Squadron
432 Squadron
433 Squadron
434 Squadron
6 Group
air gunner
aircrew
B-17
bale out
Beaufighter
Bennett, Donald Clifford Tyndall (1910-1986)
bomb aimer
Caterpillar Club
Conspicuous Gallantry Medal
crash
Distinguished Flying Cross
Distinguished Service Order
Dulag Luft
escaping
Goering, Hermann (1893-1946)
Halifax
Hitler, Adolf (1889-1945)
Hurricane
Lancaster
Me 110
memorial
Military Cross
navigator
Operational Training Unit
P-51
Pathfinders
prisoner of war
RAF Alconbury
RAF Biggin Hill
RAF Digby
RAF Hendon
RAF St Eval
Red Cross
Spitfire
Stalag 3A
Stalag Luft 3
Stalag Luft 4
Stirling
strafing
training
Typhoon
Victoria Cross
Wellington
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1087/11545/ARaineyDC180607.2.mp3
e4e0f9a91379454954ba0c8402533130
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
Rainey, Donald
Donald C Rainey
D C Rainey
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Donald Rainey (b.1928). He grew up in Scopwick near Lincoln and witnessed three crashes.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-06-07
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Rainey, DC
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
MC: This interview is being conducted on behalf of the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Mike Connock and the interviewee is Donald Rainey. The interview is taking place at the home of Mr Rainey’s daughter, Mrs Barker in North Hykeham, Lincoln on the 7th of June 2018. Also in attendance is Mrs Wendy Barker.
[recording paused]
WB: Go.
MC: Well, thanks for doing the interview, Don. What I want to start off with is right from the beginning. You asked me how far back I want to go. When and where were you born?
DR: Cranwell Air Force, Air Reserve because my, my mother’s sister husband was a big wig in Cranwell. Teaching through all the war.
MC: So you were born there.
DR: And that’s how I was born there but I lived at Scopwick.
MC: When was that?
DR: At the Royal Oak.
MC: When was that that you were born?
DR: 1927.
MC: ’27.
DR: Yeah. That makes me old.
MC: Yeah. No [laughs] There’s a few of you still around. So what did your parents do?
DR: They lived in the pub. The Royal Oak at Scopwick.
MC: Oh, did they?
DR: Yeah. And in that pub in the war we had George Formby’s wife for ENSA. And she stopped at our pub for about four days entertaining the troops. Beryl they called her, didn’t they? Beryl. George Formby’s wife. Beryl. And she stayed at the Royal Oak at Scopwick in the war entertaining the troops in Digby. In the aerodromes.
MC: So you went to school in Scopwick.
DR: Yeah.
MC: Yeah. What was school —
DR: I left in 1942.
MC: What were schooldays like in those days?
DR: Useless.
MC: Did you enjoy school?
DR: Yeah.
MC: Oh, you did. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, so tell me so when war broke out how old were you? That would be ’26. Be fourteen.
DR: About just before the war.
MC: Twelve. Thirteen. Twelve or thirteen.
DR: Yeah.
MC: Yeah.
DR: I left school at fourteen. Had to do and go to —
MC: Yeah. Yeah. A lot did.
DR: And I went to engine, apprentice engineering. British Crop Driers.
MC: You did well.
DR: Yeah. I got a job straight away.
MC: Yeah. You did in those days.
DR: A fitter, maintenance fitter. Seven years apprentice it was in them days.
MC: Yeah. So, you did a full apprenticeship, did you?
DR: Yeah. Seven years.
MC: So when you were, so when war broke out you were, you were still in Scopwick.
DR: Yeah.
MC: Yeah. So tell me some of the stories about Scopwick then and what you saw.
DR: Saw? All the Air Force. In our pub at Scopwick after the first war they extended it because we’d got that many customers. Air force. Airmen and WAAFs from Digby aerodrome, you know.
MC: So you mentioned about this Lancaster you saw.
DR: Yeah.
MC: Doing fighter affiliation.
DR: That was, that was the one. That was in the, at the end of the war, wasn’t it? It was the 11th of March 1945 it crashed. And it got hit with that Spitfire and it chopped the back end clean off. And that landed at, near Scopwick Station. The tail end did.
MC: Where did the rest of it go then?
DR: The back of the Ash Holt Woods between Blankney and Scopwick. Outside the main road between Blankney and Scopwick. And they was all killed.
MC: Did you have a lot to do with the RAF at the time?
DR: No. I didn’t go to, I didn’t go in the war.
MC: Yeah.
DR: Because I was a bit too one life, and I’d done, and I was doing an apprentice. They didn’t call you up —
MC: No. I just wondered whether you met any of them on a regular basis?
DR: Oh, I did. In the Air Force.
MC: Up until —
DR: The pilots from Digby.
MC: Yeah.
DR: Definitely we did.
MC: Yeah.
DR: They used to come over our pub swooping when they come back.
WB: Dad used to play the piano accordion in the pub.
DR: Aye. In the pub.
MC: Your dad did.
DR: I did.
WB: No. You did.
MC: You did. You played the piano accordion.
DR: I was taught. Yeah. I was taught music.
MC: Who taught you to play music? Music then?
DR: A firm in Lincoln it was them days.
MC: Oh right.
DR: And then I used to play in the pub. Aye.
MC: You weren’t very old then.
DR: I weren’t. I were seventeen. Eighteen. I was eighteen then.
MC: Yeah. So that would be, yeah towards the back end of the war then.
DR: Yeah.
MC: Yeah. So were you —
DR: And that —
MC: So, and any other instances that you remember from that time?
DR: About the beginning of the war Waddington, I don’t know if anybody knows this there used to be a red flashing light at Waddington Aerodrome. And what they did they used to stop that at night and they used to have a decoy and pull it between Scopwick, on the [Mere?] Lane on a Saturday night for a decoy for the Germans. Not. You know, we used to see it.
MC: That’s, that’s interesting.
DR: That’s true that is. A big decoy. And they used to have that flashing at night and to deflect the Germans didn’t it for they’d think it was the Waddington area.
MC: Yeah.
WB: They said they would bomb the fields then instead of the camp. Yeah.
DR: Aye. They did.
MC: Yeah.
DR: That was another thing they did.
MC: So what about this fuel leak then you were telling me.
DR: Oh, that was, that was after that was. After the war.
MC: Oh was it?
DR: When the Vulcans was there.
MC: Oh right.
DR: But between that a Vulcan, one of them was trying to land at Waddington. Something wrong with it. Three or four of them. No. Three jumped out and one man’s parachute, and he dropped at Dunston Pillar and it killed him. Did you ever know that? Then the pilot got the Vulcan landed. But others, some of them jumped out but one didn’t and he dropped in at Dunston Pillar in my firm’s land.
MC: Yeah.
DR: He got killed.
MC: So what about the war time? I mean, you mentioned about this Lancaster. Were there any others?
DR: Oh scores of Spitfires crashing. Ever so many. At Scopwick village cemetery there’s seventy some odd burial graves there.
MC: And they were all —
DR: Memorial.
MC: And that’s all people killed.
DR: Yeah. All Canadians. All Digby was all Canadian Air Force.
MC: Yeah.
DR: And the bloody, the Germans used to keep bombing that every other night. Air raids that they used to bomb the airfields so the Spitfires couldn’t land. So what they did they took a hundred some acres of Parker’s land, made a dummy airfield so they could land there. Then they took all the WAAFs to Blankney Hall. Did you know that? Did you know? To do the plotting at Blankney hall because they bombed Digby no end of times and got so, you know a few got killed there.
MC: Yeah. So they moved them to Digby Hall.
DR: Yeah. To Blankney Hall.
MC: Blankney Hall.
DR: Then they got it set fire and burned down, about near the end of the war that was at Blankney. Blankney Hall. Aye.
MC: So what about you know you talked about the Lancaster and the Spitfires. Any any other incidents that you can remember?
DR: Aye. On Easter Monday when they bombed Digby they were shooting with bloody guns after this bloody German plane and they got it down. And they’re buried at Scopwick. These Germans.
MC: Oh right. Yeah.
DR: Aye. I can remember that. It was a long time ago though isn’t it? Just let me have a look at —
[recording paused]
DR: That you get from planes.
MC: When you were a boy you used to collect it.
DR: After the, after, in the war it was. You see we’d nothing else to do as I say. And another thing they had at, night at Scopwick there used to be a big beck if it’s still there and it was the blackout, wasn’t it? They used to come out of the pub. Kept on falling in the bloody beck. No idea. I can remember that.
WB: They’d obviously had one or two too many.
MC: So where did you go to pick this ammunition up? Did you go —
DR: Well, where the planes crashed.
MC: Oh right [unclear]
DR: They used to leave no end. They used to leave no end and there was another one crashed. I reckon there was some. I think it came from Metheringham. It crashed at Scopwick in, near Scopwick Railway Station and I reckon the graves were still there. That’s near when we, just before you get over to Scopwick Station to come to Timberland around the back there and one crashed there. A Lancaster. And I reckoned that was from Metheringham ones I reckon.
MC: Oh aye. Yes.
DR: Yeah. We was always going to go to that but we didn’t go because it was blazing like hell that. Because we were on our bikes. Do you know what I mean? [unclear] There was nowt else to do then but. And then with the bloody, if you were in the old fields, them days we used to be out with say bird, or nesting, and the bloody Germans would come over you at head height, in case they machine gunned you. Planes, up at Digby. They were trying to keep Digby down because it was a fighter station, wasn’t it?
MC: Yeah. Yeah. It was.
DR: And then when we worked at Temple Grange that’s there, we could see Digby. And I see thirty Flying Fortresses land in Digby. Aye. Because they couldn’t get down in Norfolk because of the dense fog. And they were there. Thirty. As I say some of them Yanks used to come to our pub. It’s all in this book. If you ever got that book it’s in there about it.
MC: Is that the, “Slightly Below the Glide Path.”
DR: Aye. It’s in there about —
MC: About Digby.
DR: Digby.
MC: Yeah.
DR: And the funerals. There’s a Memorial. I was brought up massive funerals there was at Scopwick. Military, you know. [pause] My grandad took that Scopwick pub in 1864. Them days. And he had a bit of a land holder there and they had the pub. That was his pub in them days. And they had a farmyard at the back of it. A lot of land. You know. Olden days wasn’t it? That’s what happened. Then we had three, he had three daughters. My mother and two more and they all married service people. The three of them. And my father, by 1926 he come up from Somerset and he was a fitter at Digby working on the double wingers. Engines. Aeroplanes. Just before the war. Not those double they had before the war. Scopwick Puff or something. Double wing planes used to be at Digby just before the war. That’s how my dad met my mother in Scopwick pub, you see.
MC: He came up from Somerset.
DR: Yeah. He lived at somerset. He would, he would be eighteen I think when he came up there. Somehow he got. I don’t know how he got there. He joined, working on the air, the old aeroplanes.
MC: Yeah.
DR: The olden days. That’s how he got to that area you see.
MC: It would be interesting to know what aeroplanes they were. You said —
DR: Scopwick Pup, wasn’t it?
MC: Oh, Sopwith Pup.
DR: Aye. That were them.
MC: That’s it. Yeah.
DR: That was at Digby. Just before the war. Aye.
MC: Goodness me. That was [pause] yeah. They were a popular aircraft in the First World War.
DR: Yeah. That would be 1927/26 because I was born ‘27 28 and he was, met my mother in the pub, you see. She was only eighteen. Seventeen. Eighteen. In them days that was a sin weren’t it [laughs]
[recording paused]
DR: Name. I forget his —
MC: No. No. It’s ok. You say there was another fighter pilot buried at Scopwick.
DR: One of them. And after the war they came and took his body up in the middle of the night. And then they come up with four bodies in a lorry and parked in my grandad’s yard, barn yard for the night. And they got, and his name and his photo’s in here in this flight book. I forget what they called him. They took him back to Belgium. His body.
MC: Oh right.
DR: And there’s a plaque at Scopwick where they dug him up from. Aye. That were after the war that was. And I know that.
WB: Because I suppose people would want their families home wouldn’t they? If at all possible. Yeah.
DR: Aye. Was full of Air Force.
MC: Yeah. So what were the nearest air bases to you then? So there was Digby.
DR: Digby. There was a bomber one was Metheringham.
MC: Metheringham.
DR: And then, then Waddington.
MC: Waddington. Then of course Digby.
DR: Then there was another one at Coleby Grange. That one. That was all interlinked with Digby.
MC: Yeah. So you were pretty well surrounded by them.
DR: Yeah. Every night around us bombers going off and off and off.
MC: Yeah. Did you used to watch them at night?
DR: Yeah. The noise. They used to pan around don’t they? To get up.
MC: Yeah. Yeah.
DR: Aye. But the Germans was all after Digby.
MC: Yeah.
DR: So they couldn’t, the fighters couldn’t get back down. And they did that [unclear] you know, the emergency landing strip.
MC: Yeah.
DR: Aye.
[recording paused]
MC: So you used Scopwick house for.
DR: Big house.
MC: Yeah.
DR: And the Air Force commandeered it and made it into a hospital for Digby Aerodrome.
MC: Did you ever get a chance to visit any of these places?
DR: Yeah. We used to go there every Monday night at Digby, Scopwick. You’d have a film show for all the patients in this big house. Aye. From Digby Air Force. Aye. That’s right.
MC: Yeah.
DR: That was another thing they did.
MC: So they allowed you in.
DR: Yeah. They —
MC: As the public as well as the —
DR: Yeah.
MC: Yeah. Yeah.
DR: Because I used to know them coming down the pub.
MC: Yeah. Of course you did.
DR: Said it was me.
MC: Yeah.
DR: Then after the war we had a gang of Germans in a big building there. Prisoners at Scopwick. No end of them.
MC: Did you meet any of them?
DR: Aye. One was a nasty sod and he was a Nazi. He had a tattoo on his arm. The other ones weren’t but there was one nasty one there. Yeah.
MC: You didn’t make friends with them then.
DR: No. They weren’t. We met them after the war. They were working on the land for Parker’s that I worked for then.
[recording paused]
DR: Aye.
MC: Entertainment.
DR: Yeah. George Formby’s wife. Beryl.
MC: Yeah.
DR: She came and she stayed at our pub for four days and she was entertaining the troops out at Waddington, at Digby and Metheringham.
MC: She was.
DR: Yeah. George. Beryl, they called her. George Formby’s wife. She worked for ENSA.
MC: Yeah. Yeah.
WB: Mensa.
MC: No. ENSA.
WB: Oh, was it ENSA?
DR: Aye.
MC: Yeah.
DR: Aye.
MC: Yeah.
DR: Toured around in a big car she was in them days. Aye. Beryl.
MC: I never knew that.
DR: It’s true that is.
MC: Yeah. So you used to have bed and breakfast in your pub.
DR: Yeah. Well, we had, there was six bedrooms in our pub. And they knocked, knocked the lot, the end off after the war because they reckoned it was too dangerous with the narrow road going up to Sleaford. So you can see where the end piece was chopped off. The kitchens and all that bit. Aye. But I’ll tell you they put an extension on our pub after, in the war because there were that many customers.
MC: Yeah. Because it’s still there.
DR: Yeah. You go in there and you’d see. You go in the front door, turn left. There’s like a long bar. The tap we used, there used to be a tap room we called it in them days for the roughs, and the posh would be in the, then they built another L shape on the back. In the gardens.
MC: Did they have any memorabilia in there of the RAF at all?
DR: My mother and father was the last person I was in there. I don’t know whether — it’s changed hands four or five times since.
MC: Yeah.
DR: So, I don’t know now. And every, every Saturday night at Scopwick they used to packed in the village hall dance. All in a big dance in a wooden hut. Packed it was. Every Saturday. You used to have to shut down while about 11 o’clock them days, didn’t they? Not allowed on Sunday.
MC: No.
DR: No entertainment.
MC: That’s what it was like. Yeah. So it was packed with airmen was it?
DR: Airmen. WAAFs. I mean, I mean, and I was they used to come down on bikes from Digby. Leave their bloody bikes. No one cared did they? And my dad in his own car would take them back home to Digby. Some of them. That was about a mile wasn’t it to walk from Digby aerodrome down to Scopwick. That was the nearest pub from Digby aerodrome.
MC: So it must have been popular.
DR: It was. There were any more in them days. Then we got short of beer. It was rationed a bit.
MC: Was it?
DR: Yeah. In them days. Yeah. In the end.
MC: You must have been popular if you ran out of beer.
DR: True. That was true that was. Aye.
[recording paused]
DR: Put it on?
MC: Yeah. Do you want to —
DR: All the fighter pilots all had a revolver with them, flying. Did you know?
MC: Yeah.
DR: Because we were all given the bloody gun. That’s true that is [unclear] because I was on about guns and that. Flaffing about.
MC: You talked about rationing. So what was food like?
DR: We was alright because my grandad had a farm. We had pigs.
MC: I was going to ask.
DR: Chickens. And all the apple trees and pear trees up in the back gardens you see because my grandad had that farm. Part of it. So we weren’t, we were lucky.
MC: Yeah. So you had plenty to eat. Did you used to share it around?
DR: A little bit. Aye.
MC: Were you a big family then?
DR: No. No. I was the only one.
MC: Oh, were you?
DR: Yeah. And my, my mother’s sister she only had one. That’s all there was. There was only two of us. I’ve only got one more cousin. But there’s a few more down Somerset from my dad’s relatives down, but we don’t see them now.
MC: No.
DR: We’ve lost them.
MC: So you hid, you were given the gun were you?
DR: Aye.
MC: And you had to hide it.
DR: I chopped it up at our works and I chucked it in the bin.
MC: Oh, did you? Oh, you didn’t keep it.
DR: No.
MC: It was a bit dangerous wasn’t it?
DR: Yeah.
MC: Yeah.
WB: Yeah.
DR: What I did I had an air rifle. A 22 air rifle. I was training to be a lathe worker, tap work, and I turned a twenty two barrel round and pressed it on inside the roller and all the firing pins were a rim fire. For twenty two cartridges [makes noise] True that is.
MC: That’s the advantages of being an engineer.
DR: Yeah. Trained up lathe work. See.
MC: Yeah. Who was it your worked for?
DR: Blankney Estates. Parker’s.
MC: Oh right.
DR: Did you hear of them?
MC: Yeah. They had their own engineering workshop.
DR: Yeah. They did. We had forty thousand acres of land in the finish.
MC: Yeah.
DR: We started off with British Crop Driers. Then they split it. But it was too big for one workshop to do all the lot and we had a new workshop built at Blankney for the bottom half of [pause] Aye. They took the Londesborough Estate didn’t they? All that lot. Took everything. Even my grandad’s land. They came up from Norfolk just before the war from the Queen. He used to farm the Queen’s Estate at Sandringham.
MC: Oh right.
DR: And they all come up to this area of Lincolnshire. They took the lot. All the Lincolnshire Showground. All up there. North Carlton. That belonged to Parker’s.
[recording paused]
DR: The fighter pilots. There were no end of them and when they’d been out on a raid they used to come back over Scopwick. Oour pub. Zoom.
MC: Yeah.
DR: Around the back.
MC: So going up the Memorial Spire that reminds you. Reminded you of them.
DR: Yeah. But the Memorial at Scopwick is still missing, you know.
MC: Yeah.
DR: The big one.
MC: Yeah.
DR: All that lot in there. But the, but the military funerals used to come, every. How many were there? About seventy buried in Scopwick.
MC: Yeah. You said.
DR: Massive funerals there in the Air Force.
[recording paused]
MC: So what did the WAAFs do?
DR: I say, they used to come down and swim in Scopwick Beck. We was dam, the, where the farmer was at bottom end of Scopwick he used to bank the beck up so the water’s deep and they used to on a Sunday or a Saturday they used to be down there in the summer swimming in Scopwick Beck.
MC: So, this was the WAAFs.
DR: Yeah. Anybody could. No end. In the summer. That’s true. That’s another thing. It’s unbelievable. It used to be about six foot deep at least. They used to be jumping in and diving in. Scopwick Beck.
WB: Well, the water would be lovely then, wouldn’t it?
DR: Yeah. That was another thing that used to happen.
[recording paused]
DR: The first thing I drove was lease and lend after the war. But our firm had about five or six Yankee jeeps running about the farms. That was the first vehicle I drove across the fields. Left hand drive Yankee jeeps. Classed as a lease and lend. Lease and lend, wasn’t it?
MC: Yeah.
DR: Aye.
[recording paused]
MC: You had to, you left school and then you had to work then.
DR: If you didn’t go to Grammar School at fourteen you had to go to work. When you was, and if your birthday was in November but you had to go to school until Christmas. You couldn’t leave school on your [pause] you finished at the end.
MC: At the end of the term.
DR: End of the term. That’s it. And I worked, it was Parker’s in them days. They’d come up from Norfolk.
MC: How long was your apprenticeship?
DR: Seven years.
MC: Seven years.
DR: Seven years. We used to go down Monks Road once a week. The old place. It’s still there for the, we learned to lathe and weld, acetylene weld and all that in the war. Petrol was rationed.
MC: Yeah.
DR: Farmers used to get extra.
[recording paused]
MC: So you were saying they used to, going back to this shooting. They used to come and practice their shooting.
DR: Yeah. In Scopwick pit.
MC: Had they dug the pit?
DR: The big pit. Then they dug a big trench at the end where they sunk the boards up, and blokes used to be in this pit, in the pit in the back of the board marking the board where the bullets had gone. Practicing. And we were at the top of end of Scopwick watching them. Every Sunday they used to come down. Shooting at that pit. And that’s still to this day you can see where that other pit was dug. In Scopwick.
MC: So this was Army as well as Air Force.
DR: Yeah. And the Air Force. Practicing.
MC: Yeah.
DR: Aye. With rifles and machine guns. So that that was another thing they used to do at Scopwick. And that’s there to this day. You can say if they ever got in Scopwick pit where they dug the pit so the men could be under the bullet with the [makes noise] flying all over. That was another incident there you see.
MC: Come down. This is a flax factory.
DR: The flax factory on the Metheringham Heath Lane. Because the Germans used to try bombing that because at the end the, where that lane is was Coleby Grange.
MC: Oh yeah.
DR: Flying field there.
MC: So they’d probably been trying to bomb Coleby Grange.
DR: Yeah. Aye.
MC: And got the flax factory instead.
DR: Aye. Aye. They built, they built an air raid shelter right round the side of it. That was another lot of works in the war. An anti-aircraft gun on the road side there there was. Down Meg Heath Lane. You can see the stand was, where it was on defending the area.
MC: Were there a lot of anti-aircraft guns around that area?
DR: Yeah. Rowston Hill Top. Have you heard of that? And just past Digby area. Another anti-aircraft gun centre there. Parker’s land again. Near Rowston Hall that was.
MC: So you didn’t see any German aircraft brought down?
DR: Not brought, I see them shooting that one Easter morning when they bombed Digby and it killed, it killed some WAAFs as well that bomb. Aye. A few got killed and they were shooting. Then the guns stopped and the fighters come chasing them because they can’t shoot with the fighters after them. And the shrapnel was dropping because we were outside our pub watching. ‘They said come in. There’s shrapnel.’ From the shells bursting dropping down. There’s no end if you stop and think what happened. But the best bits is when the WAAFs would come out the pub and drop in the beck because it was black out [laughs] Oh, airmen did as well. Not only WAAFs.
MC: Yeah. Because it was dark.
DR: It was dark innit [laughs]
MC: Yeah.
DR: And it was deep in them days. Still there to this day the beck is. And that’s where they used to swim. Right at the bottom. Half a mile further down because it got deep because it only started at the top end of Scopwick that beck did. Out the ground. Come building up from where it started. And when my uncle come he was a warrant officer at Cranwell. When he used to come to the Scopwick pub he had to take his uniform off because everybody were saluting him. All [laughs] it was a right bloody game it was. He used to come because he married my mother’s sister you see.
WB: Was that Dorothy?
DR: Dorothy. Yeah. And he finished a wing commander at Halton at the end of war. Finished the post. Left after the war. He’s passed away now. He came —
MC: So, what did he do in the war?
DR: He was, trained pilots at Cranwell. Teaching people to fly.
MC: Oh he was a flying instructor.
DR: Aye. He was. That’s how I got born at Cranwell. In their hospital. Through my dad being in the forces. Fighters at Digby. A mechanic what he was.
MC: So your dad was in the forces then you say.
DR: He was at the beginning of the war. Yeah.
MC: Yeah.
DR: Then he come out after the war.
MC: Yeah.
DR: Took the pub over because my grandad sold that pub to a firm called Soames Brewery but he kept all the land and the farm. Then my dad went as landlord of the pub.
MC: Yeah.
DR: All through, all through the war. He’d seen my mother. That’s how it worked. And my grandad died on the day the war broke. Brought on 1939, weren’t it? Aye. So my granny really brought me up because the pub was full. We had two bar women every night in the pub.
MC: Busy in those days.
DR: Oh God. It was. It was unbelievable. Nowhere else for them to go. Some of the Yanks came from them Flying Fortresses used to come down to Scopwick. So there was thirty planes then. There was ten people in each plane. They had to get that lot mended because it was that dense fog. They couldn’t land in Norfolk. Because we could see it from Temple Grange. It was across from Digby. All them bloody planes that day, one day when I went to work. I was working up there in them days. All them. They had a job to get off again. Had to wait for the wind. Certain day, when they got them out the, and I tell you the fighters was landing on another piece what they’d emergency landed.
MC: So you, you stayed with Parker’s throughout.
DR: All my life.
MC: My goodness.
DR: Forty five, fifty years.
MC: Goodness me.
DR: I had a good job.
MC: I was going to ask you what you did after the war but that’s, it’s what you did after the war.
DR: That’s true that is. And I stayed on for four, for four years at, for six months a year keeping on while they trained me up you see. I’d keep going you see because they used to do peas for Bird’s Eye at Grimsby. And what they did them days they used to send a student out all day and night clocking all the lorries out every two hours. Because they had to have around about fresh peas every two hours. And they used to say if that that lorry aint got his load of peas up for to go to Grimsby he still had to go after the time. Because they’d tell you’d they’d been well two hours from the frozen and that was true that was but they used to clock you. This person used to clock the lorries out. You couldn’t stop on if you hadn’t been broke down. Make your load up. You had to be off. He did.
MC: Goodness me.
DR: And that lot, them lorries them days there was the only one allowed to drive off with the hours running because it was perishable goods. Peas weren’t they? You couldn’t stop when you’d done your hours. They were exempt that was. Perishable goods.
[recording paused]
DR: In Mannheim was Lanz. In the war they flattened Mannheim. The British did. You know. Bombing them. And after the war it rebuilt up and it went to John Deere. And that’s where all the John Deere’s come in this country come from. Mannheim. And they land at Langar. Have you heard of Langar? Near Nottingham. Aerodrome. And that’s their, that’s the dropping point. All stuff come to Langar. Then it’s distributed. What I’m getting at we were send to Langar twice a year to keep up with all the trends in John Deere’s, new coming in. They was training us there in the new technology of John Deere’s at Langar.
MC: So John Deere’s equipment used to come from Mannheim.
DR: Yeah. To England. That was the manufacturing factory there at Mannheim. It used to be Lanz. And it got, and if you wanted a tractor John Deeres got the Lanz symbol on. Are you on there? But the Americans they sell them. They have them in America. They get dropped off. But in England it all goes to Langar. All John Deere stuff. And our firm had an agency. Parker’s at Metheringham they were. Then it went to Louth. Louth Tractors. Have you ever heard of that? Well, that belonged to our firm, because you had to get out of the ranges to get another one up. Another one at Dyke. Have you ever heard of it? Near Bourne. Dyke. There’s an agent’s shop there as well. That was our lot.
MC: Well, thank you very much, Don. I’ve got a fair bit there. It’s nice. And thank you very much for taking the time to, to be interviewed.
WB: Yeah.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Donald Rainey
Creator
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Mike Connock
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2018-06-07
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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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ARaineyDC180607
Conforms To
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Pending review
Format
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00:34:53 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Civilian
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Description
An account of the resource
Donald Rainey was born in 1927 and he lived with his family at the Royal Oak in Scopwick. Donald remembers George Formby’s wife, Beryl staying at the pub for four days in the war whilst entertaining the troops at Digby. Got a job as an apprentice engineer at British Crop Driers, as a maintenance fitter. Donald describes life in Scopwick during the war. Scopwick was surrounded by RAF stations and Donald describes the pub and meeting servicemen there. Donald remembers aircraft being shot down. Donald describes the pub as always busy as there was nowhere else for servicemen to go.
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Benjamin Turner
Temporal Coverage
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1945-03-11
childhood in wartime
crash
ground personnel
prisoner of war
RAF Blankney Hall
RAF Digby
RAF Metheringham
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1062/11457/APayneJB150608.2.mp3
d15cef4ebe65bbad4bec4356ee9b1cbb
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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Payne, Brian
John Brian Payne
J B Payne
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Brian Payne (b. 1932, 2530371, Royal Air Force). He served on Canberas 1951-1959.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-06-08
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Payne, JB
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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MH: Good morning to anybody that’s listening to the recording of this morning. I have the pleasure of interviewing Mr John Payne at his home address xxxx xxxx. The date today is Monday the 8th of June 2015. The time by my watch now is 11:41 and basically, I’ve got the purpose here to interview Mr Payne regarding reflections and memories of his time with the Royal Air Force, dating between 1951 and 1959. He will also be touching on a very interesting subject also about his father, who was potentially one of the first people to join the combined service back in 1918, in the formative year of the Royal Air Force having moved over from the Royal Flying Corps. There may be other points that Mr Payne wishes to touch on. I may or may not be taking notes during this and there may or may not be some direct questions at the end, but I’m now going to hand this recording over to Mr Payne and I’ll get him to run through his story.
JBP: My Christian name is Brian. This was the name of a close friend of my father’s, who was two years older than him. In 1916, he was called up in Bradford to join the Bradford pals, trained as an infantryman, went over to France in January of 1917 and was killed on the 22nd of February 1917, on the Ancre River, which is not far from Rheims. In 1940, things were looking difficult. The evacuation of Dunkirk was taking place, Hitler’s armed forces seemed to look unstoppable, we lost most of our equipment left in France. Churchill had just taken over and formed his first war cabinet and everything looked black, but as a seven year old boy, these things were not in my mind at all. One day, my father left his bureau open and I had a look inside, and I saw the usual kinds of things, and in one corner, there was a little portion set aside for technical notes. I didn’t know what they meant but what I did know was, that there were three photographs, and they were photographs of biplanes in front of a hangar. So that evening when dad came home, I said to him, ‘What are these photographs, Dad?’ And he said, ‘Well, when, in 1918 when the First World War ended, I was flying one of those aeroplanes and I was training to be pilot, but I didn’t finish my training because the armistice stopped all the flying so I never got my wings’. Well, as a little boy going to school with other little boys, this was a goldmine. This was a wonderful thing to find out. That my father had been a pilot in the Air Force, even if he didn’t go flying and dropping bombs and things on Germany. He was there, he did his bit, as far as he could and from then on, I dreamed of going into the Air Force and flying. I didn’t mind whether it was flying as a pilot or a navigator. I just wanted to be able to say, ‘I’m aircrew in the Air Force.’ Times passed. I got myself seven credits at school certificate, which was very unusual because mostly, I just worked for other people I enjoyed and looked forward to having as my teachers. And I got one A level. Not enough to go to university but plenty to go into the Air Force to fly, and I was called up as a national serviceman. Started off by going to Padgate and learned to dislike drill corporals who hazed us from day, dawn to dusk. 6 o’clock in the morning reveille till bed time, and got the uniformity that they wanted in terms of what we were wearing and how we cleaned equipment, and then off to a grey Hornchurch to be graded as a potential aircrew, and when I finished the grading, they said, ‘You’re a grade three pilot, but you’re a grade one navigator’. So I said, ‘I’d like to try being a pilot first’. So that October, I was sent up to RAF Digby, where they had Tiger Moths, and I had a marvellous time. The only snag is, the twelve hours that I flew, I always had an instructor with me. Never went solo. Never, never did landings on my own. And that really meant that I could only look forward to being a navigator, but I consoled myself that if I was a navigator, I might not kill myself as easily as if I was a pilot, and with that thought, I went on. Now, the Air Force was in a phase of expansion when I joined them but the majority of the aircraft were World War Two aircraft, propeller driven, and by that time the speed of aircraft meant that propellers couldn’t be used to power aeroplanes because they couldn’t go fast enough. They came up against a problem called the speed of sound, which didn’t do anything good for propellers, and jet engines were coming in, witness the Meteor and the Vampire, which were our front line defence but when it came to Korea, and the North Koreans invading the South Koreans then the, one of the few occasions when the United Nations Council sent troops somewhere to fight, and we were one of the sixteen nations that answered the call of the UN, sent people out to Korea, but of course, we found that the Koreans had jet aircraft from Russia, MIG15, and these MIG15s could play havoc with our slower piston engine aircraft, the bombers, and the fighters weren’t very good against them either, but I was going in on this wave of enthusiasm about the first jet bomber in the country, which was the Canberra. The B2 Canberra. Oh, and I did want to fly that aeroplane. I was hoping I could get on to that aeroplane, to fly a jet bomber. My father had been enrolled in the Air Force a fortnight after it became the RAF from being the RFC and the Royal Naval Air Service, so he started something new and here was I with a chance perhaps of flying in a Canberra. Well off we went for our training. They opened up some temporary camps. First at RAF Usworth near Newcastle, which was a dump. We were in wooden huts. Fortunately, it was February when we went there, when it was bitterly cold, and by the time we finished it was August and it was nice and warm, but we couldn’t get anywhere from the camp very easily, because the buses didn’t run very frequently to Sunderland or Newcastle, and certainly, there was no Sunday morning service to either place from Usworth, so we were out there, trapped on an airfield with nothing to do, but I passed that. Had some adventures, like a compass being wrong in the aircraft and me flying over cloud for an hour, an hour and a quarter and finding us miles away from where we should have been, because the compass was in error by five degrees, which is a lot of miles if you’re flying at two hundred miles an hour. From there, I went down to Lichfield, which again was another temporary, it was a wartime training base where they had Wellington B10s. My course went through successfully, most of them anyway, but a couple of, four of the lads were involved in crashes. The first was a Wellington that was doing a let- down, and the trainee navigator set the coordinates wrong for his Gee set. Instead of letting down to the airfield, he let down in the side of a hill, but they all three survived it because the pilot pulled the nose up as soon as he saw the hillside, and he kind of, was climbing, and the hillside was climbing a bit faster, so eventually, the hillside hit him underneath and he was going on alright until he hit a wall and then it broke into pieces. The other accident happened when they were in the circuit, coming in for final landing. The pilot made an error, the co-pilot was killed, one of the navigators was trapped in the wreckage and the pilot went off to find help and the other navigator stayed with his mate. The fog came down. It took them four hours to find the aircraft. Having got through that, we had a joyful occasion when I got my navigator’s brevvy, and I was confirmed as a pilot officer in the royal service, and incidentally, my initial commission as acting pilot officer was signed on the first day of the current Queens reign. What a long time ago that was. It’s like having a first, first cover stamp isn’t it? Well then, the moment of truth. Hardly anybody from our course at Lichfield went on to jets, just me and two others. We were told we were going to Bomber Command Bombing School at Lindholme, now notorious as a prison, where we did the practice with the Mark 14 bombsight that the Lancasters and Lincolns used, which was called the T2 bombsight for the Canberra. Unfortunately, the bombsight was only an area bombsight in the Second World War and they could have an accuracy of up to four hundred yards with the bombsight. In jet aircraft, the areas were even bigger. It was not a successful bombsight. The work hadn’t been done sufficiently in advance, but we were grappling with flying near the speed of sound at high altitudes, and the problem with the visual bombsight is, you couldn’t see the target when you want to release the bomb, because it was too far ahead to allow for forward propulsion, before the bomb eventually went down vertically, and our experience with a jet bomber dropping inert bombs, just cast metal with explosive inside and a fuse was never very successful. But the time came when we went to 231 Operational Conversion Unit at Bassingbourne, and this was the big time. I was very lucky because the first pilot that I crewed up with, with a Scottish navigator that we had under, Pilot Officer Ford was sent off one day to do circuits and bumps, part of his training before he could fly with his crew, and he took off and got lost and landed downwind at RAF Duxford, which was an inactive fighter station. We never saw him again. And then we got crewed up with a Flight Lieutenant John Garstin, and he was a major influence in my life. We flew together for two years. He was a career officer on a regular commission, destined to go a long way. He’d already served as a aide-de-camp to the governor of one of the Caribbean islands, and he’d instructed at the Initial Training Unit at RAF Cranwell, which is a prestigious post too, so he’d obviously destined for future roles. Anyway, I got him for two years flying in our Canberra which was Willie Howe 725. We got it brand new from the makers via RAF Binbrook where they fitted the particularly RAF equipment in to the aircraft and made it ready for operational use. As flight commanders Terry Geddoe was A Flight commander and John Garstin was B Flight commanders. Flight commanders had their own aircraft. Terry’s was 724 and ours was 725. 724 ended up in a fire dump and was written off, 725 ended up at RAF Duxford, now the Imperial War Museum, Duxford, where it stands as an example of the B2 bomber. The training was interesting but when we finished the course, I had done roughly two hundred and fifty six hours flying since joining the Air Force and there I was, a navigator observer, in the first jet bomber to be flown by the RAF and was I proud? My word I was. From Bassingbourne it wasn’t a long haul up to RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire. We got there on the 26th of May 1953. A date engraved in my mind because the first four crews to go to flying on 15 squadron in the Canberra era, or the Canberra chapter as well call it in the [pause], oh never mind. There were five squadrons building up their strength. There was 15, 10, 10, 10 squadron, 15 squadron, 44 squadron, 56 squadron and 149 squadron and we were all training to become operational in the first eighteen months of our stay at Coningsby, but in the following August, we were sent, we’d been there fifteen months or so, we were told we were going to go to Cottesmore, because they wanted to lay a three thousand yard runway at Coningsby for the V force when it finally arrived. So off we went to Cottesmore, which was a very happy time. Nine months there and off we went again. This time to RAF Honington, which had just had a three thousand yard runway installed for the V force, and there we stuck until the Canberra squadron was dissolved in 1957, but a lot went on before then. For example, the first serious detachment that we did from one of these bases, was from Honington to El Adem. This is in North Africa, near Tobruk famous for the battles between Bernard Montgomery and Rommel in the 1941 and ‘42 years of the Second World War. So it was exciting to go to such a historic place. We were there to fly a week’s intruder exercise over Greece, where they had the ancient Meteors and the ancient Vampires, so we had to fly at a low speed so they could catch us. We cruise normally at .72 Mach, but for those exercises, we had to cruise at .66/67 Mach so they could catch us, so that was quite fun. But I remember about that is the gritty wind, all day and all night - blowing, blowing, blowing - and as dusk fell, you could hear the explosions of mines that had been laid in the Second World War and not cleared, just lying there corroding. Expanding, contracting, expanding, contracting, until all of a sudden, they went off. We did make one visit, we went forty miles along the road from Tobruk, to a famous area where the forces really clashed. I can’t remember the name of the area but there was a peninsula, and on it was a German war memorial. We went up to this war memorial. Everybody started going quiet and whispering, and we looked at the ages of the people on this war memorial, and it was covered. All the granite was covered with names hundreds of young men, and I guess we all had the same thought. Eh up, this could be us. We were a very subdued bunch going back to the officer’s mess at El Adem that evening. When we got there, the local paper was in. They’d discovered the body of a Second World War soldier who’d died in 1942 in the Africa Korps and they found him, twenty yards off the main highway between Tobruk and Benghazi. Twenty yards, in a bit of a scrub, sitting behind a machine gun. Again, it brought it down to earth. And when we got back to England after our attachment, people were beginning to write about Suez and Egypt, and the possibility of confrontation, because Nasser, in July of ’56, nationalised the Suez Canal. Now it’s perfectly logical why he did it, which I can say now in hindsight, ‘cause I can’t remember very much about my attitude at the time except that, oh dear, this is what I got paid flying pay for. It started off with Nasser wanting to build the Aswan Dam. He wanted to build the Aswan Dam because he wanted to control the waters of the Nile, to make them more useful agriculturally, but also as a source of power to power electricity stations and improve the infrastructure. All very laudable, but for that he needed loans, and at the time that the Aswan Dam was starting, or was waiting looking for funds, first the Americans, then the British said, oh, we’ll lend you some money, but after that, Abdul Gamal Nasser made the mistake of buying his weapons of war from the Russians. Not from America and not from England, which upset the politicians. So they said, ‘Well, if we can’t have your orders for aircraft, you can’t have our, we’re going to nationalise the Suez canal, because if we can’t have your loans, we’ve got to pay for it somehow and we’re ongoing with the work’. Now, Anthony Eden had been one of the leading pacifists in the run up to the First World War, and had accompanied Baldwin when he went with that paper peace in our time. He was a sick man, but he wasn’t going to make the same mistake with a dictator again as he’d made with Herr Hitler, and he decided that the, the legal side of international lawyers should tell him whether the nationalisation of the canal was legal, and much to his chagrin, the lawyers said, providing he pays a reasonable compensation to the shareholders, he’s quite within his rights, and it’s quite legal for him to nationalise the Suez canal. This wasn’t what Anthony Eden wanted to hear, but Mr Anthony Eden decided that he was going to teach this fellow a lesson, and he thought of gunboats, which was his age, and he thought the Canberras would do the job. It just showed how little he knew. We knew what we were being prepared for. We were told not to talk to our wives and girlfriends, which we didn’t. We were confined to camp and it all got very tense. Then we were ordered out to Nicosia in Cyprus. At the time there was the EOKA shooting British officers in the back, so we didn’t fancy really, going to Nicosia but when we got there, we found we were alright, because they wouldn’t let us out of camp anyway. Every square foot of the airfield was occupied. There were no permanent accommodation for junior officers, they just slept in tents. The food, with all the people on board, was atrocious, and to cap it all, it was my twenty fourth birthday, and two days after my twenty fourth birthday, my pilot Dennis Wheatley and I were in the briefing room, preparing for our first raid over Egypt, because war had been declared. When they told us that, I just wanted to get on my own for a bit and think out what it could be like. It was a bit scary, but we’d been sent out there in our lovely Canberras. There’s only two problems. The first problem was, we had no way of navigating the aircraft accurately, because the system that was used over Europe was called the Gee system and this was two, two, a master station, two slave stations and they sent out signals. The master sent it out direct to the aircraft and sent one to the, same signals at the same time, and then the two slaves retransmitted the signal to the aircraft, so the aircraft had three readings, and from that, could fix their position by use of a special chart overprinted with Gee values, so we could look at the Oscilloscope and take the C readings and plot the aircraft’s, and that was how we were trained. But there was no Gee station over in Cyprus, nor could they build one in time, but we hadn’t any other aids. We hadn’t even got an astro compass or a bubble sextant. That didn’t do, that didn’t work very well in a fast flying aircraft anyway so we were without navigation aids. And the first raid we went on, was at Kibrit airfield, and we had, we couldn’t, the straightforward way, would have been go due south from Cyprus to the mouth of the Suez canal, go up the Suez canal, and bomb Kibrit airfield, but we thought that, or the powers that be thought, well even the Egyptians will have anti-aircraft gun going up the canal, so if we go up the canal, we’re liable to get shot at so we’d be clever, we’ll fly a series of three courses, and come around like a big question mark. Based on Cyprus, we went down the arm, then round, round, round and at the third turning point, the Valiants would come from Malta, and they would drop markers on the turning point, so we would know where to go to start our bombing run, and then some Canberras of 138 Squadron would mark the target with different target indicators so we’d know what to bomb. Well, nobody had thought that flying three legs without any nav aids is easy to do, because a slight mistake in terms of piloting the aircraft could put you miles off course. And so it was. When I came to the time when we should have been at the last turning point, there were no TI’s from the Vulcans that I could see. I couldn’t see anybody attacking any airfields within visual range of our aircraft. I’d not seen the canal, but it should stand out on a, on a dark night. In fact, there we were, with six one thousand pound armed bombs, going back to an airfield we didn’t know, very close to a large mountain. So Dennis said, ‘We’d better jettison our bombs’, so we went out to sea and dropped the bombs in the water, and hope nobody was swimming underneath. So ingloriously, we went back to base, not having even seen the target. The fact of the matter is, that until that flight, I’d never seen TI’s anyway, ‘cause they were economical during peacetime. They didn’t use everything there so TI’s didn’t get dropped. The next airfield to be attacked was Luxor, which is down to the south of Egypt, and the reason we were attacking Luxor was that Nasser had put his IL28 bombers, the Russian jet bombers, down there out of sight, he hoped. They lined them up on a runway and the air, the photo reconnaissance people saw the aircraft, so that was our target. So we were sent there, in the dark again, but that’s a maximum flight for a Canberra. We have one bombing run, one bombing run only. Well, after our first incident, we were very unhappy, me and Dennis, because we’d not even found the target. On this occasion, the TI’s were dropped and we saw them. A lovely sight. It was November the 5th again. But because of the limitations of our bombsight, built as it was during the war for Lancasters and Halifaxes and Stirlings, flying at two hundred knots, the maximum speed you could fly was three fifty knots, which was way below our maximum speed, and the maximum height you could bomb was twenty five thousand feet, because that was all, we liked to fly at forty thousand feet so going, flying over at high level, coming down to a bombing level, dropping the bomb then climbing up again. We did a cruise climb from the Luxor target, on the first occasion, to conserve fuel, it’s a way of flying a long way. We got to forty eight thousand feet and I have never been as cold as I was that day. Neither had Dennis. It was freezing at forty eight thousand feet, but we got back and joined the queue of aircraft waiting to land, but this time, we had dropped our bombs, and you know how big an airfield is. We missed it. So our bombs fell just outside the perimeter, as did a lot of bombs, but the interesting thing about the debriefing was, the intelligence officer debriefing us was trying to put our bomb burst closer to the target than we wanted to, and I said to him, I said, ‘Look’, I said, ‘I dropped the bloody bombs. I know where they went. You put them where I said, not on the runway, I didn’t hit the runway’. Well when we got back home, it was agreed that it had been a failure. It had been a complete waste of time sending the Canberras, because we didn’t have an accurate wind to put on the bombsight, we had blind navigation, just dead reckoning and that’s anybody’s guess, dead reckoning, so they sent us back the next day to the same airfield, but they had us take off half an hour earlier, so we’d have the last of the light to bomb by, which was intelligent, but didn’t help the results much because we still had no accurate wind over the bomb, over the airfield. Nobody transmitted one to us. So we’d flown all that way by dead reckoning and again, this time I could see the bombs drop, and they did drop inside the airfield, but they dropped on a place which was neither good nor useful. It didn’t disable the airfield and it didn’t disable the IL28s. As it happened, the following day, the French sent in a low level attack force and destroyed them all, but what a waste of time. And then the fourth raid I did, at Suez, was with our squadron commander, Squadron Leader Scott, and I was flying as nav plotter instead of single navigator, so the nav observer went down in the nose and he map read from the coast to the target, and from the target back to the coast, so I didn’t have anything to do except sit there and listen to the conversation, but the final attack was a place called El Marsa barracks, and by this stage, we were supporting the Army in, just out of Port Said. But the nice thing was that, a few days later, they sent us back home to England. That was, that was marvellous, that was the good news, because it got us into our own beds, and good meals and things like that, but they wouldn’t let us off camp. We were still restricted and we were told that although we’d come back in early November, that beginning of, end of December, we were going to go out to Malta, Exercise Goldflake was a kind of surveillance from Malta of the area when it had all calmed down and has a wing of Canberras out there, so we had another month to serve so it was coming up to three and a half months before we’d see our loved ones again [pause]. But when I started doing research on the internet, and the National Archives, it was interesting because so much was glossed over, but I understand that Sir Anthony Eden didn’t have a war cabinet for this particular operation, he just worked with one single senior civil servant, but the planning of the whole exercise made you feel that it was a kind of a mismatch. Senior officers were keeping their stiff upper lip type faces, but I think they were fuming inside because of the way that the arms had been used, or not used properly and all the embarrassing things that could be said, perhaps weren’t said by those in authority at the time [pause]. It was strange drawing up all of a sudden. I had a feeling of how people were when they were going to war, in a real war, not an adventure like this one, and I wrote a little song about it. Have you heard that song “Flying In a Jet Plane,” John Denver?
MH: Ahum
JBP: Well, just right on the top. I won’t, that’s it, that’s it. I won’t, I won’t, I’ll just say it to you rather than sing it. I can sing it but I’m all flat. This is, “Flying In a Jet plane” by me. I pay full tribute to, certainly to John Denver, because it was his thing that started it off -
All my kit is packed
I’m ready to go.
The moon is full, the coach is slow.
I’ve a three hour trip to base, my weekend’s done
Tomorrow is a flying day. I’m 536 we’re on our way.
Flying east, towards the rising sun.
So kiss me and smile for me.
Tell me that you’ll wait for me.
Hold me like you’ll never let me go,
Because I’m flying in a jet plane. I don’t know when I’ll be back again.
Oh Anne, I hate to go.
All leave is cancelled. Weekends too.
The future’s bleak, but I love you.
You fill my waking thoughts the livelong day.
Every place I go, I think of you.
In my sleep at night, I dream of you.
Pray for peace to hold. Not all outright war.
So kiss me and smile for me. Tell me that you’ll wait for me.
Hold me like you’ll never let me go.
‘Cause I’m flying in a jet plane. I don’t know when I’ll be back again.
Oh Anne, I hate to go.
The die is cast. Now the war’s begun.
We fly by night till the bombings done.
Then we fly back to England once again.
A month in Malta, for our crews,
Then we are told the welcome news, of leave for every other man.
So kiss me and smile for me.
Tell me that you’ll wait for me.
Hold me like you’ll never let me go.
‘Cause I’m working in a jet plane. Navigating back to you again.
Landing gently in your arms. Landing gently in your arms.
That’s my poem. A better singer than me can sing it to you [laughs]. Well we got back to England, after our stay in Malta, which was quite pleasant, it’s just that we weren’t seeing our girlfriends and wives, you know, but when we got back, we found that the Canberra squadron, 15 Squadron was being disbanded and this would take place on the 17th of April 1957. This would mean that the Canberras would all go back to the maintenance units and be handed out to other squadrons that were being formed. We’d be, we’d all go our different ways, but the squadron would reform with the Handley Page Victor in 1989, so it wasn’t going to be disbanded for very long, and it could become a Victor squadron, but I’d got to decide what to do. I went home for my first leave in February, and I discussed seriously with my father whether to resign my commission immediately and come out of the Air Force, but he said, ‘Don’t be so precipitous, it’s been a big shock and you are a Christian, but let’s look at the options’. So we went through the options. I didn’t want to fly in the V bombers, ‘cause I didn’t, I didn’t want to drop a hydrogen bomb or atom bomb on anybody and we eventually decided that the best use I could make of my time, would be a navigation instructor, so I went back to the squadron and discussed it with our friends, and the CO got me some forms to apply and I was taken in number 46 staff nav course, which was a course designed for two things. The first was to broaden your experience of the way that navigation was conducted in each of the commands flying, you know, Fighter, Bomber, Coastal and Transport Command. I think that’s all. If I’ve forgotten one, put it in, and the second purpose is to learn how to write staff papers and appreciations, which was very, very useful in my future life, as an insurance consultant. I enjoyed the course, I came out second, and then a guy called Polly Parrot, who was in the Air Ministry on his ground tour, he rang me up one day. He did junior officer postings. He said, ‘Brian’, he said, ‘I’ve got some good news for you. You’ve got a posting to 231 OCU at Bassingbourne. How does it feel?’ I said, ‘That’s great’. I said, ‘When are you getting out of your ground job?’ He said, ‘Oh next year. I’m coming out and I’m hoping to get on the V force’. I said, ‘I’ve got a girlfriend in Sheffield that I think I want to marry’. But I went off to OCU and I got some very good helping from the chief instructor, who took me under his wing and got me working properly. He gave me confidence, and then the Indian Air Force started coming through Bassingbourne, as part of a deal for them to buy our Canberras, we’d train their pilots, navigators, and I got friendly with a Flight Lieutenant Nath. I couldn’t pronounce his Christian name, so he said, ‘Oh call me Juggy’. So Juggy Nath he was and we got on like a house on fire. He came up one November the 5th to our home at Sheffield and met my parents, met my girlfriend, only she was close to being my fiancé then and my young brother who was setting off fireworks, and he really enjoyed himself, and then years later, I got a telephone call out of the blue and we were in here, about 1985, and he was flying with Indian Airways as a captain, and he’d just got married for the first time. He was in his fifties then, at fifty five then, a wing commander in the Indian Air Force he was, and he phoned on spec, and tried some Payne’s in the address book and got hold of me, so we were delighted, and he brought his wife up and came. The first time he was up, he talked to my parents and enjoyed that, so he talked in the evening to my parents. A thoroughly wonderful occasion. Doing research for this about eighteen months ago, discovered that a Wing Commander Nath, N A T H, was the most decorated Indian Air Force pilot in the history of the Indian Air Force, and my friend Juggy, who was a bit of a playboy. He didn’t like flying desks, he loved flying. He loved anything to do with sport. Very keen sportsman and good fun as well. And then the following, I’d been at Bassingbourne six months and just settled in nicely, I made the one major mistake of my career. Polly Parrot rang up and said, ‘I need a station navigation officer at RAF Finningley’, which is very close to Sheffield. ‘Are you interested?’ Of course I was interested. Oh great. So I went up there and the, not that the group captain I didn’t know, but the wing commander was a navigator in charge of the operations room, and he was security cleared to deal with V bomber crews and his deputy, Pete Harle, squadron leader, he was an H bomb specialist and he was cleared to work with these crews, but I’m a flight lieutenant, station navigation officer, the squadron’s navigation officers outranked me. I was only a flight lieutenant, they were squadron leaders. Wing Commander Dawson kept all the interesting stuff about navigation so I began to wonder why I was there, ‘cause I’d got nothing to do. Nothing to do. No security clearance to help with the V bombers or anything in any shape or form. I once tried marking the log, a chap on the squadrons, and the wing commander came and tore me off a strip, the group captain, no, the squadron leader on the squadron, ‘You shouldn’t be marking my men. Give over’. And then they made the post a squadron leader post. Well, two months before, the corporal in charge of the map store had left after doing two years national service, and the only job I could see I could do was the map store CO. So I was flight lieutenant in charge of the map store for the last four months of my service and then came out in civilian life, where I had a totally different career and married Anne. And that’s the story of my life in the Air fFrce. I rest my case.
MH: You’ve had quite an extended career there. Well, extended in what you’ve done but squeezed into a short period of time with the RAF. I’ll go back, take you all the way back if I may to your father, and what his experience was and the way that, did he infer on you any, any, the way that he was trained or was that something you found out afterwards from him? Did he give you any stories regarding his training in the early, early years of the RAF?
JBP: The most infuriating part about it is, that my father had one photograph of three trainees on his course at Old Sarum airfield, but he’d sent home many letters and many photographs to his parents, and they hadn’t kept any of them. We have one letter dated the 1st, the 2nd of January 1919 when he’s trying to impress his mother by what he’s doing, and he calls himself the second in command of the navigation empire. He says, ‘It’s the officer here’, and he says, ‘ and I’m there to do the odd jobs that need doing when he’s making a presentation, but as we’re not doing presentations at the moment, you can see I’ve not much to do, but we discovered the other day that the coke burning stove in the hut causes an upward draft. We had a brilliant idea that we would make hot air balloons and fly them, but they didn’t work so we made a windmill, and the windmill went round on the current so we painted it in RAF colours and had it suspended, so that it would go around all the time. If brass hats came in we would just say we’re checking that the draft, that the stove doesn’t need filling up at all’, and he went on like this, pulling his mother’s leg and, ‘Look at the headed notepaper’. Old Sarum. It’s embossed, not just your printed stuff, yeah. Because my grandmother was a bit of a social climber. Victorian governess type. No, the research I’d done about my father’s training and the training of pilots in the First World War threw up some very startling facts. Fourteen thousand four hundred aircrew were killed in the First World War. Eight thousand of those aircrew were killed in training accidents before they ever got to the front. In other words, our training system killed more of our aviators than the enemy. After the war, when they looked at the records, the German Air Force had twenty five percent of the casualties as the British Air Force up to 1917. It’s shocking. Ok, it was a new world, aviation. The Germans and the French were the major aviators before the First World War. Our generals were, they could only see as far as the cavalry, and they didn’t show any enthusiasm for anything to do with flying. They found out very quickly in the First World War that flying was very important, because the French and the Germans had them, and the English didn’t, so until they got themselves sorted out, which took a year or so, they were under represented and the reconnaissance done by the British was good. It convinced the commanders in the field that they were worth having. Particularly when they had these big pushes like the Somme, and then the pilots had to fly contact patrols, otherwise they had to keep in contact with the front line to be able to see how close the Germans were and whether they could machine gun them out of their positions, but of course, when you’re flying that close to the front line and somebody’s lobbing shells from your side and from their side, the chances of a shell hitting you is not remote so many of the aviators killed. The figures don’t match up to the Army, but then the number of flyers engaged compared with the number of the Army soldiers engaged was quite different as well, but the losses were very high. And the training of aircrew was a problem, because when the war started, we only had, I think it was a hundred and eighty qualified pilots in the whole of Britain, and training was hit and miss. It started off with, in about 1909 that if you wanted to learn how to be a pilot, you got on to this kind of flimsy box kite thing. There was one seat and that was for the pilot. So, the pilot would sit on the seat with the controls in front of him. No dual controls, just one set of controls. Then the trainee would get in through the barrage of spars and things that are holding the aircraft together, and he would be invited to sit behind the pilot so his knees were touching the pilot’s sides and his hands were touching his shoulders, and then to feel the movements the pilot was making, and then the pilot, the instructor, would get out and say, ‘Now you try. I don’t want you to make any turns. Just go up forwards and down forwards’, and it’s surprising how many people crashed like that. You see, the engines of the aircraft weren’t powerful enough. They just take the aircraft up off the ground, but the flying speed forwards and the stalling speeds when they dropped out of the ground were probably three or four miles an hour different, and they didn’t have a kind of speedo to see how fast they were flying. They had very primitive instruments. Couldn’t fly in a wind over five miles an hour ‘cause they’d go backwards. It slowly improved but we were totally reliant on the French. We had to buy, for the bulk of the war, we bought French engines, French aircraft until we started developing our own in 1915 but the war had been going on a year then and it was a very slow progress, and there were great periods when the Germans had the upper, they had the control over the air over the front lines and that was horrible for the soldiers, and they, they found a way of firing through the propeller. That was the big thing. So you aimed the aircraft and fire through the propeller and shoot down the enemy aircraft. And the Germans had an aircraft which wasn’t very successful but it was a good gun platform, and it was called an Eindecker, and these Eindeckers used to go up and our pilots didn’t think they could shoot at anybody, you know, nobody couldn’t shoot anybody down, certainly not through the propeller, and then the Eindecker got into the position where it could shoot the British aircraft down and shot them down in droves. We eventually found an aircraft that could fight the Eindecker. It had three guns facing forwards, called a Pusher biplane, and it had three, three guns facing forwards but the observer had to take great risks with his own life to fire one of the guns, ‘cause he had to balance on the edge of the cockpit to stand up to this gun to fire at the back of the aircraft and there were no training manuals. People were posted to be instructors like the Army does, you know. ‘Right boy, you’re not volunteering but you’ll be an instructor now. You’re now posted as an instructor to ‘blah blah blah’. Go and instruct’. You don’t tell them how. So that you’d think you had just come out of flying training. Hopefully, he had a good pilot to instruct him but many of them weren’t. A lot of the pilots came out of the front line with shattered nerves. Do I fly at all? So when they were made into instructors, unfortunately they used to send people off far too early in their training, so many of them got killed because they shouldn’t have been flying alone, but one of the, the reason was that the instructor was trying to avoid flying, and then you got pilots sent back from the front who were a threat to the squadron if they were going out on a reconnaissance, and they got sent back and made into instructors. In fact, they’d make anyone into instructors if they could, and the instructors privately called their pupils Huns, because they were as liable to kill them as much as the Germans. And then, in 1917, a chap who’d been in the, been flying as a pilot and then as a squadron commander, he went to Trenchard and said, ‘I think we can organise flying training so it’s more useful’. The kind of flying training that we were giving to people was basic training, but it had nothing to do with flying in war. So, we didn’t teach people manoeuvres that are dangerous. Many of the instructors wouldn’t know how to do it anyway. The ones who were straight to instructing from training school and this chap had the novel idea of training people to fly and fight at the same time, so all the training was to do that, if there were any risky manoeuvres, then people had to go through these over again and again with the instructor until he had mastered it, because shying away from not mastering something wasn’t on. And fortunately, he’d been in the post a year at Gosport when my father joined the Air Force, and by that time it was organised along the lines that he pioneered. Great man. So my father got proper training. The aircraft were equipped with dual controls. They had a tube that they could blow the whistle by the other pilot’s ear and you could talk through the tube, and that was called a Gosport Tube, and altogether more time was given to training people before they were sent out, because in periods when the Germans had the control of the skies, they were shooting down our aircraft and we were losing pilots like mad, so the front line commanders were asking for more pilots and the training programme couldn’t produce them, and it wasn’t until 1917 that Trenchard wrote a letter, which Haig signed, sent to the cabinet, war cabinet and they increased the aircraft squadrons from forty to a hundred, and specialist units were created. But a lot of the pilots, a lot of the instructors, had to be trained to instruct in this new way. So you started by training, nobody had been training instructors to instruct until that point, and everything happened in the final year, and I was glad that my father went into the Air Force when he did, ‘cause if he hadn’t have done I might not be here. That’s a long answer to a short question.
MH: What did your father do when he came out of the RAF?
JBP: Well the first thing he did was to be diagnosed with tuberculosis in his left leg, and he required six months treatment for that, and fortunately they were able to cure it but he always had a weakness in his left leg. Then he had another eighteen months looking for a job because, when he went, went in the Air Force, he’d been apprenticed to be an engineer, engineering draughtsman but he’d not finished his course, so he applied for something like that, but he’d not finished and other people had and they got the job. But eventually, in 1921, he got a job and he worked for the same firm from the age of twenty one to the age of seventy four. Same firm. It changed ownership three times. Each time the business was failing and somebody bought it out, but it was a good record. He saw good times and bad times. One of the good times was, he went with a friend, Jack Webster, on holiday at Towyn in Wales, and Jack had married a girl called Mary Haye, who was the elder sister of Florence Haye who was a zoology and botany graduate from the Liverpool University, and she was the only female taking that degree, all the rest were fellas. So she was kind of in advance of her time but she’d not had a boyfriend even though she was twenty six by now, because if you got married between the wars, you had to give up teaching and she liked teaching so she gave up men, until she met my father and they got married in 1929, but there were one or two moments. Mother’s family was a working class family. Did all the shopping, Gibbet Street in Halifax, and Florence’s dad who was a thimble maker by trade, but it was mechanised in the war years so they weren’t made by hand any more so he was unemployed at the end of the war, and had a very rich great uncle called Uncle Joe Allen and he had a posh house at Maidenhead, and he had the franchise for importing into Africa the products of a certain Mr Ford for the whole of Africa, and he gave my grandfather a job in the Gold Coast, Lagos, importing Ford vehicles, and my granddad told us of an occasion when the local chieftain decided he wanted a Ford car so he went along and explained it all to him, and couldn’t help noticing that the chief was looking very disappointed and very upset. So he asked him what the matter was and he said, ‘Well you sent me a picture of this car and where’s the lady that goes with it?’[laughs] Anyway, the Haye family didn’t drive cars at all so my mother was out with my father in his Austin 7 and they were having a row as they were driving along. She didn’t, not knowing what she was doing, she switched off the ignition. The only time he hit her.
[Ringtone tune. Reminder for medication]
JBP: My pills. I hope they appreciate the nice music [pause]. There was a pause while he took his pills.
MH: Yeah. Yeah.
JBP: Who has not put his pills out this morning?
MH: What we’ll do is, we’ll temporary pause the interview at this time so Mr Payne can have his pills because they’re more important to be honest. So we’ll pause this for a second.
[machine paused]
MH: Welcome back, this is a continuation of the interview with Mr Payne. The time now is 13:04. Mr Payne had some medication to take so we decided to pause at that time to give him due time to do that and he’s happy to continue, which I’m very grateful to him for. We were just finding out about your father and what he had done after his days with the newly combined Royal Naval Air Service and Royal Flying Corps, a bit about his training that he’d done and then subsequent to that that he’d stayed with the same company for a phenomenal amount of time. What was it that he was doing for that company?
JBP: He was an engineering draughtsman, which was what he was being trained for, been training, but he was joining a company called Hall and Sons in Rotherham who were struggling with the changing conditions in industry and commerce, because it was about that time that the big recession started in about 1925 or so and they were having to multitask, so my father found himself the only draughtsman but also expected to go out and make calls on people as a salesman, but in doing that he found he’d got a capacity for being a salesman and by the time the company, Hall’s, was sold to British Automatic Refrigerators Limited, my father was a full time salesman in Bradford for them, and as the recession deepened, so he had to give up his car, and he was walking around selling freezer units to butchers because they had to install freezer equipment in their shops in order to keep the meat fresh. About 1932, 1929 they got married, in 1930, my mother gave birth to a still born child at six months, simply because of an infection she caught, and in 1932 I came along and brightened their lives and my father sent a card to my mother a month before I was born, ‘Whoops mum, soon be hitting the high spots with you. John Payne’, with a little ditty on the back of it as well. He’d got a nice quiet sense of humour. My mother was one of six girls and they all liked Raymond, as he was called, and he got on well with his mother-in-law as well. In fact, he got on with most people, he was very even tempered. He’d got a nice sense of humour and was very reliable. Everybody found him very reliable which was one of the reasons for his success as a salesman because as I found it certain, if you were honest with people, it’s very highly valued and so it should be.
MH: So you come along in 1932.
JBP: Yeah. My sister Anne came along in 1935. my sister Margaret in ’38, but my brother Robert decided to wait out the festivities of the war and came along when peace was declared. The only trouble was that my mother, who had gone back to teaching during the war as her war work on the Monday, she had an interview with the headmaster who said, ‘I’m delighted to tell you, Mrs Payne, that the teacher who went to the war from here, the biology teacher, is not coming back to Sheffield, so you can work full time at the job you love’. She was very pleased, went out and rang my father to tell him the news, went to the doctor’s on Friday and guess what. ‘We’ve done some tests Mrs Payne, and you’re having a baby in August’. So she, you know, she’d done her bit and my father called the baby ARP, because he didn’t taken any air raid precautions. So he was called Anthony Robert Payne [laughs]. Now Robert was a common name in the family, Robert. But like my father, another thing about my father, he couldn’t go into military service because of his deafness and his TB hip so he joined the air raid wardens, known as the ARP, and he went to the first meeting with the group. What do we call you? Now my dad hated Raymond, because it was a family name, and he hated Henry which was his other name, so he says, ‘Call me George’, so ever after, whenever it suited dad, ‘Hello George,’ we knew he was an air raid warden in the war. He also, not a religious man but a very, very sincere Christian. In the time when the evacuation of Dunkirk was taking place, he was in hospital having been diagnosed with having gallstones, and in those days, it meant an operation and the aftercare was botched and he got an abscess on his wound, and the surgeon came in and told mum and dad that if it burst inwards, that was it. End of story. If it burst outwards, there was a good chance of recovery, so they had three weeks with this hanging over their head, and dad, being a regular church goer anyway, he and mum were praying about it, and so was the extended family on both sides, and one day dad was by himself in the, in his cubicle in the ward and he had a sense of a presence with him, and he got the sense of words kind of appearing in his mind, ‘You’re going to be alright. Don’t worry’. And he didn’t, but the impact it had on him afterwards, he started regular bible study, he became a preacher in the Plymouth Brethren, and he was a very popular preacher. He did an awful lot of appointments by request. Took a number of weddings in their tradition and funerals. He preferred the weddings. They had adult baptisms, you had to be converted and then baptised, so as a sixteen year old, I had to get into this water with this old man. The only consolation was the girls had to do that and they looked lovely with their dresses clinging to them [laughs]. But he used to bring people home from the morning service, and he’d bring people home who were on their own and he called the lame ducks. And my mother had a spell in a psychiatric hospital in her fifties and she went to Middlewood, and she met a couple of ladies there and there were nothing wrong with them. They’d just been put in a mental hospital and left and become institutionalised. So my mum, when she got discharged from hospital, she said to the psychiatrist, would it be possible to take these two ladies out occasionally. Just they seem very subdued. So he said yeah, and later, about four months later, he said, ‘Mrs Payne you’ve made a tremendous difference to these ladies. They’re coming alive’, and mother always said, they kept coming to her house till they died, but she said isn’t it awful that people can be locked away in our civilised society and, of course, after that the legislation they brought in to close mental hospitals, because so many people were put in there, you know, put in there for having a baby out of wedlock, or because their father was wealthy and didn’t want them around. Shocking it was. So he really lived out his life of faith and I wouldn’t say there were any of us who are as good as he was. I’d like to be but I wouldn’t, I’m not.
MH: Did he, or did he carry on any sort of passion towards flying? Did he fly much after?
JBP: On the -
MH: Did he have the opportunity to?
JBP: On his eightieth birthday I took him down to Old Sarum airfield where the Shuttleworth Collection is based. Have you heard of them? Of course you have, yeah. And they were flying the Avro 504K which was the training aircraft he used, and I took him down there because that was the day when the flying displays were being done by the Avro, and he really liked that. And then we saw an oil painting in the shop, and I bought it, and he had it in his bedroom till he died and then it went to my grandson, who has got it over his bed now. So the link’s being continued although Nicholas has just got a degree in geology, so I can’t see him going to fly.
MH: But your passion came alive when you went into your father’s bureau.
JBP: Yeah.
MH: It touched you then.
JBP: That’s right.
MH: The bug, as such. As some people call it.
JBP: Yeah.
MH: From a photograph.
JBP: We all get touched by bugs, don’t we?
MH: We do.
JBP: Passion.
MH: Passions.
JBP: Passion. Yes.
MH: But your passion, then, continued through.
JBP: Yes. I didn’t, my long term aim was to fly. I tell you what were a hell of a culture shock and that was going on my honeymoon. Not, not the interesting bit, but the first time that Anne had flown, and we were taking off at three in the morning, in the pitch dark, and we came across the Mediterranean coast on our way to Rome. at first light, and that was magic. The only thing that wasn’t magic was buying some bloody tickets when I’d been paid for flying [unclear]. I did feel that. [laughs]
MH: So you joined the RAF in ‘51.
JBP: Yeah. National serviceman. The number of 2530371, and I was an aircrew Cadet.
MH: Just to make sure that I’ve written that, 2530371.
JBP: Yes.
MH: And that service number made -
JBP: National service number.
MH: National service.
JBP: The regulars were 414, first three letters.
MH: Ok. Did that then go, that also then picked up your national service number or did it become completely different? Your regular service number.
JBP: No. I kept the national service number.
MH: But it had a prefix then of 414.
JBP: No 414 was the one that was issued at Padgate.
MH: Ok.
JBP: Other access camps might have had different numbers, I don’t know, I only know Padgate. I was a national service man until the 14th of November 1951 when I applied for a permanent commission, a four year commission with four years on the reserve, which I extended when the direct commission system came in which, I think, they extended to a twelve year commission with an option of coming out after eight years. I went on to the direct commission before Suez and I took the four, the eight year option after Suez.
MH: What recollections, or what impressions when you were at RAF Digby learning first, learning first how to fly on Tiger Moths?
JBP: Oh, that was magic. Without a doubt the best flights I ever did, even though I was a Canberra navigator, the most exciting flights were Tiger Moth flights. There was the Chipmunk came in to replace the Tiger Moth. I used to love flying the Chipmunk, but flying in an open cockpit is something, something else. Something completely wonderful. And you can do so much over a small area because you’re flying quite slow relative to jets. You can hover almost. You can keep inside the airfield perimeter and just do your -
MH: Yeah.
JBP: Your stuff. I liked everything about the Air Force till Suez.
MH: Suez was the turning point.
JBP: Yeah [pause]. It was the start of this book I suppose. If I go back I could, I could tenuously link it to get it out of my system. By the time it was happening I wanted to go, and if we’re going to, I didn’t want the war to start. I wanted it to be done diplomatically like I said in the song, but I was quite committed to go into action if necessary. I wasn’t suddenly questioning whether I should go or not. My attitude was, well I’ve been paid flying pay for five years, they’re entitled to my service up front, and once it started, you just wanted to get it finished as soon as possible [laughs]. But I think there is a report on the bombing. I’ve been trying to get to the National Archives, I’ve been trying to get a report on the, there was a survey done of the bombing results on the airfields, and I’ve read fragments of other people’s books on the subject, which makes me believe that this does exist, but I couldn’t find a way of getting to it ‘cause I’m not very good at those websites. I’m sure there was a report done and they took nine major airfields and we didn’t close one of them. In all the bombs, we dropped and we didn’t close one of them. An enormous number of bombs and a lot of them dropped outside the airfield perimeter and that’s the shocking thing.
MH: You can reflect in some ways looking back just over a decade back to when Bomber Command first started out. The bombing missions to Germany and such like.
JBP: Yes.
MH: The accuracy there that was portrayed.
JBP: In 1941 a report came out and it showed that aircraft bombing with direct reckoning and star sights, which were the only two things they had at night, nine out of ten bombs dropped were more than five miles away from their target. Only one bomb out of ten was within five miles of the target and these were five hundred pound bombs. They weren’t a thousand pounders. And the area of devastation was only about a hundred yards. So the safest place to be was the target.
MH: Yeah. It’s strange to think of it like that, but that is, that’s a correct statement.
JBP: Yeah.
MH: Yeah. But it’s interesting, though, that, as you said in part one, that the bombsight that was used by the World War Two Bomber Command bomb aimers was the same then, just over a decade later, in the jet era, in the Canberra.
JBP: Yeah. And the forces against, the forces acting on the bomb and on the aircraft had greater, one of the examples is astral, astral navigation, using the stars. Now it all started with ships at ground level or at sea level, and bringing down the star sight on to the horizon to get the elevation of the star, to then be able to draw a great circle line, which on a short distance is a straight line to get a fix but you don’t have an actual horizon in an aircraft so you’ve got to put something in, so they found with low speeds, you could put a bubble in, and the bubble is acted on by the forces of gravity and where as a sea, seafarers could take two or three sights and that would be enough, we used the bubble sextant we had to take sixty sights, all automatic and they averaged out sixty sights of this star and then you got on the tables, and plotted this on your chart and you looked for three stars so that they crossed at a hundred and twenty degrees, a hundred and twenty degrees, a hundred and twenty degrees and your probable position was inside this ‘cocked hat’ as they called it. I was taught that in basic air navigation training. I used it once when I was at Lichfield on a night exercise, and I used it once on the staff navigator’s course when we were looking at Coastal Command and Transport Command and the way they navigated. Never used it otherwise. And I went to, from St Mawgan to Gibraltar on a staff nav course and I was navigating by lines of pressure, with the aircraft being steered by the gyro not a compass. I tried to understand that because I’ve got the notes down there and I tried to understand it now, and at eighty three, I just can’t understand it [laughs], at twenty four I was navigating by it and got there. Yes. The equipment lagged way behind the aircraft. That was the problem we had, we always had. Nowadays, the way they take modern star sights I’ve not been trained so I don’t know them, but the early ‘50s was, 1952 was the biggest size of the Air Force in war or in peace. That was the most resources there but a lot of those the jet engines made everything redundant, and we had a lot of other aircraft.
MH: It’s my understanding that, yeah, because I think Bomber Command still had things like the, well the Americans called the Superfortress, but we called it the Washington.
JBP: Yeah. That’s right.
MH: Which was still around -
JBP: Well 15 Squadron had Washingtons before it had Canberras.
MH: So, I mean, if you think of the size of the Superfortress, you know, the Washington compared with the Canberra, quite a fundamental change.
JBP: It is.
MH: In aircraft type, etcetera.
JBP: And when the yfirst displayed at Farnborough by Beamont, on behalf of English Electric, the way that he flew it was like a fighter, and some old fuddy duddies in the air ministry said, ‘You don’t fly a bomber like that. It’s a light bomber not a heavy bomber’, and of course, the heavy bombers did spectacularly well. The Vulcan, the Valiant and the Victor. They really were agile aircraft, but when you got to those speeds, the G forces that you can vector a G force into the horizontal and vertical. The G forces were far greater on equipment in the aircraft, and the T2 bombsight we used in the Canberra was a modification of the Mark 14, which as you rightly said was designed and built in 1940, after the Bomber Command said you don’t want to lose any more crews, but if you wanted an accurate bombsight, you had to fly straight and level for so long and you can get shot down while you’re doing it. You go for a bit of evasion and then you accept an average error of four hundred yards, so what blanket bombing was, was seeking to knock out the factories, seeking to kill the workers who worked in those factories, because they were in the zone. Just pass the zone with enough bombers to allow for breakages on the way there and a certain number of bombs, the probability is, you covered every point of the carpet, but you kill civilians and that was a deliberate policy before Bomber Harris took charge of Bomber Command. He just carried it out. He gets blamed for it but it was Churchill that was the prime instigator.
MH: I’ll step you back in time if I may.
JBP: Yeah.
MH: Back to your favourite aircraft being the Canberra. Could you take me through, or take the people that are going to listen to this later on, through right the way from mission start to mission end? What would have been your role and what you did, what you wore, because I remember you saying when you got up to a very high level of forty eight thousand feet, you found yourself very cold.
JBP: Yeah.
MH: And reflecting upon that bombers during the World War Two, of course, had problems with freezing guns and that sort of thing, that they couldn’t then operate to defend themselves, so it’s the similar sort of scenario there, with the freezing element.
JBP: Yeah.
MH: But then the crews in World War Two, of course, wore the sheepskin clothing, etcetera, that was designed to keep them warm and the leather helmet, etcetera. If you could take us through what your, how you, your day would have gone from mission start to mission end.
JBP: Right. Yes, I can do that. I’ll think of a particular mission. I was flying an exercise, a Bomber Command exercise, testing out capabilities of ships at sea and aircraft finding them. I’m stationed at Honington, near Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk, a member of 15 Squadron. My pilot is Flight Lieutenant John Garstin. The nav plotter is Flying Officer Jock Logan and the navigator observer is myself [pause]. We have a meal and then we’re taken by RAF vehicle lorry or bus or Land Rover to the briefing room, collecting on our way, the parachutes which are the type which you sit on [pause]. We go to the, entering the briefing room we go to get our equipment out of the store, which is where we keep it. The first thing that I put on is some thermal underpants, stretching down to just below my knee and a thermal top. The next item of clothing I put on, if its winter, it’s a woollen cover for the body and the arms. If it’s summer, probably nothing particularly special. A thick pair of socks, because it’s amazing how cold you get in your feet and extremities, so you need a thick pair of socks, woolly socks and flying boots which are designed so that if you get shot down over enemy territory you can cut off the, the bit of a boot that looks like a flying boot and you’re left with a pair of reasonably serviceable shoes, which look a bit like shoes for escape and evasion. Having got yourself dressed in that gear, you then put on your flying overall. In my day they weren’t the colours they are today, it was a kind of grey blue with the squadron badge on the pocket and the rank on the shoulders, on little bits of material that can be slid on and off and used elsewhere. The next item of clothing is a pressure vest. Now a pressure vest, the function of the pressure vest is if the, what do they call it, we were pressurised down to a certain level for operational work. If we were flying at forty thousand feet, then the cabin pressure is pressurised to make the inside of the cabin twenty five thousand feet, so flying at twenty five thousand feet, if you’ve got an explosive decompression at that artificial height, you quickly go to forty thousand and this is where the pressure vest kicks in. The moment there’s any change of pressure, the pressure vest inflates and the inflation is to guard against damage being done to your breathing. It’s connected up with the oxygen system which is fed to you under pressure anyway, and there’s a clip on here, the oxygen mask attaches it to there, attaches to your helmet. Your helmet, strangely enough is not made of thick material, it’s made of a cotton. It’s washable cotton with the earpieces in and the, the nose I say, the nose of the thing fitting over you like that. You couldn’t operate at high levels without oxygen. You’re flying at forty thousand feet, there’s no way you can do without your oxygen. You’ve got to be taking your oxygen in otherwise you will start hallucinating, and as an observer, I had a little bottle of oxygen for when I went forward to the nose, or came back from the nose, I wasn’t on the mains supply system I had my own bottle, so I had to make sure I got that. Over the pressure vest I’d got what is popularly known as the Mae West, which is the bright yellow jacket with inflatable front like the famous actress. When you’re flying, you fly encased in your pressure vest, and on top of the pressure vest, no, your flying suit is underneath your pressure vest. That’s right. Switch on to the oxygen. I’ve got to look at the bomb bay and check that the bombs that we are going to drop are the ones that have been specified at the briefing, and I check that any settings that have to be made before take-off are made. I can set the bomb pattern inside the aircraft. It’s next to where I sit. It’s just here. And if you’re down in the nose, and you’ve got to suddenly set a pattern to come back, crawl back, set it, crawl forward. In other words, the aircraft was very cluttered as you saw. Because of the extra navigator and the extra bank seat on the original plans, all the space that would be available to a single nav isn’t available, because that’s put aside for the observer, and because of the observer the pilot seat instead of being centred under that plastic dome is to one side, so tall pilots kind of get a bit bent. They’re flying this way and this is crushing their head over like that, and they often have a bone dome on up on their helmet, so that the result is flying like that and not being able to see very well that way, and you can’t see behind anyway. No mirrors. There should have been a radar called yellow putter, but yellow putter proved to be unworkable in anything like operational conditions. It just didn’t work, so they scrapped it. We never had it on my squadron. We weren’t experimental, we were just routine main force. Dogsbodies. Having got all our equipment and our helmets, making sure that we have the right oxygen mask because we fly T2 bombers, we fly T4 dual control training aircraft and they provide one T4 training aircraft per squadron, so that we always have something to do CO’s checks and things like that in. But when you fly in the T4, you don’t have a pressure vest ‘cause the aircraft doesn’t go to that height. It only goes to twenty five thousand. You don’t do long trips so there’s only room for one navigator, because the two pilots have to have got to have bank seats. You’re mainly flying local simulations so you don’t have wing tip tanks, so you can do high speed runs in one of those, which is rather fun. Go to maximum four hundred and fifty knots, liked doing those, and occasionally we’d do full load take off, when we’d put six one thousand pound bombs on board and the pilot could feel the change in the trim, both taking off and landing. That was important that we did those regularly, ‘cause you’d be flying with twenty five pound practice bombs, they don’t make much difference to the handling of the aircraft, but six thousand pounds of bombs makes a big difference. You don’t do fancy aerobatics with six thousand pounds bombs on either. We then go into briefing. The briefing would be in terms of first of all, telling us what our target is and how we are to approach the target, what formation we are going to fly, the turning points and the times we’ve got to be at the various turning points. The emergency alternatives to our own airfield if we come back and we’re clamped up with fog or things like that. They would tell us where the enemy, for the purpose of the exercise, where the enemy are. That’s reported. Where they were steaming, which part of the North Sea we should be looking for and generally giving us data about the meteorological conditions, both on the way to the target and at the target. We always treat winds given to us by Met offices as a bit sceptical because they were seldom rarely right, and one of the jobs of the plotter is the navigator observer, he works the radar and gets the fixes every four minutes and then the plotter takes those fixes off my chart, and puts it on his chart and uses it to calculate variations in wind, which would call for a variation in course, and then you [unclear] travel at that time, at the back point, the pin point. You’ve got to hit it at the right time and we prided ourselves of getting there within six seconds, whereas the standard that was set which was easy with Gee. Now, when it came to dropping bombs, there were two briefings. The first briefing is if we were dropping twenty five pound practice bombs, one at a time, on the target. We could drop eight of those in two hours. The reason being that there is more than one aircraft using the bombing range at the same time. People on the ground have receivers so they can hear what the pilot says, so if you’re on your bombing run, your pilot switched on to transmit at the end of the bombing run, and you can hear the nav observer saying, ‘Steady. Steady. Steady Right. Right. Steady. Steady. Steady. Steady. Bombs gone’. And the pilot would echo, ‘Bombs gone’. And the people on the ground would then know, in so many seconds, a puff of smoke would show and we’d know where the bomb landed, and it was up to the people in the bomb proof shelters to get these bearings, pass them to a central control point by telephone. They would plot the three positions and get the fix of where the bomb actually hit and its relation to the target, so it could be 2 o’clock, a hundred yards. Mine laying was five hundred yards. That was visual bombing. GH bombing. I told you about Gee to get fixes, say where the aircraft position is, well GH uses the same equipment and the oscilloscope in the aircraft, but in this case, the master station, not the one that transmits the original signal, it’s the aircraft that puts the signal and it gets two replies and one gives you a course to steer to go over the target, pre-computers on the ground and the other gives you four points that you would check off one, two, three, four and when you tick off number four, you drop your bomb, so flying along in an arc, like that, and these lines have changed at right angles to that line, so you can navigate saying, ‘Right. Steady. Steady. Steady’, like you can with a visual bombing, but radar bombing at forty thousand feet is a lot more accurate, because with radar, you don’t have to see the target with your eyes. Visual bombing you’ve got to see the target with your eyes and often, if you are that high, the target is over the hill so you can’t see it. There are practical limitations with the visual bombsights.
MH: You mentioned Gee.
JBP: Yeah.
MH: Was it the same sort of Gee system that the navigators would have had to rely on during Bomber Command in World War Two?
JBP: Definitely.
MH: The same, the same system, it hadn’t changed or had it been -
JBP: No, Gee had had its life, because the nice thing about Gee was that you kept the security of the aircraft, your own aircraft. An aircraft that transmits signals can be homed on to. The Germans could create a radar which could home on to the transmitters from, say, with aircraft with H2S, H2S bombing system was a radar bombing system where the sea was black, the land was light green and built up areas are bottle green. Now that was transmitting a signal ever millisecond or so and an enemy fighter could home in on that signal and blast it. And missiles, of course, are even more effective at homing into signals like that. So what was nice about Gee was that it was a passive system. The aircraft didn’t transmit anything. It just took a signal from a master station and then when they came in, two signals from the slave station and with the oscilloscope it could be a calculated reading, and you go to the chart, plot those two readings and that gives the position of the aircraft. Now you could, we practiced a thing called GH homings, Gee homings [unclear], and that was used extensively in Bomber Command when we were using the Gee systems in the mid-40s, because you could pre-determine from your chart what signals you needed to see to be in a certain position at a certain time.
MH: Right.
JBP: So you’d put these points that you wanted to put down and then you’d go back on the arc of the signals to where you wanted to start tracking on to that. So say you were, went to Berlin, massive big target so it doesn’t really matter where you hit, but if you got a line going through the target, another line telling you when you got to the target, like a homing back to base, you can actually fly a course using Gee, a bit more complicated than GH but you could do that from 1942 onwards, ‘cause GH came in in 1944 and there was no doubt that, by the time I joined the Air Force, visual bombing was in decline, except for the Canberra, because they couldn’t miniaturise the H2S radar enough to fit into the Canberras size of aircraft, and what advantage we had and this, for many years, people don’t realise this the Canberra was a wonderful high altitude aircraft. You’re talking about it going, it had world records for fifty seven thousand feet at one stage, but an aircraft that could fly at that height and manoeuvre is very rare and the fighters with swept back wings couldn’t do that. The MIG15s found, always found Canberras a headache because when you tried to formate on it, you couldn’t get near it and if you tried to outmanoeuvre it, the Canberra was far better because of the big wing section between the engines but I felt very happy flying in Canberras. It was a good aircraft, just as the Mosquito had been before it because it was a replacement for the Mosquito.
MH: And did as many roles.
JBP: Yeah. And it was the only aircraft that served fifty six years operationally in the RAF. No other aircraft has gone beyond fifty years. I’d like to say it was because of myself you know [laughs]
MH: What would you say was your happiest time or your happiest moment or your happiest reflection in the RAF?
JBP: It sounds silly. We were only at Cottesmore for nine months, but there was a couple from Sheffield who joined the squadron two months after I did, and the husband was called Alf. Alf Bentley and his wife was Joan Bentley and they were quite a bit younger than me. In fact, they were the youngest married couple on the squadron. I think he was just, Alf was just on his twenty, just over twenty when he came to the squadron, and they had a son in ‘54 and twins in 1956. No. They were both born the same. Yes, Steve was born in January and the twins came in Christmas of the following year. They had three in ten months and I’m godfather to the eldest, and at the time that Steven was born, they had a sixteen foot caravan on the caravan site, and we had the main gate for RAF Cottesmore and next to that was the wooden huts for junior officers, ‘cause they didn’t have a properly built mess and we were all close together and the station similar, so there’s three groups. So the pattern we got into was that myself and Harry Tomkinson and Bob Haines, Bob flew as a navigation plotter in Pete Dyson and Alf Bentley’s crew, and we’d go up in the evenings to their caravan, and sometimes we go to the station cinema, and sometimes just play card games and board games, and of all my moments in the Air Force, the best moments were eating soft biscuits that Joan were trying to get rid of, and playing, playing monopoly and laughing like anything with Steven sleeping away. The day I came out of the cinema, I got a post here playing cricket at Usworth, and knocked a tooth out -
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Brian Payne
Creator
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Mark Hunt
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-06-08
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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APayneJB150608
Format
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01:51:04 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Second generation
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Cambridgeshire
Cyprus
Greece
North Africa
Egypt
Libya
Libya--Tobruk
England--Duxford (Cambridgeshire)
Description
An account of the resource
John Payne was born in 1932 and went into the Royal Air Force as part of his National Service, becoming a Navigator on the Canberra aircraft with 15 Squadron. His father went into the combined service in the First World War, and was training to be a pilot when the war ended in 1918. This prompted his desire to fly. John tells of his enjoyment of flying the Tiger Moth aircraft during his training at RAF Digby, and his experiences of his many travels to RAF stations.
He spent some time in Greece, taking part in intruder exercises, and also recalls his time spent near Tobruk and tells of his experiences including visiting a German war memorial. John participated in the Suez Canal crisis, and details his operations in Cyprus and Egypt, and the problems that this created from a navigational point of view. He tells about his meetings with Flight Lieutenant John Garstin and also Wing Commander Nath, the most decorated pilot of the Indian Air Force and the part they played in his life. John flew the T2 Canberra named Willie Howe 725 now on display at Duxford.
Contributor
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Vivienne Tincombe
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1956
1957
15 Squadron
aircrew
faith
Gee
memorial
navigator
RAF Bassingbourn
RAF Digby
Tiger Moth
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/821/10805/PFisherT1701.2.jpg
ab966b75919cc81ba9cf72d7ae808da1
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/821/10805/AFisherT170726.1.mp3
14a8d63f6e971f8062c9b1885ae60417
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
Fisher, Thomas
T Fisher
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Thomas Fisher (1922 - 2020, 1097527 Royal Air Force). He trained as a bomb aimer / navigator.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-07-26
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Fisher, T
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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GT: Ok. This is a official interview of Mr Thomas Fisher and we are just outside of Dumfries in Scotland and it is the 26th of July 2017. Your interviewer is Glen Turner from the 75 Squadron Association and accredited IBCC interviewer, and also present is Thomas Fisher’s daughter Julia McLennan and a traveling friend here of Glen’s, Diana Harrington from Middlesborough. So, Thomas, can you give us, your opening piece of information would be where you were born, your date of birth and where you grew up, please.
TF: Yes. I was, I was born on December the 7th 1922 in Sunderland and I grew up in that, in that town.
GT: And where did you go to school?
TF: In Sunderland.
GT: And did you complete High School or —
TF: I, well, I [laughs] I passed the 11 Plus to go to Grammar School which I did do but unfortunately, I, my parents said I had to leave school when I was fourteen which was rather a bit of a blow because, and a surprise because my father had already signed a form to say I would stay until I was at least sixteen. But they sort of said they needed the money and so I left school and got a, got a job. I worked in an office for a while and then I became an apprentice painter and decorator. I worked at that until I was, until I was eighteen and that was when I decided that I would join the Air Force.
GT: Had the war been going long at that time or did you join before the war?
TF: No. The war had been on since the end of ’39. End of ’40. It would have been going on for a bit over a year during which time we’d have been, it had just been a series of disasters. You know, the Dunkirk evacuation and lots of bombing. I must admit I was getting a bit fed up with hearing the siren going at 3 o’clock or so in the morning and expected to get up and go to an air raid shelter. But, but fortunately that was the only time that I was subjected to bombing was before I joined the Air Force. I was much safer when I was in the Air Force [laughs] I was never at an airfield that was attacked at all and, and well to be quite frank I had one horrible time when I picked up the local newspaper and the corner was folded over of the heading and I could just see the letters “tain” said, “We must surrender.” And I took that as Britain says we must surrender. I was absolutely horrified at the thought. I just stood and stared at that for a bit and then I bent down and picked it up and the corner flipped over back. And it wasn’t Britain. It was Pétain, the French Prime Minister. And that was, I think that was one of the times that I sort of definitely thought the Air Force seems to be the only thing that’s doing anything at the moment so, and also I’m getting a bit fed up with them coming over and dropping bombs on us so we might as well go and do the same to them.
GT: So, you were seventeen years old at that time.
TF: At that time. Ah huh.
GT: And you mentioned that yourself and was it your family that were involved with German raids over Sunderland?
TF: Yes.
GT: And were you attacked, did the Germans manage to bomb your area? Your street, or house?
TF: They actually did later, at a later date when I was in the Air Force they did actually bomb the house.
GT: Did you lose any family from that?
TF: I, I got, I was stationed in the Air Force at Inverness and I got a message to go and see the adjutant and when I did he said, ‘I’ve got some bad news. Your house has been bombed. But there’s no, no one’s been hurt.’ So that was alright and they were very good. They immediately gave me a railway warrant and sent me on leave to see if I could do anything to help.
GT: Ok. So, let’s then just go back slightly to your reasons for joining the Royal Air Force and and how you managed to achieve that for me please.
TF: Well, the reason. Yes.
[telephone ringing]
TF: I would say the reason was —
GT: Ok. Hang on. I’ll tell you what. We’ll just pause that.
[recording paused]
[clock chiming]
GT: Ok, Thomas. Can, can you please tell me why you joined the Royal Air Force and when and how?
TF: Yes. Well, I joined in nineteen, at the beginning of 1941. And the reason why was I got a bit fed up with getting bombed by German planes coming over in horrible times. Middle of the night getting it Not that I expected I was going to make any difference but I just felt I would like to do something to make up for all the bombing that was going on and so I visited a recruiting office and said, ‘I’ve joined the Air Force.’
GT: So you were saying that you lived or grew up in Sunderland but there was no recruiting office there. You had to go somewhere else.
TF: No. No recruiting office.
GT: Where was the recruiting office that you went to then?
TF: It was at Newcastle on Tyne which was about twelve mile away. But, and so I went through there and joined the Air Force and, and I think I was put on what they called deferred service for about two months and then eventually went down to Blackpool where we got kitted out. Well, it was rather pleasant in a way because it wasn’t an Air Force station as such. We just lived in hotels. There’s hundreds of small hotels in Blackpool and there would probably be about six of us because they were nearly all geared up with double beds you see and of course we all had one each. So if they had six rooms it normally meant there would be twelve people staying but there was only six of us sort of like. We got good meals and then went out and got our uniforms and got kitted up with a whole pile of stuff. We were all given a kit bag and moved along a line and someone would say, What size shoes do you take?’ ‘What size shirt do you, what’s your collar size?’ And such like and you’d just keep dropping things in and we took, with laden kit bags went back to our hotel and were told to pay after, after lunch with our uniform on. And, and someone came and checked over to see if everybody fitted reasonably well and then we started doing basic training with a lot of PT and marching along the promenade, running around the sands like a lot of lunatics with rifles and bayonets. And, and then in the fullness of time we, I was there about a month and then went down to Number 4 School of Technical Training.
GT: Now, Thomas, now Thomas earlier you were telling me when you initially went to the Recruiting Office what they recruiter did to give you your future job. Can you, can you tell me that again please? What happened when you went to the Recruiting Office.
TF: Well, when I offered to be a flight mechanic he said, ‘Not so fast. We’ll have to see if you’re suitable for training.’ And, and then started to give me what I’d say with good grace here was a bit of mental arithmetic. Just wanted to know whether I could add up and I wasn’t completely illiterate and, and then and said I was quite suitable for training. So that’s why I ended up at Number 4 School of Technical Training at St Athan in South Wales.
GT: And how long were you there for and what did, what did they train you on?
TF: They trained [laughs] they trained us on all sorts of old pieces of aircraft. I don’t think there was a complete plane. Actually, when I was [unclear] was when I went to start the training someone came in to [laughs] in to my classroom one day and said, ‘Would there be any chance that there’s a sign writer here?’ So I said, ‘Yes.’ So he said, ‘Well, could you come through so that I’ll show you what we’d like you to do?’ And they wanted me to do some small lettering on a sort of board you see and said, ‘Well, the problem is I don’t know when you’re going to be able to do it. You can’t miss any of your course and you certainly can’t be expected to give your spare time because you’ll not have enough. You’ll be spending more of your spare time studying anyhow so would you mind missing PT? So I said, ‘Well, if it’s for the good of the Air Force I’ll miss PT.’ And so, when everyone else went to do PT in the middle of the morning I used to just go and spend a bit of time in there and in reality waited ‘til the tea van came around and had a cup of tea and a bun or something while everybody else was doing PT. But most of the things were very old pieces of aircraft. Just an engine here and there and we, I don’t ever recollect seeing an aircraft with an engine in to do anything. But however, we had our tests and we passed out as a flight mechanic engine. You had the choice of being either engine or air frame. If you were air frame you were usually referred to as a rigger and if you were an engine you were usually referred to as a fitter.
GT: So that was your choice. You were given a choice to be a rigger or an engines.
TF: Yes. A rigger or a fitter. One looked after the airframe and one looked after the engine.
GT: So how many was on your course when you went through there?
TF: I would think possibly about twenty or twenty four. Maybe two dozen.
GT: Did, did you lose anybody? Did they drop out or move on?
TF: I honestly couldn’t remember but I don’t think so.
GT: And the tests you did at the end there was it written or did you have to prove yourself on the machinery?
TF: Well, I think it was mainly written but it was also taken into consideration your work that you’d done during that time. One of the things I remember which seemed a complete waste of time was trying to find a piece of metal as a cube to fit into a square hole. And I could never for the life of me, never could think what that was going to have to do with an aircraft was spending hours and hours filing away to get a perfect fit.
GT: So during that time at St Athan then your barracks you were in were you twenty men to a room? Did you have bed packs? Did you have spit and polish shoes? Did you have marching?
TF: No. We didn’t have marching but we were expected to spend one evening cleaning the room and leaving everything neat and tidy for the COs inspection the following day. That was once a week.
GT: No stand by your beds inspection?
TF: I don’t recollect that. No.
GT: Interesting.
TF: On the whole, yeah it was reasonably comfortable and beds, we did have, we did all have a sort of a little fitted wardrobe each to put clothing and things in and, and then at the end of that time we were given two weeks leave.
GT: So how long was a course for, Tom?
TF: Well, I think it would be about sixteen weeks. I went in, I think it would probably be the 1st of May when I went in and it would be October when I passed out and that would have been a week at, a month at Blackpool and the rest of the time at St Athan. And I was given two weeks leave and, with instructions to report to Number 92 Squadron at Gravesend. So, I thought from Gravesend being at the, on the Thames Estuary I thought it was going to be a very busy station with getting fighters and bombers going. But however [laughs] when I got down to Gravesend, they said, ‘Oh, 92 Squadron. They’re not here.’ So, I went, ‘I’ve trailed all the way. Come all the way from one end of the country to the other.’ ‘No.’ He said, ‘They’re not here. I don’t know where they are.’ And I thought surely you must know. But then when I thought about it later I thought, well no. You didn’t give information like that away. They were just, suddenly the squadron would just go and they wouldn’t say where they were going. So, I was told to, I was shown where I could have a bed for the night, where to go and get a meal, ‘And after breakfast in the morning if you come back here I’ll have found out where 92 Squadron are and give you a railway warrant again and you can go join them.’ So when I went back he said, ‘Well, they’re in Lincoln at an airfield called Digby. So, I then took all my kit, got a bus in to London and then the train up to Lincoln and then on to, to Digby.
GT: So you were still eighteen years old at this time.
TF: At that time. Yes.
GT: And you got to Digby ok and what aircraft did they have when you first arrived?
TF: Spitfires. And, and it was actually in a way a little bit of an exciting time because obviously there was no television but we did see news regularly. News came on the radio. Everybody was glued to the radio for the 9 o’clock news and you kept hearing about, particularly during the Battle of Britain how they’d shot such a lot of German planes down and such like which later we discovered was great exaggeration. There were never anywhere near that number shot down. However, you saw the, the squadrons taking off and looked across and you saw, I saw great big bell outside the crew room and the notice up, chalked on a blackboard. “When you hear this bell you will run like hell.” And so when you, when somebody pokes their head out of the door and shouts, ‘92 Squadron, five minutes readiness.’ And the pilots then all knew that whatever they were doing would have to be dropped in five and be off in the plane and away. And then we would come out, possibly come out when it was time to go and ring this great big bell and we would dash down and unplug the, well wait ‘til the pilots got the planes started, unplug the starter batteries out and wave them out because a Spitfire a pilot can’t see where he’s going if he’s looking ahead because of the little wheel at the back on the ground. And if that lifts up the propeller’s going to hit the ground and twists so you sort of slowly guide them out and then they’re away and you see the whole squadrons flying off to somewhere and you know, you feel, well I’ve had some little part in this. And then when they come back they were immediately refuelled and every morning they were checked over completely to be ready for the next time.
GT: So, what Mark of Spitfire was flying on that squadron at that time?
TF: I don’t honestly remember. I just do know that they weren’t fitting with cannon. They were definitely just the eight gun and, but they were three bladed propellers. I gather some of the early ones were only two but later they were four. But I’m not sure what the number was.
GT: That’s fine. So, so when you got to Digby did they have everybody put into barracks again? Or did you have single billets or —
TF: No. It was a pre-war station and they were, it were quite good because there were a block. A big block of building and A Flight would have one side and B Flight another and the downstairs would be, we were all split into two watches because you had to cover every, complete daylight so sometimes it could be from what? 5 o’clock in the morning until 11 o’clock at night. And so obviously we were split in to two. Two watches. And one watch would have one room and there would probably be about twelve or twenty people in the room. But they were brick built and pre-war, centrally heated and incorporated on the landings. There were bathrooms and things. They were reasonably comfortable.
GT: So, you chose rigger as your trade.
TF: No. Fitter.
GT: You went fitter. So, from the engines that you had to work on at St Athan you arrived on the squadron and you were given Merlins to look after.
TF: Merlins, ah huh.
GT: So, did you learn your skill on how to maintain a Merlin directly there on the squadron? Was that a quick learning session for you?
TF: Well, what we trained on at St Athan were Kestrels which were really very similar to a Merlin but only very, nowhere near the power. But I suppose we must have just picked a lot up as we went along really. And I was there for a relatively short time and then for some reason or other I got posted to 417 Squadron.
GT: And what time, what date was that then, Tom? How long did you spend at Digby?
TF: That would be [pause] October. Just before Christmas. It was probably end of November.
GT: So barely two months. Barely two months or so on 92.
TF: Ah huh.
GT: Right. So you went up to 417.
TF: 417.
GT: And where were they based?
TF: Charmy Down in Somerset. Near, very near Bath.
GT: And aircraft type?
TF: Spitfires.
GT: And how long were you there for?
TF: I was there quite a while and I was very surprised to find I was now in the Canadian Air Force. It was all four. All the Canadian squadrons were fours.
GT: And how did they, work out? The very —
TF: Well, it was, it was just being formed. It was a new squadron just being formed so the pilots were, had a lot of, a long way to go to get operational and they were all Canadian. And the ground staff, the fitters and riggers were mostly Canadian but I think they must have been a bit short and there was about a half dozen or so of British boys made their numbers up.
GT: Was the Battle of Britain still going at that time or had it finished?
TF: No. The Battle of Britain was over then.
GT: Ok. Just going back then. So, you were on 92 Squadron during the Battle of Britain.
TF: No. I was still after the Battle of Britain.
GT: That was still just after. Ok.
TF: The Battle of Britain was 1940.
GT: Alright.
TF: And that was 1941 when I went in.
GT: Was there still much German aircraft activity that the Spitfires were going up to meet at that time?
TF: Not a great lot. I think what had happened was the squadron had originally been at Gravesend and they were very busy. They were. And when they went up to Lincoln there was a little bit of a rest. They weren’t going to be quite so, so busy and while I was there we had a visit from the King who came up to inspect the squadron.
GT: What’s your recollections of meeting the King? Did you shake hands? Did he talk to you?
TF: No. My recollection is of being rather appalled at the idea of, we had to parade in front of the hangar in our best uniforms and shoes polished and such like and the announcement came over, ‘All personnel not on essential duties will line the roadway and cheer his majesty when he goes past.’ And I thought I’ve seen this on the newsreels and you used to think it was spontaneous but you were actually ordered to go out and cheer the King. [laughs] And the other recollection I have for him was that his face was absolutely plastered with makeup. He looked, almost looked as if he was trying to smile or do anything. Well, he had a little permanent half smile. If he tried not to it looked as if it would all crack or something. It was really thick. It may have looked fine on camera but it looked ridiculous when you were close to him. And so things weren’t all that busy at Digby when I was there but now as I say there were, there were just this Canadian squadron was just being formed. It was bitterly cold weather then but obviously got in thick and one of the things that surprised me was we used to have to put heaters in the planes to stop them freezing. I don’t know why because they always had ethylene glycol in the tank. Anti-freeze. But however, they had these heaters to go under the engine and another one under the cockpit and the fitters always looked after the heater. And one day I noticed on the notice board, it said, “In future the flight mechanics will not do any servicing to the catalytic heaters.” They will — “This will be carried out by a specialist.” And then a bit further down, “The specialist will be AC Fisher.” And I I don’t know one end of them from the other [laughs] I have no reason why I would know anything more about them but the following day someone came and collared me after I’d finished my breakfast and said, ‘I’m taking you to —’ I think it was to Colerne. Another Air Force station, ‘Where you are going to get a day’s instruction on catalytic heaters.’ So, I went there for a day and on the strength of that I, I was then inspecting them. But it was quite a good job because it was bitterly cold weather and when all the mechanics were bringing the heaters off the planes they were still quite warm so I had my little part quite, quite heated. So —
GT: Fascinating. Well, those Canadians should have been used to the cold weather, wouldn’t they?
TF: Well, yes. So, and then I was supposed to have them all ready for early evening to go back in having been checked over and refuelled and such like.
GT: So you became a bit of a specialist on the base then. Very good. So how long did you stay with 417 and where did you go from there?
TF: I stayed with 417, not very long. I stayed with them for I suppose getting [pause] we moved about, about the Easter of the following year up to a place in Scotland called Tain. But I always remember that because I’d been out and when I came in he sort of said, ‘Oh. We’re moving and you’re on the advanced party. You’ve got to leave tomorrow.’ And I said, ‘Well, where are we going?’ ‘I’ve never heard of it.’ But it was quite a journey up from, from Somerset up to the north of Scotland.
GT: So that was about Easter 1942.
TF: Ah huh.
GT: Be about there. And how long did it take to move the squadron up there?
TF: Well, quite a while in a way. We went up and funnily enough the weather was beautiful. We were sitting out most of the time waiting for the planes arriving and of course they were being flown up. And it was probably two or three days and then things just, were just continued there and then things started to change. We got issued with tropical uniforms and it was, the Canadian boys went on embarkation leave and one half at a time and then there’s the other half and it never occurred to me to query why we didn’t get any embarkation leave. But however, I just thought we were going. I had all the gear. The kit. And somebody came in one day and rattled a few names out and said, ‘You’ll not be going with the squadron. You’ll remain here and look after the planes and they are always to be available at about half an hour’s readiness.’ And so the squadron moved off to the Middle East and about half a dozen of us stayed behind and gave the planes a check over every day and ran the engines up to full boost and and there was nothing else to do. It was absolutely very boring. But luckily for me I came in to our hut one day and there were one of the boys looking really miserable and I thought he’d had bad news from home, and I said, ‘What’s wrong.’ He said, ‘I’ve been posted.’ I thought, oh, lucky you. ‘Where are, where are you going?’ He said, ‘I’m going to Inverness but I’m all by myself. I’ve got to go all by myself to Inverness.’ I thought, ‘What a dreadful thing to happen. Would you like me to go instead?’ He said, ‘Ahum.’ I said, ‘Well, look, let’s go to the orderly room and see if we can get it changed.’ So I went down. I said, ‘Was the posting by name or just for a flight mechanic?’ And he said, ‘Just for a flight mechanic.’ I said, ‘Can you change that name to T Fisher?’ And he said, ‘Yes, but mind you you’ve got to go in the morning.’ Everything in the Air Force was wanted to be done yesterday but then you do nothing for about six weeks and then again its a rush. And so I went down to Inverness and that was the best thing I ever did in the Air Force actually. I’d only been there a week or two when the, it was a tiny little station and it was 14 Group Headquarters Communication Flight and they called the station Longman. And I [pause] and then while I was there there was a notice came out and the CO called a little parade of flight mechanics. There would have been about possibly twelve of us altogether of riggers and fitters and he said, ‘I’ve got a communication from the Air Ministry and they would like flight mechanics to volunteer to become flight mechanic air gunners. So, ‘And if you would volunteer will you take a pace forward.’ So I duly took a pace forward and if I hadn’t the others took a pace back which would have left me standing at the front. And he said, ‘You’d better come and see me this afternoon.’ So I went to see him and he said, ‘What on earth made you want to be a flight mechanic air gunner? Is it because you wanted to fly?’ And to be quite frank I felt like saying if the Air Force hadn’t have such silly names for people calling people a pilot officer and he might never have, never a pilot at all and a flight mechanic that doesn’t fly.’ So, but however you don’t talk to COs like that so I said, ‘Yes. Because —’ He said, ‘Well, why on earth didn’t you join as a pilot?’ I said, ‘Well, the main reason is that the recruiting officer said flight mechanics were wanted more.’ I said, ‘But I also knew that pilots have to have a flying, had to have a school leaving certificate and I don’t have one.’ He said, ‘Well, that is true. You have to have a school leaving certificate but no one will ever ask to see it.’ So I thought oh, this is [pause] ‘So, in that case I’m recommending you for training as a pilot.’ So, in the fullness of time I, we got sent for to go down for a selection board which was held in Edinburgh. So I went down to Edinburgh. I was told to book myself in somewhere for a few days and I went down to Edinburgh and had this. And the first thing I noticed was we went in to a big room and there was a blackboard and somebody came in and whipped a cover off the blackboard and says, ‘You’ve got one hour to write an essay on the —’ And there was a choice of two or three subjects. So, I got that over and then there was a few tests like Morse aptitude test, another eyesight test, then a night vision test and then the next day had another paper handed out and it was a maths. An hour of maths. And at the end of all that there was an interview. Oh, no, after that there was a medical. And I thought that was when I was going to fail. We had to blow up a tube of mercury and I thought my lungs were going to burst and I just shut my eyes and blew and blew and blew and blew. And then I heard a voice say, ‘Alright, you’ve done it.’ And, ‘You’ve passed the aircrew medical and now you go for the Board.’ And we knew some of the questions you would automatically be asked about, ‘Why do you want to fly?’ And I was always amused because in the sort of Aircrew Association magazine that I used to get later people used to say what they’d always said to things but you knew full well they would never have said it. ‘Well, because if I’m got to go to war I’d like to do it sitting down.’ And so, another one, ‘Because you get more money.’ And so on. Anyhow, I knew neither of those would really have been what they said. So, I I said, ‘Why didn’t you join then?’ Well, I couldn’t very well say, ‘Because I don’t have a school leaving certificate.’ So I said, ‘Because I was told the flight mechanics were urgently needed.’ And so a few things and then the other thing that always puzzled me they set such a store on, ‘What sport did you play?’ So and for some reason we all knew that what they wanted to hear was that you played rugby. They didn’t want to hear you played Association Football. But as it happened I was never any good at any sports so I couldn’t. Netball, I would go the opposite way to what I wanted to go and I had never managed to bowl anybody out at cricket so I was absolutely no good. But however, I thought well, there’s no good saying that so I sort of said that, [pause] ‘Did you not play for your school?’ And I said [laughs] ‘No. The school I went to was in the middle of a large town. It had no playing fields.’ However, we did used to go to the swimming baths regularly and I said that I was also a very keen member of the Scouts Association Swimming Club which meant you could get in the baths for tuppence instead of three pence or something on certain nights. So that seemed to satisfy them. And, and then a few more questions and then I was told they would, I would be recommended but they explained that you no longer could you be a pilot. You had to agree to be a PNB which meant you would be a pilot, navigator or a bomb aimer but you all got the same pay and you all had exactly the same and you were all equally important. That was always stressed. And so I went back and just waited to be sent for again. And this was about three months must have elapsed before they sent for me so there was no urgency. And I went to Aircrew Reception Centre at London which I didn’t like at all. I never did care for, I never cared for London and that was the only thing I really remember about it was going for a long run through some of the London parks and to then, I thought that was the PT part. But no, you then started to stop in certain places and do exercises. And that night I was on fire watching which meant I was sleeping on the top bunk of a two decked bunk and only had to get up if there was, if the sirens had gone. Had to watch for where bombs had fallen. And when I leapt out of bed for my turn my legs just buckled up. I think with the unaccustomed exercise I couldn’t even stand [laughs] never mind run. It took me ages before I was able to walk again. And anyhow, I finished there and most people went up to Scarborough to do their ITW training but instead of going there I was sent to Cambridge and went to Pembroke College which was rather nice. I was quite pleased about that. And when we finished there we did an awful lot of law. Military. It’s Air Force law and administration. Civil law. And we did meteorology which is understandable and, but and then there was the exams at the end and, and then if you, you never knew who had passed and who hadn’t because if people hadn’t passed something they just were whisked away. You never saw them. You couldn’t see anything. Speak to them even. Anyhow, I then moved down to a little airfield called Sywell, near Nottingham and learned to fly on Tiger Moths which was quite, I thought that was great. To sit in a little plane and push the throttle forward to get more power and pull the stick back a bit and I’m actually flying now, you know. And that was fine for two or three days but then they started to have to do spins and loops and oh dear and I was just felt absolutely ill with that. Oh, I felt horrible. And anyhow, I stuck it out for the training and then the chief instructor gave us all test flight and he told me that he didn’t think I was going to be suitable for pilot training which I think I already knew [laughs] And so I I was then put down to be a bomb aimer. And from [pause] from there I went to Manchester but we didn’t do anything. It was just a question of waiting until we went out to Canada. And in the fullness of time I got on the Andes and it was quite a nice pleasant run and landed at, I think it was St Johns in Canada and went up to Nova Scotia. Not Nova Scotia. New Brunswick. And then eventually down to Ontario for a bombing and gunnery course. And I always remember the first time we flew. The pilot said, ‘It’s just a wind finding exercise, isn’t it?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘Well, how about if we do it over Niagara Falls?’ Oh, I thought. That’s great. And, you know, that sort of thing. Gosh. I never ever thought I would be sitting here flying over Niagara Falls. And so, I finished there and then went on to Number 1 Air Observer’s School which was mainly for navigation and flew quite, trips out across the Great Lakes and navigated about Canada and quite, quite pleasant really. And it was much easier than doing it over here because there was no blackouts so if you saw a train going along with lights on you think well there should be a railway line near here. Well, yes that must be it. Where here there are so many trains you don’t know where you were going. And towns were all lit up so again that was good, everything was easy, quite pleasant and a plentiful supply of everything. And, and we used to spend most weekends going down to America. And so I was quite, quite happy time to be there. And eventually we finished training and the great day arrived when we could get our flying badge and it was quite a do. They assembled the whole, the whole of the station and the courses passing out which in this case was us would be in the middle and you would hear your name read out and we were all forever being told you put, you have your white flash very loose in your hat so it can be easily plucked out and you hear your name which in my case was Sergeant Fisher, Sunderland, England. And the next might be Sergeant Jones of Winnipeg, Canada. So we went and stepped forward and some air marshall picks out, plucks out the white flash and someone hands him a flying badge and pinned it in and then you give him a salute and walk away. And there was the band playing, and a marquees with a buffet meal laid out and they made quite a do of it.
GT: Was the course you were on, Tom was it a mixture of of English, Canadian, New Zealand, Australian? The people —
TF: Mostly when I was there they were about fifty fifty English and Canadian. I don’t think there was, I don’t know if there was any Australian although we did see, there were quite a few Australians waiting to go on courses when we were waiting at Manchester to go over to Canada. So, there were obviously some Australians would go.
GT: That was the Commonwealth Training Scheme.
TF: Yes.
GT: Because the majority of New Zealand and Australian aircrew went through that scheme before they headed off through to England. So it’s interesting to hear you actually went the other way to so this training scheme to go back to England. So, when you finished that training and you were given the half brevet of observer or bomb aimer.
TF: Ah huh.
GT: Which one?
TF: Well, it was really what we used to be called observer and that went out of fashion and bomb aimer, but bomb aimer had also become much more of a navigating. And when I went on to bombers they used to work in conjunction with the, we had a navigator and one of us would operate one radar set. I think I used to do the Gee and he used to do H2S and —
GT: So, for your time then in Canada how long did you spend overall and then what was the dates and year that you got back to England?
TF: I would say slightly less than a year overall there. A lot of that time was hanging about mind. When I was at Moncton we weren’t doing, we weren’t, it wasn’t, they were just waiting to go somewhere else. Then there was two weeks leave when I went to New York and then back to Moncton to wait for a ship to bring us back home again. So, the actual time was getting on for a year altogether.
GT: When you were in the USA what was the feeling like about the war and obviously they recognised you guys because you were all in our English RAF uniforms or did you change in to civilians and try to keep yourself —
TF: No. No. We always wore our uniforms and we didn’t have passports. It was quite sufficient to have your identity card in your pocket when they came around at the front of you. They would just look at that and went across. There was no bother. It was really quite pleasant actually because the Americans were really really good. It was not unusual to go in to a restaurant for a meal when you asked for the bill or as they would always call it the check, you would always get oh its been paid for. Or someone to come in the bar and produce a tray of drinks on your table and say, with the gentleman, ‘With the compliments of that gentleman in the corner.’ And yes. They thought we were marvellous you see. But —
GT: What were the American ladies like? Did you get to go out to the nightclubs or the —
TF: Yes.
GT: Dances. Dine and dances.
TF: Yes. No problem at all like. I always remember going to one and as soon as I got in this girl came up and said, ‘Are you with or without?’ I said, ‘Well, I’m without.’ She said, ‘With now.’[laughs]. But, oh yes, there was never any problem on that score.
GT: Because you know the Americans were over in England [laughs]
TF: Yes, I know, and I think we to a large extent were treated the same as the way they were. Only of course they had lots of goodies to give away and such like but there was no need for that anyhow in America. There was plenty of things. But yes they were. They were very very interested to know what we were doing. Oh, it was a sort of a wonderful time. I used to, it was only a Friday evening we used to get a train from Toronto down over the border to Detroit. And, and what really happened was a terrific contrast because in Canada you cannot get drinks other than coke. There was no, no bars you can’t get a drink in restaurants and its quite, quite strict on that score but you could just cross over the border. And even in Niagara in the American part there’s nightclubs and business going on all night. In the Canadian half it shuts down quite, no where to go drinking and things like that.
GT: So you were about twenty years old by this time.
TF: Ah huh.
GT: You had yet to have your twenty first to come. Right. And so, when you finished in Canada you were all put on another ship back to Britain.
TF: Yes.
GT: Was it part of a convoy or was the ship fast enough to avoid the U-boats?
TF: The ship, it wasn’t a convoy. None of them were in convoy. It was reckoned it would be fast enough but if by any chance it got torpedoed it would have been terrible because it was so crowded. It was a very big ship. The Mauretania and it was, oh, I was absolutely appalled when we went on and they gave us a hammock. I says, ‘Go to sleep in a hammock?’ And it’s and I realised afterwards we were lucky to have hammocks to sleep in. At least we were in the top half as well where there was a bit more air and such like. It was so crowded they could only give, there was plenty of food but they could only give us two meals a day because they just, you know there wasn’t the space. They couldn’t fit any more in to the dining rooms.
GT: So how long was that journey? Two weeks?
TF: No. About a week each way.
GT: Brilliant. So, when you got back to England what happened to you then?
TF: Well, they sent us up to Harrogate for, for a very short while and then we came home on leave for two weeks. I went back to Harrogate and we stayed there for a few, a few weeks again and then for some strange reason I went up to Whitley Bay to do what they called a survival course and it always puzzled me why I was picked. Nobody else on the course went with me. I just went up to Whitley Bay and I was a bit appalled actually because when I got there I was issued with khaki battledress and great thick heavy army boots and we spent a lot of time running about on, on the beach and the purpose really was to try and show us how we could survive on stuff you could find on beaches. Sort of, you know I think I’d rather just die than eat some of this stuff to be quite frank. But, and I always thought it was funny to think that we were marching around like a lot of little soldiers during the, during the day and in the evening we went back to our billets. We were in sort of houses in, not, they weren’t people living in them but the houses had been sort of commandeered and they were empty and they just put beds and a few tables and things in for us and we changed to our Air Force uniform and go down to a dance. And I often thought I wonder if people realised we were, and also of course we were very proud of our new flying badges but then again in the morning we were back again in to this khaki uniform. But I flatly refused to wear Army boots. But on the other hand it was a bit awkward because we still wore those funny little gators and there was a gap between the top of my shoes and the [laughs] and the gator. So if you ran through a stream your feet were absolutely soaking wet. But anyhow, it was only a short course and when that was finished of all places I came up here to Heathhall.
GT: And that was a posting that that you asked for or was it just something you were told to go to?
TF: It was just something we went to. It was called Number 10 Advanced Flying Unit. And it was flying Avro Ansons and it wasn’t bad. It was quite pleasant really. We used to fly over the Irish Sea and over to Ireland and the Isle of Man and such like and a lot of, a lot of little cross countries and such like and [laughs] I never thought at the time that I would be living so near to, to Heathhall.
GT: So, what year was this? What month and year? Can you remember?
TF: Oh, we’re getting on for ’44 now I would think.
GT: And what was your role to be doing at this with the Ansons? You were still training? Or did you teach others?
TF: Navigating. Navigating and [pause] mostly navigating but we did, did drop practice bombs and actually it was part of the targets, one of the targets we used was, is still visible through the, through the, you can see the base of it and usually I had a cross country flight and then come back and we’d go, go and drop bombs. Six bombs from different directions over. It was either there or Luce Bay and and I think that was mainly what we did here at Heathhall. And then from there I got posted up to Lossiemouth and that’s where we were told we would have to find, sort yourself out in to crews.
GT: Oh, what, what base was that at? Sorry you went to the Lossiemouth base.
TF: Lossiemouth.
GT: Ok.
TF: Ah huh. It was an Operational Training Unit.
GT: Ok.
TF: I think we were number 20 OTU and, and we were in a way sort of lucky there because we were told we would have to form crews and from what I’d understood with most people the whole collection of aircrew was put in to a hangar and told to, ‘Sort yourselves in to crews and if you haven’t formed yourselves in to crews in an hour we’ll just come and put you in.’ But we were told to sort yourselves out in to crews and you’ve got a week to get that done. So just get to know each other in the bar, in the mess and get, get to know each other and and see what happens. And the second day over there I was [unclear] I was going to have a drink before the lunch break and there was a flying officer and a flight sergeant came in and they came straight across to me and one said, ‘Oh, I’m John and this is Eric. Eric’s my navigator and we would like you to join us as bomb aimer.’ And I thought well he’s a flying officer. That’s not bad. He must have some experience. So I readily agreed and I discovered afterwards that why he had had experience they’d kept him on as an instructor. So I felt quite confident we’d got a good pilot.
GT: Yeah.
TF: And then during that time we collected a rear gunner and a wireless operator and that meant five of us in the crew and we were now on Wellingtons and but [pause] And then after a little while the, for some strange reason again we were posted down to Moreton in Marsh and we were now told we were going to join Tiger Force.
GT: Now, you earlier mentioned it was 1944. So, by this time when did you get posted to 20 OTU in Lossiemouth?
TF: I was posted to 20 OTU in Lossiemouth and then from Lossiemouth posted to 21 OTU at Moreton in Marsh.
GT: But what year was that please, Tom?
TF: Oh, we were getting on for ’45 then, I guess.
GT: So you spent quite a bit of time training within the UK once you got back from Canada.
TF: Ah huh.
GT: On the Ansons, wasn’t it? I was just thinking back to the time you spent down here training on the Ansons. So how long did you spend on bomb aimer training with the Anson aircraft?
TF: The Bomb aimer training at?
GT: With the Ansons you were, you were bombing off of here somewhere. So —
TF: At here they were Ansons, ah huh.
GT: There’s quite a few months for you doing that.
TF: Probably, I don’t think it was a long time, probably about four months.
GT: And that took you in to early 1945. Wow.
TF: It would be getting on for that. Around that time. Ah huh.
GT: So, you, you were aware at the time with your crew that the war was closing. It was coming to an end.
TF: I don’t think we were actually. I don’t think we were. I don’t think. I don’t think we knew very much beyond our own immediate little —
GT: Right.
TF: No. I don’t think. We’d heard obviously you heard on the radios, news reels and you saw newsreels in cinema but I don’t think we were actually aware that it was getting so near finishing.
GT: Because it’s a long time to be spending doing your training when —
TF: It is an awful long time. Yes. But of course. there was such an awful long time of waiting in between. Sort of from Pembroke College, Cambridge to Flying School was straight off but then Flying School to going out to Canada to do really the next part of your training there was about three four maybe six weeks in Manchester. A week on the ship and two or three weeks at Moncton in Canada. All we always kept doing something but there was nothing to do with our, with training. It wasn’t until we got down to the Bombing and Gunnery School that you started to realise it and you also realised these were the only places they were giving us any tests at the end to make sure you’d, you got through. The others were just filling time in.
GT: So, when you crewed up at 20 OTU Lossiemouth did you do any flying there or did you go straight down south?
TF: I don’t recollect doing much in the way of flying Lossiemouth. I think we went down to, to Moreton in Marsh.
GT: That was 21 OTU.
TF: 21 OTU. Yes.
GT: Ok. So, and you did flying time there then.
TF: Yes. We did quite, oh we did a lot of flying time there and it made you wonder what we’d all been trained for first because now all the methods that we’d been doing were hardly used because there there was radar and you had a new type of bombsight. The Mark 14. The old one you used to have to watch for your target coming up between two wires and it looked like a really primitive thing. It was, it looked a bit like a compass and then an arm sticking out and you had to just search for the, find the target. Yes. I think. Give the pilot instructions. ‘Left. Left.’ Which incidentally if you wanted him to go to the left it was always, ‘Left. Left.’ And if it was right it was always just, ‘Right.’ So if he heard two he would know it was left. And gave him instructions and always one that, don’t do any last minute corrections because a bomb will always go in the direction the plane’s going. So if he’s moving to the left the bomb will just go over to the left and not to where you wanted it to go. And so yes it was [pause] but now we had a thing, which just shone across on the ground. And you just had to direct the pilot to get so that that cross went, the long arm went up over the target and when he reached the cross piece that was when you pressed the button and it released a bomb.
GT: So was it, ‘Bombs gone.’ ‘Bombs away.’
TF: Oh, ‘Bombs gone, yes.’
GT: ‘Bombs gone, skipper’
TF: But yes, it was usually something like we do sort of working out in your settings and wind speeds and all that and then said, ‘Bomb doors open.’ Because the pilot would open the bomb doors and then you would then say, ‘Number one and two selected and fused, nose and tail. Because if you dropped a bomb before it’s fused it doesn’t explode. Or so they say [laughs] I wouldn’t know.
GT: So, with the arming of your weapons you had a selection panel to choose and you already knew what bomb load you had. Is that correct?
TF: Well, you would. Yes. Because it’s got to be, it’s better if it goes out evenly and not all at one side first when it’s fused and you always had to select and fuse and then you —
GT: So those fuse setting that you, you then set the bombs before you released them was that given to you as part of your briefing before. Before you were to leave for an operation or was that something you chose when you were there for the, during the flight. The fuse settings for the bombs where did they come from?
TF: They were put on by the armourer.
GT: Yeah.
TF: And —
GT: So you knew the fuse settings before you took off.
TF: Well, it was just a switch.
GT: Good. Ok.
TF: And, and apparently we would [give them away] was because they would be left hanging on the thing. If there were little things left hanging on the bomb rack they would drop them without the fuses being set.
GT: Right. So that, that’s your arming wire which is selected to the, to the micro switch on the aircraft. So, you set the micro switches to hold the arming wire. As the bomb fell away wire came out of, out of the nose fuse and allowed the spinning propeller to arm the fuse of the bomb. Yeah. Good stuff. Ok. So, so Tom then once you moved down to 21 OTU that must have been pretty much near the end of the war.
TF: It would be because it was when you say 21 OTU. When we finished, we finished our training on 21 OTU and then we moved up to I think it was 16 I can recall 1630 or 1830 Heavy Conversion Unit.
GT: And what aircraft did you convert from the Wellington to that?
TF: From the Wellington to the Lancaster.
GT: Lancaster Mark 4 or Mark 3s generally. The Merlin engine.
TF: Merlin engines. Yes. Four Merlin engines which lots of people blame for having hearing aids in later life but —
GT: That’s a point to ask you, Tom. For your hearing protection. You didn’t have any hearing protection.
TF: Didn’t have any at all. And it wasn’t just in the, in the, in with four Merlins in the Lancaster but running the Spitfires up on the ground to maximum boost. There were no other. It can’t have done the ears any good at all. But to go back to Lancasters we’d now collected two more in the crew making it up to seven. A flight engineer and a mid-upper gunner.
GT: And, and that was and at what base were you at, Tom?
TF: North Luffenham.
GT: North Luffenham. So, now, now the war had finished you mentioned Tiger Force early on.
TF: Yeah.
GT: So, can, I know what Tiger Force was. Can you describe to me what you knew of Tiger Force at that time?
TF: Well, I just knew that we were going to go to Japan and I also know, quite vividly remember being to keep, we were going to have a little capsule of some sort of poison sewn in our, in the collar of our battle dress. We were told that if you get shot down the choice is yours. You can either be taken prisoner or you can bite the end of your battle dress off and take that.
GT: Cyanide probably.
TF: It was poison. Yes.
GT: Ok. So you were training on, on the Lancasters at this time. Had the atomic bombs been dropped?
TF: No.
GT: No. Ok, so you were, with this training in Tiger Force did they mention the Lincoln bombers to come?
TF: I’d heard of them. I didn’t know what they were but, particularly what they were though but I did read afterwards that the British government and the American government had come to an agreement that we would send out Tiger Force which would consist of twenty squadrons of Lancasters plus 1830 Heavy Conversion Unit. Why that I don’t know but that was what we were on so we knew full well we were going to, to go out.
GT: There was quite a numerous amount of squadrons of Mosquitoes to go as well I understand from the Tiger Force —
TF: I would think. I would think so because the Mosquito was a fantastic aeroplane.
GT: Certainly. So, they actually stated to you you were going to be going to Japan or bombing Japan.
TF: Well, I suppose we’d be bombing Japan first, isn’t it? No. There were, one or two places were mentioned but I don’t think it was officially. Officially mentioned.
GT: So how many flights did you do then in preparation for that? Because VE Day had happened.
TF: VE day had happened. Yes. And it sort of quite regular really. I might also mention earlier on when we were on OTU on Wellingtons that one night there was somebody extra seemed to get in. Come on wearing a flying suit so you couldn’t see what he was or what his rank was but he was an extra person came along that night. And the following morning we found we were no longer had a radio operator in the crew. [pause] He’d, he’d been taken out and that was the Air Force way of doing things. You know, no chance to say cheerio or anything. It was just [pause] I’m assuming that he wasn’t up to scratch and he just disappeared and later in the day we just got a new one.
GT: Did you have any, any idea that some of your crew members were unhappy or couldn’t take the strain? Or —
TF: No. No idea at all.
GT: And at this time you had done no overseas operational bombing —
TF: No.
GT: Sorties at that time.
TF: No.
GT: Because —
TF: No, it was very shortly, we’d only been crewed up and flying for two or three times. That apparently is the RAF way of doing it. I think they thought it might be bad for morale. They just —
GT: Were you made aware at the time of LMF? Lack of moral fibre.
TF: Of any —
GT: Lack of moral fibre. Were you aware of that term?
TF: Not an awful lot. I think I heard more of it afterwards. I think it was a disgusting thing. We knew of its existence but I suppose you always adopted the attitude of well it wouldn’t happen to me, would it?
GT: But you were a volunteer. All of you blokes were volunteers. Right?
TF: Yes.
GT: And they still treated you quite badly at that.
TF: It was, it was dreadful.
GT: Someone couldn’t keep it going. Ok. I’m assuming then that your navigator was, was removed from flying status because of his supposed lack of moral fibre and the way you described it. Would that be fair?
TF: Well, I think it possibly, could be that he was. Just wasn’t efficient enough with his, it was the radio operator. I think it could be just that he wasn’t in it. But I don’t know whether [unclear] would have anything to do with it but I did know that he was only member I knew in the aircrew that was married.
GT: Ok. Maybe he was removed so the war was finishing and they only wanted single, single men.
TF: It could be.
GT: Yeah.
TF: But there was no reason given. It’s just he flew with us one night and then we never saw him again.
GT: Right. So, when you did your training through on OTU and then on the HCU did you do any practice bomb dropping from the Wellingtons and then the Lancasters?
TF: Just practice.
GT: Just practice. Yeah. And how many hours have you accrued then for daylight and night time. Can you remember the flying hours you had done?
TF: It wasn’t a great lot.
GT: Now, Wellington. The Heavy Conversion Unit at that time is that pretty much where you much finished because you didn’t go to Lancaster Finishing School at all?
TF: No. That was one of the things that always puzzled me. Why didn’t we go to a Lancaster Finishing School like other people? But I realised afterwards it was because we did all of it on Lancasters. The others that went to Lancaster Finishing School went on to Stirlings and Halifaxes and then just did a short time on Lancasters but we did the whole of Heavy Conversion on Lancasters.
GT: Intriguing because most of the LFS Schools, Number 3 at Feltwell, for instance most of the 75 Squadron aircrew that I’ve talked with and seen their logbooks they only did four flights. Four to five flights in one week from a Stirling and then straight on to Lancaster. So, so you did, you did the full, that’s huge. Ok. So then, then came VJ day for you guys.
TF: Ah huh.
GT: And did flying pretty much cease because you were preparing for Tiger Force to get going to the Japan region.
TF: Well, that was to say rather strange. What happened in my case was just before VJ Day I was told I had to go and see the CO. And I went to see him and he said, ‘Your demob’s going to be coming up shortly.’ And I said, ‘Well, I’m not surprised,’ I said. I said, ‘But,’ he said, ‘My job actually is to persuade you to sign on.’ He says, ‘Now, you could. If you were, the best thing you could do you know would be to sign on for twenty one years. You’ve done five years. Twenty one years you’ll be thirty nine. Eighteen when you joined. Twenty one years. Thirty nine. You’ll retire on a pension at thirty nine.’ Which sounds very nice but it was going to be only a very small pension anyhow. But anyway, I thought well I don’t think the peacetime Air Force is for me. I think, I always think of the words of a PT or drill instructor and he had a gathering of us to take for a PT session early one morning. Our names appeared on the notice board to attend for PT and we all knew it was because we’d done some minor infringement of rules and regulations and we, I went down and I had my PT kit on and I had a sweater or something on top. It was a bit chilly. And a lot of the Canadians, well they were mostly Canadians actually and most of them were commissioned and they came down in overcoats for the PT, so he said, well of course as you realise he had to be reasonably polite. He couldn’t speak as if they were just, ‘Hey you,’ do this or do that. He said, ‘Could you take your overcoats off?’ ‘Oh, no.’ ‘No? Why not?’ ‘It’ll be cold.’ He said, ‘Well, you can’t do PT in overcoats.’ ‘Well, we could try.’ [laughs] And he got really exasperated and said, ‘It’ll be a good job when this war’s over and we can have a proper Air Force without all this flying.’ And I thought my goodness an Air Force without flying. Does he think the Air Force’s main purpose is to do PT and march about and things like that? No. The peacetime Air Force wouldn’t be for me.
GT: So, he swayed your decision to sign on further. Yeah. So, so you that chap was asking you to carry on as a bomb aimer.
TF: Yes.
GT: After the war.
TF: And, after the war and he says or you could just sign on for six months. And I thought well what’s the point.? I’ve, you know I’ve got to adjust now to going back to Civvy Street. I’m not staying in the Air Force. I’m quite sure of that. I could not possibly put up with the peacetime. I could imagine it. Marching here and marching there. Life was so free and easy and things and also it was, they would probably be a little bit more strict on the visions of class. You know. I mean, in the aircrew when we’d done a, whether your crew were officers or sergeants you all went in for a meal the same, in the mess at the same time having, and we all used to use the same mess. It was all, you know nobody did any different but I should think that changed in peacetime. And so I said, ‘No. I don’t think I will.’ And then he said, ‘Well, if you won’t sign on you won’t do any more flying.’ And I thought is this man crazy? They’ve spent thousands of pounds training me in two years or so. Training me for this and now because I won’t sign on [pause] and I just cannot stand sort of being threatened like that. It just, that was just enough. So, I said, ‘Well, in that case I don’t do any more flying. So, later that day we were down for night flying and I went along to the, the briefing room and there was the board for tonight’s crews. And there was a sort of list down the side of the pilot’s names and the list along of the crew and I looked down. Flying Officer Jorgenson. Navigator Flight Sergeant Stobes, bomb aimer — it should have said Flight Sergeant Fisher. It had been rubbed out. And I was absolutely appalled. I didn’t think he really would have done it that quickly. I was really really annoyed and so, oh well that’s it. I don’t. So I did nothing for two or three days and then I thought well, I think I might as well go home for all the good I’m doing here. So I did. And then I started to worry about it a bit. You know, you’re being rather stupid if you get, if they discover you. You’d probably lose your stripes and crown and your demob pay would go way down. Way down. So you’d better go back. So I went back and at the same time I was relieved but at the same time it was not good for your ego to know that nobody had ever missed you. And anyhow, I went and saw the adjutant and said, ‘What am I supposed to do?’ He said, ‘What do you mean what do you do?’ I said, ‘Well, I’m not flying now.’ He said, ‘Well, whose crew were you in?’ And I told him. He looked up some records, he says, ‘That was a few weeks ago.’ ‘Oh yes. Yes.’ He said, ‘What have you done since then?’ I said, ‘Well, I’m waiting for a job.’ He says, ‘You mean you’ve sat on your behind and done nothing.’ ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘I wouldn’t put it like that.’ He said, ‘I don’t see how else you can put it.’ Anyhow, he said, ‘Come in the office next to me and you can sort of help me. You can be a sort of assistant adjutant.’ So that’s what I did. But I didn’t like it at all.
GT: So, there was no other aircrew. Had the same thing happened to them? Did he just single you out or was it common across —
TF: Well, no. There was no more but as it happened after I had [unclear] him up for about forty years later and I got a telephone call and he mind, sort of said, ‘Am I speaking to Mr Fisher?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘Thomas Fisher?’ ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘Were you in the RAF?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘You used to like to spend your weekends at Cheltenham.’ And I said, ‘As it happens I did but how do you know all this?’
GT: Yeah. And what happened?
TF: And he said, ‘Well,’ he says, ‘One final. One final question. Were you in Yorgeys crew?’ We always called him, he was always, his name was Jorgenson. He was always known as Yorgey. And I said, ‘Well, yes. Yes, but who are you?’ He said, ‘Well, I’m Frank, the wireless operator,’ he says, ‘And I’ve set myself a task of when I retired I was going to trace all the crew so that we could have, and see if we could have a reunion.’ And he said, I said, ‘How have you traced me? I live in Scotland now. I’ve moved from the North of England.’ He said, ‘Well, I’m with Scotland Yard and you must remember I’m used to tracing people and most of them don’t want to be traced.’ So, he, he said, ‘Can you think of any of the other names?’ I said, ‘Well, how far have you got?’ He says, ‘Well, I’ve discovered that Johnny is, only lived about forty miles from me. So we’ve been together and you’re the next one.’ And eventually went through with the aid of a newspaper ad, an advertisement and eventually traced all the crew and we met up. All met up again at Woodhall Spa. It was amazing to see each other after an absence of [pause] this would be about 1990. An absence of about forty five years.
GT: So when you finished with, with the aircrew because as then flight sergeant you became deputy adjutant you didn’t keep in contact with your crew even though you were still the same?
TF: No. With actually, this was the first, I gather that VJ Day the crew, I mean I just couldn’t understand it. We’d worked together all this time and then we only did two more practice flights and then that was, that was it. They’d actually gone on a train to go down to an RAF station. I think it was in Cornwall and the RAF police boarded the train and singled them out and said, ‘Will you get off at the next station and return back to your base. You’re not wanted anymore.’ So that was only a matter of days before VJ Day was announced.
GT: Fascinating. That must have been really disappointing to spend all that time —
TF: It just struck me as so ridiculous to think all this training that I’d had and why split a crew up?
GT: And you were the only crew that you know of that this happened to.
TF: Ah huh.
GT: That recruiter, eh. He’s got a lot to answer for.
TF: And then in many ways I was certainly glad I didn’t sign on because it wasn’t very long before bomb aimers were redundant [pause] The aircrews, most aircrews were now restricted to two. Pilot and a navigator. Bomb aimers were not wanted. Air gunners were no longer wanted. Radio operators were no longer, were no longer needed after a while because the pilot doesn’t need, you don’t need to use Morse Code anymore. You can speak plain language over hundreds of miles.
GT: Mind you, you’d been given a lot of navigator training so most navigators later received bomb aiming training.
TF: Could possibly. Possibly I had about that. But there was hundreds of us. Thousands in fact, I suppose.
GT: The UK was awash with airmen wanting to do something.
TF: And then just finally I got a bit fed up working in, just in the office and I asked the adjutant if I could, I thought well, perhaps I could go and learn to drive. That would be more sense. And —
GT: So up to this point you’d never driven a vehicle.
TF: Never driven at all. No.
GT: Aged twenty one. Going on twenty two.
TF: Ah huh.
GT: Yeah.
TF: No. I mean there must have been hundreds of us learned to fly a plane before we learned to drive a car. And he says, ‘Well, I could send you to Catterick and they’ll give you some tests and see what your suitable for.’ So I went to Catterick [laughs] and I had, I don’t know what these tests were. How they were worked out but and then in the central, he said, ‘I’ve got the result of your test and it appears you would be ideal for training as a butcher and cook.’ I said, ‘You are joking surely.’ And I can’t really, don’t believe what I was hearing. I had been, I was told I was suitable to train as a flight mechanic which is a higher grading. And then I was training as a bomb aimer navigator and now I’m just suitable to be a butcher. And that’s the one thing I could not stand was the sight of raw meat. And I said, ‘Well, that is out of the question. I just will not do that.’ He says, ‘Well, what would you do?’ I said, ‘Well, learn driving. He said, ‘Well, there’s no vacancies.’ He did try I must admit. ‘No vacancies in any driving school but I could send you to a transport company and you could do local training.’ So I did get transferred to this but I never did any training out there at all. What I was used for was to fill in gaps where people were away. If they were short of. Although I wasn’t an officer I would often do a parade and I would take part as orderly officer or something. Whenever they were a bit short I filled in for that. And then eventually I just got demobbed. But I was just so, to think I’d had blooming tests and now it turned out I would have been better off as a butcher.
GT: That’s crazy. So did you follow up and look at the medals that you were entitled for your war service?
TF: Just, I was just entitled to the, what everybody was. The Defence Medal and the, the war —
GT: The ‘39/45 Star.
TF: Star. Ah huh.
GT: And, and did you send in to have them? Received them?
TF: I did take them.
GT: And you’ve got them now.
TF: Ah huh.
GT: You’ve still got them.
TF: Ah huh. Incidentally I’ve got a photo here of the crew.
GT: Oh ok.
[pause]
GT: Perhaps you can, I’ll tell you what we’ll finish the interview first there.
TF: Ok.
GT: And let’s have a look at those soon. But so from, from your time of being demobbed, Tom you obviously didn’t go the butcher route. So, what did you end up doing in your new civilian life?
TF: Well, I had two things in mind. I was, one of the things that I thought I might have, might have had some help on instead of doing this silly business saying I could be a butcher or something I thought if they might have told us what grants were available for what training purposes. So, I had, when I was, before I joined I worked for my father as a, as a painter and decorator. So, I just went back to, to doing that and the Air Force and the government paid part of my wage because I’d left as an apprentice and there I was twenty two twenty three and I would not, I would expect better pay than [laughs] so they made up the difference. I can’t remember how long it was but they did it for so long and I sort of settled again and that. And then eventually I, I expect my father was getting a bit past it so I took over and I had quite a reasonable business. I got some quite some, quite good customers such as Lloyds Bank and I did quite a lot of decorating on hospitals and schools and things and, and then I also had a wallpaper and paint shop. And that, that was the rest of my, my life.
GT: That was here in Dumfries?
TF: No. It was in Sunderland.
GT: Oh, ok.
TF: But I [laughs] must say that the shop itself became a bit of a nuisance because the supermarkets, the Do it Yourself supermarkets were coming out. The price maintenance came off paint and wallpapers and so there was sort of cut price wars. And then to make things worse the shop got broken into twice. I got a bit fed up with hearing the telephone go in the middle of the night. ‘Something about your place. Can you get around?’ So this was including one practical joker who rang me up about 3 o’clock in the morning and said, ‘This is Sunderland Fire Brigade. ‘There’s a fire at your wallpaper shop. Can you get around?’ And I thought, oh no. ‘Yes.’ So I went back up to the bedroom and started to get dressed and my wife said, ‘What was that about?’ I said, ‘It’s just some fire. She said, ‘Well, ring the Fire Brigade.’ I said, ‘Well, that was the Fire Brigade that rang me.’ She said, ‘Well, how do you know?’ So, ‘I Don’t.’ So, I rang the Fire Brigade and they hadn’t phoned at all. It was just a hoax call trying to get me around in the middle of the night.
GT: They were going to wait for you huh? So you met a lady and you married and had children I guess.
TF: Yes.
GT: Can you give us a little bit of your, your fond memories of that time? Who is your wife and your children?
TF: Yes. Well, I I was sort of quite fond of going dancing and that seemed to be the way of meeting most people but and I met my wife at a, at a dance and I sort of had a few dances with her. One or two. And then they played, which was the custom in those days of the last dance was always a waltz and they usually sort of announces that, ‘Will you take your partners for the last waltz?’ Which, when that finished I said, ‘Well, I’ll sort of see you home.’ And she said, ‘Well, I live up at Grindon.’ And I thought that’s a bit far isn’t it? But she said, ‘I get a bus.’ I said, ‘Where do you get the bus from?’ Park Lane was the bus station. ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘I’ll go around that way.’ So, I went around that way and saw her on to the bus and arranged to see her again and then saw her two or three times and then it became quite a regular, a regular thing and and then that’s, we got married in 1950. And the problem was at that time was it was so difficult to get houses because with being so much bombing done at the places were instead of being streets of houses there were just streets of bomb sites and they were building new houses but the council where I lived in Sunderland would not allow any new houses to be built privately. Only council houses. And that was, created a problem. Well, firstly I didn’t want a council house and secondly you couldn’t get a council house until you’d had two children. So, so that’s how you fit that in was never explained. But eventually we, we looked at a few places and found somewhere we could live quite happily. I went, went in for it and I remember putting an offer in and the agents saying, ‘Well, mind I’m not having an auction, a Dutch Auction going on in my office, you know. If that’s your offer it has to be stick to that. If somebody comes along with better I’m not coming to see if you want to go any more.’ And then he added, ‘But I will place that offer before my client and I’ll advise her to accept it. And in a very short time I heard word that she had accepted and so we got well, the house if nothing else. And I got married in 1950. And, and I was sort of, you know having my own little business by then and, and then Julia and my other daughter came along and I think that was about it really, wasn’t it? I’d always wanted a wallpaper and paint shop and I just ran the business from my house you see and then someone sort of said he had one and he was retiring. He wanted to give it up, you know. He said would I like to take it and I said, ‘Yes. I think I’ll take it over. And and then we moved from where we were living until I was, just carried in until it was time to retire and my wife wanted to move somewhere else. She didn’t want to stay in Sunderland and I was quite happy there excepting I did get a bit fed up with having the shop broken into a couple of times but then I sold the shop anyhow. Then my house was broken into a couple of times and, and then I think I had my car broken into two or three times. So I thought well yes, I think I’ll agree. We’ll move. And my wife wanted to go down to Devon and, and I thought it’s nice. I like Devon. But I didn’t think I wanted to go that far the other end of the country you see. Anyhow, someone she knew suggested there was someone was building these houses just up this road and so we came through and had a look and decided to have one and I asked how much it would be. He said, ‘I’ll work you a price out.’ And this was in the middle of the summer and I always remember we got the price just as we were coming up to see you at Christmas. And so, after the Christmas we went, but unfortunately we couldn’t sell our other house it was just, so we had to let it go. So I had to ring the solicitor up and say we can’t go ahead with this and then the estate agents kept sending me a brochure and I looked at it one night when one came and I said, we’d sold our house in the meanwhile and I said [unclear] does this sound familiar to you, “In the village of Lonchinver, a three bedroom bungalow newly built. Just requires the purchaser to choose the bathroom and kitchen fittings.” That sounds like our house or what would have been our house and so I rang up and sure enough it was. So we came through to see it and it wasn’t quite like that. There was no walls up. It had a roof on but however we decided then we’d sort of decided we would move so we moved up over here. And that would be in nineteen, in 1991. So I’ve been here twenty six year now.
GT: Grandchildren?
TF: Two. One in Edinburgh and one in Aberdeen.
GT: Wow. Very good. And and in your retirement did you settle and golf, tennis, bowls?
TF: No. I I was never, never very keen on golf. No. I got, I bought a touring, a small touring caravan and we, we always went, we went once a year or two to a reunion and then went went away in the caravan about a month each year and a few weekends. And then I joined the Aircrew Association and they used to have some quite nice little breaks. About four day breaks. They were often connected with flying but not necessarily. Went down to Duxford for a few days. Up to the Scottish Memorial at East Fortune and Mildenhall.
GT: Was the Air Force Association something that was important to you after serving in the RAF?
TF: Not the Air Force Association itself but the Aircrew Association was. I suppose there were so many people in the Air Force Association and I did join actually. I more or less had to because they [laughs] they asked me to decorate their premises out and when they discovered that I’d been in the Air Force I really didn’t have any alternative but to join. But it wasn’t what I expected. It was merely a place to go and drink and a lot of the people they weren’t, hadn’t been in the Air Force anyhow. It was just, just a club to go drinking. But that wasn’t what I was looking for. But when I heard of the Aircrew Association I, it was a lady that my wife knew mentioned it and she said, ‘We have some really nice outings and get togethers. Why don’t you ask your husband if he wants to join?’’ So she mentioned it to me and then a few weeks later she said, ‘I’ll be seeing —' so and so, ‘This afternoon. What do I tell her? She’s sure to ask us if you would like to join.’ I said, ‘Tell her yes I would like to join. So, the following day a telephone call from the secretary and he said, ‘I understand you’re interested.’ I said, ‘Yes, I am.’ He said, ‘Yes, well. You were in the RAF.’ I said, ‘Oh yes, I definitely was.’ He said, ‘Do you know your number?’ I said, ‘Yes, I still know my number.’ And he said, ‘Were you aircrew? By that I mean not just did you fly but were you qualified?’ And I said, ‘Oh, yes.’ He said, ‘Well, I’ll make enquiries and we’ll be in touch.’ And obviously went to find out whether or not I’d actually, the bloke finally came back and he said, [unclear] so, ‘Would you like to come to our Christmas lunch?’ Which I did do. And well, regular quite regular lunches. Often here or down at the Valley and in the, in Dumfries. And then there was a monthly meeting so that was a regular thing then. But no, I never went in for golf or tennis or anything like that.
GT: What about air shows? Do you still, do you still look at the different aircraft that the aircraft are flying today? Of any interest?
TF: Not really. Not the ones today. I’ve always been more interested in in the old ones. In fact, there’s the Heathhall Airfield still have an aircraft museum and we are going there on Sunday, aren’t we? But yeah.
GT: And have you been to East Kirkby or Hendon or Coningsby where the Lancaster is?
TF: Yes. I went over to Coningsby and I saw the Lancaster in the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight.
GT: Fabulous. And —
TF: And that’s it. We were standing underneath it.
GT: Very good. So, your crew you mentioned that one of your crew members managed to get hold of you. So are your crew still about?
TF: No. I’m the only one left.
GT: You’re the last one surviving, eh?
TF: I’m the last one surviving. Ironically I was the oldest.
GT: Gosh. Yeah.
TF: I think at twenty two I was the old man of the crew.
GT: Do you think bomb aimer was was the job for you in the end? Did it work for you?
TF: It worked quite well yes. I mean. I quite, I would have been quite happy as a pilot but I realised that I was not in the position to be able if, if a plane got in to difficulties to get it out. Flying straight and level I could cope with quite well but if something happened you know I wouldn’t have been any use at all. And navigator? Well, bomb aimer and navigator were the same thing really. I think the only difference was the navigator did, went deeper into it and they did a thing called a square search which we never never did. But I mean we were expected to be able to navigate a plane. I mean, as an example we were flying in a Lancaster once and the radio operator says there, ‘Skip, the wireless if off. The radio. I can’t get anything on it at all.’ So, Johnny called and said, ‘Well, really you know we’re not supposed to fly over the sea without radio. What do you think, Eric?’ That was to the navigator. ‘Oh, press on.’ ‘What do you think Thomas?’ ‘Oh, press on regardless. Not a little thing like a radio going to stop us.’ So, we did and that was alright. And then suddenly there was a shout from Len, ‘Hey skip, port engine’s gone. Oil pressure’s right gone. There’s no pressure there at all.’ Oh, feather the port inner.’ And then it wasn’t very long before, The starboard engine’s now gone.’ So [laughs] so things looked to be getting bad. So we had two, just two engines and at the same time I heard the navigator, I think the navigator swearing away to himself you see and he said, ‘Oh skipper, the H2S is not working.’ And Dennis says, ‘Oh, well Tom will take over the navigating now.’ I said, ‘I’m sorry but Gee’s not working either.’ So, he says, well we had to get back to the old method of, of getting a bearing where you could and a course and came back to North Luffenham and called up on the radio. That was the one where you sent Morse messages out but plain talk on the other one was ok. And Johnny calls up and requests permission to land and they said, ‘We’re sorry. You can’t land here. There’s too thick fog so you can go to —’ It was somewhere near Oxford, and they gave us a course to fly if we went down there and we got there and then it was quite exciting in a way because you heard the flying control say to, ‘Clear all aircraft off. Emergency landing.’ And Johnny had called up and said, ‘Well, we’ve only got two engines. So yes. Emergency.’ And you saw the crash tent and ambulance coming up to meet us at the end of the runway and then race to be alongside us and you thought ee gosh, you know, in a couple of minutes time I could be in the back of that ambulance. Or I might just be walking away. So I think I’d better get down in to a crash position and go down with my back to the main spar and then thankfully you felt a bump bump bump. We’re down now. We’re alright.
GT: Because your bomb aimer’s position is lying prone in the nose, isn’t it?
TF: With your back on to the main spar.
GT: Yeah.
TF: In the event of an emergency the bomb aimer gets the, lifts the first aid kit off the hook and takes a chopping axe off it’s thing. Stuffs them down in the front of his battledress and gets your back of the main spar and then that’s it.
GT: I can’t think of anything worse that’s going to kill you it’s an axe stuffed in your pocket. Yeah. Well, well Tom is it, you’ve given us such an amazing amount of your recollections and your time obviously the war finished before you got a chance —
TF: Finished. Yes.
GT: To do any operations per se but do you remember any of your friends that that got on operations? Did anybody talk to you about what they saw? What happened.
TF: Well, one thing I do remember is that after that I volunteered to be a flight mechanic air gunner and then the CO’d recommended for pilot training. I’d been down, had a selection board, came back there was a thing came out, “Would flight mechanic volunteer to change to flight engineer?’ And my friend did that. Changed to flight engineer and he was away, oh I had only just started my training when he was away and trained and we kept in touch. We always wrote and, and then he got, he brought the plane back from Germany and got a Distinguished Flying Medal when the pilot was killed. And I looked a bit surprised to see when he put it on his letterhead. He was still [unclear] DFM and then, I was just starting really. Just starting probably two or three years past Cambridge when I’d kept in touch as I say and I wrote to him and I got the letter back and it was just marked, “Return to Sender.” And it had been opened, got my address out and sent back and he, obviously the reason for that was that he hadn’t come back. And when we were at Lincoln I looked at the [pause] at the Memorial numbers and sure enough his name was on. So he, he’d actually gone on ops, it would only be a few weeks training at St Athans and he’d gone on ops and I hadn’t even finished, hadn’t even got down to flying training.
GT: So as a flight engineer he got on to ops pretty much straight away.
TF: Straightaway.
GT: He was.
TF: He didn’t do, didn’t do any flying training. Didn’t do any OTU or anything like that. Just go straight to a squadron.
GT: Do you think that saved your life then?
TF: Or possibly might have been to Heavy Conversion Unit.
GT: Do you, you consider then that because that would have been say perhaps a year and a half’s worth of the war if you didn’t choose flight engineer. Could that have saved your life too, do you think?
TF: It could have done. Yes. If I hadn’t, if I hadn’t picked the flight mechanic engineer and got recommended for pilot training if I hadn’t done that I would have automatically probably have gone with him and just been a flight engineer. Actually, I did wonder about changing when he went. And then I thought well look you’ve had this altered in your paybook from now I would say trade or category FME UT PNB and you’d also a bomb aimer and a pilot navigator were a higher category than a flight engineer and you got a better pay so I thought well, I’d better just let things go. But yes, it was a very lucky, lucky thing to happen.
GT: Yeah. Tom, you still have your logbook.
TF: Ah huh.
GT: It’s ok. So have you given a copy of this to the IBCC?
TF: No.
GT: Because I can arrange if that’s the case. If you have not then we can arrange for that.
TF: I, the, the museum up at Heathhall took a photostat copy of it.
GT: They might have that in their local files but the IBCC are very keen to, to be able to copy yours in a high resolution file and as a point of note for the recording Tom is showing me photographs of his crew both at the time of training and also later on in nineteen ninety, nineteen ninety something there.
TF: 1991.
GT: Yeah. In front of the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight aircraft which looks like Coningsby.
TF: It is, yeah.
GT: Yeah. Coningsby. So, so Tom would you, would you like to also approve that copies of these photographs can also go to the IBCC?
TF: Yes. Yeah.
GT: Fabulous. Right.
TF: Went to, went to the first reunion we had was at Woodhall Spa which is just a few miles from Coningsby and had arranged that we would see the Battle of Britain of Britain Memorial Flight Lancaster and they’d also arranged that we would go in it. And we all went in and took up our respective positions. One in the rear turret, mid-upper turret. Me down in the bomb, in the bomb section and there was it seemed to me, I don’t know where they came from but there was an awful lot of people snapping photos of us in there and they said, ‘That’s the first time ever that we’ve ever had a complete crew come.’ They said, ‘Plenty of people come but never as a complete crew.’ So that was at, at Coningsby at our first reunion.
GT: So, when you left your crew how long did they stay together after that?
TF: Oh, it was a matter of days.
GT: Oh, it was. Ok. So, it wasn’t —
TF: Well, one, one went as a airfield control. Another one went in charge of a group of German prisoners to close an airfield down and transfer all, all the goods up to, to somewhere else. And apparently I gather, that he had only problem tracing two. And one was the mid-upper gunner. A Welsh boy. And he knew he was Welsh so he put something in the Cardiff, in the Cardiff newspaper and, but the boy himself didn’t see it but his ex-wife saw it and thought that sounds as if it could be Terry and told him. And he was very cagey about it. He was wondering [laughs] what the reason why he was ringing him up about.
GT: Fascinating. Well, Tom, I I think you have duly covered your career, your life your service very well and it’s been an honour and a pleasure to come and interview you today and I’m going to make sure that this copy gets to the IBCC by next week and I’m sure that you’ll receive some form of communication from them. So —
TF: Ah huh.
GT: But it’s, it’s been a great afternoon so thank you very much. We’re also going to get some photographs and —
TF: I might also add that we did get a little bit of a bit of a reward in as much that in nineteen, in 2005 was it the Lottery granted money for people to visit when they’d served anywhere abroad and at, I went to Canada. And then again in 2010.
GT: And you visited your, the previous Training Schools where you were.
TF: Yes, because it turned out that the Navigation School was now Toronto Airport.
GT: So that was pretty easy to go back and see the Commonwealth Training Scheme areas.
TF: And then we did another one in 2010. About seven years ago now, wasn’t it? Oh, we did another one and in this case they said you can take the, they would pay the cost for a carer to go as well. [unclear] asked if she would be a carer for us.
GT: So, have you been to the Bomber Command Memorial in London yet?
TF: Not in London.
GT: Ok.
TF: Just the one in Lincoln.
GT: So, you’ve been to Lincoln and you’ve seen the Spire. What do you think of the Spire?
TF: Well, it makes you realise the Lancaster’s wingspan is very, it’s quite wide. Yes its, its quite good. Actually, I thought the whole set up that they had at this opening ceremony had been very well thought out and was quite well, really well organised.
GT: And you are prepared and getting ready to go to the opening of the archives building, Chadwick Hall. And that will be early in 2018. Just coming up.
TF: I don’t, I wouldn’t know. I doubt if I’ll be at that time but I —
GT: Oh well, I can promise you Tom that your record that you’ve just been telling me today will be in the IBCC Archives and they’ll be, they’ll be honoured and thanking you very much for that. So, I think we can, we can safely say that I can now complete the interview with you, Tom.
TF: Ah huh.
GT: And thank you very much.
TF: Not at all.
GT: For your time. So, this was Thomas Fisher and I have been in the company of Diana Harrington and Julian McLennan and this is Glen Turner who has come to interview Tom today. My service was Royal New Zealand Air Force for thirty years as an armaments technician, so now secretary of 75 Squadron Association I am honoured and pleased to help out the IBCC with interviews of the Bomber Command crews from World War Two. Signing off. Thank you very much.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Thomas Fisher
Creator
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Glen Turner
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-07-26
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AFisherT170726, PFisherT1701
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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02:04:40 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Wales--Glamorgan
Description
An account of the resource
Thomas Fisher trained initially as a fitter in the RAF. When the Air Ministry announced that flight engineers were needed from the ranks of the ground mechanics he volunteered for training. The CO was surprised that he volunteered and asked him if it was only because he wanted to fly. If so he should apply to train as a pilot. Thomas didn’t have a school certificate but the CO encouraged his application anyway and Thomas began training. He enjoyed the flying but not having to do emergency manoeuvres. Initially, Thomas was working as a fitter for 92 Squadron at RAF Digby on Spitfires. He then was posted to 417 Squadron at RAF Charmy Down. He then was posted to 14 Group Headquarters at Inverness. He joined Bomber Command as a bomb aimer and was prepared to join Tiger Force.
Temporal Coverage
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1942
1944-07-04
1945
Contributor
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Julie Williams
20 OTU
21 OTU
aircrew
Anson
bomb aimer
bombing
flight engineer
flight mechanic
ground crew
ground personnel
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Operational Training Unit
RAF Digby
RAF Lossiemouth
RAF Moreton in the Marsh
RAF St Athan
Spitfire
Sunderland
Tiger force
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/610/8879/PMillerP1501.2.jpg
f56dac581f8541f60a8ad337a85c6fce
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/610/8879/PMillerP1502.2.jpg
3c813b020292a9e12b3c53fd1df379ed
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/610/8879/AMillerP150601.1.mp3
520ae851d62c7ebbaff997e1fd396243
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
Miller, Peter
P Miller
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Miller, P
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Flight Lieutenant Peter Miller (3008496 Royal Air Force). He served as an air gunner and gunnery leader with 12 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-06-06
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
PM: You, you want my name or rank?
MJ: Yeah.
MM: Name and rank. Um I’m Peter, I’m [laughs] I’m nearly as bad as you. I’m recording this for Peter Miller, who is my husband, for the International Bomber Command Centre on the 1st June 20 -
MJ: ‘15.
MM: ‘15. We’re at Wragby in Lincolnshire.
PM: When I was called up. Is that alright?
MM: Ahum.
PM: 25th of the 11th ‘43. Went to Cardington. I was only there for a week getting kitted out and such. Was sent to Skegness, my home town, to do a couple of months foot drill. I was billeted about half a mile from home. So, when in the town I was the person sent by cycle on errands. Afterwards was posted to Halton on a flight mechanics course on which I was made AC1. Leaving Halton on the 29th of the 5th ‘44 I went to Digby, Lincolnshire, 527 squadron. Enjoyed time off, such, it was a Canadian station at the time. Then being posted to Bircham Newton, Norfolk, 695 squadron who were drogue towing. After a short while there I was sent to Blackpool in November classed as a PDC from which we went to Liverpool to get a boat. A Dutch ship called the [oanvan oldabarnevoort?] which after, after a late start we caught the convoy and going down the Med at Christmas Eve sailing past Gib onto Aden, then to Ceylon to drop some, some, some people off and then back up to Bombay to a transit camp. From Bombay we went to a place called Cawnpore [Kanpur]. That was our destination - 322 MU. Spending two and a half years in Cawnpore [Kanpur], returning from Bombay on the SS Somalia landing in Liverpool for being demobbed at a transit camp just outside Blackpool early July ’47. That’s, that’s my service career.
MM: What did you think to India?
PM: It was air, do you want the aircraft I worked on?
MJ: Oh yeah. I mean, well, that’s a, that’s a nice round off way of putting things how they are but yeah where, what, what, what did you do in Bombay because it seems a long way to be having an aircraft. I mean if you -
PM: It seems like a long way to what?
MJ: It seems to be a long way to go and play with aircraft so I just wondered what you had to do there.
PM: We were servicing them.
MJ: Yeah.
PM: Um Liberators.
MM: It was a big camp wasn’t it, Peter?
PM: A very big camp. Worked on Liberators to start with. About -
MM: Did you enjoy India?
PM: About five months.
MM: Did you enjoy India?
PM: Well yes. It was alright.
MJ: I suppose it was a good place to get a suntan.
PM: Yeah. Yeah but mainly. I had almost two and a half years on Dakotas.
MJ: So you mainly worked on Dakotas.
PM: Yeah, air frames.
MJ: Air frame.
PM: Air frame fitter.
MJ: Was it, was it very busy being in India fitting or was it -
PM: We were busy.
MJ: Quiet?
PM: Of course we used to service them from all over South East Asia Command.
MJ: So, so when people think that you were um in India probably having a quieter time than most you probably, you weren’t were you? You ‘cause
PM: Oh no, we weren’t living it up.
MJ: No. I mean that’s what people would think. I mean
PM: Yeah.
MJ: That’s what I’m saying. A lot of people don’t associate India with the RAF do they?
PM: Yeah. We weren’t living it up.
MJ: No. So, so how did you, I imagine it was very hot over there was it? Or -
PM: Very hot.
MJ: So -
MM: And you went up in the hills didn’t you on your leave -
PM: Pardon?
MM: You enjoyed going up into the hills didn’t you? On leave.
PM: We used to get on, we used to get our normal leave but also we had a, we used to go on hill parties, a month, probably fifty or sixty used to go by train to the foothills and then up by wagons to the place we spent the, spent the leave, the holiday. I had my twenty first birthday in Darjeeling.
MJ: That must have been interesting.
PM: Yeah. It was alright [laughs]. But the other places were, were very fair. They used to take us as far as they could by train, Then we had to go on, on wagons further up.
MJ: Did -
PM: We used to go by train to Darjeeling. Pre, pre, pre-war I think the moneyed folks had taken Darjeeling over and they weren’t all that keen on us blokes out there going to Darjeeling but er we made them happy.
MJ: Did um -
PM: But that’s a lovely spot that.
MJ: So even though the work was hard it was quite a nice place to be.
PM: Yeah. But, but regarding, regarding the weather it, it was very hot. During the hot season we used to go to work in the morning. There for seven and we used to work while one and after 1 o’clock the time was our own.
MJ: It was too hot to work?
PM: Yeah.
MJ: So, so, so in a way you were working nights really?
PM: [laughs] But we were we’ve had everything done I think. There was, it was a very big camp. There was three villages on the camp.
MJ: Was, was it more than just RAF then?
PM: Pardon?
MJ: Was it more than just RAF?
PM: Just RAF.
MJ: So -
PM: Yeah.
MM: There were locals. The villagers were locals.
PM: Local villagers. They were on, on the side -
MJ: Side.
MM: Doing your washing for you.
PM: Well they used to, they were our bearers and things were alright until the war finished.
MJ: What happened then?
PM: Until the Jap war finished. And then Pakistan and India were having a go at one another.
MJ: So you got stuck in the middle.
PM: Well more or less. We wanted to get home. They held, well, we believed they held our demob up for a while.
MJ: Why because of the conflict between the two -
PM: Well, in case there was going to be. Nothing happened. We got on the boat and came home.
MJ: So that, that was a better deal than you thought.
PM: Yeah. One of the biggest laughs we got was when we got to Liverpool on the way home. We were getting off the boat and a jet went over. Never seen a jet.
MJ: No.
PM: Only heard about them. You should have heard the cheer that went up.
MJ: That must have been, so you were probably one of the first people to see a jet flying.
PM: Yeah. In Liverpool.
MJ: You don’t -
PM: Vampire.
MM: Yeah.
[Tape paused].
PM: The cold season out there -
MJ: Yeah.
PM: Is about like this.
MJ: So it’s like having summer in the winter is it?
PM: Yeah.
MJ: So did you, you got warm -
PM: The, the snag is um these blokes that’s been in, in the desert and that, they reckon it goes stone cold at night. Not India. The sun, the sun sets and that’s it. Nothing else. Then the sun comes up and it’s daylight again and you’re getting warmer.
MJ: Yeah. So did you find you had to do more work in the winter per se or, or is it ‘cause, ‘cause the engine, or did you have to sort of -
PM: Yeah, in the, in the cold season we’d probably work another hour a day.
MJ: That, that doesn’t sound a lot but I imagine in those sorts of heats everything buckles including yourself does it?
PM: Yeah.
MJ: I mean, did, did you have to bring in, how did you get everything to where you were ‘cause you were saying you didn’t have any transport as such.
PM: When, when the war finished we, we were, they were sending in um Liberators to our place for scrap. We had a colossal scrapheap there. They were sending these Liberators there because - I don’t want it recorded because -
MJ: No it’s alright.
PM: Yeah well what we heard was that the Yanks wouldn’t take them back as returned lease-lend.
MJ: Well I mean that -
PM: And we just had to get rid of them but we weren’t allowed to sell them. That’s, that’s all we heard. They were wheeling them down to salvage and there was about seventy or eighty Libs there when I got posted home but on other places there was more Libs.
MJ: So I mean -
PM: And they just started destroying them. Took anything that, everything that was any use off the Libs and then, I can’t remember which station it was but there was one station in India was, had started to destroy the Libs. I, I don’t know what, well anybody that was in the RAF on aircraft would say it’s easier to build one then take one to bits. They um they took all instruments that were of any use out.
MJ: Right.
PM: Dinghies, first aid, everything like that. Armoury. All that out and then they took them onto the scrap, down to the scrapyard and drained all the oil out, out the engines and started the engines up and ran them flat out until they went bang.
MJ: So that they couldn’t be used again.
PM: No use whatsoever.
MJ: You know if -
PM: And then they recommended that what you did was have a, have a wagon or tractor fastened to the front of them and drive the tail unit up against a wall or something like that to break them up. Anything that’s riveted you see you can’t get it to bits by, by just undoing it.
MJ: It was built to last so -
PM: But that’s, that’s how it was but there was, there was about seventy at Cawnpore [Kanpur] when I came home that, that hadn’t been touched. Well, I say hadn’t been touched they’d been stripped but hadn’t been damaged.
MJ: I don’t think that was just yourself. I’ve heard things go, you know, because it’s hard to trans. Do you think it was hard to transport the stuff back? I -
MM: Distance.
MJ: You think -
PM: But the –
MJ: I would have thought it would be the pure economics of getting something, it was more expensive to -
PM: If the Yanks had taken them back they could have flown them back.
MJ: Do you think so?
PM: Yeah. I’m sure. They flew them there they could have flown them back.
MJ: Did, did any of the, anything else get left behind? Was it just the planes? Just, everyone leaves everything behind or did you bring most of it back?
PM: Well I don’t know what happened to them at Cawnpore [Kanpur] because they were still there when I left but there was a reunion at Cawnpore [Kanpur]. I was going on it but I got a new [motor?] and I couldn’t go and er the chaps said that the Indian air force wouldn’t let them anywhere near the salvage.
MJ: They wouldn’t let them anywhere near salvage. Well I’m surprised it’s still there.
PM: Yeah. They wouldn’t let them anywhere near salvage.
MM: But you used to go swimming didn’t you? You had a pool.
PM: Oh we’d go swimming. There was a swimming pool on the camp.
MM: A swimming pool and that. You enjoyed that.
MJ:: More than I can do.
MM: I can’t swim.
MJ: Yeah.
MM: So I mean there was some good times wasn’t there?
PM: Oh yes we had some good times.
MM: Good times. Friends. Lots of laughs.
PM: Off the camp mainly, the good times.
MM: Used to go down to one of the places nearby didn’t you? Villages, towns whatever you called it.
PM: Oh we used to go in, in to Cawnpore [Kanpur] itself.
MM: Yeah.
PM: The city
MJ: Well you say it’s a city. Was it sort of like -
MM: How big?
MJ: Was it a big place or –
PM: Oh it was a big place -
MJ: ‘Cause I mean -
PM: The city was. Yeah. The actual RAF camp was called, oh God - Chakeri.
MJ: Oh right. I thought -
PM: It was about four mile out of Cawnpore [Kanpur] but Cawnpore [Kanpur] was a city and we used to call the camp Cawnpore [Kanpur]. It was always Cawnpore [Kanpur].
MJ: Um maybe -
PM: Where were you stationed? Cawnpore [Kanpur].
MM: But you used to have meals didn’t you, in the city, when you went out?
PM: You what?
MM: You used to go for meals didn’t you? In the city went out -
PM: Oh could do. Yeah. Go in to the city. But we were only allowed in one part of the city. They um it was out of bounds to us.
MJ: It’s er so -
PM: It was, it was our military that put it out of bounds to us. They wouldn’t, wouldn’t let us in the -
So it wasn’t inflicted. It wasn’t, you weren’t put out of bounds by the city itself. It was the hierarchy of the military itself.
PM: Yeah. Yeah.
MJ: Saying you couldn’t go to certain parts.
PM: That’s it. Yeah.
MJ: Ah and did you, could you go out of uniform or did you have to be in uniform?
PM: We was, we were out of uniform most of the time. I mean when we used to go to work in a morning, 7 o’clock in the morning, you’d have a, a pair of shorts on, socks and shoes, bush hat and sunglasses and we used to go to work like that and at 1 o’clock when we, when we finished work we used to walk, we didn’t march back or anything. We used to walk back in groups, probably call at the swimming pool on the way back, used to go back and have lunch and then just loaf about.
MJ: Well I imagine it’s, it’s too hot to do anything else at that time. I mean -
PM: It was a funny old time.
MJ: Yeah I can agree with you there. You –
[Tape paused]
MM: Yeah.
PM: About the same height as I am now.
MM: Six foot.
PM: Weighed seven and a half stone.
MM: Rather slim.
PM: I got a demob suit and I kept my best blue. And I came home. The demob suit was slightly too big for me. ‘You’ll grow out of it’, that was that you see, which I did. Within, within a month my blue didn’t fit me. I didn’t care ‘cause I chucked it away and my demob suit was dead tight. I had to collect all the, all the family clothing coupons together and go and get measured for a suit, ‘Make it plenty big enough’ and I stopped growing then [laughs]. So I got one suit big and the other, other two too small.
MJ: So most people stopped growing and you took that many years to grow-
MM: His mother’s cooking that was. Put the weight on you. [laughs] Didn’t it?
PM: Yeah.
MM: Your mum’s cooking -
PM: Yeah.
MM: Yeah. Built you up again.
PM: My mother was in the first war.
MM: First World War.
PM: In the RAF. In Germany.
MJ: [That’s what?]
PM: Yeah. In the Royal Flying Corp.
MM: As it was then. Yeah.
MJ: So you inherited the job did you?
MM: Must have done.
PM: Yeah.
PM: When, when you were on about servicing, servicing aircraft we had to be there, we were in the hangars for 7 o’clock in the morning but if there were any aircraft either stuck outside or in the hangar that were going out you checked the tyre pressures before the sun got on them because you never know what the tire pressure would be after about an hour in the sun out there.
MM: And of course they couldn’t fly them till they’d got your little signature could they?
PM: Hmmn?
MM: You couldn’t fly them till they got your little signature.
PM: Oh no couldn’t. Well I was one of a team. I was the air frame rigger um on a Liberator four engines so there’d be four engine fitters, instruments, wires um guns and turrets all had to be checked and signed for before the pilot could have it.
MJ: How long did that take?
PM: Hmmn?
MJ: How long did that take?
PM: Well I mean if the aircraft was, was, was alright, if it had come out of the hangar after, after a major service it would be taken out on a test flight. One of each trade would go up with him if it was a bomber. Go up with him and you’d fly around and everything was alright. Come back. You’d check up again. Then before it flew again tomorrow it had to be serviced because between flights inspections on RAF aircraft if it, if an aircraft came, came up from London and landed on your airport there would be a between flights inspection before it could go again.
MJ: Oh I didn’t know that.
PM: Yeah.
MJ: How often did that happen?
PM: Hmmn?
MJ: Did that happen regularly?
PM: That was it. Between flights inspection. And being, being a rigger, that’s what I was, they were the last to sign the 700. The 700 was the aircraft manual and every, everybody that was concerned with anything on the aircraft had to sign and the rigger was the last one to sign because he was responsible for um the petrol cap being loose. Nothing, nothing to do with him normally. The um the blokes driving the petrol bowsers used to tighten them up but it was, it was his aircraft and he had to do something about it. So he used to tighten, tighten it up and any, any little panel that was loose he’d secure the panels and that before he signs and until he signed they couldn’t go anywhere.
MJ: Did you have a team of riggers or was it just you per plane?
PM: What?
MJ: Was it just you on one plane or did you have a few?
PM: Oh yes. Yeah. Yeah.
MJ: So -
PM: Didn’t, didn’t do a half a dozen planes. Just, just the one plane.
MJ: Yeah but did you work as a rigger on your own or did you have someone helping you?
PM: Was, was
MM: Was there more than one rigger on each plane?
PM: No. Only one rigger.
MM: Ahum.
PM: Yeah.
MJ: So that’s a lot of rivets.
MM: Ahum check them [laughs].
PM: Yeah well the aircraft, the framework of the aircraft and everything in general was alright. It was day to day um events um tyres and things like that. Brakes slipping. All those sort of things.
MJ: Do you think you had more trouble because it was hotter there than most would have?
PM: Of course being a rigger brakes were my job as well. [laughs]
MM: You said when you went to Halton it was a case of half of them for engines half of them for airframes wasn’t it?
PM: Yeah.
MM: So it just depends which side of the room you were on [laughs] you were telling me.
PM: [laughs] Yeah.
MM: You had some fun down there at Halton didn’t you?
PM: You what?
MM: Had some fun at Halton.
PM: Halton. Yeah. It was um water shortage. Halton camp is on a hill. The hill, the hill is that far and high that there’s two parade grounds on the hill.
MJ: Two?
PM: Two parade grounds on the hill. You go through the gates, you go up and, oh from here to the bridge there’s the bottom of the parade ground and it goes back into the hills and you carry, you carry on up the hill there and about, about another twenty, thirty foot up there’s another parade ground. It was a hell of a camp Halton was. It was a, um what’s it -
MM: Training?
PM: Oh God.
MM: Officer’s training do you say?
PM: No.
MM: No.
PM: Weren’t officers. They -
MM: Cadets.
PM: When you join, you join the RAF you -
MM: Cadets?
PM: You was a member. I was a member of the air force but I was only a sort of a temporary member but I, I, I didn’t sign on for ten years or owt like that but all the regulars they, they were right under the thumb. By hell they were.
MJ: So you think it was different for you. Was it ‘cause you -
PM: Yeah.
MJ: Because you were sort of part time if you like.
PM: Yeah.
MJ: For a better word.
PM: I liked Halton. It was a nice camp.
MM: Taught you how to shoot there didn’t there?
PM: Hmmn?
MM: Taught you how to shoot there didn’t they?
PM: Yeah.
MJ: This is um -
MM: One poor chap. Everybody dashed because -
PM: We had two, we had two Jewish lads -
MJ: Yeah.
PM: By God they were dim [laughs] and er they, they, they were on a, on a rigger’s course but everything, everything went wrong with them. On one day we had um rifle training so went up on the, up on the bus up the hill and there was um the targets. Perhaps six or seven targets.
MJ: Right.
PM: And a wall, a wall just below them and behind, behind the wall there was a trench so the blokes, blokes up there looking after, looking after the targets they were, they were safe and you had ten rounds and you just, you had your ten rounds and you got in front of one of, one of the targets and that and you’d been told how to fire them and everything. The corporal would shout, ‘Fire.’ And then down there on the range there used to be a flag on a pole come out and he used to stick on to the target where, where the bullet had gone through, if it had gone through. Well these two Jewish lads they couldn’t even hit the target never mind [laughs] and there was everybody else had to get off and let them pick their own target and everything. Our corporal was on the phone to them down there and, ‘Right. Fire. Take your time.’ Bang. Flag went like that. Bang. Next time it went [beuuuu]. Phone rang. Corporal said, ‘What’s the matter?’ He said, ‘He hit my mate.’ He’d, he’d hit his tin hat. Hit his tin hat. This bullet and had gone off his tin hat.
MJ: So he was safe though?
PM: Yeah.
MM: Most of them.
PM: And then we had hand grenades. There was, there was this wall. All sandbanks and that and over the other side of the wall about there, there was a, there was a hole and behind this wall there was another wall and everybody used to get behind that wall and the corporal used to bring one bloke around and show him, show him everything, make sure he, he was holding the grenade right, then he used to toss it over to go in the hole. Everybody else was doing alright and this one he dropped the grenade the other side just on the top and it rolled down so the corporal grabbed hold of this bloke, pushed him down and more or less sat on him. Bang. ‘That was close wasn’t it?’ the corporal said. And, and, we, we went up into the, up the hills. Sten guns. They were deadly you know. If you dropped a sten gun it’d bounce about all over the place till it emptied and [laughs] there was two corporals that had never, never met these two. ‘Watch them. We know what we’re doing.’ Corporals, ‘Alright.’ Showed them how to go on and everything. Give these two a sten gun each, got them to load them, ‘Don’t do anything. We’ll have you one at a time so you come with me.’ So he fired. Nowhere near the target or anything like that but he got shot of the, the ammo. The second one went, spun around, he says to the corporal, ‘It won’t fire’ pointing it at the corporal. [laughs] God. He said, ‘Stand still. Let go of the trigger. Put it down.’ If there hadn’t been anybody else around he would have clouted him around the side of the earhole with the sten. Anyway, they got rid of them. I don’t know where they went to but they were no good as, no good on engines or airframes or anything like that. They were completely useless, the pair of them.
MM: They were only young though you see weren’t they? Eighteen and a half.
PM: Yeah they’d only be just over eighteen.
MM: That’s what I mean. Today –
PM: Yeah.
MM: They’re at school aren’t they?
MJ: Yeah. So it’s surprising you’re here.
MM: Yeah.
PM: Yeah.
MM: Then he come back to Digby, Lincolnshire.
PM: Eh?
MM: You enjoyed Digby in Lincolnshire didn’t you?
PM: Yeah.
MM: No calamities there?
PM: No. Come back to Digby.
MM: You used to go in to Lincoln didn’t you?
PM: Yeah. Used to go in to Lincoln.
MM: On time off.
PM: It was a Canadian station. Everything underground.
MJ: Underground?
PM: Eh?
MM: Underground.
MJ: Everything underground?
PM: Everything was built underground. It was a radio and radar station. We didn’t, we didn’t know that when we were stationed there but, but they used to work underground.
MJ: That’s -
PM: At Digby. It was good station. It was a Canadian station.
MJ: Was that better than the RAF ones?
PM: Well, they were better supplied than what we were.
MM: Food was good [laughs] Yeah.
PM: Yeah a lot better supplied.
[Tape paused]
PM: We were all, all air frame fitters and one of the station aircraft, we got two Dakotas belonging to the station. One had gone to Lahore.
MJ: Right.
PM: From our place and um next morning they were refuelling it and the chap drove the petrol bowser with the dipstick sticking out and tore the underside of the wing. Well that was it you see. He didn’t just tear the surface of the wing he, he buckled the main spar. So we, we had several Dakotas there that would probably never fly again and using them as spares and got hold of, got hold of my mate we did and get a, get a mainplane from, from salvage. Give him, give him all the gen on this one aircraft, ‘Go and, go and check if it’s alright.’ So he come back he said, ‘Yeah it’s alright.’ He said ‘Right. The three of you,’ he says, ‘You Miller’ and what his name, ‘Go and fetch it off.’ And we took, we took the crane down with us and we got the, got the trestles and everything and the jacks underneath it’s wing and we disconnected the wing and took it away completely from the engines you see. You’ve got the two engines there and a centre section between them and the fuselage but beyond the engines that’s the outer so we got that and we got a Queen Mary. You know the Queen Mary’s, we used? The um -
MJ: Ahum?
PM: The long, the long low loaders. Very wide, ten foot wide, that the RAF used to drive around you’ve seen them there their low loaders haven’t you? They’re called the Queen Mary’s. They’re ten, ten foot wide and during the war if, if you had to take anything with, with a Queen Mary through, through a town you had a police escort and they’d take you the best way through the town because of, because of the width of the vehicle. And we loaded this, loaded this mainplane and all the gear we wanted and everything and we cleared off to Lahore. The three of us. It took us three days to get there. Close on four hundred mile.
MJ: What were the -
PM: Well the roads in India were just like the roads down to the villages here and we got there and this Warrant Officer [Pryor?] said, ‘Goodness I’m pleased to see you lot.’ He said, ‘Get on with it.’ So we took, took this mainplane off and they carted it off to salvage there and um they got all the gear there, got all the gear and everything but they wouldn’t let them touch it.
MJ: Why was that?
PM: So we, we had to do it you see. The plane belonged to us so we, we, we got the mainplane off and everything, put the other one up got it all, all bolted in. Everything. Control cables, electrics, everything and got hold of Taf Bevan, ‘Right. Fly it.’
MJ: How long did that take you?
PM: Hmmn?
MJ: How long did that take you?
PM: Well three days overall. ‘Fly it.’ He says, ‘Alright. Sign.’ So we signed for it and everything. The warrant officer, the err engineering officer at whatsit, he said, ‘You’ve done a very good job you blokes have.’ The CO was there as well. At Lahore. He was, he was there as well. He said, ‘It looks very, very nice,’ he says. He said, ‘I’ll get on to,’ Oh I don’t know the name of our CO. He said, ‘I’ll get on to him and tell him what a good job you’ve done.’ And we went up with Taf and he, he said, ‘Nothing wrong with this. It’s alright.’ Taf Bevan, he was a bloody Welshman. We never did find out his name. His first name. Never. And he was a warrant officer. He wouldn’t, he wouldn’t take a commission. He just wanted to stay non-commissioned.
MJ: Did he say why?
PM: Warrant officer.
MJ: Yeah. Did he say why he didn’t want to take a commission?
PM: He said, ‘I don’t want to be with that crowd stuck in the officer’s mess and that. Better off in the sergeant’s mess.’ He said, ‘I’m away next morning.’ We said, ‘You’re bloody well not without us mate’ and we transferred the um the Queen Mary to Lahore and climbed in the Dak with him and flew home. Thirty minutes. [laughs]
[Tape paused]
PM: Now can’t you? Between you?
MJ: I think so. You should be able to.
PM: You just, you know, well why not do that?
MJ: Did you -
PM: What about that? [Oh bought]
MJ: Yeah. People don’t think that so that’s why your lifestyle is different to todays because people don’t realise what you did. I mean so -
MM: Things have changed so much haven’t they? So much.
PM: I know we were on a test flight one day with Taf and um Taf used to let us take control for a while. He used to sit there but he knew what was happening and everything and one of the blokes he said, ‘Do you want it Taf?’ Taf says, ‘No.’ He says, ‘Just carry on.’ He got it lined up. It was about three mile out from the end of the runway. ‘Go on. You’re alright.’ He said, ‘Shall I land it?’ ‘No you bloody well won’t land it’ [laughs] He said, ‘I’d be the laughing stock of the bloody sergeant’s mess. Come out.’
MJ: Yeah.
PM: We used to, on a Dakota there’s a cockpit and there’s a cabin and it’s the full length of the aircraft near enough. You go in, you go in the double doors.
MJ: Right.
PM: And you go up to the, to another door and that that’s the control. There’s navigator, radio operator, two pilots and we used to, about three, four of us used to get up near the door and Taf would be sat there you know, nodding away there to himself and that. ‘Right. Now.’ And we’d run to the other end to the tail end [laughs]. ‘Come up here you lot.’
MM: He knew what you was doing?
PM: We, we’d run to the tail end.
MM: Yeah and made it, realised.
PM: [Climb?]
MM: Yeah.
MM: Realised what you were. You had a laugh at East Kirkby didn’t you?
PM: Yeah.
MM: They were doing a Dakota up at East Kirkby.
PM: Yeah. They were.
MM: You went out to, to have look and you said to the lads there, ‘Can I have a look inside it.’ I think you managed to get in it didn’t you?
PM: Yeah.
MM: And anyway you said to them.
PM: ‘Do you know anything about them?’ I said, ‘Yeah a little bit. I used to be on them in the air force way back.’ ‘Bloody hell. When?’ I said, ‘Oh I came out in ‘47.’ ‘God, I weren’t even bloody well born then.’
MM: Made you feel very, very old didn’t it duck [laughs] yeah.
PM: They were a lovely aircraft to work on. Dakota is. No trouble whatsoever.
MJ: Didn’t bite back.
PM: Hmmn?
MJ: Didn’t bite back.
MM: No. [laughs]
PM: They were no trouble at all. Used to fly around with the doors off.
MJ: Why?
PM: You see there’s, there was a passenger door and a cargo door on them.
MJ: Yeah.
PM: Take one or the other or both doors off. It didn’t half whistle and that inside the aircraft.
MM: Was there any reason to take the doors off though?
PM: No. No.
MM: No.
PM: You either take it off before you fly or when you land. You don’t take it off while you’re flying.
MM: No, presume not.
MJ: Was there any reason why you took them off when you flew? Or was it just because they were in the way?
PM: The doors come inwards. Not outwards.
MJ: So -
MM: What reasons did you take them off for?
PM: Eh?
MM: What reason did you take them off for?
PM: Well.
MM: Can you remember?
PM: No particular reason.
MM: Oh. Good job it wasn’t raining.
PM: During the war, on the Dakotas, along the top of the fuselage there was little windows about that size, along. So that when they were carrying troops they could open one of those windows and fire at any aircraft that was attacking them.
MM: Ahum.
PM: If they were carrying troops.
MJ: Really?
PM: Yeah. Yeah, I’m not kidding.
MM: Never heard of it.
MJ: I wouldn’t have thought of that one.
PM: I’m not kidding. Liberators, you know, you used to get in and out through the bomb, bomb bay. Get in and out through the bomb bay. The bomb doors, the bottom of the Lib is only about that far off the ground and the bomb doors go up like that and there’s a cat walk right through. The cat walk goes to, to the rear where there’s a mid-upper gunner and two, two [waist] gunners. One each side. And a rear gunner.
MJ: So you always had -
PM: And if, if you go forward up a couple of steps you get on to the flight deck where the crew, the air crew go. You, if they’re flying around and they opened the bomb doors there isn’t a bloody soul would dare go across that cat walk. From the back to the front or the front to the back. There’s not a soul would dare go. It’s, it’s perfectly safe, there’s no, no danger whatsoever and there’s plenty to hold on to. Hold on to all the bomb racks.
MJ: But no one would do it.
PM: Nobody would go in. No one would do it.
[Tape paused]
MJ: So what was this about Fred then?
PM: He, he used to go out first thing in a morning, he’d go to bed at night about nine, but first thing in the morning, probably 5 o’clock he’d cross to the cookhouse to get his porridge before they put sugar in it. Yeah. He wanted salt in his you see. Yeah. Well he was always messing about with, with animals and that and he went out one morning for a walk and there was a narrow path, trees at each side and that. He was approaching this corner when around the corner there come this panther. He says, ‘It stopped and I stopped, of course.’ He said, and its tail was going like that. He said, ‘And we stood there for about three quarters of an hour. Seemed like it.’ He said, ‘And I thought if that bloody thing comes at me there’s a tree just behind me. I can leap behind hopefully.’ He said, ‘I daren’t look around.’ He said, ‘I was weighing all this up’ he said and all of a sudden the panther put the foot down on the ground, spun around and shot off back the way it came,’ he said, ‘ And I shot off the way I came.’ He said, ‘We were about twenty five miles apart in ten minutes.’ He, he was, he was always doing something like that. Always messing about with, with animals. There was an empty cookhouse and he went and there was a wild cat in the bloody cookhouse. ‘I’ll have that.’ He went in there. This wildcat was flying around the walls. He said it was going that fast it was on the walls. He said, ‘I didn’t know what to do with it,’ he said, but the windows, the windows were all shut except one. He said it took a flying leap at that and crashed straight through the glass and everything and away it went. He said it went out, missed, missed the veranda and everything and landed out in the middle of the road. [laughs] He said, ‘I wasn’t frightened of it.’ [laughs]
MM: And who slept on a snake? One of you lads found a snake under his mattress.
PM: Yeah. Yeah. Rum lad that.
MM: Who was that? Who found a snake under his mattress?
PM: Oh er who was it? One of the other lads. Fred said, ‘I’ll get that out for you.’ He outed it. ‘Cause you see if you found a snake out there you had to find the other bugger. Nearly always travelled in pairs.
MJ: Do they?
PM: Ahum we had a, we had a snake in our billet one night. We got it and finished it off and we were looking around for its mate. Couldn’t find its mate anywhere so that was it. Wasn’t going under the mossie nets. Next morning this bloke got up and er there was this snake laid, laid in there. It had been crushed. He’d crushed it. You see the beds out there were wood. They were just a wooden frame and then there was like string across and then what they called a dhurry. It was like, just like an [asbestos] sheet the size of your bed. When you went anywhere you know on guard at night or something like that you took whatever you wanted in your dhurry. Got it all wrapped up in the dhurry. Then you had your mossie net and your mossie net was you had four, four bamboo canes that used to go inside the legs across the back of the bed like that and your mossie net went on the top and your mossie net was shaped, was shaped just like, just like a box. The box was down, the box was that way up and the things, the sides of the net came down you see and these, these four bamboo canes they went up behind, behind the leg and up the inside of the nets so it was all sprung out. That was how your mossie nets went. There were times when we’ve taken the mossie nets down and inverted them and then put the bed inside, inside it.
MM: But this snake that you was talking about.
PM: It was an open top.
MM: This snake you was talking about was underneath this here mattress thing wasn’t it?
PM: Underneath the dhurry.
MM: Yeah.
PM: Yeah.
MM: I didn’t realise he’d been sleeping on it all night.
PM: No. No.
MM: No. Oh horrible things.
PM: Well it was dead anyway. Fred says, ‘Poor little bugger. You’ve been laid on it all night.’
MJ: I’d like to thank Mr Miller on behalf of the International Bomber Command project on the 1st of January no oh June 2015 for his interview and, and for myself I’d like to thank him. My name’s Michael Jeffery and this is the end of the interview.
MM: My name is Mavis Miller, recording this for the International Bomber Command Centre on the 1st of June 2015. We live at Horncastle Road, Wragby, Lincolnshire. Yeah. I was at Minting, school at Minting, during the war. We lived about four miles from Bardney aerodrome so we saw a lot of the RAF lads and the WAAFs who used to come to the Sebastopol at Minting. My father also worked at the Bardney aerodrome so we were involved quite a bit. He always used to come home very distressed when, at times, the bombers would come back with the air force lad’s uniforms having to be burned because they were blood stained. Another small happening during the war was I was with my friends down Hungerham Lane about a half a mile from my home when we saw two of our fighters firing at this German fighter and it was brought down at Baumber, again only about three or four fields away from where we were. Unfortunately, no one got out the plane. We were told that it went up in flames. The farm workers couldn’t get anywhere near it but I was pleased to get home that night safe and sound. I think that’s about the end of my experiences.
MJ: On behalf of the International Bomber Command Historical Unit I’d like to thank Mrs Miller for her stories of when she was a child and on the June the 1st 2015 I’d like to end the interview.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Peter Miller
Creator
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Mick Jeffery
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-06-01
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AMillerP150601
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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eng
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
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01:02:55 audio recording
Description
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Peter was called up in November 1943 and after basic training was sent to RAF Halton to be trained as a flight mechanic. Whilst there he had several dangerous incidents during small arms training.
Initially posted to 527 Squadron, which was Canadian, at RAF Digby and then to 695 squadron at RAF Bircham Newton working on drogue towing aircraft.
Posted overseas, he arrived at RAF Chakeri near Kampur where he worked on servicing B-24 and C-47 aircraft for South East Asia Command. He recalls that as an airframe mechanic he had to sign the Form 700 certifying that all the other trades had carried out their servicing correctly.
The local town was largely off-limits and only certain parts were allowed to be visited. The weather was very hot and in the summer hill parties were sent to the hills to escape the heat. Peter spent his 21st birthday at Darjeeling. When hostilities ceased the spent its time dismantling and scrapping B-24s aircraft. Whilst India was partitioned, Peter's demobilisation was postponed in case of tensions between India and Pakistan.
After two and a half years he was sent home via Liverpool, where he saw his first jet, and was demobilised in July 1947.
Temporal Coverage
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1943
1944
1945
1946
1947
1947-07
1943-11
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Buckinghamshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Norfolk
India
India--Kānpur
India--Darjeeling
Pakistan
Contributor
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Terry Holmes
B-24
C-47
fitter airframe
flight mechanic
fuelling
ground crew
petrol bowser
RAF Bircham Newton
RAF Chakeri
RAF Digby
RAF Halton
service vehicle
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/529/8763/PReddishDE1709.1.jpg
4403b07c2d04be641a9404794f3f2812
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/529/8763/AReddishDE170131.1.mp3
8c96b769611544c7a968374e5bc21d65
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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Reddish, Doris
Dorris Edith Reddish
D E Reddish
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Reddish, DE
Description
An account of the resource
14 items. An oral history interview with Doris Reddish (1925 - 2017) a memoir, correspondence and photographs. She served in the Royal Observer Corps.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Doris Reddish and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-01-31
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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TJ: Right this is Tina James and I’m interviewing Doris Edith Reddish. We’re at Doris’s home in —
DR: My name was Wright though before.
TJ: [redacted] Heckington. The date is the 31st of January 2017. So Doris your name is Reddish now?
DR: Yes.
TJ: What was it?
DR: Wright, Wright.
TJ: W, R, I, G, H, T?
DR: Yes, yes.
TJ: And that was your name from birth. So you were born in 1925 I see. So what about your parents did, did your father fight in the First World War?
DR: Yes, yes he was in the First World War
TJ: Did he survive?
DR: Yeah. He was in the trenches
TJ: Well he must’ve done —
DR: Yes.
TJ: If you were born in 1925 —
DR: Yes, yes. He got wounded about five times and always in October. Yes.
TJ: Really?
DR: Yes. He got bullet holes, scars all over him and then he finished up being crippled by arthritis from standing in the water all the time.
TJ: Yeah.
DR: And they said they had a pint of tea in the morning and it had to shave them and wash them and drink. And that’s how it was and he said that he’d be talking to one of his mates, those stood in the trenches, and his silence and looked down and he’d been shot dead. Killed. Yes by the side of him.
TJ: Did he talk a lot about his experiences?
DR: Not really. No, no if we just asked him, you know, a bit about it he would then but, no.
TJ: What year did he die?
DR: Um.
TJ: Roughly.
DR: It was eighty — he was eighty when he died, um.
TJ: So he was eighty. So he achieved quite a reasonable age —
DR: He was eighty when he died yes.
TJ: So maybe in the sixties was it?
DR: Um. No it was — oh ‘cause I’m — er.
TJ: So anyway never mind.
DR: I can’t — yes ‘cause he was — fortunately their family they were farmers.
TJ: Um.
DR: He had — there was eight boys in the family. And they left the eldest son each time on, for the farm and then they took three boys, the next three boys and all of them came though, yes. One of them was a stretcher bearer out in the trenches.
TJ: So I bet your dad couldn’t believe it when it was — all started to happen again.
DR: Um. Such a waste wasn’t it?
TJ: Wasn’t it? Yeah.
DR: Dreadful.
TJ: Um. So, when war broke out in 1939 what were you doing at that time?
DR: I was at school. Yes. I was at school.
TJ: In where?
DR: Sleaford High School.
TJ: So you’d have been what — about [pause] fourteen, yeah? So you were fourteen? Your school stayed open did it?
DR: Oh yes.
TJ: Being in Sleaford.
DR: Oh yes. Used to go on the bus, ten miles on the bus every day to school. Yes.
TJ: So how old were you when you left school?
DR: Pardon?
TJ: How old were you when you left school?
DR: Sixteen.
TJ: And then what did you do?
DR: I went to commercial college and then I worked at Market Rasen for Moore, Cooper and Burkett’s for a short time and then —
TJ: In the office?
DR: Yeah.
TJ: And so how did it come about that you joined the—
DR: You had to, didn’t you, it was compulsory.
TJ: Had to do something?
DR: Yes, had to do something like that yes.
TJ: Um. Did you get a choice —
DR: Yes.
TJ: Of what you did?
DR: Yes and we just, I just chose that.
TJ: What else could you have done? Do you know? Can you remember?
DR: You could’ve just gone into the army or something like that. For boys they could go down the mines. They were called Bevin boys or something like that.
TJ: They were.
DR: Um. Yes.
TJ: So, you chose, chose the observer corps, what year would that have been? About forty, forty-one?
DR: I think it was nineteen — was it forty [pause] six?
TJ: Well the war finished — were you doing it during the war?
DR: Oh well yes. That’s right isn’t it? Oh yes, er, um.
TJ: Can you remember how old you were when you started with the observer corps?
DR: Yes I was just seventeen. Nearly, nearly eighteen, yes. Because my friend and I were both —
TJ: So about forty-two then?
DR: Yes.
TJ: So it was, by then it was the Royal Observer Corps?
DR: Yes, yes. That’s right. Yes.
TJ: It was 1941 —
DR: Well it used to be, originally, apparently it was RAF OC, Royal Air Force Observer Corps and then it went to Royal Observer Corps.
TJ: Yes, 1941 I understand that was. So tell me about your training. Where was that done?
DR: That was done at St Peters Arches in Lincoln. Do you know where that is?
TJ: Yes, I think so.
DR: It’s on the corner, not far from the Stonebow.
TJ: Yeah.
DR: It used to be the fifty shilling tailors or something I think underneath it. And there used to be a guard at the bottom. We used to go up there in the lift and then after a while we left there and went to Beaumont Fee.
TJ: I know that.
DR: At Todson House. That’s where I did my commercial college training. And then latterly we went to Fiskerton and at Fiskerton it was underground.
TJ: What did your training comprise of?
DR: Aircraft recognition but we were not out on the outpost we were in the operations room. We were plotting the aircraft on a table.
TJ: Yeah.
DR: And also we had what they call an RDF board which stood up, a big metal thing with a map on.
TJ: So do you know what RDF stands for?
DR: Yes, you listen for the planes coming in over the sea and plotted them as they come over, over the coast. Yes. Onto that.
TJ: Do you know what RDF stands for?
DR: Radio? No I don’t.
TJ: No.
DR: No I don’t think we ever bothered. But you see when the aircraft were coming back home the Germans used to mix in with them.
TJ: Really?
DR: Yes, they used to come back with them. So — but from the sounds of the aircraft and things you can tell, you could tell the difference. You knew what each sound was. But with the recognition there was three different classes in that, basic, intermediate and masters. But you had to just recognise planes by just coming on at you, like that. You could only just [unclear]
TJ: Did you get a first class? Did you get a masters?
DR: No, no, no we didn’t, we just did the basic and intermediate. I think the masters was for the people more out on the posts. The outposts. Yes.
TJ: So you, you never went on an outpost?
DR: No, no, no.
TJ: Out onto the fields?
DR: No.
TJ: No.
DR: No we felt there was a bit — [laughs]
TJ: So. How did they get the reports in? Did they telephone them in?
DR: Yes. Yeah. Um, it’s funny because they would be like telling you to have your headphones on they’d be telling you these things about them and the planes were coming closer and closer and they’d be fighting. You know, there’d be one of our Spitfires and things like that and you’d be listening to it like that and all of a sudden, pop [emphasise] off. They’d shot them down. It’s how to see and things. It was really — it was fun anyway and we used to go on different shifts, off at three in the morning and the next day back on at three in the morning. It was a bit — but, em, there was some marvellous times, it was good and because of the ops room and things where we worked the aircrew boys could come in as well to, er —
TJ: Right in the middle of town?
DR: Yes, yes, yeah, but no when it was full on it was really full on.
TJ: How many people would’ve been in that room?
DR: It’s in the book. There’s photographs of them. I should think, how many would be at the table, probably twelve probably and then there used to be along with two people on the RDF board and then up above there was a tellers [?] coming in from Digby and different places. And officers sat at the top. I should think there’d be about twenty. Yes, at a time. Yes.
TJ: Various ages?
DR: Yes, oh yes, yeah, but like I say we were the, we were the two youngest of them.
TJ: You and your friend?
DR: Yes.
TJ: And what’s her name.
DR: Betty Bally.
TJ: And you said she’s still with us?
DR: No she’s dead.
TJ: Oh right. Who’s the other lady you were talking about earlier?
DR: No, no. Evelyn lives at Woodhall but another friend who was with me but her memory is not as good as mine.
TJ: Um.
DR: Yes, yes.
TJ: So did you have quiet nights of —
DR: Oh yes, yes
TJ: Lots?
DR: If they weren’t flying and if there was no ops and things it was very quiet.
TJ: Um. So what did you do whilst you weren’t —
DR: We used to play shove ha’penny [laughs] and all those sort of games like that they had and the food. Beans on toast, cheese on toast, pilchards on toast. It’s what we used to live on.
TJ: And that was provided for you was it?
DR: Oh yes, yes.
TJ: Whilst you were on duty?
DR: Yes. No they, the manager from Freeman Hardy and Willis, Sidney his name was, he was a, he was nice and things. But yes, I can remember him, but, um —
TJ: He, was he in there too was he?
DR: Yes. He was a, he was a very bit higher rank, was Sidney.
TJ: Did he manage to keep on going in the shop, in the shoe shop?
DR: Um, yes.
TJ: At the same time as –
DR: Yes, yes.
TJ: Yeah.
DR: Yes. I think several of them had part time jobs. I don’t know how they managed it though because of — had to sleep when you came off duty which was difficult with changing times all the time. But, um, no —
TJ: So where did, where were you living at that time?
DR: I was living up Cheviot Street.
TJ: Which I believe is near Monks Road?
DR: Yes, yes.
TJ: What were you in digs or —
DR: Yes, yes, yes we were in digs. Evelyn and I were together there but Betty Bally she lived at Saxilby. So she used to go home to Saxilby.
TJ: What on the bus or the train?
DR: No, no, no, her dad used to pick her up. Or often we used to cycle and I used to go home with her to Saxilby. We used to cycle to Saxilby. But then we got friendly with the full crew and they often used to come in a taxi and pick us up because they could stay in the ops room as well you see. And they would taxi and take us home like that.
TJ: That was nice.
DR: Yes, yeah. So —
TJ: So what about social life?
DR: Well what — we used to find a dance in Lincoln. Tuesday nights it was the Montana which is across the road from the Theatre at Lincoln. Wednesday night it was the Drill Hall. Thursday night it was the Astoria which was over the Burton’s clothing shop there. And, um, we used to [pause] dance, you know about three, at least three nights a week we used to go dancing and like we’d go in, if we was going on duty at eleven well we’d go to the dance till eleven. But if we came off duty at eleven we used to go. Yes.
TJ: To the dancing?
DR: Yes. It’s, it was absolutely marvellous it really was.
TJ: From the social point of view?
DR: Yes. And the work was interesting.
TJ: How good were you at aircraft recognition?
DR: Very. Yes. Very.
TJ: Did you always keep up an interest in that? After the war?
DR: Yes. Yes. I’ve always been interested in the planes. Yes. Um, propeller planes, I don’t know anything about jets and —
TJ: No.
DR: And those sorts of things
TJ: It must have been, there must have been some upsetting times though?
DR: Oh yes. Yes. Because you had various friends and you knew which aerodrome they were going from because we could see, and you’d count the planes out, plot them out and then when they came back you’d plotted that there’d be two or three missing and if you had boyfriends in the thing like I used to have to nip down to the Post Office to ring up to find out if Monty, who was my boyfriend then. Thing with — then one night he went to Berlin on the 1st of January 1944 and he didn’t come back from that. Yeah. But also we had a — at home because I lived at a bakers shop at Billinghay and dad thought it was his duty to help look after them and they had a notice up at the camp at Coningsby and Woodhall if anybody would like a meal to come. Which they did, we had lots of them, lots of them come and this particular one, Ken Ingram his name was and he was only young, he was twenty-one and on a Wednesday if I was off duty we used to go to Boston our parents, did for, to the wholesalers. And he used to want to drive to Boston and I used to want to drive to Boston so he would jump in the driver’s seat to go to Boston but I used to pull him out and I think then, I used to get in and he used to pull me out. Well he went on this raid, right tearaway, sort of little thing he wasn’t very big and of course when they got shot down he bailed out. Joined — wouldn’t be taken prisoner he joined up with the resistance and did that for a while and then the Gestapo got him and they killed him. They hung him up on the wires and his body wasn’t allowed to be cut down for two or three days. Yes. It’s — and he was an only — well he had a brother who was killed by the Japanese and then he was like that. And he had no, his mother was dead. Yes. And his father kept a hotel and he came over to visit us. Yes. After the war to tell us all about it. And it is apparently Wendy who comes, well Billy’s friend, lady friend and she got it all up on the thing and apparently they have put a, some sort of a monument for him over — yes.
TJ: In?
DR: Where it happened.
TJ: And where would that have been?
DR: I don’t think —
TJ: France?
DR: I don’t, I don’t know if he joined with the French or the Dutch resistance. Yes. No. There were lots and lots of them but. Yes. Got shot down. That was dreadful.
TJ: Was there much bombing near or in Lincoln?
DR: Oh yes, quite a bit. The worst part about it was like when the planes got home and crashed when they landed and things and that was dreadful.
TJ: I know Waddington Church was bombed.
DR: Yes.
TJ: Was there much bombing in the town itself?
DR: Yes. I know at Tattershall. Was it in Tattershall they bombed didn’t they? I know when war was declared on the Sunday they came over and dropped incendiary bombs at Billinghay.
TJ: Um. I wonder why there?
DR: I don’t know. Well it’s funny because that Lord Haw-Haw man you know who used to come on. And one Sunday lunchtime it was, at Chapel Hill, there was a pumping station and the people at the house were just having their lunch and they got the carving forks stuck in the joint and this plane came over, bombed it, the place, and killed them at the pumping station down there on that Sunday lunchtime. And then Lord Haw-Haw at night said that some, something special they’d bombed but it was just the pumping station. And dad, like I say was a baker, and one particular morning the — you can hear a German ‘cause you know the German planes when they came over, really low over the village and he had got his white apron on and he went outside to look and the thing was just coming over and went ‘tut, tut, tut, tut’. Yes.
TJ: Um. Missed him I take it?
DR: Yep. Yep. Yeah. Really low they used to come over. So we used to have our excitement.
TJ: Yeah.
DR: No and then they had a spell to go to Digby to the RAF at Digby there. And when I was there we were staying at Blankney Hall and one of the WAFs left an iron on the ironing board and I’d gone home on — for the weekend and she burnt the hall down. Blankney Hall was burnt, she burnt the hall. So that’s how I went back to Lincoln.
TJ: Um.
DR: That was sad.
TJ: Did you ever get to go up in an aeroplane?
DR: We went up once but only for just a little few minutes just — yes.
TJ: What sort of plane was it?
DR: In the Lancaster. Yeah.
TJ: And from where from? What airfield?
DR: I believe it was Skellingthorpe I think. I can’t just remember. ‘Cause we went —
TJ: There were so many of them in the area?
DR: Yes, that’s right, yes in the area.
TJ: Was that your first time flying?
DR: Yes. Never done — No. I’ve never been abroad to —
TJ: Never been in an aeroplane since?
DR: No. No, don’t want to. Never. No.
TJ: Did you enjoy that flight?
DR: Well no because it was so rough in the thing. In those Lancasters there’s no comfort or anything and yes.
TJ: So you weren’t keen to do it again?
DR: Yes.
TJ: Did you all go for a ride in the plane or —
DR: I can’t remember to be quite truthful. I can’t — I don’t know why I can’t remember more about it.
TJ: It’s alright. It’s just something I read that the people in the Royal Observer Corps were offered an opportunity if at all possible to go up in aeroplanes.
DR: Yeah. You know to think about it I can’t even think if it even got off the ground or if we just taxied on the thing. It’s funny that I can’t — I wonder why no one wanted to go in an aeroplane since. The thought of being closed in. If you could have the windows open, yes. No I’m not an air traveller. But like I say that my time in the Observer Corps was my happiest time, couldn’t help but enjoy it. It was serious but there was a lot of enjoyment.
TJ: Camaraderie?
DR: Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yeah. I often try to think about — I can remember [pause] getting in the thing but —
TJ: After that?
DR: There was sometimes, I don’t think we went in the air even. I think we just taxied.
TJ: Maybe that’s why you don’t remember it.
DR: Yes, that’s right. Yes.
TJ: Maybe if you’d gone in the air you might have stronger memories.
DR: Yes. I think I would somehow. Yes.
TJ: So you kept abreast of what was going on in the war?
DR: Oh yes. Yes.
TJ: With radio and the newspapers?
DR: Yet [pause] I don’t know why at Fiskerton I don’t really know — I think it must have been at the end more, right at the end while we moved to Fiskerton. Like I said to Evelyn about it, but she can’t, she can just remember us being there.
TJ: What, where you worked from?
DR: Yeah. Yeah. From Fiskerton at the end. Why did we move from Beaumont Fee? I just can’t think. Like I say there’s no one to check with.
TJ: Ask?
DR: That’s the point, yes. I don’t know of anyone round about here who’s left and —
TJ: You did say about what, what aircraft was first on the board in the morning.
DR: Oh yes, yes. The first aircraft on the board was from, it was a Beaufont [pause] Beaufont, Beaufont
TJ: Beaufort?
DR: Beaufort I think and it was from up at Donna Nook, up that direction.
TJ: Which air —
DR: You’ll find it in that book, all in that book. Yes.
TJ: I’ll have a little look at that. This?
DR: Yeah.
TJ: So you always got the same plane first up every day?
DR: Yes. The same one, well the weather plane it was. It used to fly out to sea and — yeah. For the weather.
TJ: For a reccy and come back?
DR: Yes. Yeah.
TJ: Beaumont, check.
DR: I can’t even remember the proper name for the thing. Beaumont fighter, yes. That um, the trouble is with, especially with the young Spitfire pilots I mean they were only young boys when they joined and they had about twelve hours tuition, I think it was, and they went and they knew that they would only be there for one or two flights and then they would be killed, it’s dreadful, isn’t it? Yeah. And to start with, in the air crew they were all the cream of the young lads that went, you know the rich peoples sons they seemed to be and — I mean in the village at Billinghay there was quite a few of them stationed in the village. You know they were probably married and got their families and that and then they wouldn’t be there many weeks and then they’d be gone because their husbands had been killed [long pause]
TJ: Did you ever visit one of the outposts where they used to —
DR: I went to Billinghay to — yes, to —
TJ: Where you used to do the spotting and the bringing in from?
DR: To look in there. Yes. But that was, that was not my cup of tea at all. No.
TJ: Did you have to climb down a ladder to get into it?
DR: Yes, yes, yeah. Up and down, yeah. Climb over a bit, yes to get in.
TJ: And what was in there?
DR: Nothing, only a table, chairs and a kettle. Yes. You see they did all that with the binoculars and things you see and — but I mean they were good I mean they knew every, the sound of every aircraft that was, that was coming. I mean well everybody got to know about the doodlebugs and while they kept going and things I mean they used to come over the village and while they were going it was OK. It was when, ‘cause the engine cut out and you knew you know to look out, yes. I mean really and truthfully I mean it should’ve been a frightening time but somehow you weren’t frightened.
TJ: That’s interesting.
DR: Yeah. I can remember you know like Sylv the air raid warden coming round blowing my dad was one, blowing the whistle for people to go and then we used to just run along the road up to the pub and into their cellar. That’s it, it was, it was an experience and really wasn’t it and — no. They were good times, enjoyable times really and sad times.
TJ: So coming towards the end of the war, presumably you knew that the end was in sight, did you or didn’t you?
DR: No. No, I don’t think we did. No. No.
TJ: What do you remember about the news breaking of the invasion? Of the Normandy landings? Did you, can you remember hearing about it?
DR: About the what?
TJ: The Normandy landings? The D-day?
DR: No. Um.
TJ: Did you read it in the paper or hear about it on the radio?
DR: I can remember that all the — we had on the Observer Corps there was part of it called the sea raids, sea rangers or something and they all went out to spotting for the, to do the spotting, yes they did.
TJ: Yeah.
DR: Yeah. Lost a lot of them got killed on that but it was essential you see for them to know to pick which was the Germans which they could do.
TJ: Yes, it was to avoid friendly fire I understand.
DR: Um.
TJ: And it worked well.
DR: Yeah.
TJ: So —
DR: Yes it was — the worst part was plotting things out and them not coming back again. That was — used to cast a cloud over everything.
TJ: So the Observer Corps actually carried on into the nineties I think.
DR: Yes.
TJ: When did you actually finish with them?
DR: Um [pause] that’s another question I asked my friend ‘cause I just couldn’t remember and nor could she said ‘I can’t remember either when we finished’. How we finished.
TJ: Can you remember VE day?
DR: Yes.
TJ: And what did you do to celebrate?
DR: Came home [laughs] yes.
TJ: To Saxilby?
DR: I think [pause]. No, I can’t remember, no.
TJ: Details no?
DR: No. I think, I can remember celebrating I think I must have been in Lincoln celebrating in the streets we did. But then how much longer did we stay on? You know, I just don’t know.
TJ: You don’t remember? No?
DR: I don’t.
TJ: You don’t know when you were demobbed?
DR: No, I can’t. I wish I could. I wish I’d kept a record of all these things but at the actual time you don’t think about it do you?
TJ: So what did you do — let’s look at it. What did you do for work after you left the Royal Observer Corps? What was the first job you had in civilian life?
DR: I just went and did my dad’s business. Just worked at home.
TJ: The bakery?
DR: Bakers, yes. The baker, confectionist, general store, yeah.
TJ: Were you a baker yourself? Or a confectioner?
DR: No. No. We had special people to do that.
TJ: Did you work in the shop during the day?
DR: Yes, yeah. Drive the vans on bread rounds. We had, you know we used to go round to all the houses then down the fens and everything. I used to drive a van.
TJ: Did you have to do a driving test in those days?
DR: No, I didn’t take a driving test. On the day I was seventeen my dad said to me ‘jump in the car and go get a licence’. So I drove to Sleaford without a licence, got a licence and drove back again.
TJ: On your own?
DR: Yes. Just went on my own because I’d been driving since I was eight years old.
TJ: On private land?
DR: Yeah. Used to go down the fens with the bread down all the fens you used to have to drive across fields to the farmhouses and things as soon as you used to get through the gates dad used to say ‘you drive’.
TJ: Can’t imagine that these days, can you?
DR: No.
TJ: You’d have been put into care [laughs]
DR: [laughs] Yes. I’ve been driving since I was eight years old.
TJ: Wow. So you’ve never, never held a driving licence?
DR: No. My brother, no my brother, he wouldn’t. No. He was three years older than me.
TJ: So you worked in the family business?
DR: Yes, until I got married.
TJ: And what year did you get married?
DR: That’s another thing I can’t even remember. I know I’ve been a widow fifty years. On the 19th of February.
TJ: When you got married would it have been the fifties, early fifties possibly?
DR: I think I was twenty-four. Was I? Twenty-four.
TJ: Yes, if you were born in twenty-five.
DR: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
TJ: Yes, about 1950 ish, forty-nine, fifty
DR: I think I was twenty-four. Was I? I don’t know.
TJ: So, what did your husband do in the war?
DR: He was, he was in the army. I didn’t know him then, yes. He was a sergeant in the — I don’t even know what regiment.
TJ: Where was he during the war? Can you remember that?
DR: I know he was abroad, I don’t know where. I know it was hot [laughs]
TJ: Africa then [laughs]
DR: Yes. Yes. It’s funny ‘cause you never talk about it you know.
TJ: Did you not?
DR: No.
TJ: Between yourselves?
DR: No. No.
TJ: Didn’t swap stories?
DR: No.
TJ: What did your husband do for work?
DR: He was a butcher.
TJ: Oh. So the butcher and the baker.
DR: Yes, that’s right, yes.
TJ: Where did you meet him?
DR: Heckington. It was in Heckington where I got married. And I had a fish shop.
TJ: Oh.
DR: A fish and chip shop. Yes.
TJ: That was your own was it?
DR: Yes. A small holding we had as well.
TJ: Did you sell wet fish?
DR: Yes.
TJ: As well as fish and chips?
DR: Fish and chips. And the shop is still there. Yes.
TJ: How much did it cost?
DR: Tuppence for the fish and a penny for the chips.
TJ: I bet they were absolutely delicious.
DR: Yes. That’s a fib anyway because they weren’t. It was — no, it was how much was it, probably was, it was only a few pence anyway. Yes. And when you think now how much it is. About six pounds for fish and chips isn’t it?
TJ: Something like that, yes.
DR: Yes. But I could buy fish then for eleven shillings a stone. Yes. And we had coal fired pans which made good fish and chips. Like all the people in the village here they said ours were the best fish and chips you could get.
TJ: What did you fry in? Dripping?
DR: Yes. Yes.
TJ: Beef dripping?
DR: Yes. Yeah. Butcher’s dripping.
TJ: Well that’s handy ‘cause your husband was the butcher.
DR: Yes. Used to get this beef dripping for, from Spalding. From the butchers up Spalding way.
TJ: I remember you telling me about Christmas Day when you were in the Royal Observer Corps.
DR: I know. That’s naughty.
TJ: Oh go on.
DR: Oh. Yes my friend and I on the Christmas Day we were on the RDF board and the officers brought us a crate of cider and we just sat there and drank this, steadily drank all this cider while we were on — but I don’t know, was there an armistice on Christmas Day? but the Germans didn’t come over did they? [laughs] So if they’d come sneaking in over the sea it would’ve been just too bad. ‘Cause we weren’t quite responsible enough to think that — yes. So we didn’t get bombed. Yes.
TJ: What about rationing? Did you, did you find that very difficult?
DR: Pardon.
TJ: Rationing of food and clothes.
DR: No not really because with being in a shop we weren’t really rationed you see were we. We could dip in — though. [pause] No we didn’t seem to be even in our digs. No we didn’t. No it wasn’t too bad at all. There’s always things that you could get. I mean you never got bananas and things like that in the wartime and I can remember with being in the shop and things that they’d probably send six tins of salmon. Well what could you do with six tins of salmon when you’ve got scores and scores of customers can you. And they always used to come in and say ‘have you got any salmon?’ and all these sorts of things but no and Monty my boyfriend, at one time, all he loved was Fry’s chocolate cream when he was went on ops. Chocolate and we used to save all our points, sweet points to keep to buy it so he could have plenty of this Fry’s chocolate, yeah. That’s what he loved when he was flying and like I say he got, he got killed. Yeah [pause] but they used to know you know those boys when they weren’t coming back.
TJ: Did they?
DR: Um.
TJ: Premonition?
DR: Yes, yeah. Yes they knew. Yes ‘cause I can remember one particular friend that I had and he had cycled down from, from Coningsby and that and I stood you know to wave, to wave to him when he went and he went up the road about six times and came back.
TJ: Um.
DR: And that and away he went and then he went out I think it was at night and he didn’t come back again. No it was very funny, but well [long pause]
TJ: That’s war for you isn’t it. Terrible. Let me just —
DR: He was my friend for several years. Even after, after the war and he was a flight lieutenant but he was gunnery leader and he used to have to take the crews out to Scherluffer[?] for practice. Yes. But he was, he got the DFM and bar and the DFC, in fact I’ve got the ribbon somewhere round about from them. Yes. And he did three full tours of ops. That’s twenty in a tour. And a few odd ones at the end. He did over sixty tours. He got shot down a couple of times, once in the sea and I think it was about a couple of days before they got picked up. Yeah. But he got through, came through it all relatively unscathed. The good part about it was when he went in the sea he got these, all these new things and I got a new pair of flying boots out of it [laughs] yes.
TJ: Did you find it hard to adjust to ordinary life —
DR: Yes. Yes
TJ: After the war.
DR: Yes. Yes it was difficult.
TJ: Tell us about how you felt.
DR: Yes. I think it was just having all your friends together and all doing the same thing.
TJ: Did you miss the sort of the friendship?
DR: Yes. Well I kept friends with Betty Bally right up to her dying. She’s been dead probably four years I think. About four years. She lost her leg and everything. It was sugar diabetes I think it was that caused that. No we just stayed friends. Like I say they called us the terrible twins because our birthdays were only about five days apart and with the young ones they used to call us babe because we were — yep.
TJ: So working in the shop out in Saxilby, was it, wasn’t as —
DR: Billinghay.
TJ: Sorry Billinghay.
DR: Yes.
TJ: So where does Saxilby come in?
DR: Betty lived at Saxilby.
TJ: That’s right, yes. Billinghay. The shop in Billinghay —
DR: Well her dad was a beekeeper. He kept bees. He was a small holder but he had bees, all these bees and I think he was head of the bee —
TJ: Keepers Association?
DR: Yes, that’s right. Yes, yeah.
TJ: So the shop in Billinghay must have all seemed a little bit ordinary mustn’t it after what you’d been doing all during the war?
DR: I didn’t think, didn’t look at it like that no.
TJ: No.
DR: Well it was like a bit strange coming back to live in the village. Yeah.
TJ: So you must’ve been proud of the contribution you were able to make —
DR: Yes.
TJ: To the war effort.
DR: I notice on the Armistice Day and things there are, that there are members of the families I think of — must be ‘cause the people, but they march right at the — with the RAF and then the Observer Corps with them aren’t they next to them when they march.
TJ: Yes, when they do the Cenotaph
DR: Yes, that’s right. Yes because I mean there was some younger people who were on there I didn’t see many old crocks [laughs].
TJ: Yeah marching it’s more of a young person’s sport isn’t it?
DR: Yes, that’s right. Although you get the old people in the wheelchairs and things don’t you at that ceremony.
TJ: Well I’m going to finish this interview here. So thank you very much for sharing your memories with us.
DR: Yes. It’s a pity you don’t read through the book there because it’s all about the Observer Corps and that.
TJ: Yes, we’ll have look at the book and perhaps we’ll copy it for the archives.
DR: Yeah, yeah.
TJ: OK. End of recording.
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 Doris Reddish
Creator
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Tina James
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-01-31
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AReddishDE170131, PReddishDE1709
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Civilian
Format
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00:47:42 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Doris Reddish attended Sleaford High School followed by commercial college. She worked at Moore, Cooper and Burkett’s in Market Rasen until she joined the Royal Observer Corps. She trained in Lincoln for aircraft recognition then served as a table plotter at RAF Digby, RAF Blankney Hall and RAF Fiskerton. After demobilisation she went to work in the family shop, then got married and run a fish and chip shop in Billinghay. Doris also discusses her father’s experiences in the First World War and reminisces about social life in wartime, bomb damage, and rationing.
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Lincoln
England--Market Rasen
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1944
1945
Contributor
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Carolyn Emery
bombing
entertainment
home front
love and romance
military ethos
operations room
RAF Blankney Hall
RAF Digby
RAF Fiskerton
Royal Observer Corps
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/187/2552/SMArshallS1594781v10107.2.jpg
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/187/2552/SMarshallS1594781v10108.2.jpg
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/187/2552/SMarshallS1594781v10109.2.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
Marshall, Syd. Album
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Marshall, S
Description
An account of the resource
77 items. The album contains wartime and post-war photographs, newspaper cuttings, and memorabilia assembled by Warrant Officer Sidney Charles Marshall (1924 - 2017, 1594781 Royal Air Force). Syd Marshall was a flight engineer with 103 Squadron and flew operations from RAF Elsham Wolds.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Syd Marshall and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-05-08
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
Newspaper articles featuring 103 Squadron
Description
An account of the resource
Article 1 has a photograph of the nose of Lancaster Mike Squared, S for Sugar at Waddington, the dispersal hut at Digby and Barry Halpenny in the cockpit of a Spitfire with his book 'Action Stations'. The cutting mentions Douglas Bader flying from Digby and Clark Gable flying from Goxhill, Flight Engineer Sgt Jackson's fall and survival with a burning parachute and Sqn Ldr Barry Douetil who fell out of his Lancaster after it flipped on its back, the only crew member to survive.
Article 2 titled Scramble by Paul Croft has photographs of Lancaster 'Santa Azucar' with stick woman and halo. Six aircrew are posed under the port engine. There is a photograph of four ground crew on a fighter's tale , identity BE483 and two airmen running towards an aircraft 'AE-X' captioned at Digby.
Article 3 is a photograph of the memorial garden for RAF Elsham Wolds and is captioned 'Ex-airmen and their families and friends congregate for the service to dedicate the memorial garden'. It was published in the Evening Telegraph Wednesday, September 2, 1981.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Three newspaper cuttings on three album pages
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Canadian Air Force
Royal Air Force. Fighter Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SMarshallS1594781v10107, SMarshallS1594781v10108, SMarshallS1594781v10109
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
1981-09-02
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.
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
103 Squadron
576 Squadron
bombing
Halifax
Lancaster
memorial
RAF Digby
RAF Elsham Wolds
RAF Goxhill
RAF Kelstern
RAF Waddington
runway
Wellington