1
25
71
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/816/31072/SFarrAA1434564v10001.2.pdf
5bf8420013e198223332adc79a64ecf6
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
Farr, Allan Avery
A A Farr
Description
An account of the resource
Six items. An oral history interview with Allan Farr DFM (1923 - 2018, 1434564 Royal Air Force) as well as his flying logbook, a photograph, list of operations, a map, contemporary photograph and a song. He flew operations as an air gunner with 100, 625 and 460 Squadrons.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Allan Farr 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
2017-07-12
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
Farr, AA
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
Alan Farr's flying log book
Description
An account of the resource
Flying log book for A A Farr, air gunner, covering the period from 29 December 1943 to 6 October 1944. Detailing his flying training, operations flown and instructor duties. He was stationed at RCAF Mount Joli, RAF Church Broughton, RAF Binbrook, RAF Blyton, RAF Waltham (aka RAF Grimsby), RAF Kelstern and RAF Seighford. Aircraft flown in were, Battle, Wellington and Lancaster. He flew a total of 48 operations, 20 with 100 Squadron, 7 with 625 Squadron and 21 with 460 Squadron of which 9 were daylight. Targets were, Cologne, Hamburg, Essen, Mannheim, Nuremburg, Milan, Peenemunde, Berlin, Munich, Hannover, Hagen, Leipzig, Dusseldorf, Courtrai, Ardouval, Bois-de-Jardin, Stuttgart, Foret-de-Nieppe, Trossey-St-Maxim, Pauillac, Fontenay-le-Marmion, Aire-sur-Lys, Brunswick, Falaise, Yolkel, Stettin, Fromental, Russelheim, Vincly, Frankfurt, West Kappelle and Saarbrucken. His pilots on operations were Pilot Officer Bowden, Flight Sergeant Etchells and Flying officer Hudson. This item was sent to the IBCC Digital Archive already in digital form. No better quality copies are available.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
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
SFarrAA1434564v10001
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Belgium
Canada
France
Germany
Great Britain
Italy
Netherlands
Poland
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Atlantic Ocean--Bay of Biscay
Atlantic Ocean--North Sea
Belgium--Ath
Belgium--Kortrijk
England--Derbyshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Staffordshire
France--Aire-sur-la-Lys
France--Caen Region
France--Creil Region
France--Falaise
France--Nieppe Forest
France--Pas-de-Calais
France--Pommeréval
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Braunschweig
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Essen
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Hagen (Arnsberg)
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Hannover
Germany--Leipzig
Germany--Mannheim
Germany--Munich
Germany--Peenemünde
Germany--Rüsselsheim
Germany--Saarbrücken
Germany--Stuttgart
Italy--Milan
Netherlands--North Brabant
Netherlands--Veere
Poland--Szczecin
Québec--Bas-Saint-Laurent
Germany--Nuremberg
Québec
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
France--Pauillac (Gironde)
France--Fontenay
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1944
1943-05-15
1943-05-16
1943-07-06
1943-07-07
1943-07-08
1943-07-09
1943-07-24
1943-07-25
1943-07-26
1943-07-27
1943-07-28
1943-08-02
1943-08-03
1943-08-09
1943-08-10
1943-08-11
1943-08-12
1943-08-13
1943-08-15
1943-08-16
1943-08-17
1943-08-18
1943-08-31
1943-09-01
1943-09-03
1943-09-04
1943-09-05
1943-09-06
1943-09-07
1943-09-24
1943-09-25
1943-09-27
1943-09-28
1943-10-01
1943-10-02
1943-10-18
1943-10-20
1943-10-21
1943-11-03
1943-11-26
1943-12-02
1943-12-03
1943-12-04
1943-12-16
1943-12-17
1944-07-20
1944-07-25
1944-07-28
1944-07-29
1944-07-31
1944-08-01
1944-08-03
1944-08-04
1944-08-05
1944-08-07
1944-08-08
1944-08-09
1944-08-12
1944-08-13
1944-08-14
1944-08-15
1944-08-16
1944-08-17
1944-08-18
1944-08-25
1944-08-26
1944-08-28
1944-08-29
1944-08-30
1944-09-12
1944-09-13
1944-10-03
1944-10-05
1944-10-06
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
100 Squadron
12 OTU
1662 HCU
27 OTU
30 OTU
460 Squadron
625 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
Battle
Bombing and Gunnery School
bombing of Hamburg (24-31 July 1943)
bombing of Luftwaffe night-fighter airfields (15 August 1944)
Bombing of Peenemünde (17/18 August 1943)
bombing of the Normandy coastal batteries (5/6 June 1944)
Bombing of Trossy St Maximin (3 August 1944)
Distinguished Flying Medal
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
mid-air collision
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operational Training Unit
RAF Binbrook
RAF Blyton
RAF Church Broughton
RAF Grimsby
RAF Kelstern
RAF Seighford
tactical support for Normandy troops
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2219/39735/SReidK473650v20008.1.jpg
e29e383500462279e35a27b01ed0931f
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2219/39735/SReidK473650v20007.1.jpg
1900967748f115d33f169d10d4610ca0
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
Reid, Kathryn. Songs and poems
Description
An account of the resource
Thirty-seven items - songs/poems about wartime experiences.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by David Stuart Miers Reid and catalogued by Nigel Huckins
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-01-23
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
Reid, K
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Christmas - Waltham 1943
Description
An account of the resource
Three verse poem about Christmas. Relates children's party and mentions WAAF officer doing party planning trying to bring cheer to Waltham station. On the reverse 'Keith Burrows, RAFA'.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-12
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
Civilian
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Poetry
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One page printed document
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SReidK473650v20008, SReidK473650v20007
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
arts and crafts
childhood in wartime
ground personnel
RAF Grimsby
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2191/39685/MReidK473650-180123-020001.2.jpg
97d6062f4993b8a4d99d4eb3116aa90f
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2191/39685/MReidK473650-180123-020002.2.jpg
c78dfb0f4fe08e703a17a597165d3be6
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
Reid, Kathleen
Reid, K
Reid, Kathryn
Reid, Katy
Description
An account of the resource
92 items and a <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/2219">sub-collection with thirty-seven poems/songs</a>. The collection concerns Kathryn (Katy) Reid (Royal Air Force) and contains memoirs, correspondence, poems and photographs. The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by David Stuart Miers Reid and catalogued by Nigel Huckins
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-01-23
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
Reid, K
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
[two drawings of Holly leaves and berries]
[Royal Air Force crest]
ROYAL AIR FORCE STATION,
GRIMSBY.
[underlined] Christmas 1943. [/underlined]
The Commanding Officer, Officers, and Senior N.C.Os., wish you all a Happy Christmas.
[underlined] Menu. [/underlined]
SOUP –
Cream of Celery.
MEATS –
Roast Turkey, Roast Pork,
Sausage Stuffing.
VEGETABLES –
Roast and Creamed Potatoes,
Brussels Sprouts, Peas.
SAUCES –
Bread Sauce, Apple Sauce,
Brown Sauce.
SWEET –
Christmas Pudding, Rum Sauce.
Beer. Minerals. Cigarettes.
[two drawings of holly leaves and berries]
[page break]
[ten signatures] [underlined] 3 Engine Charlie a crew. [/underlined]
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Christmas menu - RAF Grimsby
Description
An account of the resource
Menu for Christmas 1943 at RAF Grimsby. Signatures of crew on reverse. 'Three engine Charlie a crew'.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1943-12
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-12-25
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
Text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Two-sided printed document
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending text-based transcription. Under review
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MReidK473650-180123-02
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.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Tricia Marshall
mess
RAF Grimsby
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/778/15054/LGoffCC746538v1.1.pdf
3236de6a86a90aa2e5a6fd9be3b30ec5
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
Goff, Cyril
Cyril C Goff
C C Goff
Description
An account of the resource
Three items. The collection concerns Pilot Officer Cyril Goff (746538, Royal Air Force) and contains two log books and a handwritten note naming his crew. He was a pilot and flew 13 operations with 100 Squadron from RAF Grimsby.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by N Bussey and catalogued by David Leitch.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-12-12
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Goff, CC
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
Cyril Charles Goff's pilot’s flying log book. One
Description
An account of the resource
Pilot’s flying log book for Pilot Officer Cyril Charles Goff from 24 February 1942 to 18 October 1943, detailing training schedule and operations flown. Served at RAF Sleap, RAF Tilstock (Whitchurch Heath), RAF Newton, RAF Shawbury and RAF Grimsby (Waltham). Aircraft flown were Lancaster and Whitley. He carried out a total of 13 operations with 100 Squadron as a pilot on the following targets in Germany: Berlin, Hagen, Hanover, Ludwigshaven, Mannheim, Munich, Nürnburg, Peenemude, Rheydt and Stuttgart. His pilot on operations was<span data-ccp-props="{"201341983":0,"335559739":200,"335559740":276}"> Wing Commander McIntyre. </span>Includes notes on a leaflet dropping operation over France whilst with 81 Operational Training Unit, and an air-sea rescue operation with 1667 Heavy Conversion Unit searching for a dinghy in the North Sea.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
David Leitch
Callum Davies
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
LGoffCC746538v1
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Atlantic Ocean--North Sea
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Hagen (Arnsberg)
Germany--Ludwigshafen am Rhein
Germany--Mannheim
Germany--Munich
Germany--Nuremberg
Germany--Peenemünde
Germany--Rheydt
Germany--Stuttgart
Germany--Hannover
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943-06-22
1943-06-23
1943-07-28
1943-08-10
1943-08-11
1943-08-17
1943-08-18
1943-08-23
1943-08-24
1943-08-27
1943-08-28
1943-08-31
1943-09-01
1943-09-22
1943-09-23
1943-09-24
1943-10-01
1943-10-02
1943-10-03
1943-10-04
1943-10-05
1943-10-07
1943-10-08
1943-10-09
1943-10-18
100 Squadron
1667 HCU
81 OTU
Advanced Flying Unit
air sea rescue
aircrew
bombing
Bombing of Peenemünde (17/18 August 1943)
Flying Training School
Halifax
Halifax Mk 5
Heavy Conversion Unit
killed in action
Lancaster
Lancaster Mk 1
Lancaster Mk 3
missing in action
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
pilot
propaganda
RAF Grimsby
RAF Lindholme
RAF Newton
RAF Shawbury
RAF Sleap
RAF Tilstock
Stearman
Tiger Moth
training
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/778/15056/MGoffCC746538-161212-02.2.jpg
0725dff61a1ab7658a1874103d68621b
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
Goff, Cyril
Cyril C Goff
C C Goff
Description
An account of the resource
Three items. The collection concerns Pilot Officer Cyril Goff (746538, Royal Air Force) and contains two log books and a handwritten note naming his crew. He was a pilot and flew 13 operations with 100 Squadron from RAF Grimsby.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by N Bussey and catalogued by David Leitch.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-12-12
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Goff, CC
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
Cyril Goff's crew
Description
An account of the resource
The names of Cyril Goff's crew.
‘Uncle Cyril Crew.
P.O CC Goff
Sgt EG Burnett
Sgt PE Duckers
FS WE Haslam
Sgt JG Smith
Sgt JW Sutherland’.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
one handwritten note
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
MGoffCC746538-161212-02
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
100 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
bomb aimer
flight engineer
navigator
pilot
RAF Grimsby
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/886/10898/LHudsonJD173116v1.2.pdf
3c81a50e35b74a600f942d515f1e4a4d
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
Hudson, Douglas
James Douglas Hudson
J D Hudson
Description
An account of the resource
529 items. Collection concerns Pilot Officer James Douglas Hudson, DFC (755052 Royal Air Force) who joined the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve in June 1939 and trained as an observer. While on route to Malta in August 1940 his Blenheim crashed in Tunisia and he was subsequently interned for two and a half years by Vichy French in Tunisia and Algeria. After being freed he returned to Great Britain and after navigator retraining completed a tour of 30 operations on 100 Squadron. The collection contains letters to and from his parents and from French penfriends while interned in Tunisia and Algeria, newspaper cuttings of various events, logbooks and lists of operations, official documents and photographs. A further 23 items are in two sub-collections with details of navigator examinations and postcards of Laghouat Algeria.<br /><br />The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Elizabeth Smith and Yvonne Puncher and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.<br />
<p>This collection also contains items concerning Louis Murray and Harry Bowers. Additional information on <a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/202827/">Harry Bowers</a> and <a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/220410/">Louis Murray</a> is available via the IBCC Losses Database.</p>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-06-16
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Hudson, JD
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
Douglas Hudson's observer’s and air gunner’s flying log book
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
LHudsonJD173116v1
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mike Connock
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
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
Description
An account of the resource
Observer’s and air gunner’s flying log book for Douglas Hudson, navigator, covering the period from 15 May 1943 to 20 July 1945. It states, ‘original log book lost on operations 27 August 1940’. Detailing his flying training, operations flown and instructor duties. He was stationed at RAF Staverton, RAF Wymeswold, RAF Lindholme, RAF Waltham (RAF Grimsby), RAF Blyton and RAF Sandtoft. Aircraft flown in were, Anson, Wellington, Halifax and Lancaster. He completed a total of 29 night operations with 100 Squadron. Targets were, Braunschweig, Berlin, Leipzig, Stuttgart, Schweinfurt, Augsburg, Frankfurt, Essen, Nurnburg, Danzig, Alnoye, Pomermia bay, Cologne, Dusseldorf, Dieppe, Wilhelmshaven, Duisberg, Dortmund, Dunkirk, Merville, Tergnier, Crisbecq and Vire. <span>His pilot on operations was</span><span> </span>Flight Lieutenant Hamilton.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
Germany
Great Britain
Poland
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Atlantic Ocean--English Channel
Atlantic Ocean--North Sea
England--Gloucestershire
England--Leicestershire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Yorkshire
France--Dieppe
France--Dunkerque
France--Merville (Nord)
France--Tergnier (Canton)
Germany--Augsburg
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Braunschweig
Germany--Cologne
Poland--Gdańsk
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Essen
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Leipzig
Germany--Nuremberg
Germany--Schweinfurt
Germany--Stuttgart
Germany--Wilhelmshaven
Poland--Pomerelia
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944
1945
1943-07-14
1944-01-20
1944-02-15
1944-02-19
1944-02-20
1944-02-21
1944-02-24
1944-02-25
1944-02-26
1944-03-01
1944-03-02
1944-03-15
1944-03-16
1944-03-18
1944-03-19
1944-03-22
1944-03-23
1944-03-24
1944-03-25
1944-03-26
1944-03-27
1944-03-30
1944-03-31
1944-04-09
1944-04-10
1944-04-11
1944-04-18
1944-04-19
1944-04-20
1944-04-21
1944-04-22
1944-04-23
1944-05-10
1944-05-11
1944-05-12
1944-05-13
1944-05-21
1944-05-22
1944-05-23
1944-05-24
1944-05-25
1944-05-27
1944-05-28
1944-05-31
1944-06-01
1944-06-02
1944-06-03
1944-06-05
1944-06-06
1944-06-07
1945-06-16
1945-07-25
100 Squadron
1656 HCU
1662 HCU
1667 HCU
28 OTU
Advanced Flying Unit
Air Observers School
aircrew
Anson
bombing
bombing of Nuremberg (30 / 31 March 1944)
bombing of the Normandy coastal batteries (5/6 June 1944)
Cook’s tour
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
mine laying
navigator
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operational Training Unit
Pathfinders
RAF Blyton
RAF Grimsby
RAF Lindholme
RAF Sandtoft
RAF Staverton
RAF Wymeswold
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2191/39881/MReidK473650-180123-23.2.jpg
d93c4ce5dac59d08fb1119cf08487f01
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
Reid, Kathleen
Reid, K
Reid, Kathryn
Reid, Katy
Description
An account of the resource
92 items and a <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/2219">sub-collection with thirty-seven poems/songs</a>. The collection concerns Kathryn (Katy) Reid (Royal Air Force) and contains memoirs, correspondence, poems and photographs. The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by David Stuart Miers Reid and catalogued by Nigel Huckins
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-01-23
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
Reid, K
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Draft notes
Description
An account of the resource
Outline draft notes for memoir. Mentions posting, Grimsby, flying control, Lancaster, people, dances, parties, heartbreak, Americans, Heathcliff, removal of camp, posting to Swannington, Mosquito and more.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Norfolk
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
United States Army Air Force
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One-sided handwritten document
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending text-based transcription
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MReidK473650-180123-23
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
entertainment
ground personnel
Lancaster
military service conditions
RAF Cranwell
RAF Grimsby
RAF Oulton
RAF Sculthorpe
RAF Swannington
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1212/11984/LSmithEW174520v2.1.pdf
753df23946c636e608bc0fe1f6566f5d
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Smith, Ernest William
Smith, E W
John Albert Smith
Description
An account of the resource
12 items. The collection concerns Flying Officer Ernest William Smith DFC (174520, Royal Air Force). It contains three log books and service materials, photographs of aircrew, a letter of appreciation regarding the return to England of a battle damaged aircraft and material associated with the award of the Distinguished Flying Cross. He completed a tour of operations as a pilot with 12 Squadron from RAF Wickenby and also served with 144 Squadron, 16 Operational Training Unit, and Flying Training School.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Lorraine Smith and catalogued by Trevor Hardcastle.
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
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Smith, JA
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-08-13
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
Ernest Smith's pilot's flying log book. Two
Description
An account of the resource
Pilot’s flying log book for Warrant Officer Ernest Smith, from 3 April 1943 to 29 June 1944, recording operations and instructional duties. He served at RAF Hixon, RAF Blyton, RAF Grimsby (Waltham), RAF Binbrook, RAF Wickenby, RAF Bircotes, RAF Church Broughton, RAF Finningley and RAF Lulsgate Bottom. Aircraft flown were Wellington, Lancaster Mk 1 and Lancaster Mk 3. Records a total of 23 operations (3 cut short) as a pilot with 100 Squadron, 460 Squadron, 12 Squadron and 626 Squadron, on the following targets in France, Germany and Italy: Berlin, Cologne, Dusseldorf, Essen, Frankfurt, Gelsenkirchen, Hamburg, Hanover, Kassel, La Rochelle (gardening), Mannheim, Milan, Nuremburg, Remscheid and Rheydt. Also details duties as a qualified flying instructor in various training units, and includes several pilot and instructor assessments as being 'above the average'. Other notes include: 'SEPT 8TH 1943 ITALY SIGNS ARMISTICE', 'C FLT 12 SQD FORMED 626 SQD WICKENBY' and 'AWARDED THE DFC'. Also contains memorabilia including telegrams from July 1941 about serious injuries received in an air accident and a letter from 1950 confirming the award of the Air Efficiency Award.
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
LSmithEW174520v2
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
France
Germany
Italy
Atlantic Ocean--Bay of Biscay
England--Derbyshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Staffordshire
England--Somerset
England--Yorkshire
Italy--Po River Valley
France--La Rochelle
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Essen
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Kassel
Germany--Mannheim
Germany--Nuremberg
Germany--Remscheid
Germany--Rheydt
Italy--Milan
Germany--Hannover
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944
1943-07-06
1943-07-07
1943-07-08
1943-07-09
1943-07-10
1943-07-24
1943-07-25
1943-07-26
1943-07-29
1943-07-30
1943-07-31
1943-08-09
1943-08-10
1943-08-11
1943-08-12
1943-08-13
1943-08-27
1943-08-28
1943-08-30
1943-08-31
1943-09-01
1943-09-03
1943-09-04
1943-09-05
1943-09-06
1943-09-23
1943-09-24
1943-09-25
1943-10-03
1943-10-04
1943-10-05
1943-10-08
1943-10-09
1943-10-18
1943-10-19
1943-11-03
1943-11-04
1943-11-18
1943-11-19
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 Leitch
100 Squadron
12 Squadron
144 Squadron
16 OTU
1662 HCU
18 OTU
30 OTU
460 Squadron
626 Squadron
air sea rescue
aircrew
Anson
bombing
bombing of Hamburg (24-31 July 1943)
Distinguished Flying Cross
Hampden
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Lancaster Mk 1
Lancaster Mk 3
Magister
mine laying
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
pilot
RAF Binbrook
RAF Blyton
RAF Church Broughton
RAF Finningley
RAF Grimsby
RAF Hemswell
RAF Hixon
RAF Upper Heyford
RAF Wickenby
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1082/19821/MPriceF19301022-170522-01.1.jpg
34854215f530b67afe2eed63126f0a17
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
Price, Fay
F Price
Description
An account of the resource
Eight items. An oral history interview with Fay Price, photographs and documents.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Fay Price and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Interview and copies of documents and photographs
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-05-22
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
Price, F
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Four dance tickets in the name of P Kendall
Description
An account of the resource
Four invitations to four different dances at four Lincolnshire airfields, RAF Binbrook, North Cotes, Grimsby and USAAF Goxhill.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Four printed cards
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
MPriceF19301022-170522-01
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Royal Air Force
United States Army Air Force
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1943-06-12
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-06-12
entertainment
mess
RAF Binbrook
RAF Goxhill
RAF Grimsby
RAF North Coates
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/620/19408/BPaineGHPaineGHv1.2.pdf
c1a7c6c381d79a4c2bf964593a249785
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
Paine, Geoff
Geoffrey Hugh Paine
G H Paine
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Paine, GH
Description
An account of the resource
14 items. An oral history interview with Sergeant Geoffrey Paine (1925 - 2019, 1894345, Royal Air Force) documents and photographs. He flew as a pilot with 100 Squadron.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Geoffrey Paine and catalogued by Trevor Hardcastle.
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
2016-07-20
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
Geoffrey H. Paine
My life in the Royal Air Force
From its formation I was a member of The Air Training Corps, I rose to the dizzy rank of Corporal and was a member of 1157 Sqdn (Falmouth & Penryn, Cornwall)
I was a pupil at Falmouth Grammar School, sat & passed my Cambridge School Certificate.
As soon as I was 18 I voluntered [sic] for RAF Aircrew and went to Sentinal House, London to sign on. Went through a strict medical and did an aptitude test in a sort of mock aircraft cockpit to check my coordination. This was successful and I was clasified [sic] as fit for Aircrew as PNB (Pilot, Navigator of Bomb Aimer).
I returned home and continued at school where I studied Air Navigation.
To start my training I had to be 18 + 3 months so on 30th August 1943 I reported to the Aircrew reception centre at Lords Cricket Ground, London. Went through another medical (plus an FFI !!) was issued with my uniform and then spent a few days in St John's Wood doing drill etc.
On 20th September I went to No 6 Initial Training Wing at Aberystwyth, billeted in the Bell View Hotel on the sea front. Accomodation [sic] was OK but food was a bit scarce! Lots of drill on the sea front and classroom subjects in the University. There were about 20 of us who were non swimmers and one cold morning we were marched up to the University swimming baths. We were lined up along the side of the pool and told to climb up to the highest diving board and jump in!! We were fished out with long polls by the insructors [sic]! One of the cadets was unable to jump and was taken off the course for aircrew to transfer to ground crew!
Apart from drill and classroom subjects we did clay pidgeon [sic] shooting and fired Lewis and Bren guns on the firing range. We also had to go into a Gas chamber and temporally remove our gas masks!
After Christmas leave I went Grading School AST Station Ansty, near Coventry to fly in the lovely Tiger Moths. Communication between the instructor and pupil was through a Gosport tube and it was quite common to inhale a strong smell of whisky! After only 6 hours flying
[page break]
I was sent on by first solo (I think it was a bit of a record judging by the instructors boasting to his colleagues!!) During our spare time we had to lay taxy ways using bricks which came from the bombed houses of Coventry. We also did guard duty at night.
Following a short leave on 25th Feb. 1944 I was posted to the Aircrew despatch Centre at Heaton Park, Manchester. On the 13th March I was posted to what had been No. 17 Initial Training Wing at Scarborough. During the first parade the CO asked if anyone was a model maker? I voluntered [sic]!! Solid wooden models of aircraft used for aircraft recognition training had “disappeared” and they were on the CO's inventory, my job was in the workshop to make as many models as possible! At night I sometimes did guard duty down on the coast armed with a Sten Gun.
On 26th of March I was posted to the ex No. 2 Itw at Cambridge which was in Pembroke College (didn’t do much there except scive [sic] to escape route marches).
On 6th of April posted again! This time to RAF Waltham, No 100 Squadron Lancasters where I packed thousands of incendary [sic] bombs and worked the Squdn office.
Back to Heaton Park on 20.05.44. 31st May 44 posted to RAF Bourne (near Cambridge) 105 Squdn Mosquitos [sic]. There I Assisted [sic] in Operating [sic] the “Sandra” light, a searchlight which was turned on to shine vertically when the Mosquitos [sic] were returning from a raid to assist them to pinpoint the airfield.
Back to Heaton Park on 18th July 44. This was another delay in aircrew training and I was given the option of staying at Heaton Park, volunteering to help on farms of going to London to do bomb damage repairs! I voluntered [sic] to go to London. (a good choice!) We were stationed at RAF Hornchurch and each morning we paraded in a hanger and given details of where a doodle bug had landed and where bomb damage repairs were needed. There were about 20 of us in my squad with a Flt Sgt in charge, we had our own troop carrier equipped with all the necessary tools with
[page break]
which to replace dislodged roofing tiles, repair broken windows (a yellow waterproof material) plaster board to replace bomb damaged ceilings.
We operated from Hornchurch from the 3rd August 44 until 5th December (No 55 repair unit). On 6th Dec. we were moved to operate from 55 RU at Kew. On 2nd Jan. 45 we went to RAF Hendon to repair and clear the remains of a barrack block which had received a direct hit by a V 1 at 7 o’clock one evening (not a pleasant task which involved picking up body parts when clearing rubble).
Back once more to Heaton Park on 8th of Feb. to be kitted out with tropical kit for flying training in Southern Rhodesia! We boarded Royal Mail Ship “Andes” at Liverpool and sailed for Cape Town. On route we called in at Freetown to take on water and amuse ourselves by throwing in coins for the natives to pick up from the deep. Natives would dive under the ship if you threw in a silver coin, some rotten blighters wrapped up pennies in silver paper. You had to block up your ears to avoid hearing the VERY strong natives language when they discovered how they had been fooled!
We arrived at Cape Town on about the 1st march and boarded a beautiful steam train to take us to Bulawayo, Southern Rhodesia. I think it took 2 days and a night. Each carriage had bunks to sleep 6. A fascinating journey through the middle of South Africa. We arrived at Bulawayo on the 4th march and spent 12 days there to become aclimateised [sic] to being several thousand feet above sea level.
On the 16th March (45) I went to No 26 EFTS at RAF Guinea Fowl, near Gwelo to start my pilot training on Fairchild Cornell aircraft. My
[page break]
instructor was Sgt Bruce. The weather every day was clear blue skys [sic]. After 7 hours 40 mins I was sent on my firs [sic] solo in the Cornell.
On the 25th May ’45 I was posted to No. 22 Service flying Training School at RAF Thornhill, near Gwelo flying Harvards. My instructor on Harvards was Pilot Officer Pearce. After 3 hrs 40 min I did my first solo flight in the Harvard. Within just a few days of receiving my Pilots Wings along came VJ DAY, The end of the 2nd World War. ALL FLYING TRAINING Ceased!!
We were all called on parade and told we were to return home. We were given two alternatives! We could either await our demob date or sign on for 3 years plus 4 years on reserve and continue with our flying training at home. I chose the latter!
We all returned to Cape Town to await our boat home to England. I had four wonderful weeks in Cape Town climbing the mountains and learning to surf at Muzenburg.
On the 10th October we boarded the RMS Del Pacifico for home. On the way we called in at James town, St Helena (where Napoleon was ‘imprisoned’) We arrived back in England on 29th Oct 45 and spent 5 days at West Kirby. After a short leave I was sent to RAF Stansted where we had to unload and store in the hangers there oceans of equipment from closing RAF Stations.
From 28th Nov to 18th Jan I was at no 27 Aircrew Holding Centre at RAF Bircham Newton.
On 18th Jan 46 I started flying training again at No 6 Sfts, Little Rissington, on Harvards. The Station closed on the 9th April and we moved to No 6 SFTS at RAF Tern Hill where I received my RAF Pilots Wings, at long last !!! on 3rd September 1946.
After some leave I went to Aircrew GST at RAF Locking near Weston Super Mare.
[page break]
More detatchments [sic]! first at RAF Church Lawford from 25 Jan 47 to 28 April 47. The station was training Naval Pilots, I got in a little flying on Harvards. From 28th April to 7th May I was at RAF Kirton in Lindsey where I acted as Despatch Rider on a 500cc Norton!! until 7th May 47.
Much to my surprise I then went to 242 Sqdn, Oakington and 511 Sqdn as second pilot on Avro Yorks! Route flying to India carrying freight and (on the side) trading bicycle tyres in Iraqu and buying carpets in Karachi in India!!! Nice profits!!
This was from 7th May 47 to 26 Aug 47.
27 th Aug I went to No. 2 PRFU at RAF Valley to qualify on Oxfords and Ansons. On 30th Oct 47 I went to
No 201 AFS RAF Swinderby to qualify as pilot on Vickers Wellingtons.
I qualified as pilot on Wellingtons and on 1.3.48 attended No 1 Navigation Staff Pilots Course at RAF Topcliffe flying Oxfords, Ansons & Wellingtons.
On 7.6.48 I went as a Staff Pilot at no 2 Air Navigation School to Fly ut navigators on Wellingtons A most enjoyable time flying all over England almost every day and night with ut Navigators on board.
On 7.8.49 I was offered a Commision [sic] if I stayed in the RAF and signed on again. I opted to take my release so as to go home and join my lovely wife, Evelyn, having married her on the 26th August 1948!
My six Years [sic] in the RAF was so enjoyable and a really wonderful expierience [sic]. Looking back it seemed like a lifetime!
I went on to farm until 1966 when I went as a Fulltime Officer in The Royal Observer Corps rising to the rank of Commander.
I retired at 60 in 1985!!!!
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
Geoff Paine's time in the RAF
Description
An account of the resource
A five page document recording Geoff's time in the R.A.F. from August 1943 until August 1949, in addition to his flying career as a pilot he undertook many other tasks as the aircrew training machine wound down.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Geoff Paine
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Five typewritten pages
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text. Memoir
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
BPaineGHPaineGHv1
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
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Jan Waller
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944
1946
100 Squadron
105 Squadron
Anson
Cornell
Flying Training School
Harvard
incendiary device
Initial Training Wing
Lancaster
Mosquito
Oxford
RAF Ansty
RAF Bourn
RAF Grimsby
RAF Hendon
RAF Hornchurch
RAF Little Rissington
RAF Swinderby
RAF Ternhill
RAF Topcliffe
Royal Observer Corps
training
V-1
V-weapon
Wellington
York
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2072/34205/LBabbageG1613415v1.1.pdf
f14ffb7085b2bf98bec5144b8f54c979
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
Babbage, Gordon
Babbage, G
Description
An account of the resource
Five items. The collection concerns Gordon Babbage (b. 1922, 1613415 Royal Air Force) and contains his log book, Pathfinder awards and photographs. He flew operations as an air gunner with 100 Squadron from RAF Grimsby and 156 Squadron from RAF Upwood.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Lesley Morley and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2021-08-31
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
Babbage, G
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
Gordon Babbage's navigator's air bomber's and air gunner's flying log book
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
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
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
LBabbageG1613415v1
Description
An account of the resource
Navigator’s, air gunner’s and air bomber’s flying log book for G Babbage, air gunner, covering the period from 15 December 1942 to 8 April 1945. Detailing his flying training and operations flown. He was stationed at RAF Stormey Down, RAF Riccall, RAF Pocklington, RAF Rufforth, RAF Faldingworth, RAF Sandtoft, RAF Driffield, RAF Grimsby, RAF Warboys and RAF Upwood. Aircraft flown in were Defiant, Whitley, Halifax, and Lancaster. He flew a total of 51 operations, 26 with 102 Squadron, 2 with 100 Squadron and 23 with 156 Squadron. Targets were St Nazaire, Essen, Kiel, Frankfurt, Duisburg, Dortmund, Bochum, Dusseldorf, Le Cruseot, Gelsenkirchen, Montbelliard, Hamburg, Nurnberg, Berlin, Kassel, Cannes, Neuss, Bonn, Opladen, Cologne, Osterfeld, Munich, Goch, Politz, Dresden, Pforzheim, Homburg, Misburg, Hanau, Heide and Harburg. His pilots on operations were Flight Lieutenant Carey, Warrant Officer Brooks, Flying Officer Parkinson and Flying Officer Edge.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943-03-28
1943-03-29
1943-04-03
1943-04-04
1943-04-05
1943-04-10
1943-04-11
1943-04-27
1943-04-28
1943-04-29
1943-04-30
1943-05-01
1943-05-04
1943-05-05
1943-05-12
1943-05-13
1943-05-14
1943-05-23
1943-05-24
1943-05-25
1943-05-26
1943-05-27
1943-05-28
1943-06-11
1943-06-12
1943-06-13
1943-06-19
1943-06-20
1943-07-09
1943-07-10
1943-07-15
1943-07-16
1943-07-24
1943-07-25
1943-07-27
1943-07-28
1943-08-10
1943-08-11
1943-08-31
1943-09-01
1943-10-03
1943-10-04
1943-10-05
1943-11-03
1943-11-04
1943-11-11
1943-11-12
1944-10-23
1944-10-24
1944-10-25
1944-11-27
1944-11-28
1944-11-29
1944-11-30
1944-12-01
1944-12-12
1944-12-13
1944-12-21
1944-12-22
1944-12-27
1944-12-28
1944-12-30
1944-12-31
1945-01-01
1945-01-07
1945-01-08
1945-02-07
1945-02-08
1945-02-09
1945-02-13
1945-02-14
1945-02-20
1945-02-21
1945-02-23
1945-02-24
1945-03-11
1945-03-14
1945-03-15
1945-03-16
1945-03-17
1945-03-18
1945-03-19
1945-03-20
1945-03-21
1945-03-31
1945-04-04
1945-04-05
1945-04-08
1945-04-09
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
Germany
Great Britain
Poland
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Atlantic Ocean--Bay of Biscay
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Yorkshire
France--Cannes
France--Le Creusot
France--Montbéliard
France--Saint-Nazaire
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Bochum
Germany--Bonn
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Dresden
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Essen
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
Germany--Goch
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Hanau
Germany--Hannover Region
Germany--Harburg (Landkreis)
Germany--Heide (Schleswig-Holstein)
Germany--Homberg (Kassel)
Germany--Kassel
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Leverkusen
Germany--Munich
Germany--Neuss
Germany--Nuremberg
Germany--Osterfeld
Germany--Pforzheim
Poland--Police (Województwo Zachodniopomorskie)
Wales--Bridgend
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mike Connock
100 Squadron
102 Squadron
156 Squadron
1658 HCU
1667 HCU
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
bombing
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
bombing of Hamburg (24-31 July 1943)
Defiant
Halifax
Halifax Mk 1
Halifax Mk 2
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
mine laying
Pathfinders
RAF Driffield
RAF Faldingworth
RAF Grimsby
RAF Pocklington
RAF Riccall
RAF Rufforth
RAF Sandtoft
RAF Stormy Down
RAF Upwood
RAF Warboys
training
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2219/39738/SReidK473650v20012.1.jpg
5af9eb04b3ff0e5c639c1c37d794cc58
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
Reid, Kathryn. Songs and poems
Description
An account of the resource
Thirty-seven items - songs/poems about wartime experiences.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by David Stuart Miers Reid and catalogued by Nigel Huckins
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-01-23
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
Reid, K
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
[underlined] HAPPY CHRISTMAS [/underlined]
“HAPPY CHRISTMAS”
We called cheerily to our friends
Hard to believe
On that Xmas Eve
How quickly happiness ends.
Our Lancaster Crews
Flying safely back
After battling through
Berlins Fighters and Flak,
Homing to Waltham
Through cloud base too low
Nowhere to divert to,
Nowhere else to go,
With fuel finished
So nearly home
They crashed landed
On the fog bound Drome.
On this Christmas night
Eighteen of our young Aircrew
Are lying dead in the Medical Flight.
Along with forty four
Killed the night before.
From the Christmas Eve Service
WE found no solace, nothing.
But our Corporal found she had lost
A diamond from her ring
With a flickering torch
On our bended knees,
Through the sermon we search
Finding ------- nothing.
If we search through life
Will we find why
Our brave Bomber boys
Had to suffer and die?
[underlined] Please God, we will not find [/underlined]
They died for --- nothing.
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
Happy Christmas
Description
An account of the resource
Multi-line poem relates story of crews arriving back at fog bound airfield from operation to Berlin. Aircraft crashed and 18 aircrew were lying dead in medical centre. Laments hoping they did not die for nothing.
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
Text
Text. Poetry
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One page printed document
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending text-based transcription. Under review
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SReidK473650v20012
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
Tricia Marshall
arts and crafts
crash
killed in action
Lancaster
RAF Grimsby
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1018/11482/BWynnDWynnIAv1.1.pdf
9dec228d01b48b5c5ece6433260ba0f1
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
Wynn, Ian Archer
I A Wynn
Description
An account of the resource
146 Items. Collection concerns Pilot Officer Ian Archer Wynn (1908 - 1943, 146838 Royal Air Force). After training as ground crew he remustered as a flight engineer and flew operations with 100 Squadron. He was killed 25 May 1943 on an operation from RAF Grimsby to Düsseldorf. Collection consists of a diary, a memorial book, an official report on what was his final operation, photographs of his crew, his family and the squadron as well as official correspondence from Air Ministry and British Red Cross, letters of condolence and a large number of letters from Ian Wynn to his wife Kathleen. <br /><br />The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Patrick Anthony Wynn and catalogued by Nigel Huckins. <br /><br />Additional information on Ian Archer Wynn is available via the <a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/126116/">IBCC Losses Database.</a>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-07-13
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Wynn, IA
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
Ian Archer Wynn memorial book
Description
An account of the resource
An album book containing: 1. Photographs of Ian Wynn, his family and his first crew captain. 2. A history of his first captain. 3. Letter of sympathy and memorial scroll. 4. A diary of events from joining the air force up to first operation fully described in item #11456. 5. Details of his awards. 6. Letters from the padre at RAF Binbrook described at items #11477 and #11478. 7. Details of a operation to Dortmund. 8 Details of his final operation to Dusseldorf on 25 May 1943 described at item #11483. 9. Career details of German night fighter pilot Manfred Meuer (he shot down Ian Wynn's aircraft). 10. Details of ceremony at Herkenbosch (Limburg, Netherlands) cemetery in 2013. 11. Photographs of Bomber Command memorial, London and the grave of Ian Wynn. 12, Wynn family tree. 13. Acknowledgements. 13. Photographs of Lancaster
This item has been redacted in order to protect the privacy of the lender.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
David Wynn
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2004-04
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Album with 53 pages
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Map
Photograph
Text. Correspondence
Text. Memoir
Text. Diary
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
BWynnDWynnIAv1
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Canadian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--London
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Düsseldorf
Netherlands
Netherlands--Nijmegen
Germany
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-05-25
2013-05-24
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. 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
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
100 Squadron
aircrew
final resting place
flight engineer
George VI, King of Great Britain (1895-1952)
killed in action
Lancaster
memorial
RAF Binbrook
RAF Grimsby
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/816/10798/PFarrAA1701.1.jpg
3e058e95595921e20571e4b0fbccb768
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/816/10798/AFarrAA170712.2.mp3
d49cec1a2dbe85a82d83be9b60eed25b
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
Farr, Allan Avery
A A Farr
Description
An account of the resource
Six items. An oral history interview with Allan Farr DFM (1923 - 2018, 1434564 Royal Air Force) as well as his flying logbook, a photograph, list of operations, a map, contemporary photograph and a song. He flew operations as an air gunner with 100, 625 and 460 Squadrons.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Allan Farr 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
2017-07-12
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
Farr, AA
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today is the 12th of July 2017 and we’re in Barnwood, Gloucester with Allan Farr, DFM to talk about his life and times. So, Alan what are your earliest recollections of life?
AF: Well, the earliest recollection that I, that I can think of is school. Although you had to be four and a half or five to go to the juniors, but I started off by going to, let me think now for a minute [pause] Benedict’s Road School. Which was in Small Heath. I can remember going each morning through Digby Park to get to the school from the place where we lived in Floyer Road, Small Heath. That was pretty well straightforward then. The only time I had any ruckus at school was when my teeth became bad and I had to go to the dentist and he took eight double teeth out. Now, for a child off five I can remember all of that. And I can remember my mother of course going with me and saying, ‘Now, you behave yourself.’ [laughs] As if somebody wouldn’t behave themselves in the, in the dental bloody trade. And of course they hadn’t got all the equipment then because what was I? Five and a half. Six and a half. All through eating sugary stuff. But my teacher was named Miss Walters and when she said, ‘Why were you away from school for two or three days?’ I forget what it was now. And I said to her, ‘It’s because I had some teeth out ma’am.’ ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘You must let me see this. Open your mouth.’ And she ran her finger around the gums that I’d got now instead of teeth. See. And that at the age appalled me. And I went home. And I never went to that school again.
CB: Oh right.
AF: Simply because of the disbelief. And I, I went then to Somerville Road School which I think was the junior school. That was on the Green Lane. And funnily enough we moved home then to live in Palace Road which was sort of lined up, if you think of it as a gun barrel onto the school that I was going to go to. And that little thing is, that’s that one thing has remained in memory, oh forever you know. The school. I had good friends. One passed away a few years ago. Frank Aden. I could never understand why I couldn’t do my muffler up like him. He had a lovely wool muffler and it seemed to fill this area because he fluffed it up. And I had a thin scarf from my mother which used to tie around my neck and slowly encircle me you know, sort of thing. We used to do a lot of bicycle riding but only locally. But used to stay out well until half past eight, 9 o’clock, you know. Otherwise and that it was purely a child’s life. My father worked at the coal stores in town. He used to take me to work with him on a Saturday because I enjoyed, enjoyed being with the workers in the coal stores. You know. One of those things that other children hadn’t got, I suppose. But, and the Market Hall was very, very close to the [unclear] Mansel’s Coal Stores. And I liked the market, I liked the flavour of the market. Men and women altogether working away. Every sort of stall you could think, think of. Even to its, its own animal, little animal zoo which I thought was lovely to have in a town because Birmingham was a big place. But slowly grew up until my only, what can you say? My only sort of adventure left was to work actually in the Market Hall itself. Which I did do finally at Reg Johnson’s Fish Monger and Poulterer and I was there until unfortunately the Market Hall got bombed and became a wreck. But the council, what they did made sort of daylight stalls where people could rent either a fish and poultry shop or a flower shop or anything that would make a shop and you were given a stall. And that I stopped at until I was eighteen and a quarter when I joined up because my father was now in uniform as a second lieutenant. Regained his commission. And we saw him on regular sort of trips back home. And I thought he was quite magnificent [laughs] as a child you know. For getting on for twelve, thirteen, fourteen then. Left school at fourteen. Went straight to the Market Hall. Straight to Reg Johnson who was a friend of my father’s and I began work at fourteen in the Market Hall. And it seemed to me that my what, my finest dream had been recognised by somebody somewhere because now I worked in the market and that’s what I’d always wanted. Not much really but it was, it was a life on its own. The market was quite full of good people you know. Working class of course but they were at it all the time. And I had one or two little adventures in the market but nothing really much. One of them was I’d not long left them and I was in blue. In the RAF. And I was stationed in civilian lodgings in Blackpool but I was on duty this one day with a rifle and five rounds of ammunition and a whistle. And I was guarding Derby Baths. If you know perhaps of the size of it I had to walk around along the front with a rifle at the slope. And I was doing just that one day and something I remember is I could see from the corner of my eye even though I was walking up and down with a rifle outside the Derby Baths an RAF officer coming from my right to walk past me. So I thought, right I’d better recognise him somehow because of his rank. He’s an officer. I could tell by the quality of his overcoat. And as he came to me I got the rifle at the slope and I saluted him by putting my fingers to my right temple and he walked on a few paces. Then he stopped and came back and he said, ‘Do you know sonny, one of us has done wrong here and I don’t know which one it is.’ And he turned around and walked away again. All is forgiven sort of thing. I should have saluted him on the butt of course [laughs] But that was a small adventure that always stuck with me because he was so nice about it. And I thought I’ve joined the right mob for a start off, you know. They’re alright. They forgive you quickly. But otherwise than that I was stationed at Croydon and stationed at St Mawgan down in Cornwall until it came my turn to go for training for an air gunner which was about twelve months later because they were really filled up with all sorts of people wanting to do their bit. And the next thing we know, I think it was either twenty eight or forty of us all wanting training as air gunners finished up on the docks at Liverpool looking for a boat called the [pause] We were going to Canada anyhow. Can’t think of the name of the boat and it’s rather important because we were going to go through miles and miles and miles of the same sort of boat. A nine knot convoy it was. And I can’t think of the name of the boat now. Should be able to. But we were found jobs on board a lovely little ship. A nine thousand tonner, if you can say, you know a nice little ship but it was all the corridors down below decks were done with cedar and different named woods. It turned out to be an ATA boat which was an Air Transport boat, which was Air Transport Auxiliary and they would fly planes over, be sorted out and go back on a boat to fly some more planes over. So I thought that was very clever. So we had a good boat to go across to Canada. We landed at Halifax. But it was a nine knot convoy so I think it took us about fifteen days to do the trip across the North Sea. I hope I’ve got that right. Geography never was my good class. But anyhow we settled off. While I was being in England I’d become a member of the RAF boxing team with the very clever reason that because they wanted my name on the programme. Farr. Because Tommy Farr was the boxer then and he was getting ready to fight Joe Louis [laughs] That was another thing that my name sorted. Sorted me out. But that’s what it was. And what happened was of course when we got to Halifax in Canada immediately I was, I became another member of the RAF Canada apostrophe [pause] in the boxing team. I caught some very nice blows as well. I didn’t do very well. They all had more experience than me but I stuck to it. And there we did our training and we went back on the Elizabeth. It took us sixteen days crossing. Fifteen, sixteen days crossing in a nine thousand ton boat. And going back home we landed up north in Scotland and we had to be ferried by small boats across from where the Elizabeth lay to where the harbour was because the boat was too big for the harbour. So, that was another little adventure. And on one occasion going across I was in the small boat taking us to the harbour when it crossed in front of the Elizabeth where she lay and it’s amazing the size of that boat. And my job on board with a rifle and no ammunition, I don’t think I looked very trustworthy was to guard the foot of the stairs leading to the bridge in case of any trouble. But I suppose I was supposed to hit them with the rifle and not shoot them because I’d got no ammunition. I always felt wrong about that somehow or other. Still. And also we, we were given the location which we were to call the sergeant’s mess because we were sergeants now. Now we were trained aircrew. And the first meal I had or second or third meal I had on the Elizabeth was breakfast on a boarded up [pause] Oh, it was a boarded up swimming pool and that’s, with trestle tables and chairs, that’s where we had our sergeant’s meal twice a day. And one of the waiters coming out brought me my breakfast and it was a man I’d worked for in the Birmingham Market Hall named Jack Bickerstaff. And he never spoke to me and I’d worked for him as an employee for some time. And he never spoke to me. I never spoke to him except to say, ‘Thank you.’ But what I felt like saying was, ‘You sit down and eat my breakfast.’ It looked like he needed it. But I hadn’t got the pluck and I didn’t see him again. But I found out that he’d been passing communist literature around somewhere where he was stationed in Canada so they booted him back again on the Elizabeth. Back to be demobbed. Not wanted. That’s terrible for a grown man isn’t it? But anyhow it happened. Never saw him again. Joined [pause] went from there to Croydon. That’s from Chipping Warden to Croydon. Then we were warned off about going on a course to become air gunners. We’d already done the basic training in Canada. We were only there sort of three months but they asked me if I wanted to join the Canadian Royal Air Force because I knew more about aircraft recognition than they did. It had been my hobby and they wanted me to become an instructor in Canada. But I thought long and hard about it but what my father would have thought about it I don’t know. So I stayed as I was and went back home to win the war. That’s [laughs] all I can say about that period. He’d, my father unfortunately was becoming an ill man so he had to finish. He was demobbed and Ansell’s, the publican people gave him a pub in Wolverhampton for somewhere to live and to run. Which he did with my mother, Faye. And I was of course in the RAF and now I was doing circuits and bumps in a Wellington at Lichfield because that was the name of the aerodrome where they trained air gunners. And next thing we know we did our final trip which was to Paris where we dropped leaflets. And then we went to my first Squadron which was 100 Squadron. Used to be a fighter Squadron during the war 100 Squadron but it was bomber now and it was Wellingtons. In Canada we trained on Fairey Battles and I sat with a Vickers gas operated machine gun on a Scarfe mounting. But that was soon all over. They didn’t spend a lot of time with us with training. To go from a single Scarfe mounted machine gun to a turret with four automatic machine guns took some beating really. But times being what they were you didn’t moan. You just got on with it. And so I passed my air gunner’s test. The way they crewed us up they’d got seven different categories of crew at Chipping Warden. No. Not Chipping Warden. At Lichfield, which was our Operational Training Unit. We went there to train to be air gunners in turrets. And a daunting thing it was as well because all the turrets were so complicated and yet so basic. You know. You either loved it or left it. But I stuck it out. And then we were called together, the seven different categories of crew and we were all shepherded in to the officer’s mess and we were told to sort ourselves out in crews. They found this was the, the better way. That like would attract like, I presume. I don’t know. But we had, I think there was [pause] it takes a bit of figuring out. Seven in a crew. And then we had to form I think it was twenty crews all with seven in. And had to report to somebody at a desk as you are writing all our names down in lots of sevens because that’s what the crews were going to be. And that’s what they were doing all over England I presume to get crews together. They had to train them all. But of course pilot’s training was running to a year or more than that. And navigators was a long course. But I got my little air gunner’s brevet and I was happy as I was. My father was pleased. My mother was worried. But that’s how it all was at that time. And so we finished up on the Squadron, 100 Squadron as operational. Which I thought was great. I had worries. But as long as my mother and father didn’t worry I wasn’t going to worry. But I think they were good actors basically. Yeah. We were on the Squadron now.
CB: We’re going to pause just for a minute.
AF: As you wish.
CB: Yeah. Only —
[recording paused]
AF: Yeah.
CB: So just going back a bit the interesting thing is that you and your future wife joined the RAF together but how did you come to go to the bureau to sign up and —
AF: In Dale End.
CB: Yes.
AF: It was a Recruiting Office. And the three recruiting offices had taken over offices in Dale End. Navy, Army, Air Force. And the air force as far I was concerned was all that was needed because the flight sergeant who was the recruiting officer or sergeant when I said to him an air gunner he said, ‘That’s the sort of thing we want.’ he said, ‘Anybody else like you at home or anything?’ I said, ‘No, sir. Just me.’ He said, ‘Oh well, you’ll have to do. Good luck.’ I said, ‘Thank you.’ And my wife unfortunately was nine, eighteen months older than me and she went away quicker to be in the forces properly. And my mates. I was working at Mac Fisheries then because we’d been told that the coal stores was becoming a Reserved Occupation and we wouldn’t be able to join up. So we’d better get a move on and make up our minds and that’s why we went on that Saturday. She joined the RAF, the WAAF. I joined the RAF to train as an air gunner. And I was content with life. I can’t think of remembering anything absolutely wrong.
CB: How did they encourage you to join a particular specialty? So —
AF: Oh no. No.
CB: Did they ask you what you wanted to do?
AF: No. I said to the flight sergeant, ‘What’s the quickest way to get in to the RAF? What’s the quickest way to become useful in the RAF?’ He said, ‘Become an air gunner.’ I said, ‘Well, put me down for that please, flight sergeant. That’ll suit me.’ I didn’t know they were killing them off as quick as they were training them [laughs] So he’d earned his Kings Shilling for the day hadn’t he? Eh? Yeah.
CB: Did it well. You went out to Canada.
AF: Yes. For training.
CB: So how did that, so you landed at Halifax. Then what?
AF: Well —
CB: You had this long trip.
AF: Yes. And we were treated quite nicely and treated properly but they had, they couldn’t put us into an Air Gunnery School because all the schools they’d got were full. So we had to wait at Halifax. No. We went from Halifax to Moncton which was like another holding station if you like for trainees. And we were taught rudimentary air gunnery at Moncton. But the real training came back home in England. They hadn’t got the equipment. And in fact they asked me and this is true, they asked me to stay. There was an opportunity for me to stay as a trainee instructor on aircraft recognition at Moncton. And I said, ‘Oh, no. No. I want to carry on and work my way through. I want to become an air gunner properly.’ They said, ‘But you won’t be involved in the war and you’ll certainly get your ranks come automatically. You know, if you spend two or three years at Moncton you’ll, you’ll have the rank of whatever is awarded to you.’ No. No. It wasn’t what I wanted. I said, ‘My father wouldn’t like it anyhow. Let’s get back home and help them there.’ ‘Oh,’ they said, ‘Alright. If that’s your attitude.’ I said, ‘It’s not my attitude. It’s my feelings.’ And that’s exactly what it was.
CB: You’d got an urge to actually do something that you regarded as practical.
AF: And quickly.
CB: And contributory.
AF: Yeah. But it took me, oh another must have been ten months before I got through to my course. Then you had to go on another course to get yourself prepared for what a rear turret was. Or a mid-upper turret. They never told you about these things but you’d obviously have to use them so they put you on a course. Another separate course for the use of a turret with four guns or with two guns. So I was happy enough with a turret with four guns. I thought you’ve got twice as many as the other people on the mid upper turrets, you know. And I played my part and that was it as far as I can make out. Had a marvellous crew. I had a good crew. The first crew I had was one with the wireless operator in named Brockbank. Here’s the crew. As small as it is.
CB: Excellent. Yeah.
AF: That’s the first crew. And not much else we could do. And we did our training and our final bout of training was to, I’ll pass it to the gentleman here.
[pause]
AF: We had to go, not bomb Paris but to drop leaflets on Paris. You’ve possibly heard this story before.
CB: Keep going.
AF: Yeah. And it was in a Wellington and I was, there was no mid-upper so the wireless operator took over the part of the other gunner if was necessary. And his name was Brocklebank. He’d got an L in it for a start off. And if you think of coming up the fuselage of a Wellington. Not all that big but far bigger than a Spitfire or a Hurricane. And then when you came to where your shoulder would be near the pilot and you’d be down a step you’d be heading for the bomb aimer’s position. And we had a lovely bomb aimer because he had to be woken up to drop the bombs [laughs] I haven’t made that up. God honest. Because the pilot got used to the, to the habit of saying, ‘Give the bomb aimer a kick.’ [laughs] because he’d be asleep going to the target. He thought it was all a load of bunkum. This business of doing that there and the other. But [Noel Macer] his name was and he was a lovely chap basically but he did like his little, his little ways you know. A bit nutty if you like but he was genuine enough. And that’s what they used the Wellingtons for which were pretty useless for anything else actually.
CB: Just on your Paris trip.
AF: Yes.
CB: How many planes went with you and how many came back?
AF: Only, only, we only went on our own. We had to follow the navigational plot that they’d got for us to cross over the Channel. The western France. Follow their route because this was, this was a trip for the whole seven members of the crew. Navigator, bomb aimer, pilot, who was a beautiful pilot. No doubt about it at all. And we all hoped to stick together because that was the plan. Not to stick with other people.
CB: No.
AF: Your own men sort of thing. And we did.
CB: So, going back to your training in Canada you said it was quite short. So what bomb aimer training did you have there on the ground or in the air?
AF: Oh, no. We only had air gunners.
CB: I meant to say air gunner. Sorry.
AF: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. What air gunner training did you have on the ground?
AF: Well —
CB: And in the air in Canada.
AF: We wondered what a dome building was. Made of brick. The second or third day of our training they took us in there and I still don’t remember. I’ve got the photograph of this. It was experimental group that we were with. They were all air gunners. All training as air gunners. But we went in this domed building and what it was it was domed and also it was painted white inside and there was a moving platform as well with equipment like this sort of thing but much bigger which threw an enemy fighter on to the curved area of this dome. And you sat in a turret which moved about on a long sort of pole and you had two guns but it was a cinemata. A camera. And you actually, as you supposedly blazed away at this one aircraft that was being shot on to this dome interior of the domed building it was all being kept on film. And you were told what the lead was and how, how far you would have to fire in front of one of the planes to make a hit while you were doing it sort of thing. It was very, very clever in its way and it gave you the feelings of what you were doing were worthwhile. But you were glad to go home.
CB: This is called deflection shooting.
AF: Deflection shooting. Quite right. That’s right.
CB: Now, what about flying in the air. Because they were Fairey Battles in Canada. Did you get —
AF: Ah, well, I got into trouble. The only time in my service. But we were at an RAF station down south in Cornwall.
CB: St Eval or somewhere like that, was it?
AF: St Eval. Yeah, well St Eval was north of, of St Mawgan.
CB: Yeah.
AF: St Mawgan. We used to fly when, when you did fly you flew off a cliff into the great blue yonder sort of business.
CB: Yeah.
AF: We did our share of flying at Cornwall.
CB: But in Canada did you fly in a Battle in your training there?
AF: Yes. We did. We did flying in a Fairey Battle with a pilot in the cockpit and then you sat in the open cockpit at the back with the Vickers gas operated machine gun. But it was so cold and very often it was twenty and thirty below, and to fire your machine gun you had to jam it against the side of the fuselage with the rifle part sticking out over the side of the aircraft and you had, you fired the gun several times. That was to blew the interior to let it see, let it see that it had been fired. But what we were doing actually was using one, one case of, of machine gun bullets and when we thought we’d downed or blew the inside of the machine gun we held the rest. We knocked the spring off and held the rest over the side the fuselage and it spun all the bullets out into the River St Lawrence below because it was just too cold to aim.
CB: Yeah.
AF: And most of the pilots were either Polish or foreign. Foreign people who hardly understood us but they were flying us so we had to be nice to them. And when we’d finished unloading all the bullets we crawled up the interior of the fuselage and tapped the pilot on the left shoulder. That was the only way you could talk. He had no intercom at all. And they knew right away that that tap meant back home, land, breakfast or dinner, what was on and that was it.
CB: How did they tell you about your scores in your practice?
AF: Oh. It was all a bit ridiculous really. This is my logbook. It’s got everything in there that I did. And in the back couple of pages is the programme and proficiency assessments. Here we are, sir. Oops sorry. That’s it.
CB: Ok. But it didn’t last very long in Canada.
AF: Well, once we’d gone through all the manoeuvres and the air to air firing and air to, there would be a Fairey Battle would tow like a long stocking.
CB: A drogue.
AF: A drogue. And you had to wait until he passed you because obviously one or two got excited and started firing at the plane. Which didn’t help a lot, you know but [laughs] it was all in good, good sport. No doubt about that.
CB: How much damage did the planes get?
AF: No. Well, we had several talkings to. Let’s put it that way. What not to do and it was meant what not to do was to fire at that bleeding plane. ‘The drogue’s what you fire at, you bloody fool. You’ll never become an air gunner,’ you know. But you did. They needed them too badly. But that’s true that is. Yeah. I would have placed him in the same spot as the bloke who said I was wrong at Derby Baths [laughs] But they did their best. Everybody did their best then.
CB: So when you then returned as you said you went to the OTU.
AF: That’s right.
CB: And what did you do at the OTU?
AF: That was —
CB: At Lichfield.
AF: That was, to start off we did nothing else but circuits and bumps. And this was to get the pilot familiarised with his crew and what they’d got to do because you had, we had to sit at our positions. Mind you we only had six in the crew because they had no mid-upper turrets then. Those came later. But we had mock ups and we used to run around outside on the grass with people with rifles. And the runners were taking model aircraft of quite some size and we had to run with those so that the ones with rifles could work out what the lead was ahead of the flying aircraft. But they did their best. They did their best. That’s about all you can say. Because they were, this was done in groups of sort of thirty or forty. You know. And you didn’t get, have your bomb aimers with you or the pilots. They were away doing other courses. But it all came together in the end. We were all re-joined again and made into aircrew.
CB: But at the, at the OTU you formed the crew.
AF: That’s right.
CB: How did you do that?
AF: At the, we were told to go to the big lounge in the officer’s mess and we were given a pen, a pencil and paper and we sat around in chairs. We had a chat with people. They made us cups of tea. Who did you like? Who didn’t you like? Who treated you well? And who, blah blah blah. But the whole idea was for you to form a crew of six on your own which you did.
CB: Yeah.
AF: And you could always be told that for any reason at all you could leave the six at any time as long as you gave a specific reason. You know. But nobody did. Everybody stuck with who they’d got. And then we had the same number of crew forwarded in a few days time. And they were the engineers because we were going on to four engine aircraft and they would be needed, engineers to balance out petrol and all that when you were flying.
CB: This was going to the Heavy Conversion Unit.
AF: Heavy. That’s right. Yeah.
CB: So where was that?
AF: Blyton? I think. I think that name sort of sticks somehow or other.
CB: Ok.
AF: But we only stopped there a week. That was all. Just to get the crew together and to get the engineer to balance his petrol flows and everything else which was rather important.
CB: So you’re on a four engine aeroplane now. What is it?
AF: A Lancaster.
CB: Right. Ok. How did you like that?
AF: Thought it was great. Well, I did. Of course you had to stay in your positions. You had to take everything very seriously but as long as you could aim and use your turret. And you got your fair share of orange juice in the little tins. They used to freeze as well when you went on ops but you weren’t told about that. Bloody orange juice. You had to get it open with the cocking lever to a machine gun inverted and one hand on top of it and the other put the orangeade on the, well the orange juice on your knee and keep hitting it. When you got through you found the bleeding stuff was frozen. We had our disappointments as well but that’s true that is. Yeah. Yes. I had my eyes freeze up once. The wireless operator, Bobby Brockbank on instructions from the pilot had to come down, open my turret, rear turret, lay me down flat and put his heating gloves on my face because they’d had, we’d had instructions that they were going to take Perspex out of the turrets so they wouldn’t get dirtied. The surface of the turret. But they never thought about the wind bringing the bloody rain in on us. We used, we used to get soaked. And my eyes actually froze up where I couldn’t open them and I couldn’t speak properly. As though everything was frozen. Started to change our minds a bit then but once you got back home people talked you out of things. But it was scary that was. When you couldn’t see. What bleeding good’s an air gunner if you can’t see? Phew. It annoyed me I can tell you. But that was true that was. That was true.
CB: So, from Blyton, from the HCU, you went to 100 Squadron. Where was 100 Squadron stationed?
AF: White Waltham. Near Grimsby.
CB: Waltham.
AF: Waltham. Yeah. That’ll do.
CB: Yeah.
AF: When we’d done eighteen trips and believe it or not at eighteen operational flights in 1943, when you’d done eighteen trips you were experienced. There was Berlins. There was Colognes. There was Essens. There was all sorts of famous German towns that we must have caused awful wreckage at, you know. But it had to be done. It wasn’t a game and that was the end of that sort of thing. You went and you hoped to come back. That’s what we called our plane at [pause] what was the name of 100 Squadron? Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
AF: At Waltham.
CB: At Waltham. Yeah.
AF: Yeah. We’d go. We’d come back after the famous radio funny man.
CB: Oh, Lord Haw Haw.
AF: Hmmn?
CB: Lord Haw Haw.
AF: No. No. No. He was English.
CB: Oh, funny man. Right.
AF: Yeah. Funny man. A comedian. We go. We come back. He was talking to the natives of course.
CB: Right. Yeah. Yeah.
AF: But that’s what we called our aircraft. Oh, and I hope you don’t mind but when we did our first operational flight to Paris to drop the paperwork. The —
CB: The leaflets.
AF: It was to talk the Germans in Paris out of fighting the war. But of course that was useless but that was part of our training that was.
CB: Yeah.
AF: And there was a front bulkhead door which meant to say if the wireless operator, Bobby had to get in to the front turret there was a big door. Must have been like that and like that that was held by two locks. And that’s, the air gunner if he was going to do an air gunner job in the front turret he had to be locked in that because the air was so great coming through if it was open that the, the Wellington used to take the attitude of a, of a Whitley. And that was a nose down flight. They reckon there was that many Whitleys got away with it because the Germans aimed ahead of the apparent motion and they were firing here and the Whitley was flying above them if you like to think of it that way. And that broke away from its moorings. That bulkhead door broke away. We couldn’t even fasten it. We’d got nothing to fasten it with. There was two locks this side and hinges that side and it was the hinges that broke through constant use. And we just had to sort of sit and wonder you know what it was all about really. Nothing you could do about it but they soon repaired it. Didn’t destroy it.
CB: With —
AF: That was part of the other story.
CB: Yes. That’s ok. So you said with 100 Squadron after eighteen trips.
AF: After eighteen.
CB: What was the significance of eighteen trips?
AF: Well, we had to, we joined three more crews from four more Squadrons and we formed 625 Squadron with those extra men. Well, they weren’t extra. They were extra to the Squadron that was being formed. We thought it was quite an honour because now we’d got different mates and different people but we had psychologists and psychiatrists come along and taught us. Talk to us about how we felt about doing operations and losses and all that business. And they asked us not to make too strong friends of any of the other crews but to make friends of our own crew. Look upon them as brothers and all that. I thought it a load of cobblers but they tried it out and the idea was that you weren’t [pause] you weren’t affected, or you shouldn’t be affected by the loss of other aircrew. It’s your own aircrew you had to stand by sort of thing. Some enjoyed it and some disliked it but it was up to them. But I suppose to a certain extent it had to work because they didn’t want too many moaners. But we formed 625. And what happened then, we had Stan [pause] We had the navigator. I can give you his first name. I can’t think of his second. He lived, he lived in Lincoln. His father worked in the steel works. Course the one thing that people disliked but they were shot out in their hundreds I believe by the aircrew and that was a telegram. And of course Stan Cunningham. Stan Cunningham, he sent his laundry on a regular basis home to his mother in Lincoln because we weren’t far from Lincoln at Grimsby. And she used to send them back in about four or five days ironed and pressed and aired and great. None, none the rest of us bothered. We tried to wash our stuff or fancied a pretty WAAF and get her to do the washing if you could [laughs] I was lucky at times. Very nice. Dizzy, the WAAF hairdresser was allowed in the men’s area for cutting hair. She was the Squadron hairdresser, you know. A lovely girl as well. But you couldn’t do much about it. One of them things. Just get your hair cut and get out of it. A shame. Are you alright? Good. And we did, we were told by the, the weather people that when we came back that night, we were going to Stettin which was farther east then Berlin. So it was a long trip and a cold trip too because it was I think it was October, November, December, one of them months. And unfortunately Stan got hit in his little navigator’s cubicle and lost part of his, his leg. So of course we pressed on sort of thing and dropped our bombs but we remembered what the Met people had told us. And the, one of the Met men told the skipper, he said, ‘When you leave the French Coast,’ he said, ‘Lose height because you’ll be able to tell when you hit England just what the weather is like. See in the distance.’ And it was all the searchlights that were set up because every Squadron had its own searchlight pattern and you could see it for miles away and you headed for it because you wanted to get down. But [pause] I don’t know what. Oh, it got to the point where poor Stan was losing a lot of blood and we couldn’t do much about it because he’d lost the thick part of the left leg. And the skipper said to call up Mayday. He said, ‘It’s the last request but call up Mayday and let’s get Stan somewhere where he can get some treatment.’ We called up and we happened to be in [pause] there was thick fog. We called up Mayday. Mayday. Mayday. All the time until it got answered and we only, ‘We got you. We’ve got you on our — ‘
CB: On the radar.
AF: Hmmn?
CB: On the radar.
AF: Yes. ‘We’ve got you on the radar.’ On the H2S. Whatever it was, ‘And we’ll get, get you directed to us. And we’re also equipped with FIDO.’ Now, FIDO was the —
CB: Fog clearing system.
AF: Fog clearing system. Yeah. And we saw them. We more or less saw the FIDO switched on. And it sort of cut a long piece of cake out of the fog. And the skipper nipped in very very quickly and got the wireless op to call up that we had wounded aboard. One wounded aboard. Because we were quite lucky, you know. Over the trips. And we landed and the moment we landed they switched the flames off because all the flame burners were down each runway and they could switch them on. But we landed and I helped get Stan to the, helped carry him. We had to lay him out. We had no stretcher. We had to lay him out on a board of some sort we’d got and put him in the ambulance. And I heard from him sixty years later [laughs]
CB: How did that come about?
AF: Well, it was me that was dilatory. You’d think with flying with a brother that you’d want to know how he got on. But the world was moving on. We had to get another navigator. But we didn’t use him because they screened us to become instructors. So we lost that navigator and I had six months at Waterbeach where we had a demob centre of our own. And they were flying Liberators from Waterbeach to India. To aerodromes there where they were picking up I think it was fifteen or sixteen early army troops and they were bringing them to Waterbeach and they were demobbing them there. They’d got their clothes and everything. And we had our dip as well. The pilot used to leave us his carton of rations which had got sweets in and cigarettes and matches and all that. But at Waterbeach there was an officer by the name of Lancaster. You’ve got to remember his name, haven’t you? We were flying them. And also we was there at the time of my marriage to my wife. No. A year after my marriage to my wife. And she was due for demob because she was pregnant which I’m proud to say was all my doing [laughs] But a posting came through while I was getting married on D-Day. June the 6th ’44. With all the family and everything else at a, a white wedding at a church in Yardley, Birmingham. And when the marriage was over, was done and all that business we went all outside talking in groups. My father came to me and he said, ‘They’ve invaded son. You should be alright now.’ I said, ‘Well, it aint won yet, dad. Let’s face it,’ you know. ‘We’ve still got to fight them.’ He said, ‘Oh, well, yeah. I know.’ But he’d been demobbed out of the Army because his health wasn’t right. But Jean and I had a very nice honeymoon at the Lygon Arms, Broadway which was paid for by some Lord or other. Good luck to him. But this Lancaster unknownst to me was put in charge of the gunnery section because lieutenant Mussey was on leave. I was away. And so there was only a couple of instructors and this Lancaster. Unknownst to me he filled a form in for an air gunner to go back and he put my name down while I was enjoying my wedding. Well, of course when it came through the next time it should have been for Lancaster because he’d been away eighteen months. But it wasn’t. It was Farr for some unknown reason. I made no complaint because I was posted within two days and there’s quite enough to do when you’ve got to go somewhere else. I’d got to go to 460 Squadron, Binbrook and take my part there as an air gunner in a Lancaster. But I was only to do twenty trips. That was, that was the score then. Thirty and twenty. But why I put my name down, if a bloke was frightened and Lancaster was frightened to death then he’s a liability to his crew. And the only way they’ll find out is when they get in the aircraft. So I thought, ‘Well, I can do it. I’m strong enough.’ So I did. Mother and dad was upset, ‘Thought you’d done enough, son,’ and all that lark but there we are. My wife done her nut. But I had to do twenty more trips. Yeah. They said Farr was a devil for bloody punishment. They weren’t far wrong either because we were helping Pathfinder force on some occasions at Binbrook. Because Binbrook was Group Squadron. 1 Group Squadron. And we were always in sort of [pause] one of the things they did on us, I think it was the third or fifth trip, I forget now. There were too many trips. But they had fitted a small light to our Lanc and we were to fly it across the target, where ever it was, with this little light on. Well, of course a moving light at about twelve thousand feet is very obvious, isn’t it? And so we got plastered left right and bloody centre by the anti-aircraft fire. They knew very well we were going to bomb that place because we were attracting the attention of the anti- aircraft fire. That’s to deflect attention off the Pathfinder force.
CB: Oh right.
AF: But they soon stopped it because of losses. So, we were alright at Binbrook, 460. But it was still 1 Group and we were still flying Lancs. And I only had to do twenty because I’d done thirty. Well, leading up to thirty. So nobody said a word. But we had a haunting, haunting bloody trip. We went to Stettin. It was our seventeenth or eighteenth trip. We were flying a normal Lancaster. We were happy enough as a crew. But just as the bomb, the bomb aimer was about to open the turret doors the bomb, bombing doors where all the bombs were laid ready to drop the aircraft we were flying reared up like a stallion. Like on its hind legs. Just, just as it was. And then its nose dropped and down we went. Of course you’ve got to the right of the pilot’s seat a wheel and it’s called a trimming wheel. And that is connected to small ailerons on the wings and on the fin and rudder and on the tailplane. That’s the same. No, it isn’t. The tailplane’s the flat one. The fin and rudder’s the upright. It was connected by, it was connected to a smaller aileron on the bigger ailerons. And the whole idea was that if you went into a dive a Lancaster with its bomb load on or without its bomb load on was too heavy for one person to pull out of a dive. But if you got somebody standing by you who could slowly turn this wheel which was connected to the ailerons and the ailerons would move very slowly and they in turn would take the pressure off all the other moving parts and the skipper would be able to pull the aircraft out of the dive. But Stan was in a bad way. And we landed and we watched three of these big hefty sort of house building machines push the Lanc off the runway. Oh no. I’m sorry. I always get stuck on this part [pause] We made it and we shouldn’t have made it. We made it back to our aerodrome. 460 Squadron, Binbrook. I’m sorry.
Other: That’s alright.
AF: I’ve gone all wrong there.
Other: Yeah. From Stettin.
AF: Hmmn?
Other: From Stettin you came back.
AF: We came back all the way from Stettin.
Other: Even though she’d reared up and then gone into a dive.
AF: That’s right. Fortunately he had the bomb aimer there with him to ease the aircraft out of its dive.
Other: The wheel.
AF: That’s right.
Other: Yeah.
AF: With the wheel. And drew. We went over the target and the bomb aimer dropped the bombs. You can put your fingers through holes and pull away the hook. Bomb doors were open so we dropped our bombs because they were a bigger liability than anything else in the world there at the time. Turned around and we were at about six or eight thousand feet and of course [pause] we don’t know what had hit us but something burst into flame on our starboard side. We went into a dive so we were soon away from it. Then the skipper got her out of the dive, pulled her level and said, ‘We’d better have a look around our areas and see what damage had been done.’ If you can see it at all because you’ll find it all underneath. Another plane had hit us head on [laughs] it’s not, it’s not believable.
Other: A glancing blow.
CB: How did you know that? How did you know it had hit you head on?
AF: Because —
CB: The bomb aimer told you, did he?
AF: No. No. No. This thing on fire passed us on the right hand side but he must have hit us about three foot below our eye level because it skidded along the fuselage and then burst into flame and exploded. And that was it. His petrol went up. But it, I cannot tell it quick enough but that’s how it happened. It was all over and the next thing we know we were flying straight and level again at about six thousand feet because the wheel had worked. On the —
CB: What height was the collision?
AF: Oh, I don’t know.
CB: Roughly.
AF: May I read you a little, it’s only a small story because you had to put, we had put we had to put everything down but it might be in that. I don’t think so. “Operation Stettin. Collision with — “ [pause] I’ve got Lanc with a question mark behind it. “Ten miles before target area. Considerable damage to own aircraft. Carried on to bomb at twelve thousand feet.” There you are. There’s your thousand. Twelve thousand feet. We were on our way home and it was slowly getting light. We were in the air nine and three quarter hours. Nine hours and thirty five minutes. Skipper awarded Distinguished Flying Cross and [pause] no. We didn’t land with fog help. That was another trip. This trip, flying back from Stettin as soon as we cleared the English coast we went into Mayday. Mayday. All the time. Mayday. Until we were — no. No. No. Forget that. I’m sorry. But that that doesn’t apply to the raid on Stettin at all.
CB: I’ll tell you what. We’ll stop just for a mo.
AF: Yeah.
[recording paused]
CB: Right. We’re just reconvening now about the Stettin situation.
AF: Yeah.
CB: Because it was a serious event obviously and unexpected. So what was happening? You were ready on the run in to Stettin.
AF: Yes. Yes. And the fighter must have been coming away from Stettin and suddenly I think it was as big a surprise to the fighter as it was to us because a normal way for a fighter to attack a plane is to have a curve of pursuit attack. Which is the way they are trained. But he can’t do a curve of pursuit from head on.
CB: So what, what so this aircraft came on head on at you?
AF: Well, no.
CB: Is that what you’re saying?
AF: You see, we didn’t even know that.
CB: No.
AF: All we know is suddenly our aircraft reared up to the point where it almost became impossible to fly because the pilot would have been on his back. And then suddenly this, this explosion to our starboard so that’s that plane done with. And then we went straight into a dive. And it’s impossible that you can stand on your feet when you’re in a Lanc that’s diving but the bomb aimer dropped all his bombs and his, his —
CB: So, he regained control of the aircraft.
AF: That’s right. And we were at twelve thousand feet. We lost about eight.
CB: So when you dropped the bombs you were low.
AF: Oh yes. We were low for a Lancaster.
CB: Right.
AF: And —
CB: And you were flying by then.
AF: And they all went. Yes. We were flying level.
CB: On how many engines?
AF: Two.
CB: Right.
AF: The outer engines. But I wondered sitting in the mid-upper turret. I mean I should have seen something. I mean it must have come as close as I am to you. The pilot of that. Because there’s only one in a single engine plane. And even then that’s guesswork. But forget that. Suddenly your plane is flying again normally and the engineer is going mad trying to balance his petrol up because if it maintained, keep his petrol from the two inner engines he’s got that spare to fly on the outers you see. Now, I’ve got to think. I’ve got to think Stettin. We didn’t come across any other aircraft. We were able to maintain our way back home. The [pause] this is, this is chronicled by the way in the RAF 460 Squadron thing in the —
CB: Is it? Good. Right. So we can pick that up there.
AF: Yes.
Other: So coming back now.
AF: That’s right.
Other: To Britain.
AF: Yeah.
Other: Do you do you call Mayday? Because you’re on two engines —
AF: No. No. No
Other: No. That’s where you mixed it up with the other one.
AF: There was a discussion amongst the crew. We were only doing a very low —
Other: Speed.
AF: low speed. That’s obvious because he was trying to maintain, keep whatever petrol he’d got.
Other: Yeah.
AF: For the later journey.
Other: Yeah.
AF: Because you’ve got to travel the full width of France.
Other: Yeah.
AF: If we’re over Stettin.
Other: Yeah.
AF: We’ve got all that.
CB: The width of Germany. Yes.
AF: All the width to the coast. See. But anyhow we were over France in daylight and we could not understand. Not any of us. Couldn’t understand why nobody came up to poke their nose in. They just left us.
Other: Very nice.
AF: If, if anybody had have come up they must have seen that the damage was horrendous. But we couldn’t see it could we? There was no way we could get out of the aircraft and have a look around. So we just left it like that and kept our fingers crossed. And we made it. And this is hardly believable. We made it back to our squadron. Sigh of relief. Sigh of relief. We wanted to hug everybody, you know. They stopped us from landing because they said, ‘You’ll damage your [unclear] will land and it will put the aerodrome out of commission altogether. It’ll no doubt crash. So will you please use the emergency crash ‘drome at Carnaby,’ which is in Scotland, see. We’d had no petrol for an hour. Well, of course it’s not registering on all the dials because the petrol is being used up. But anyhow, we had to say alright because they refused us entry and we went to Carnaby and its five runways. Bigger than all the other runways we’d ever seen and its different surfaces to land on. We picked the middle one and its right from the sea. They said, when we got on to control at Carnaby, they said, ‘There’s no other aircraft in the vicinity. You can go out to sea as far as you like and come in as slow as you like.’ And we didn’t know what he was trying to tell us at all but they didn’t like the look of it. You know. Anyhow, we had a chat together because we could all link up with the intercom on the plane and the skipper said, ‘I’m going to go out to sea again. I’m going to come in as slow as I possibly can,’ and he said, he looked at the bomb aimer and he said, ‘I want you to have your face pressed against the starboard window in the cockpit. You others can look through the small windows there are,’ down each side of the fuselage in the Lanc, ‘And you can tell the skipper anything you want that is useful. But for God’s sake no idle chatter,’ he said, ‘ Because what I’m going to try and do, I’m going to try and put the weight of the aircraft, and the wheels down if they’re working. If they’re not working then I’ve got to think again but we’ve got to get the wheels down and locked. So you get your faces against the little windows and my gunner, engineer will see about what petrol we’ve got and if we’re alright.’ And we came back in again then on to the middle runway. I don’t know what surface it was but he came in with the tail down. The port wheel, it, it was swinging and it came forward and it locked at an angle. The starboard wheel was just swinging. So that was going to be the trouble. The right hand one. So the skipper said to the bomb aimer, ‘Keep your eye on that starboard wheel, he said, ‘’m going to bring it in in any case. I’m bringing it in as slow as I can and as low as I can and the moment it touches the earth I’m going to pull the joystick back and put the weight on it.’ He said, ‘That’s all I can do,’ You know, ‘God bless you all and thank you very much.’ And we had to take up our crash positions either side of the main spar and look through the little windows and sure enough the right hand wheel was flapping. But suddenly the plane lurched and it come down and the wheel snapped, locked. The right hand wheel. [laughs] I see it now.
Other: Yeah.
AF: I can see it now. Locked. I thought thank God for that. We pulled up [pause] A wagon came out to pick us up as members of a crew. And there is on board the plane, on a chute behind the navigator’s little hut if you like, there’s a seven million candle power photoflash that goes out the chute of its own accord. Activated by the first bomb. So that travels down to the height where the bomb explodes and the photoflash is set off at the same time so that they get exactly where the bombs have landed.
Other: Right.
AF: And the plane pulled to a standstill and the skipper said, ‘I want you all out as quick as you can. The plane may explode.’ We don’t know what might happen after this. And so we all hurtled out. And the photoflash had been shook loose by the collision and had started its travel down the chute to go out with the first bomb. But instead of that the plane had hit it so it must have been under the aircraft. The German fighter had hit it and bent it in to the Lancaster like a screw into wood. Yeah. That was, you know a five hundred pound bomb going off on its own. We had a look around. Oh. Now then. I’ve missed a lump out here. Oh. I’m sorry. But I’d said to the skipper after the collision and we’d dropped the bombs, ‘I’m going to remain in the mid-upper skipper because I can see more from there than anybody else.’ ‘Alright, son. Do what you like as long as you’re helping.’ So I waited in that plane and I said to the crew about half an hour later, I give it time to settle, I said to the crew, ‘It looks like the port fin and rudder,’ and they’re like elongated eggs on a Lancaster, I said, ‘It looks like it’s badly damaged and its starting to move.’ I said, ‘I’m sorry about this but it’s true.’ I said, ‘So, wherever you are get your parachute close to you so at least you can get out of the aircraft,’ I said, and, ‘I’ll stop here. I’ll just keep my eye on that fin and rudder.’ As it grew lighter the fin and rudder wasn’t moving. But the plane had grazed its way down our fuselage and released loads and loads of this white metal and that had wrapped itself around the fin and rudder. And it was that that was shaking. So I called up the crew. I said, ‘The fin and rudder appears to be safe but I don’t know. But it won’t stand a lot of shaking about I can tell you that,’ I said, ‘But I’ve got to tell you because you need your parachutes with you.’ You know. I said, ‘I’m going to get mine now it’s got lighter. We can see we’ve got a plane.’ As I went to jump down from the half turret of the mid-upper gunner I felt somebody hammering on this part of the leg because I’m sitting on sort of, this is part of the dustbin and the guns are here. So I looked down. I could see out there and it’s the wireless operator again. Bobby Brockbank. And he’s going like this to me, up. Eyes. So I leant right over and looked down [laughs] and there was no plane. The H2S equipment which is bigger than that table, far bigger and like a pear shape, that had been thrown against the rear turret of the rear gunner. So, of course we thought about him then. So I said to, I motioned to Bobby. I said, move out of the way and I was able to climb down the fuselage inside because it was all long lengths of metal. So I got down and we moved all that junk from behind the rear gunner so that he could get out and have his, drink his orange juice if he wanted to. But what we did then is we sat ourselves in the, in the spaces where the main spar is joined to the fuselage. We had four of us in there in holds. So that was better. And then yeah what a fool. What a bloody idiot. We had this, this bloke we were nearing the coast and you could see fog and we called up Mayday. Mayday. Mayday continually all the time. And finally they called us back and said, ‘If you go on to — ’ [pause] oh what do they call them? Bloody. ‘If you go, if you go on route — ’ such and such, ‘You’ll hit our aerodrome and you’ll see the fog lights are on. You can land. There’s no other plane about.’ And we did this and landed straightaway. He put the aircraft down plonk and the wheels shot forward [laughs] you know. How do you look at it? It’s nothing else but pure bloody marvellous. You know. We did a little dance. At least we were flying still. We landed, pulled up, and immediately they sent three of these bulldozers out to push the aircraft off the spot where we had landed to all, there was all crashed aircraft there. Piles of them. They sent a van out for us. None of us were hurt which is remarkable in itself. We were ferried back. Carnaby back to Binbrook. Twenty five minutes. That’s how far it was. So we were so lucky. It doesn’t bear thinking of. When I called up that lovely crew and told them about the strips of, not the strips, no that the fin and rudder was shaking. I honestly thought it was shaking. I wasn’t trying to enlarge upon our dilemma. That, that was all that thin strips of metalised stuff. You know. And to see the photoflash turned around and bedded in to the side of the aircraft. It was near miraculous it didn’t go off because it was supposed to go off. You know. And what do you do?
CB: Extraordinary.
AF: Did a little, oh and underneath the mid-upper turret where I was sitting you could see daylight straight through the fuselage [laughs] and I’m not building the story up. You know.
CB: So when you were first hit and the aircraft reared up what went through your mind?
AF: Well, I thought for a moment that, that the pilot had had a heart attack or fainted as some did and he’s, he wasn’t driving straight. You know. What do you do? What do you think of? You see all, all your relatives and hope that they’re all alright but you think to yourself don’t start thinking about them. Nothing to do with it. Mind you we were Stettin away from England which was a good two and a half to three hours flying at the speed we were going. So I thought to myself at the time I wish Lancaster had been here. Naughty. But there we are.
CB: We’ll just take a break there. Yeah.
[recording paused]
CB: We talked, you talked a bit earlier about the navigator getting his leg, Stan. Wounded.
AF: That’s right.
CB: So how, first of all how did he become wounded? What happened exactly?
AF: Anti-aircraft fire.
CB: Right.
AF: Coming through the fuselage.
CB: Right. So it was shrapnel.
AF: Shrapnel.
CB: Which took out a good section of his leg.
AF: Actually took it away.
CB: Yes. So then coming to the nearer time. Sixty years later what happened?
AF: The phone went. ‘Is that Allan Farr?’ I said, ‘Yes, it is. Who’s that?’ He said, ‘It’s Stan. Your lovely navigator. What are you doing this time of the morning?’ I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe it. I’d always expected him to have a very, very, very dicey leg and even to be in a chair and wheeled about you know. And I thought to myself then and he said, ‘Are you still there?’ I said, ‘Yes. I’m in shock you silly cow. I’m in shock [pause] Have you got any hobbies?’ He said, ‘Yes. My wife and I go fell walking.’
[telephone ringing]
AF: [laughs] Fell walking.
Other: [laughs] Without a leg.
CB: Amazing.
Other: Yeah.
CB: So, what did you say to that?
AF: I burst into tears.
CB: Oh, did you?
AF: He said, ‘You aint crying are you?’ I said, ‘Stan, thank goodness. Oh.’ I said, ‘The number of times I’ve been going to write to the RAF section which would look after anybody who, you know.’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I’m, I’ve got a job. I’m still working. I’m doing electrical stuff but only, only on paper,’ you know. ‘And I’m married. I’ve got a lovely wife.’ I said, ‘Well, you know this is great.’ And I was still crying. Funny isn’t it?
CB: Did you get to meet him?
AF: Yes. We went up to Lincoln. Stayed two nights. And really it was so very, very nice just to see him come in a room. Funny walk but he wasn’t putting it on.
CB: So what was his side of the story?
AF: Pardon?
CB: What was his side of the story that he told you? So after he’d been wounded what did he tell you had happened?
AF: He was put straight into an ambulance. And that was the aerodrome that had got the —
Other: FIDO.
AF: FIDO. That’s right. FIDO. The fog dispersal thing. And he got his old job back. But we went and saw him. We enjoyed their company. They enjoyed ours. We got talking about different things. We didn’t go again because it upset me too much to see him.
CB: But as a curiosity what about his wound? How did he describe —
AF: Well —
CB: How that had been dealt with?
AF: You have, you carry, I think it’s a half a dozen in the medical pack which is by the, in the, by the bomb aimer’s compartment. And they’re a tube like that with a very, very long spidery point. And what you have to do is, and it wasn’t me that did it. I don’t think I could have done. Now, who could it be? It could have been the bomb aimer [Noel Macer]. It couldn’t have been the skipper because he couldn’t leave his seat. But what it is you break the top off and it leaves a very jagged long sharp thing which now of course is laudanum or something coming out. And you stick that in the wound. I don’t know if I got it right. But I had to look away. I mean I’m a big brave bloody air gunner.
CB: It’s morphine is it?
AF: Hmmn?
CB: It’s morphine.
AF: Morphine. That’s right. Yeah. But dear Stan. He was a lovely fella. He was. I said to him, ‘You’re nearly good enough to be an air gunner.’ [laughs]
CB: We’ll stop there again.
AF: Yeah.
[recording paused]
CB: So in an aircraft we’re talking about here the Lancaster there’s a mid-upper gunner and there’s a rear gunner. Now, you did some time as a rear gunner but in this case you were sitting in the mid-upper.
AF: Yeah. I was.
CB: So what was the situation there?
AF: When I went on my second tour it was the mid-upper gunner that needed to be replaced so you take that position. You can’t mess about. Or if in the case of Stan they almost immediately put another gunner [pause] No. Put another navigator into his place so that the plane could still keep flying.
CB: Yes.
AF: Because I did, I think four or five more trips after that. Then I left the crew. Went around and shook all their hands. And one of them spat in my face. He said, ‘You could have stayed.’
CB: Gee.
AF: Because they get used to you. They get to trust you.
CB: It was that emotional was it? He felt, what did he feel to make him do that?
AF: Well, he felt the lack of a good gunner.
CB: So what did he say when he spat in the face, in your face?
AF: Well, ‘You can piss off as far as I’m concerned.’
CB: That dramatic.
AF: Well —
CB: Because you —
AF: They get to rely upon you.
CB: But you are all the family aren’t you?
AF: That’s right.
CB: You are a family.
AF: Yes. You see, even, even the plane is, I think it’s M for Mother isn’t it? Yes. M for Mother. Look. See. We go. We come back. You’re frightened of death but you don’t want it to happen to you. But where’s the logic in that?
CB: So you said that the specific training, for separate training —
AF: No.
CB: For the different positions.
AF: I have seen, a briefing is when all the crews of the Lancasters and we could put forty two up from Binbrook. You, when you attended briefing up on the dais was the commanding officer to tell you why this was taking place, what the target was, how they, possibly to do with a target. You know, what they’ve got to do. Other things that they wanted other planes to do. Really it was to keep you in tune with any equipment that was going to be used as well. I mean [pause] you weren’t allowed to go wild. You were supposed to respect the villagers but what used to upset me more than anything else there was an area where the villagers from Binbrook, because there’s a village of Binbrook come to wish you well by waving flags or anything they’d got that’s colourful. Scarves. And of course as the aircraft came on to the take-off area you were on solid ground. You’d come off the grass. And as the engines revved up you’d see the flags going quicker and quicker you know. And then you’d take off and they vanish out of sight. But again you find you’re crying. You don’t basically want to go. Who wants to take that job over anyhow? I wish I could see that bleeding sergeant major now sometimes [laughs] I’d make him pay for something. I don’t know. But all sorts of fears came at you. I don’t know. Yes.
CB: On how many occasions did fighters attack the planes you were flying in?
AF: I think, I think my limit was four. You see the only way a fighter can properly bring down a bomber is by the curve of pursuit attack. That’s drummed into you time and time again. They don’t make head on attacks. They did out east where the Japanese planes often just flew in the way they’d been trained. In straight lines. Which made it easier actually to sort of kill them off. But it was always a curve of pursuit and he couldn’t have been attacking us because that would have been the silliest way to commit suicide. I mean to ram yourself into a Lancaster. It don’t bear thinking of does it?
CB: No. So on occasions when the planes did attack, other than that one how many times did you shoot at them?
AF: Oh. You see. The psychiatrist told us. They said, ‘The Germans don’t want to die any more than you gentlemen want to die.’ He said. ‘So if they’re making an attack on you, you can be well prepared that they will fly away from you because they’ve had enough if only it’s you see if it’s only seconds.’ So they didn’t do much to help you. These psychiatric people. Whatever the names are. But in fact you had, you had a flying operation which were supposed to take you away from aircraft that were trying to knock you out of the sky. And that, that was if you had to, you had to identify your aircraft because if an aircraft has a thirty foot wingspan which is a fighter normally then you can’t hit him. You won’t hit him unless you open fire at six hundred yards. Then you stand a chance of hitting him. Or setting him on fire. Some of the blokes tried to get, some of our blokes tried to get maps of different German aircraft because what you were looking for was the oxygen bottle. If you could hit that you’d blow his head off because it would just disintegrate the plane you see. You haven’t got time to even look three times at the plane to work out whether it’s an ME109 or a Focke Wulf 190 or —
CB: And it’s in the dark.
AF: Hmmn?
CB: And you’re in the dark.
AF: Well, oh yes. Yes. I was put in front of the CO by the warrant officer in charge of the armoury. And he said he’d put me in front of the commanding officer because I’d, I’d not denied anything, I’d agreed with what he said but he, this is what he said to the commanding officer, ‘This man continually loads ammunition into his four guns in the rear turret. He loads them in an explosive, a cupronickel. Anything that’s not cupronickel, he’ll use again.’ He said, ‘He uses exploding bullets, incendiary bullets, different sorts of bullets, bar cupronickel which is supposed to use, sir. And it’s bending, the heat from some of them is bending the barrel.’ And the CO says, ‘Well, you’re entitled to have your say, Mr Farr. What are you doing?’ I said, ‘I’m trying to get the one that’s trying to get me.’ I said, ‘It’s only own back sir. That’s all.’ I said, ‘If I can get this bastard with an exploding bullet I’ll use it.’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘Stay out of the armoury. That’s an order. And that’s the order that’s going into the, into your record. So let’s have no more of it. You’ll treat this gentleman with respect and accept what he’s done to your guns. That’s what his job is. So don’t make it silly.’ I said, ‘Alright. Thank you very much.’ But that’s, that’s what I was doing. Putting incendiaries in. Anything that exploded. And of course didn’t do very well at it.
CB: How many did you shoot down in the end?
AF: Hmmn?
CB: How many did you shoot down in the end?
AF: No. No. No. You couldn’t. To claim a kill you’d got to have either confirmation from the French Resistance. They have got to see, actually see the battle take place and to see the wreckage. Now, who can do that? It really, it was to stop handing out lots and lots of medals I suppose.
CB: Now, in your case you did two tours.
AF: Yeah.
CB: And you had a distinguished flying medal.
AF: That’s right.
CB: So at what point was that awarded and what was the accolade that they attached to it?
AF: Um.
CB: So what did they do? On a time base or based on some experiences.
AF: No. They just, and they give a reason for it.
CB: That’s what I thought.
AF: It’s amongst some of these somewhere.
CB: Ok. We’ll have a look in a minute. So when did you get it?
AF: Oh. I got it in, I think it was January or February of ’45.
CB: Right.
AF: And I finished my last trip in October ’44.
CB: Yes.
AF: So obviously they were deliberating over it for some time. But also of course these things were really of no monetary value except for the, the twenty pound they slide to you. Which was good money in them days because we only got, I think it was eight and a six or eleven shillings a day flying pay. See. So you didn’t become an air gunner for the money [laughs] Give us a kiss and shut up.
CB: Did all the crew get the same flying pay?
AF: Oh yes. Yes. I think the pilot and the navigator were a higher, a higher grade because they had to shovel. They had to shoulder more responsibility. Their courses were really courses to make you sit up. Especially a navigator. You know. I was down as a wireless operator. A w/op ag. Wireless operator and air gunner. I soon crossed off the wireless operator off. I wasn’t sitting down at some poor lady’s diner at Blackpool where some of the crews who were training as wireless operator/air gunners were asking people to pass the sauce in code. That aint me. Tapping it out on the vinegar de de dit da da. Dit dit. They can stick that.
CB: Did you get any training in signal?
AF: Wireless.
CB: Yeah. In wireless.
AF: Yes. Oh yes. But I am not that technical. I just am not with it.
CB: No.
AF: You know. In fact, Mr Pretherick at St Benedict’s Road School. Friday afternoons we used to leave class at half past four. But he used to say, ‘Put all your books away. Happiness is about to descend upon you.’ Lovely teacher. He really was. He said, ‘I’m going to throw a question to the room and as soon as, if you answer it right you can go. But don’t hang about in the corridors.’ Half an hour later there would be him and me. He said, ‘Farr, we’re in the same bloody position again.’ Excuse the language. He said, ‘But why are you having this difficulty with just putting four or five numbers together and totalling it up?’ I said, ‘I don’t know, sir,’ I said, ‘I do try very hard. I do really. Can I go now?’ He said, ‘No. You aint answered your question.’ [laughs] He was as cute as me, I think. Yeah.
CB: So you finished in October ’44 on ops.
AF: Yes.
CB: What did you do after that?
AF: I was posted. I was sent down to Waterbeach where they were demobbing the first Army soldiers from Mauripur, India. And they were flying them back in Liberators. Fifteen or sixteen at a time. Big aircraft but they could only fit sling seats in them. And that’s all they could sort of fit in. And I was partly to do with that. I had to drive a little jeep around with, “Follow Me,” on the back in lights. That’s so that when they landed and got to the end of the runway control would tell them to hang fire. ‘Just keep your props going. The inners will do. We’ll send a jeep out to you to take out the demob centre which is the other side of the airfield.’ And they were whistled straight over to this demob centre and three or four days they were out because they had to do all this sort of thing. Obviously. What have you been doing sort of thing. And everything else, you know.
CB: But that was at the end of the war wasn’t it?
AF: Oh yes.
CB: So you went to, according to your logbook you went to 12 OTU after you finished at 460 Squadron. Did you? What did you do there?
AF: Can I have a look?
CB: Yeah. It’s on the summary at the back page.
AF: Oh yes. 12 OTU. Here.
CB: That was all ground work was it?
AF: Oh yes. The 2nd of October.
CB: 26th of October.
AF: It’s alright. No.
CB: ’44.
AF: Do you want to leave it there a moment?
CB: Yeah [pause] Yes. 26th of October it says.
AF: Yeah. I’m looking for my —
CB: Your glasses? What?
AF: No. I mean. Ah, that’s what I want.
CB: But you ended up, you stopped your flying by the look of it at —
AF: Oh yes.
CB: After 460 Squadron.
AF: Yeah. Yes. That was the end. Well, after I’d done forty odd trips they put that as a limit. And they wouldn’t let you go.
CB: No.
AF: I mean, we’ve had, we’ve had crews go off and get halfway to the target and they’ve discovered, ordinary, one of the —
CB: An airman in the —
AF: Yeah. Airmen in the Lanc.
CB: In the aircraft. Yeah.
AF: Yeah. He wanted to go for the experience of seeing what a raid was like [laughs] I mean, you’ve got to look after him. What could you do?
CB: Just keep going.
AF: Well, that’s right.
CB: Yeah.
AF: Just keep on going. Yeah. But I’m just wondering what it says here.
CB: It’s back on Wellington on the listing. But in here you haven’t got an entry.
AF: No.
CB: So it sounds as though you didn’t do flying from then on.
AF: 12. No. Obviously. No. I would presume that I gave them a blank.
CB: Yeah.
AF: There’s eight months work there.
CB: Thinking back across, of the war. What would you think was the most disturbing part of your experience?
AF: Seeing what it looked like from the air when hundreds and hundreds of houses were burning. Which is upsetting. You know. You can imagine what’s taking place down there. People screaming. People trying to get out of rubble and rubbish. Stuff that’s burning. A terrible thing really. But that’s what used to worry me was the condition of some of the towns. Well, you must have seen photographs of the towns afterwards.
CB: Absolutely.
AF: With just, well, it’s like a lot of vacant blind people walking about. A great thing. A great pity. You couldn’t get up an anger. I never found that easy. But it happened. When I was —
CB: Couldn’t get up an anger of what do you mean?
AF: An anger that it was all happening at all.
CB: Oh right.
AF: Not at Waterbeach. These books are never right. You skived off as much as you could. Although I enjoyed, I enjoyed instructing on aircraft recognition. But there again I’d been doing it as a hobby at eight. And they force you to look at aeroplane models when you’re twenty one or twenty you don’t mind.
CB: What was the high part of, for you in the war? The best thing that happened to you in the war.
AF: The only, the only thing that I can think of, sir with any honesty is when my leave came around and I could see my parents and my girl, then my wife. Same girl.
CB: Yeah.
AF: But didn’t have a lot of money. Never have had.
CB: It must have been difficult to keep in touch with her because she was posted to different places.
AF: Well, she was in a, she was in a [pause] they’d all got bikes so they could cycle where they’d got to go to. You could tell the pluck they’d got. But she was repairing aircraft. Wellingtons of course were made in a [pause] made in a linen which is then doped when it is on the frame of the aircraft. It’s doped and it tightens up so that it gives you a skin which will, a linen is very strong. And that’s what was used on Wellingtons to keep them flying. Because there’s no doubt it. They were useful aircraft for training. But that’s what she was doing.
CB: I’m just going to stop.
Other: Wonderful.
[recording paused]
AF: Just be glad you weren’t an air gunner.
CB: Yes.
AF: In all respects.
Other: You know.
CB: So, Alan Farr, thank you very much indeed for a most interesting conversation.
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 Alan Avery Farr
Creator
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Chris Brockbank
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
2017-07-12
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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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AFarrAA170712
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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02:02:38 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Allan Avery Farr was working at the market in Birmingham before he joined the RAF. He wanted to have the quickest entry to see action and so trained as an air gunner. He trained in Canada where he was offered a post as an instructor but he wanted to serve with an operational squadron. On one flight his eyes froze over and the wireless operator had to help him to recover. The navigator was seriously injured during one operation and when they landed the crew helped get him to the ambulance. Allan met up with him again sixty years later. On one operation they collided with a German night fighter and although the aircraft was very severely damaged they managed to return to the UK.
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
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Canada
Germany
Great Britain
Poland
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Berlin
Poland--Szczecin
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
100 Squadron
12 OTU
460 Squadron
625 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
Battle
crewing up
Distinguished Flying Medal
FIDO
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
love and romance
mid-air collision
military service conditions
Operational Training Unit
RAF Binbrook
RAF Blyton
RAF Grimsby
RAF Lichfield
RAF Waterbeach
recruitment
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2054/33664/PBarnettA2101.2.jpg
0ad8c8274bbf442f0f22fa06619c1755
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2054/33664/ABarnettA210811.2.mp3
4f633204fcd2bf40ed3bc381344fca36
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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Barnett, Alfred
A Barnett
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2021-08-11
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Barnett, A
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Flight Lieutenant Alfred 'Barney' Barnett (b. 1922, 1390286 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as an air gunner with 100 and 156 Squadrons.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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RP: This interview is being conducted on behalf of the International Bomber Command Centre in Lincoln. The interviewer is Rod Pickles. The interviewee is Alfred Barnett. Also present is a friend of Mr Barnetts’, Brian Leveridge. The interview is taking place on the 11th of August 2021 at Mr Barnett’s home near Bodmin in Cornwall. Good afternoon, Mr Barnett. May I call you Barnie?
AB: Certainly.
RP: Right. Our first, our first question is the usual one. Could you just tell me a little bit about your early days, and your childhood and what prompted you to join the RAF?
AB: Well, at the beginning of the war I was in Kent and I got rather annoyed with the Germans bombing London. Bombing. And the only way to hit back was to join the Air Force. That’s how I came. So, I joined. I don’t regret it. I went to Padgate to start with. Then I thought the easiest way, well I hadn’t got a lot of brains, I thought the easiest way would be an air gunner because don’t forget the air gunner, the rear gunner defends the aircraft and so I became and I think within a matter of a few months I went to 100 Squadron at Waltham. That’s Grimsby. I think I did six trips there and then with Len Overton we volunteered to go to Pathfinders under DCT Bennett, and I went to 156 Squadron. And I think I did, we were just coming on my third tour. I got put off because I got involved in low flying at Skegness. We forgot the clock tower. We missed it but only by just. And then I went to, to an OTU. I didn’t care much on some of the fellas there because all they wanted was to keep off operations so I went over to see Air Marshall Bennett at Huntingdon, and before I finished the conversation I was back on the squadron.
RP: What rank were you at this time?
AB: Flight lieutenant.
RP: A flight lieu. Yeah.
AB: I went through the ranks and I got commissioned. Well, it was Bennett that gave me my commission and how he gave that, I was rather keen of looking after my guns because we had a Fraser Nash FN-4 before the Browning 303s and I was out working on them one day and a character came along in an old Irvin jacket and he said, ‘What are you doing?’ I said, ‘Cutting the Perspex off the turret.’ He said that’s going to be so and so cold. I said, ‘Yes, but Perspex stops a lot of your vision.’ So, we took out all the Perspex off, and just sit in the open. I know it sounds daft. And also with my guns it had Palmer firing gear which is a stupid ruddy thing because of the hydraulic firing gear and if the temperature was about minus fifteen the hydraulic fluid used to freeze. So I did away with that, and I put bowden cables through so I could push down and get at least two guns working at the same time. And then the next thing I was told to go to Huntingdon, 8 Group Headquarters. When I went there the character sitting there was Air Marshall Bennett. So, he gave me a commission and I was quite happy. I linked up with Len Overton and —
RP: Len Overton was the pilot, yes?
AB: He was the pilot.
RP: He was the pilot.
AB: Funny thing I was flying as well, because Bennett liked all the crews to be able to do the other person’s job and —
RP: So, what aircraft were you flying at this time?
AB: Lancasters.
RP: You were flying Lancasters. Yes.
AB: Yes. I was at Warboys. And so I got put off. I think I’d just done my third tour then. I went on. I went to an OTU and I’ve never met so many bloody stupid people trying to keep off flying and I was ruddy daft wanting to go on it. And I’m afraid I’m a bit more loud-mouthed but I say what I think.
RP: So where was the OTU? What station was this at? The OTU.
AB: At, oh it would be in my book.
RP: Yeah. Ok.
AB: And by the time I finished having a word at 8 Group Headquarters, by the time I got back everybody thought I was I was going to be court martialled but I was posted straight back to the squadron and I was quite happy then.
RP: Because you were actually working on the OTU. You weren’t a trainee. You were actually part of the trainers.
AB: Yes. I was doing the training.
RP: Right. Right.
AB: I’ll tell you one fellow. I went back. You may have heard of him, Ken Letford [pause] He flew F-Freddy when they did that broadcast over Berlin.
RP: Oh right.
AB: We was old school friends together and I always remember that. Meeting him. He’s still on, I think, I think he’s still alive at Wyton, and and that’s where it all came. So, I did my time there. Then I got sent, when the war was ending I got sent out to Germany on the British Bombing Survey at Bad Nenndorf. Then I got mixed up with CSDIC, Combined Services Detailed Interrogations. Messed with Colonel Stevens, Major Warden, Lieutenant Langham. Do you remember that case? They were, they were doing interrogations at CSDIC, and people were saying you know, that they was ill-treated. Well, if someone, you’re doing an interrogation and he throws a hot coffee in you face it kicks you in the crutch you get awfully annoyed. You know that.
RP: You would. Yes.
AB: Yeah. So there. Then I came back and went, was out in Germany on British Bombing, then I got to war crimes Nuremburg in CSDIC. Then I came back. The only funny thing is I had a Boxer dog. I got it for a Group Captain Ford but he couldn’t get it back to this country so I kept it and we landed at Croydon. The Veterinary Unit in Hanover knew all about it. Unfortunately, the bloody dog went and bit the customs officer there [laughs]
RP: Oh dear. That’s not going to get you into the country, is it?
AB: It did. The dog went into quarantine.
RP: Right.
AB: At Hag Bridge. That cost me a lot of money but he became a champion in this country.
RP: Oh right.
AB: [unclear]
RP: Crikey.
AB: It was a lovely dog.
RP: Yeah. So, so going back to your flying was the Lancaster the only aircraft you flew then?
AB: No. I was in, look in my logbook.
RP: Yeah.
AB: Wellingtons. Whitleys.
RP: So, would, would a Whitley be the first one before the Wellington or —
AB: Yes.
RP: Because they were quite an early type.
AB: I think the first ones were the Bothas, I think.
RP: What did, what did you do your training on then? What was the aircraft?
AB: On a Botha.
RP: Oh, it was a Botha. Yeah.
AB: Yeah.
RP: Of course, they weren’t, they weren’t really any good for warfare but they were good for training.
AB: No. No. No. Polish characters, which don’t forget, the Poles did a lot of good work in this kind of country.
RP: Yes. Yes.
AB: And I met some very nice Polish people. I know a lot of them are condemned but don’t forget if they got shot down in Germany that was their end. Then I got sent out to Germany on British Bombing Survey at Bad Nenndorf, and while I was there I went to War Crimes Nuremberg. To the trials there. And then I had a funny job of picking people up. Now, my German is almost nil but there were so many displaced persons floating around Germany, and if you sit and keep quiet, and you’ve got a job for me I could get away with it.
RP: Right.
AB: And as you were travelling in an old car, our old Hannomag with this Boxer dog picking people up from say Hamburg right down to Munich.
RP: What? These were displaced people.
AB: Yes.
RP: Yeah. Ok.
AB: And it’s amazing. I never realised the Germans were so meticulous in keeping records of people.
RP: Oh yes.
AB: And you say go to one place, and say [unclear] oh that’s so and so. He went to so and so, and I used to travel Germany going from one to another and picking up and I never had any trouble at all. I only had one character who tried to pull out a small automatic. Fortunately, I had one before him, so he was all right.
RP: So —
AB: Then I came back to this country and Air Commodore Wynter-Morgan, Air Marshall Combe. I ended up living with Air Marshall Combe at the Woodpeckers at Brockenhurst. Then I went to the Ordnance. I went to 12 Group Headquarters. Became their group armament officer. Then I went back to the Ordnance Board. That was formed in 1414. That was in Kensington. That was organised the year before the Battle of Agincourt. Then I became secretary to the Pyrotechnic Panel. That’s anything from say a small hand-held signal to a bloody great rocket. Then I went from there. Where did I go from there?
RP: Can you, when, when did, you obviously stopped flying by the time you’d been sent to Germany.
AB: Yes.
RP: So, when, your last flight was a sort of a wartime thing.
AB: Yes at [unclear]
RP: It did. Yeah.
AB: Yeah. But then I used to fly from different places.
RP: Yeah. But your actual career as a flyer ended with the war. Yeah.
AB: Yeah. More or less as a transport from A to B.
RP: Yeah. Just looking at this 1942, you’ve got a Botha here on air to sea exercise and that. So, between the time you left school and joined the RAF what were you doing then as an option?
AB: I was hoping to become a vet.
RP: Oh right.
AB: Slightly different.
RP: Yeah.
AB: And that’s what I was working on then so, but when the war came along I joined up.
RP: Where did you join? Where were you living when you joined then?
AB: I was living in a place called Blackheath.
RP: Yes.
AB: It was Kidbrooke at one time. Then London expanded.
RP: Yes.
AB: There was an airfield there at Kidbrooke. That’s the start of the old M2. Remember it?
RP: Yeah.
AB: Do you know London at all?
RP: Not very. Not that well. I know it.
AB: Oh.
RP: But I never lived there.
AB: They turned there. Then what was it? When I went to 12 Group Headquarters as a Group Armament Officer I met a bloody twit called Donaldson. You may remember him. He flew hundreds of aircraft at six hundred and six miles an hour.
RP: Oh right.
AB: But he had a brother and his brother was a very nice fellow but Donaldson, the one that did that was a complete bloody twit. Excuse me. Now then —
RP: I think you’re allowed to say that.
AB: There was a court martial going on for low flying. So, what does he do? There’s a place called Newton. He was beating the airfield up. He thought that was funny. There’s a poor blighter there losing his, well his rank and everything for doing a bit of —
RP: Doing a bit of that. Yeah.
AB: It was only a bit of low flying.
RP: And he gets, he gets away with it.
AB: Yeah.
RP: Ok. So, so did you finish the war as a flight lieutenant then?
AB: Pardon?
RP: Did you finish the war as a flight lieutenant?
AB: Yes.
RP: Was that your rank when you finished?
AB: Yeah.
RP: Yeah.
AB: So, there it is. I had quite an interesting little job.
AB: Oh yes.
RP: Wandering around the continent picking people up. I’ll tell you something funny. Brian, can you pull that box over there please. That plastic box.
AB: The people you were picking up were they suspicious people then? Were you, were you thinking of —
RP: The plastic box on the floor.
[recording paused]
RP: Ok, Barney. If we could go back to your training days.
AB: Yeah.
RP: In the RAF. What was your first training base and what did you do there?
AB: Padgate was my first base.
RP: And what, what were you doing there?
AB: Well, that was when I joined the Air Force. And I went from there to Blackpool to do more or less the square bashing. And then from there I went to a place called Morpeth.
RP: Oh yeah.
AB: Flying in Bothas to do air gunnery.
RP: So that was the air gunnery training.
AB: It’s the training. Yeah. Then from there I went to 100 Squadron at Grimsby called Waltham. I did six trips there with a fellow called Overton. Len Overton and —
RP: So, what aircraft were you on now?
AB: That was on, started off on Lincolns. Not Lincolns. No. What was the one before?
RP: Manchester was the one before.
AB: Manchester. That’s it.
RP: Yeah.
AB: I got rather put off there because when I went there I looked up at the sky and one was coming down in flames and I didn’t like that.
RP: They were a bit under powered were they?
AB: Yes. Then we got converted on to Halifaxes and went to a Lancaster squadron. That’s typical, isn’t it?
RP: So where did your Halifax, where did you do your Halifax training?
AB: That was a place called Lindholme, I think.
RP: Oh yes. Yeah. Yeah.
AB: It was Lindholme. Then I went to Waltham. Did six trips there. From there we got sent down to Warboys in Huntingdon to more or less NFU training for Pathfinders with Bennett. Rivett-Camac was the CO at the time. He was an excellent fellow. Then they brought this fellow, Collings in which was a complete twit. And I did, I did two tours and we was due —
RP: How long was a tour? How many?
AB: Well, it was supposed to be thirty trips.
RP: Right.
AB: Or if we’d done a double tour it was forty odd.
RP: Right.
AB: But I’d done I think it was getting on for fifty trips, and then we got court martialled for low flying over Skegness. JB921. Everybody saw that bloody number and I still remember it.
RP: So what was the result of the court martial then?
AB: Well, they couldn’t do much with us all because we were all nutty as a fruit cake and I got sent off and I got sent to an OTU, and I rather fell out. Maybe I’ve got a big mouth but I fell out because they, they didn’t want, no they, these people working there they thought they had a safe little job and I wanted to get back on flying.
RP: So, you, this is where you were doing the training.
AB: Yes.
RP: You weren’t a trainee.
AB: No, I was instructing.
RP: You were instructing. So what was the aircraft on the OTU then?
AB: That was Wellingtons. Whitleys and Wellingtons. And so, I took myself off and went to see Air Commodore Ayres. Well, first of all I went to 8 Group Headquarters in Huntingdon and asked could I see the big chief. And it was Air Commodore Ayres said, ‘What the hell are you doing now?’ I said, ‘Well, I’m wasting my time because I’m not going to be instructing.’ So, he said, ‘Right.’ So, I went in to see Bennett. Air Marshall Bennett. He was an Australian. Very much down to earth. He said, ‘You’re wanting to come back?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ So, of course he commissioned me because it was him that saw me cutting the Perspex out of a turret and joining up the guns so they would fire if the hydraulics froze. I could still fire the guns.
RP: So, what rank were you when you got your commission then? What rank?
AB: Flight sergeant.
RP: You were a flight sergeant. Ok.
AB: That was the rate I was on and I was quite happy. Then I was flying away. We dropped food over into Belgium. Holland rather as you saw in the logbook. Then I got sent to London to go to British Bombing Survey Unit at a place Bad Nenndorf.
RP: To come back to the Operation Manna. Were you flying, flying Lancasters then?
AB: Lancasters. Yeah.
RP: So, but that was, this was just dropping food.
AB: Yeah.
RP: So how many sorties did you do on Manna then?
AB: I think [pause] look in my book. I think I —
RP: Yeah.
AB: That little blue book.
RP: Yeah. Yeah. I can do that but —
AB: I did, I think it was eighty. It was either seventy eight or eighty trips.
RP: Crikey.
AB: You were supposed to have done twenty five or I think thirty five. Then there were two tours. You’d no need to fly again.
RP: No.
AB: But I think I’d done eighty. I was trying to do a hundred. For some reason I was a bloody nutcase. I was trying to count, I suppose.
RP: So, how many sorties do you think you flew during the war then? If you —
AB: I think I did eighty.
RP: That’s a lot isn’t it? And you were never, and you were never injured or shot down.
AB: Oh yes. We got, we came back in a bit of a heap a couple of times and up on the Norfolk coast there’s called, a place called Woodbridge.
RP: Oh yes. Yeah. I’ve heard of it.
AB: You may have heard of it.
RP: I’ve heard of Woodbridge.
AB: But it’s a bloody great big concrete slab.
RP: I think. I think, yeah. Yeah —
AB: And if you landed there the bulldozers used to just sweep you off the runway into a big heap.
RP: If you crash landed.
AB: Yes.
RP: Right.
AB: Because you usually, you come back there. I met some very nice people. One of the best characters d ever met was a fellow called Rivett–Carnac. His brother was Chief Constable of Cambridgeshire but he was a wonderful leader but he was as crazy as they come. Then they had Group Captain Collings. Well, we couldn’t create a mutiny but, so actually it was Bennett told us to write a little note saying we wanted to transfer and he came in. I remember he came in. He took his coat off. He said, ‘We’re all equal now.’ He said, ‘What’s the trouble?’ I said, ‘Well, the CO’s a bloody twit.’
RP: This is Bennett you’re talking to.
AB: Yes.
RP: Yeah. Right.
AB: You could talk to him.
RP: Right.
AB: I’m not kidding you.
RP: Yeah. Yeah.
AB: Before we finished our conversation the character Collings was off the station.
RP: And what, what happened to him then? Do you know?
AB: I don’t know. I’ve got a photograph of him somewhere walking along with the queen.
RP: Oh right.
AB: Was. But he was. No. What I found, I found there were some people who like to get themselves the cosy little jobs, shut the window and say, ‘Blow you chap. I’m all right.’
RP: Right. So, they had a comfortable war.
AB: Yes.
RP: Yeah.
AB: Well, the funny thing was I was more of a nervous wreck, you may think I’m a nutcase now, when I wasn’t flying then when I was flying.
RP: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, you mentioned Len Overton. Did you tend to stay with the same crew on your various posts?
AB: Well, part of the time I stayed.
RP: Yeah.
AB: With Len Overton.
RP: Yeah.
AB: The funny thing is for some reason. I don’t know how because I’m not up with the signals to know all this sort of thing. Computers.
RP: Yeah.
AB: But someone sent me a photograph and I’ve got it there because I was his best man but somehow I got this photograph and it’s over on the side there and, but Len Overton, he didn’t want to come back. I think, I think his nerves were a bit shattered. But I always thought it’s a challenge and besides the ruddy Germans knocked my old mums house down.
RP: Oh right.
AB: With two bombs.
RP: Yeah. Which was why, which was what persuaded you to —
AB: Yeah. And I saw what happened to London.
RP: Yeah.
AB: I remember that Saturday seeing all these aircraft when the big fire was in London.
RP: Yeah.
AB: And maybe it’s just me.
RP: Right. Of the, of the aircraft that you were in. The Lancasters. The Wellingtons.
AB: Yeah.
RP: What was your favourite then? Which one did you —
AB: Lancasters.
RP: You liked the Lancaster.
AB: Yes.
RP: Yeah.
AB: You could really throw a Lanc around. You could. It could take a hell of a lot of punishment. I remember we was over Hamburg. If you remember [unclear] history we did, I did I think it was five nights and seven days of bombing Hamburg and one of the funny things is we dropped the marker bombs which was Pathfinders, we dropped the marker bombs, and one of them got hit by one of the German rockets underneath and blew it back through the bomb doors. And a fellow called Tommy Cable got the immediate award of the DFM because he hacked this marker out of the aircraft because it was back inside the aircraft.
RP: Yeah.
AB: It was a little bit uncomfortable.
RP: Crikey.
AB: But he had, Tommy Cable came from Grimsby. But no, I I found it alright. I wasn’t really interested because for some funny reason I was a technical officer. I wasn’t a general duty for flying. I was, do you know the general duties? They do the flying.
RP: Yes.
AB: Technical officers. I was a technical armament officer. How I got in there I don’t know but I was. I went to the Number 1 Air Armaments School at Manby. I did specialist armament.
RP: What year was this then? How far in?
AB: Oh, this would be the beginning of ’44.
RP: Oh right. So, you’d, you’d done a lot of flying before then.
AB: And I went back to, I went back to Manby and I qualified as an armament officer and I was supposed to have gone to Warnborough and Christmas Island. Thanks very much to a horse that broke my arm because I used to ride young horses.
RP: Right.
AB: So I used to go, if you look around here like that over there. The wife had a, ended up about seventy horses. Well, you know that don’t you, Brian?
BL: Ahum.
RP: Crikey.
AB: Fabius was one of the famous horses she had.
RP: I see there’s a few up there.
AB: Oh yes. Now, my little wife she died of actually diabetes. She smashed her skull. She had a mark on her face where a horse stepped on her face. Are you married?
RP: Well, I was. My wife died in January.
AB: Oh. Women are not always easy to live with are they? But what, you know but she was a wonderful little thing.
RP: Yeah.
AB: Brian may have met her. But the big trouble she had bad diabetes.
RP: Oh right.
AB: She was on sixteen injections a day
RP: Oh, my goodness
AB: And they can play hell with them.
RP: Yeah.
AB: It can. It’s not them. It’s their complaint that you had to live with and quite often you fall out being bloody war declared. You would sit down and think where the hell did that start? Some stupid little thing.
RP: So, what year, were you married? During the war or after the war?
AB: After the war.
RP: So, you were single. You were single during the war then so you —
AB: Yes.
RP: You were fancy free during the war.
AB: I didn’t have time for anything else.
RP: Well, that was my next question but obviously you’ve answered it.
AB: Yeah. No. I met little Thelma. Actually, I’ll tell you how I met her. I brought a horse down from Leicester. It was a thoroughbred I brought down, and how I got that horse, it was a Mr Skinner, and I used to buy these horse because when I used to take off I used to fly around and see who had got horses.
RP: Right.
AB: The next job, where’s the nearest pub? So, that night I’d be in the pub, keep chatting. People used to be very suspicious but when they found you’d put old clothes on and were working with the horses, not just for something to sit on I found that I got along fine.
RP: Yeah.
AB: Different parts whether I was Leicester, Lincoln, there, and this here horse, and I was having a meal with them and I was speaking about this horse. Course he had a very good, must have been about three thousand acres. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘You can’t catch that bloody thing.’ I said, ‘Yes you can.’ He said, ‘Well, if you can catch it,’ he said, ‘How much will I give you?’ I said, ‘Ten pound.’ He said, ‘Right.’ He said, ‘I’ve won ten pounds.’ I went out with a bit of string and I learned from an old gypsy how to catch horses. Now, it may sound strange. This old gypsy. I thought, ‘How does he do that?’ What he always used to carry was a little bit of the afterbirth. I know it sounds crude but it was just like a little piece of dried up —
RP: Yeah.
AB: Crinkly paper. Now, if you have that on your hand horses are very inquisitive animal. If you walk and turn your back on a horse he’s saying well, what’s he up to? Walk away. A horse will follow you.
RP: Right.
AB: So, I’ve had a rather odd life.
RP: You have.
AB: Do you think I’m an odd person?
RP: Well, can we go back to your technical officer days then? So, having been a technical officer.
AB: Yeah.
RP: In 1944 but you still went back to flying from that. Yeah.
AB: Yes. Yes.
RP: So you had a dual role basically then.
AB: Right. Because I was a technical officer. I wasn’t a general duties.
RP: Right.
AB: And I went to Newton up near Nottingham.
RP: Yeah. I know where Newton.
AB: To 12 Group Headquarters that was. Donaldson was there. Do you remember Donaldson? He flew at six hundred feet.
RP: Yeah. You said. Yeah.
AB: But he is the biggest stupid show off. His brother was a very nice fellow and I went there, and I went there and as group armament officer for 12 Group. And then I fell out with Donaldson because he, there was another character court martialled, a fellow, a very nice fellow for low flying and Donaldson was beating the airfield up and because I told him about it he made it so I phoned up Air Commodore Wynter Morgan. He was at the Ordnance Board in London. I told him what had happened. He said, ‘Right, pack your bags. You’re down here.’ And I went in and then I joined up with Air Marshall Combe. Now, Combe, Air Marshall Combe he lived at the Woodpeckers at Brockenhurst. He was the Combe out of Watney Combe Brewers. His wife was a Mitchell and Butler Brewery, so money married money and I got on fine. I travelled all over the place with him and we lived, in fact I lived with them. And I, I got on alright, and he got on alright and he put up with me.
RP: So, where were you stationed when the war ended then? Where, where did it all come through —
AB: I was in Germany.
RP: When the war ended.
AB: Yeah. But he was [unclear]
RP: Because you were still. But the war had, had the war ended or was it about to end?
AB: No. It had more or less ended.
RP: Yeah.
AB: It ended when I was out there.
RP: Oh right.
AB: I got suddenly sent out there. I was at [pause] wait a minute. I was at Upwood in Huntingdon.
RP: Because you were still flying up to the —
AB: I was flying but then I more or less stopped flying and I suddenly got sent out to British Bombing Survey.
RP: Did they explain why they’d stopped you flying then? Why did they pick you for that then? Did they explain?
AB: They kept putting me on these other jobs.
RP: Yeah.
AB: So, I found it alright. I used to travel around all over the place. I was my own little boss and I got flying pay and technical pay so I didn’t complain.
RP: Even though you weren’t flying.
AB: Yeah.
RP: Yeah. Because of your qualifications. Yeah. Yeah.
AB: Yes. You see, if I stayed, if I stayed as a flight lieutenant. If I became a squadron leader I’d lose my flying pay.
RP: Oh right. I see.
AB: And my technical pay.
RP: Were you ever offered promotion then?
AB: Yes.
RP: You were.
AB: So, as a flight lieutenant I had all the perks and none of the —
RP: None of the aggro.
AB: Ugly bits.
RP: Ok. Very good. So, what, if you had to pick one then of your of your sorties that you did are there any memorable sorties that were a close run things that you can remember?
AB: Yes, there is one. You look in the book. It’s at Hamburg. I think we’d done about the third night we’d been over Hamburg. The bomb doors opened, bombs away, and we had what they called markers. TI markers. Target Indicator markers, and as they went down we got hit by one of the Prince of Wales feathers they called them. These here big rocket things, and it blew the bomb back in to the nose of the aircraft and it hadn’t exploded which is a bit off putting and we were spinning down because a couple of the engines had been knocked out. We were spinning down. We couldn’t jump out because of the centrifugal force.
RP: This was in a Lancaster. Yeah.
AB: Yes.
RP: Yeah.
AB: Then the aircraft pulled itself out. And after the war I met a character that remembered seeing this aircraft come down because the flare was still burning in the bomb bay.
RP: Goodness me.
AB: It was a bit uncomfortable but he pulled out and we got back to this country.
RP: So, you flew back from Germany in that condition then.
AB: Yes, and we landed at a place called Woodbridge which you know.
RP: Yeah. Yeah. Right.
AB: We put the aircraft down there.
RP: So —
AB: Thought thank God for that one.
RP: So, one, one final question for you then Barney. Would you do it all again?
AB: Not for this country. No. I’m sorry.
RP: No.
AB: Not for this country. They buggered around. I spent five and a half years in hospital. Halton, Wroughton, Headley Court, Ely, Stoke Mandeville.
RP: Crikey.
AB: Thanks to Mr Robbins. He’s dead now.
RP: Why was that?
AB: You may have heard of him in Truro. He took two sections out of my spine. I’ve got the reports in the, in the other room there somewhere.
RP: Was this from an injury? A wartime injury.
AB: Yes.
RP: Oh right.
AB: And some of the bloody twits you met, because let’s face it sometimes you feel you get around, sometimes you can’t, and it’s not for, just for me. How about some of these other poor devils? Sorry.
RP: No. No. You’re entitled to say that and it’s been fascinating. I’d really —
AB: Yes. It is.
RP: I’d like to say thank you for —
AB: But no. This country. Let’s face it. Churchill. Don’t forget Churchill ordered a raid on Nuremburg because, and we lost ninety four, ninety six aircraft, not counting those that were damaged coming back because he dictated beyond. Bennett was against it. Harris, Air Marshall Harris or Air Chief Marshall Harris was against it. He ordered it. It was either ninety four or ninety six. You can look up your records that we lost and that’s not counting those aircraft that came back, ‘cause Churchill was a big blabbermouth. Now, if you follow through Churchill never let the RAF Bomber Command go on any victory parade.
RP: Yes. I know that. Yeah.
AB: You know that don’t you? What I’m saying.
RP: Oh yes. I know.
AB: And we were complete outcasts to him. He was a soapbox orator Churchill. I suppose he did do a good job because he more or less took over from, after Eden wasn’t it? And —
RP: Chamberlain.
AB: Chamberlain, Neville.
RP: Chamberlain. Yeah.
AB: No, Eden —
RP: Eden was he was his foreign secretary.
AB: That’s right. The foreign one.
RP: Yeah. Yeah.
AB: Chamberlain was, “Peace in our time,” at Croydon airfield.
RP: That’s the one.
AB: Yeah.
RP: Ok. Well, I’d just like to say thank you. It’s been fascinating, and I do appreciate your time so thank you very much. That’s lovely.
AB: It’s all over is it?
RP: That’s, thank you. Yes. Thank you very much.
AB: Oh, I’m sorry if I’ve —
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Alfred Barnett
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Rod Pickles
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2021-08-11
Type
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Sound
Format
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00:33:21 Audio Recording
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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ABarnettA210811, PBarnettA2101
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Language
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eng
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
Great Britain
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Bad Nenndorf
Germany--Nuremberg
Description
An account of the resource
When Alfred’s mother’s house was destroyed during Luftwaffe bombing, he was determined to join the RAF and fight back. He trained as a gunner and completed two tours and a spell as an instructor. After his final tour of operations, he joined the British Bombing Survey and CSDIC (Combined Services Detailed Interrogations) based at Bad Nenndorf in Germany. He was also involved in the Nuremberg War Trials.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1944
100 Squadron
156 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
Bennett, Donald Clifford Tyndall (1910-1986)
bombing
Botha
crash
Lancaster
Manchester
military discipline
Operational Training Unit
Pathfinders
RAF Grimsby
RAF Warboys
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/938/11295/AMacCormickA161126.1.mp3
cacd0abccd972fde8ad86476d6df8c78
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
MacCormick, Anderson
A MacCormick
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Anderson MacCormick (Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a flight engineer.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-11-26
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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MacCormick, A
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
BJ: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Brenda Jones. The interviewee is Anderson MacCormick. The interview is taking place at Mr MacCormick’s home in Milngavie Glasgow on the 26th of November 2016. Thank you Anderson for agreeing to talk to me today. So could you tell me about your life before you joined the RAF?
AM: I don’t think there was anything especially particular about that. As compared to today for a young children I’d say that we had an awful lot more freedom. It’s a, it’s a comparatively small area where I was brought up in Alexandria. That’s in the Vale of Leven. And as children we were allowed to do, get out and play and go where we liked within that area without any fears. A bit different from what children have today. I worked. I went through junior school and then I went to the academy. And I started working as a part time boy with a firm when I was eleven year old. It was a reporter and press photographer. That was just delivering messages and doing work for him after school and at the weekends. That was quite interesting. It brought in the time at the beginning of the war and this particular freelance reporter he had, during the First World War put in a small paragraph in the local papers of all the men who were killed during that war. And he was trying to carry on doing the same thing in the Second World War. It meant going and asking questions around about. He would hear that someone had been killed. In particular at the period of Dunkirk. And he would normally get the information in but we had to query that and confirm it before he would put in his paragraph. So that was interesting. The [pause] the situation came that his main photographers was taken away. Were called up. And I wasn’t sufficiently qualified to continue working with the business and so I had to leave there. And from there I went to work with the Insurance Society and was working with them as a clerk in the office until such time as I went away to the air force. During that period from the start of the ATC I joined that and was a member of the ATC until I went into the air force itself. The [pause] I don’t think there was any great special things about my youth or that the, my memory of that time was the freedom that we had to do as we wanted to do. I remember a whole summer another lad and myself we spent going up to Pollok Park where motor, rowing boats were hired and we helped the people there and played about there. That was something which I don’t think many children would be allowed to do today. That was when we must have been nine or ten year old that we were doing that. So, as I say there was a tremendous amount of freedom in these days to get out and literally enjoy life. But there was nothing terribly spectacular.
BJ: So how did you come to join the RAF?
AM: Because my mother was in the WRAF in the First World War. And I had in fact intended applying to become a boy entrant in to the RAF prior to the war starting. I had the application papers all completed for that and, but that was cancelled at the start of the war. The boy entrants were cancelled at the start of the war. It did start up again I believe. But I think possibly because my mother having been in the service during the war and I wanted to go the same way. Always had a great interest in flying. And, but because the the boy entrant, the scheme was stopped that finished that idea. So the, it was a case of learning something about flying with being in the ATC. That again, nothing terribly spectacular about that. The only thing that came with that was that one of the officers in the squadron I was in had been a glider pilot and he had a, they had a glider there. I think, I think it was his glider, the officer that was there and we’d take that out. It would be taken out on a Saturday or a Sunday and erected in a field in Dumbarton. And we hauled it back and forward over the field and one or two of the lads, the older lads that were there were allowed to get in it and do what you would term a ground slide. And that gave me an attraction to the gliding. And that was carried on through the period I was in Germany. I’d done some gliding there and then joined the gliding school when I came back when I was, after I was demobbed. Joined the gliding school. The ATC Gliding School at what, it was Abbotsinch Airfield. Now Glasgow airport. That the connection there was always an attraction to be flying.
BJ: So when you joined the RAF tell me about your training.
AM: I don’t, there was nothing spectacular about the training. From we spent, I can remember my first meal in the RAF which was at Lord’s Cricket Ground. We did, I had of course travelled down overnight to London never having been there before. And of course there was the old story if you wanted to know anything you always asked a policeman. And when I arrived in London I did that. I asked a policeman both for the direction, directions to get to Lord’s Cricket Ground and also where I could buy some breakfast. The policeman, he lived up to their reputation and took me around to a cafe where all the railwaymen had their food. Their breakfast. And I got a real breakfast there I think at, what would you, how would you describe it? It had practically everything in it and it was all fried. That certainly was the — from getting that meal I got to Lord’s and at lunchtime there we were all queued up and given a bowl of soup and a hunk of bread. I couldn’t say it was a slice. It was just a, it was I think more like a [pause] the French roll of bread and just a piece torn off that was our, was my first meal with them. And then again [pause] the same as everybody else who went through the whole procedure in London of getting kitted out. Going and doing our, the [pause] the a swimming trial. And one of the things that turned out there was being told I’ve, I was at the front, on the front rank and getting dark in London in the January. We had to carry an Alladin lamp there. One at the front and one at the rear of the column. And I was given the job of carrying the Alladin lamp until they found that I was trying, I was walking fast, marching far too fast for any of the wee fellows at the back. And I was the lamp taken away and I was shoved up the back so that they didn’t have to march so fast as I was making it. But the few weeks we spent in London we went through various different lectures. The one thing I can remember we had PT every morning and it was like this kind of weather we have at the moment. And that was over at the zoo at the premier park [pause] I don’t know if I made a note in here for that. No. No. One of the big parks in London. It’s got a big pond in it. Where the zoo is in the park and I’ve, I’ve forgotten the name of it but we had our, we got our meals there, in there. And the dining room was over in the park itself and one of the things that did happen there was it was, we’d always to queue to get into the dining room and that queue was along the side of the monkey enclosure that was there. And very often the monkeys would be copying us inside and near the enclosure. We had to queue along the side of it to get into the dining room. Again that was something that was totally new to most of us. For a lot of us it was completely new being grouped together with a large number of strangers. A large number of people we didn’t know. The lads who’d been to boarding school had been used to living with other youngsters there. They could handle it an awful lot better. I think possibly being in the ATC and having done the various camps there did sort of bring me into it much better than if I was completely new to it because I’d done that before. But we went from London down to Newquay and had our ITW down at Newquay which was very pleasant. Very nice down there. That’s what you had to fill in there. The ITW at Newquay. And we were there at Newquay for what — six weeks. Again it was one of these things of getting to know very much the people who were around about you. Usually your first sort of introduction to them was who walked into what room and what bed you got in a room and the people who were there. But again out of it was usually an intake of somewhere about fifty people coming in. In time you got to know the others who were there. But that was again the usual drill, marching, shooting shotguns and or pistols. Learning Morse and doing a test for, to see whether you were capable of reading Morse. With that, on the Morse actually when they, when they were giving us a test for that the a lot of the intake I was with did not survive the test and we all complained that this was the person who was sending the Morse was the problem. He was up in the top room, up in a house and we were away out in a field. And we managed to overturn the decisions on that because we claimed that the way the Morse was sent wasn’t satisfactory. We probably were all a bit too lazy and didn’t learn it [laughs] but it wasn’t his fault, whoever was sending it. But these are the things that happened. The other things I remember at ITW was going out and going cross country running which a lot of us had probably never done before there. And in general it was a, a period of learning and learning quickly. That, that the whole course we moved off from there and then all met up and we went to various small stations to do some flying experience. And then we met up at Locking which was number, number — [pause] Number 7 S of TT. That’s the School of Technical Training we went to. And then we went from there to St Athan which was Number 4 School of Technical Training. And there we spent, what? It wasn’t ten months? [pause] Six months. Between the two stations. I think we were six weeks at Locking and then the rest of the period up to October we were out at St Athan. And that was then that when you got passing out and got your wings if you passed the exam. Again, a very interesting period. We were all I think at the same stage all learning something totally new there that, I’m coming on with that. I feel that just the things that happened, how circumstances worked out at the end of the period at St Athan they were, as I said before there was, there was a blockage in the line and too many people and not enough places to go to and we were sent on our leave after we’d finished the course. But instead of being posted direct to a Conversion Unit I was not in the half, my name was in the latter half of the alphabet and half the people who’d passed out at that time were delayed. I was sent — when I finished my leave and returned to St Athan they just sent me home again for another period. I can’t remember just how long it was and then I went to the aircrew school at Sturgate for two or three weeks before I was posted to a Con Unit. But that pushed me back, oh a month, six weeks. If I had have gone straight to the Con Unit from St Athan as a big part of that intake went I’d have been flying on ops over the winter of ’44 ’45 and that was a period where there was quite heavy losses. A rotten winter it was. Deep snow. I learned how to shovel snow off a runway at that period. But by not, by being held back over the winter I was actually doing the training in the Con Unit where others who’d been sent to a Con Unit right away would have been on to operations during that period. So I always have felt that that possibly saved my life. That a lot of these chaps there who were flying on ops during that period they, the one chap that I was very friendly with and kept up with until after the war he [pause] they’d done their Con Unit and then they went to a squadron and had done one or two ops. And then went to — they volunteered to go to PFF then and this stopped them. They had to do a further period of training before they could fly on ops there and Fred, they never, they’d never done any more ops after they went to PFF. It was just the time was spent training. But I’m sure a lot of the chaps who were on that same course as I was on would have been flying on ops during that period and a lot could have been lost. So I’ve always had this feeling that by that happening to me it possibly saved a life there. That particularly after going to Con Unit, finishing there we were posted to a squadron. And another crew joined the squadron on the same day and I got to know them because when we were sent on our first op, we were there for maybe possibly a fortnight after we got to the squadron. We went on our first operation and so did that other crew. They were sent on a gardening or a mine laying trip. We went to Duisburg on a bombing trip. We came back. They didn’t. So again the circumstances there it could have been us that went on the gardening trip just as they were, out of, we were the two new crews that were there. And something must have been looking after me at that time. But it’s amazing just how circumstances can change. Change the chances you have and change a life. And I’ve always felt that being held back however much you didn’t like it had been worthwhile as far as I was concerned.
BJ: Can you tell me what your job involved then?
AM: The job.
BJ: Yes.
AM: As a flight engineer.
BJ: Yes.
AM: Right. You, you [pause] you’re the member of the crew who had to know the aircraft and all the systems in it. And before a flight, before every flight you had to check quite a number of the systems. Checking the outside of the aircraft to see that everything was as it should be. The skipper usually had a walk around the aircraft as well. You had various systems to check inside before you went off. But these pre-flight checks had to be done and they then, whilst flying you were assisting the skipper, the pilot. You were in charge of the engines and setting of engines and the checking of the fuel that had been used and keeping a record of that. Keeping a record of the temperatures of the various, of the four engines there. The [pause] you were the one person in the crew who was always on your feet and could be up, around and doing something. You helped the pilot on take-off. He would start off and take the engines up so far and normally the engineer would take over and put the throttles through and lock them. You’d attend to adjusting the flaps. And in general that really was you, you were working with the skipper. Working with the engines. Trying to, if you could get them synchronised instead of being like the, I don’t know if you’d ever heard about the German engines of a German aircraft where they were mainly pulsating. A different sound entirely. We tried to get the sound of the engines all to be in sequence there. But there was not [pause] oh and just looking after the engines and the skipper. That was the job.
AM: So, can you tell me what it was like going on the missions?
BJ: Well, I would say for the first one it was an easy one. You didn’t know what you were going into. The skipper, usually he’d done what was termed a second dickie and he went to, on a trip with an experienced crew before he took his own crew on an operation. So he had some idea and I can remember once my skipper, he went to Dresden on his second dickie. And we all were all asking him what it was like there. My memory tells me he couldn’t give us an awfully satisfactory answer. But then when we were going and I certainly found and I think that the other members of the crew how it was, you trained for a long time to go there and you were literally looking forward to it. But you didn’t know what you were going into. So for that trip it wasn’t too bad. Subsequent trips you knew what you were going in to and if it happened to be quite a long trip you were going on you knew that the chances of you meeting up with a night fighter were greater the longer the trip that was there. And I can’t remember having any great anxiety on going off on a trip. Either at night or a day trip there. That it was just another operation you were going on. But again we were all young. Well, eight of us were all, six of us were all young. The rear gunner we had he was, I think he was, Nobby was thirty nine which was old for aircrew at that time. And the rest of us we were all between eighteen, and I’d say I was about twenty three and that was for the lot of us. Oh I’m forgetting the bomb aimer. We never did know which, what age Jim was. He was a Canadian and we never found out much about Jim but he was certainly, certainly an older person. But I would certainly say that the first op was no great hassle. Although where we went to was one of the heaviest defended towns in Germany. But it certainly, it must have had some effect on us. The fact that we knew we were going into and knew what we were going into and what we were going into in subsequent operations. And I only did thirteen actual bombing ops but they were thirteen times you could have been knocked down. And we were pretty lucky. We only were damaged once that I know of with flak. We had a hole in one wing when we came back. Some of the things that you saw there at the various different operations such as rockets being used. And you could watch them being fired from the ground, coming up, the light on them. The flaming from the rocket. You could watch them coming up. And being coned by searchlights. Quite a nasty experience. But you just took it and accepted that was what was going down at that time [pause] But the [pause] I don’t, I can’t remember any particular feelings. Glad to be back obviously once you got back home. We had one particular operation. It was a daylight and it was to Bremen. And we were not flying our normal aircraft that we usually had. We found it quite difficult to getting this aircraft to climb above about seventeen thousand feet. The bombing height for that op was somewhere about between twenty one and twenty three thousand feet depending where you were stepped up. So on that, the aircraft was very fast. We actually were able to fly up to the front of the stream, you know for a few minutes and have a look at the twenty two thousand pounders that were being carried by the leading aircraft. We flew up underneath them and had a look at them because they had just a fairing around the bomb where you could see it in the bomb bay. And then we allowed ourselves to get back down in to the stream again. Into about the middle of it. We flew up and beyond the target at Bremen. And then turned around and coming back in over the target but we were this two thousand feet at least below all the rest of the stream. The — coming in to the target the bomb bays were opened and looking up you could see the bombs and they were thousand pounder blast bombs in the bomb bays of the aircraft above us. We were right in the centre. When you looked into a bomb bay when it was sitting on the ground and the aircraft had bombed up they didn’t look all that terribly fierce things but when you looked up there and saw them there you knew that they were going to be getting dropped in seconds and that you were right underneath them and knowing the stories of aircraft that were knocked down by being hit by our own bombs from the aircraft above them it was not a very pleasant feeling. The bombs were eventually released and they dropped right in front of, I was looking out to the right hand side of the aircraft and they literally they dropped in front of the engines and then dropped between the main plane and the tailplane of the aircraft to. The seconds would have been, too see these bombs there, the bomb doors opened knowing they were going to be dropped and when they were actually dropped they were long seconds. Luckily the skipper knew what he was doing. He still flew straight and level. If he’d have tried to escape from these bombs dropping I’m sure we would have been knocked down but he just continued on straight and level. We didn’t get touched by any of the bomb but by God they were close. That certainly was quite an experience. Not nice. But one of the things we knew about was just after we’d joined the squadron there was one crew who’d had the, on a night raid the bombs from an aircraft above them had hit them. Had actually gone right through their wing there and luckily missed the fuel tanks that were in the wings and had gone right through the wing. Another one they had the incendiary bombs which had been dropped from above, gone into their wing and luckily none of them went on fire. Which they were very lucky with. But the thoughts that would have gone through head at the time I can’t remember them now but I know its one situation I will never forget. Just seeing what was there and knowing what was going to happen. That could have been a bad day that one but it wasn’t. And the, the, that really was the only time well not the only time when ops were a bit dicey. The one trip to Kiel which was where we saw the rockets being fired at us. And at that same trip we were coned by searchlights. And another aircraft from our squadron was flying alongside us and it was originally coned and the cone went off it, came on to us and luckily it moved on to another one and we went out of it before we’d even, the skipper had even started to try and take any evasive action at one two three. And we think, I think that the number three got hit. But this other aircraft that was beside us it had a name painted on it of a squadron and we knew it was one of the aircraft of our squadron with this name that was on it. It’s not nice during a, it’s as if it was in broad daylight, it was actually the middle of the night, with a cone of a searchlights hitting you. You could be blinded for a while. But that really is [cough] we had the situation on a couple of trips of coming back rather short of fuel. In fact in one of them one of the engines had cut out because of shortage of fuel just as we landed. Again quite lucky that then you had the situations that you get back after a long trip. Coming in to land, being given permission to land, coming in to land and suddenly an aircraft comes in underneath you. And we were a mixed squadron of Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders. I think there were a couple of Americans there. And the Australians particularly were prone to do things you didn’t fancy that we had that happen to us. Coming in on approach and an aircraft coming in slipped underneath us. They hadn’t been given permission to land. They just — in. That was it. Couldn’t care less who they pushed out the road as long as we had to go around again and go through the whole approach. That was always something that annoyed you. When somebody had done that. Other than that I can’t see there was any other things that disturbed us all that much more at the time. When you’re young you have a different way of looking at things. And of course coming on the end of the war, well before the end of the war we were, we’d done the trips to Holland. For Manna.
BJ: Oh yes. Tell me about that then.
AM: Well, that one wasn’t it? I reckon we were on first trip. On the Sunday. And that really was the only one that was any possible problem there. We didn’t know whether Jerry was going to keep to the — we’d been told at briefing that the truce had been made with Germany. In fact it hadn’t. We went on the Sunday. The truce wasn’t signed until the Monday morning. That the [pause] and initially we were called oh what, some time about 5 o’clock or something Sunday. Saturday night. And I assume, I cannot remember now but I assume we had been out on the town on the night before. On the Saturday. And the SPs came around and gave the usual shake and shout and wakened us up. Both crews that were in the Nissen hut that we were in there. So we were, they told us that there was a battle order. The war hadn’t finished then so it was still classed as a battle order and that the — obviously went through the procedure. Then up to our flying breakfast. Got to the briefing room and that’s where we learned that we were going to drop food to the people in Holland. We had, I’ll put this light on a minute. We had done a practice just before that with low level dropping of food at the, tut tut, was that tea a bit strong for you?
AM: No. It’s fine thanks.
BJ: You quite like it.
AM: Yes.
BJ: Ok. Right. The [pause] yes we were went through and got a briefing that we were going to Holland to drop food to the people there who really were starving. And the weather was atrocious. The, we were given a time for take-off. That passed. And I can’t just remember the times off hand but it was at, an hour or two passed for our time to take off for this because, we believed, the weather. Eventually at one point I think I can remember they wouldn’t send us because of the weather and then they came and told us we were going. And there was only two aircraft from our squadron and it was both the crews were in the one hut. We thought we obviously we had been picked on in some way that we were going for this trip. However, it was probably pretty much the worst weather flying over England that I’d ever flown in. Rain, low cloud and we were flying down to under a thousand feet at times. And flying over the North Sea we were certainly down to about five hundred feet because of the cloud. And then got so far and then it cleared. Coming up to the Dutch coast. Cleared. In we went. It was a lovely day over there. That would be possibly, what [pause] it would be the time of the day we would be there. What time did we actually go off? [click] oh , hit in the eyes.
[pause]
Where is it? That’s Rotterdam. Yeah. Oh yes. It was afterward. It was 12 o’clock and after 12 o’clock in the day by the time we got there. So it was coming up to the middle day and, but we continued because of what the job we were going to do we continued flying about the five hundred feet although we’d flown at that height across most of the North Sea. And dropped our food, came out and one of the things with that was we were we were actually I think about the fourth, the fourth aircraft to go in and drop our load at Leiden. And there were various different drop, drop zones. But flying over the villages there seeing the people because of the sound of the engines they were getting they were coming out the houses, standing in the middle of the street waving to us. Some of them still in their nightclothes coming out on to the street there. Again a four engine aircraft going over at about five hundred feet over the house you hear it. You know what it is. And to see the German troops in pairs on the street carrying their rifles over their shoulder. There was also light ack ack guns crew there who literally followed us around with the, their gun. Now they could have opened fire. We had no guns at all. All our guns were taken out of the aircraft. And the, the if someone had done the wrong thing we hadn’t an awful lot of hope at that height with the guns that they had there. It could have been nasty. As it turned out they didn’t fire on us. The [pause] after we’d dropped our food at, on the field at Leiden we turned and came straight out. Our instructions were you must stick to the definite passage that was agreed. We would come straight out over the coast. We turned out, coming over the coast we went over and there was the sand dunes there and then there was a jetty. A wooden jetty going into the North Sea. And on the end of the jetty a German soldier, his rifle on his shoulder, his tin hat in his hand and he was waving [laughs] That he obviously thought he was getting some of this and he was quite pleased that this is what was happening in the war because he was standing there waving with his tin helmet in his hand. Now, I’ve, at the moment I’ve been writing back and forward to a lad in Holland who is trying to write a book about the dropping of the food. And he’s been trying to identify where that actual jetty was. It’s the sort of thing you didn’t take any notice of at the time. But he might tell me one of these days he’s found it. But it, the [pause] having we’d just been told that the Dutch, the people in Holland were starving. Not had any great, great information about it. It was still felt an awful lot better and I made a note to that effect. It felt an awful lot better dropping food to them then dropping bombs. And certainly I subsequently went across to Holland in ’85 and we met a lot of the people there who had been the recipients of getting that food there. But that’s a different story. The actual truth about the truce that had been made — they had been, Air Commodore Geddes had been negotiating with the Germans for quite a wee while to get this truce completed for us to drop food to them. But the, why they had decided to go ahead on the Sunday to drop it, for us to go ahead, I don’t know but the [pause] I think the truce had been sort of made completely but it hadn’t been signed and it wasn’t signed until the Monday morning when the senior German officer Seyss-Inquart came to the school at [pause] oh gosh the name of it. Oh heck. I’ve forgotten the name of the wee school where they used it for the actual signing of this truce. But we were going there without any real cover when that truce hadn’t been signed. The Yanks didn’t go till the Monday. Until after the truce was signed. But the, out of the four trips I went on there was certainly a bit of, a wee bit of worry about going on the first one. Not only was the weather that bad but we just didn’t know what the Germans would do. And as I say if they had have opened fire on any of our aircraft it could have been quite nasty. But that certainly was the, quite a, shall I say a high moment of flying. The second day we went there having been there once and knowing that everything was ok we enjoyed a period of low flying. Which in Holland, in the flat country they have there it was very good. When the skipper’s got to shout for full power to get across a wee bridge [laughs] you’ve been really down on, on the deck and flying low. That, that the, it was quite good. We eventually [pause] we were issued with chocolate. The usual flying rations. Chocolate and what have you each time we flew. And after the first one and knowing what was happening they gave you a bit more information about it we were able to make up a wee parcel on a parachute and drop some of the sweets for the children there. And certainly having learned subsequently what these children went through at that time it certainly was needed there. They had a pretty rough time of it in the western Holland. In fact funnily enough I just got that wee booklet there given to me today. It’s come over from Canada. It’s a, it must be a Dutch. It might be a Dutchman who’s written this in Canada for Canadians. And that’s my son in law. His sister is just come over on holiday from Canada and she picked up this book in Canada. Haven’t even been through it to read it yet. And it’s about the hungry winter. But the, that’s going to interesting to get reading that. In fact funnily enough there must have been a book signing because it’s signed by the author. There. Really, going on from there the flying part we also brought back troops from, the POWs from Brussels. And then we went on to bring back some troops from Italy. Those were Exodus trips was from Brussels. They were POWs. And from Italy it was Dodge trips we’d done from there. Going in to, flying into just outside Naples. The airfield there. Pomigliano. But that was quite interesting.
BJ: What were, what were the POWs like from Brussels that you picked up?
AM: We didn’t get much contact with them but the [pause] the lot we brought back had all been issued with new uniforms so you hadn’t seen what they’d been like. But coming back there was one officer in the group and the skipper invited him to come up to the cockpit as we were coming up to the white cliffs of Dover. And I don’t know how long he had been in the camp but the emotion showed by that chap and he must have been there a year or two was something to see. Something to realise just what it, what that must have meant to him to see these white cliffs. That really, nothing said but just the actions itself showed how he was feeling that day. And following that it wasn’t long after that that our squadron was being disbanded and the, some of them were going to join another, another squadron and we, my crew went away out to the Middle East. And I was made redundant. So I spent chasing around the country doing various different jobs and stationed in various different places. I quite enjoyed life.
AM: Were you still in the RAF then?
BJ: Still in the RAF. Yes. They couldn’t demob everybody at the one time so you had to wait your turn and the, although a lot of people had asked to get retrained into another different ground job some managed it and some didn’t. Some wanted to continue flying. I would have liked to continue flying but I saw the way that they were giving some of the people who had said they would sign on for a period, and didn’t like what I saw. They, they got them to sign on, on the basis that they would continue flying and then given them a ground job and just kept them there. I had actually, and because of seeing this the various different jobs I was doing in different stations where I was moved around sort of indicated you would probably be on the ground and not getting back to flying at all although they had agreed that you would be flying. There was one station I was on there was a warrant officer navigator who’d completed a full tour and he was being used as a clerk for equipment. A clerk. He’d signed on for to stay in the air force and but on the basis that he would still continue flying. But he was being used as a clerk. One, one of the things, I met a chap I knew who had done, a gunner who’d done two tours. He’d signed on to stay in the air force and the last time I met him I met him going across the esplanade at Edinburgh Castle. I’d gone through there for a day. It was one of the places I used to go. To the castle. And I met him there. Now, I’d last met him in the air force and knowing when he was, when I met him there he was the messenger boy at the recruit centre in Edinburgh. No word about going back on flying or doing a flight although he had signed on, on the basis that he would continue flying. That was after I came out of the air force. The war had finished. But it was not very nice and I know that about a week or a fortnight after I was demobbed we had all been told if you were a flight sergeant you were back down to sergeant and you covered up your tapes during the day. You were just an AC1 and equivalent to them although you still got your sergeant’s pay. But the week after or a fortnight after I came out even the stripes were taken away and the pay was down to an AC1. The same as an AC1 was getting at that time. That, ok they had thousands of people in the services. The cost of paying them all and paying them at the rates they had been giving them must have been terrific. Quite a big job for a time too. But when they got you to sign on there and you’d done that and then they don’t carry out their side of the bargain it’s not, not very nice, not. So, I’d have liked to have stayed on in the service stay but better paid. I didn’t. You could have been lucky or very unlucky.
AM: So did you keep in touch with people after you got demobbed?
BJ: Well, I was into the gliding at that point. And again that was to a certain extent was keeping in touch with the air force in general. That was over a period of about twenty years that I was working at the gliding schools. So it was, in a way I kept on in touch but then going back to various, one or two different stations, active stations where they were doing gliding there. And they [pause] you were to a certain extent keeping in touch there but not to the extent of keeping in touch with the active air force itself. And again of course a lot of the people I was meeting through the gliding school, the instructor’s were all ex-RAF as well. And they always kept a contact with it. It was the [pause] many cases during the war and the comradeship you had was quite a nice life. But I don’t know how it would have been in peacetime. To be constantly there. As you can see I still keep [laughs] actually my son in law is in a job where he does a lot of night shifts and he buys all these magazines and I get them handed on to me to read and they’re still of interest.
AM: Could you tell me a bit about what it was like on the, on the base when you, during the wartime? What did you — what was the life like and what did you do when you weren’t on operations?
BJ: You mean on, on ops when what you were —
[pause]
BJ: Is that, what it would be like? Generally, squadron life?
AM: Yeah. Yes.
BJ: Literally you sort of lived from day to day. You could either be doing some training [pause] even between the operations you went on you might be sent off to do some air to ground, fighter affiliation flying there. Or bombing practice at the bombing range. And some days you would be sitting around doing nothing if you weren’t called on for, to go on ops. The, that the, that there certainly was one particularly cross country which we did but I think that was at Con Unit. I can’t just remember. I think it was when we were, before we finished Con Unit. It was a flight from the base I was at either — probably the Con Unit there. At Sandtoft. Where we actually flew up towards the Grampians in Scotland, turned out to the west and we were flying up. This was during December so it would be. Yeah it would be at the Con Unit. The ground there, it was quite a lot of snow during that particular year and we were flying somewhere around about the twenty thousand foot mark. The ground was covered in snow and all the mountains were covered in snow. And we, it must have been a full moon. Turned out to the west and we had a turning point on over one of the islands out in the west. As we flew out, and I would say as we flew over the coast that the cloud below us disappeared and what we were seeing there was islands that had snow on them. The sea was black. The islands sparkled like diamonds. With the full moon of course it was beaming up there and the sight of that I can still see that image of that now. But I wasn’t acquainted with the islands. I hadn’t spent any time on them in these days but this was absolutely marvellous. As we came out over the edge of the cloud you came to the, the cloud was if you were going over a cliff and you went over it and here were these islands out there glistening in the black sea. And that was a fantastic sight to see that. I’d love to see that again. I don’t think I ever could. And from there we flew down to Lands End. And then we were back up over the country again. It was quite a long cross country that. The [pause] but the navigator, the bomb aimer, they were doing a H2S [pause] exercise and they had to identify a town on, on the radar there. And the picture all went [laughs] and we were, we had a wee while chasing around and not knowing where we were. I’ve just forgotten which of the towns it was that they had to select and make a pinpoint. However, we finished up by going and doing a bombing, a high level bombing in the dark. And I think that trip took us somewhere about ten and a half hours which was a long, long trip for a cross country at home. It was exceptional but that sight of these islands I can never go to the islands without thinking about what they looked like seeing them from that height and these circumstances. I think it was quite — a memory keeps coming back of a thousand bomber raid where the, during the flight it would actually be over France at the time and going up to the astrodome and looked out and all I could see around — the sky was clear and right around the horizon as far as I could see was aircraft. There were so many aircraft all there that they were right to all the various horizons all the way around. And I can’t remember where we were going that night. It must have been southern Germany somewhere but certainly it was quite a sight. Again, something which occasionally comes back. Remembering that something I’ll never see again. But the, one of the bad things about it if I’d have had a camera it would have been worthwhile and there were a lot of our crews although cameras were prohibited. Supposed to be. A lot of the crews Canadians and Australians who could buy the cameras in their own country and could get film from there that could take. I’d have loved to have had a camera in those days. It would have been quite good.
AM: What was it like inside the aircraft?
BJ: Sometimes cold but it depends which aircraft you got. Some of the heating systems weren’t all that terribly good. But the — I certainly was in a position I could get up and move about there which probably helped me. The gunners, wireless operators, navigator they were all stuck in their seats where they were all the time. It could be very cold for the gunners at some times. But the, Nobby our rear gunner would tell us of how he could get an icycle going right from his oxygen mask right down to the floor. That [pause] some of the trips could be monotonous. Long trip. And then in the air I was certainly taking readings from the various stages and recording them but I think they were every twenty minutes or something. I cannot put it in my mind how often that they were. Half an hour or twenty minutes you had to take I these reading but the rest of the time it was a case of just looking out. Constantly looking. Always. Keep a sharp lookout for night fighters if they were anywhere there. Nothing has left any great impression on my mind as the feelings I was getting at that time. It was just ok. You were doing a job. Giving the skipper his cup of coffee at the [pause] a bit monotonous at times when it was dark. You were seeing nothing, and quite glad to get back home. Yeah. There was times. I remember on one trip when the Remagen bridge head had been, over the Rhine and the, and on that occasion we had been warned at briefing to stay well clear of it because the, both the Americans were on one side, I think it was the Yanks that were there. It could have been the British troops. And the other side was Jerry. Neither of them wanted the bridge destroyed. And their anti-aircraft fire would open up to aircraft at any height. Obviously the, I think our own troops and the Americans would not have normally fired on the aircraft above a certain height. But there they said if you got anywhere near it from either side they would go and we, that was on the road coming back, and somebody obviously did go near it. We saw this open up, the bombardment from the anti-aircraft guns and an aircraft went down. They’d obviously gone too near. But a bit of bad navigation on somebody’s part to do that. Part of the chances they were taken there but the long trips out, back and forward were a bit monotonous. If you, unless you were constantly occupied doing something and certainly other than just recording instrument readings that was it. Just a monotonous flight in a way although I could get up and move around and that probably helped.
AM: What did you do on your time off?
BJ: It was just [pause] I can’t really say. Just evenings you might have went to the NAAFI or to the club. They had, at Waltham there was a good club there. I don’t know who ran that one. The [pause] during the day I certainly at Elsham, I used to go with another engineer to the link trainer and see if there was any spare time there. That was supposed to be all the pilots that would go there but we used to go there and this was great to go and fly in a link trainer. Whether we could do that I can’t remember whether there was only certain days you could or whether you could go there every day. But on the, that there was many days I should think that we just had nothing to do and we used to sit around and sit in the aircrew room reading the paper and that was it. There was usually some flying at some time during the week. Some exercise of some type. If we weren’t flying possibly the, in the engineer’s section may have had a wee lecture there to fill it in. We weren’t pushed around all that much to do anything. But I’m trying to remember. It’s not something that’s ever [pause] I can’t really remember [laughs] That’s seventy years ago. During the period during the war certainly we probably had maybe a lecture or something to go to or as I say sit reading the paper. After the war then you probably had a job that kept you working all day depending on the job you were in. I can remember one place. I was down in London for a while. Another sergeant and I were in charge of the dining room of the unit down there and there I spent at least two hours most days out in the rowing boat in the park. Regent’s Park it was. And that was lovely. So much time there. Just nothing to do. The girls who served in the sergeant’s mess they would lay the tables and lay everything out and you just could go around and see if everything was ok and that was it. No problem. Other places, in one camp I was in one of the duties I had was working with redundant equipment. And I had the use of forklift truck that I’d go around this airfield and pick up crates. Mainly full of clocks. And I had a, one hut in the camp which was full of clocks of all different descriptions. I remember I used to go in there. I could spend a couple of hours winding all these clocks. But that, it was just a job to keep you occupied. The [pause] except once I went over to Germany. Over there we were we talked ourselves, quite a few of us talked ourself into going over there. We’d heard about a detachment that was going there with the Air Ministry Special Duty Flight and we went up to see them at their head office in London and talked ourselves into going over there. Supposedly we would be over just as AC1s. But in fact you still used the power. You lived in the sergeant’s mess and you still used the power of the sergeant’s stripes. And we had quite an interesting time over there working with the gas bombs that Jerry had stored there.
AM: Where was this?
BJ: In Germany. We were stationed at RAF Freiburg. I can’t remember the name of the place where the bomb dump was but it was very close to the Russian border to the — somewhere there. And that the Jerry had underground bunkers. They were actually on the surface but covered with soil and grass. Camouflaged concrete bunkers where they had these bombs stored in big wooden crates. And at the end of the war some of the people who had been there they had gone in to the bunkers and toppled. They were a bit, they were five high the boxes with these bombs in them. And they had toppled some of them over breaking the casing of some of the bombs releasing the gas that was in there. Which made it a wee bit on the dangerous side because the gas masks we had weren’t any use to protect us against what was there. But we were in charge of German, German troops as you called them [unclear] and they’d done the labouring part. So the lifting up of the bombs and working out and we had to take out the picric acid and the dynamite that was in them, in the bomb. Sometimes you were getting a bomb, take it out of its crate and you’d find that the casing had been cracked. If it’s one of them that had been toppled the casing might have been cracked and the gas was leaking. But one of the strange things it was a poison gas. It had the same properties as phosgene and mustard. But the chief scientists at the plant where they made the gas on one or two occasions he was brought over to check and tell us whether a bomb was cracked or otherwise. And he would go up to the crate and stick his nose in it and take a great big sniff. And he would say, ‘Right. That’s cracked.’ Or, ‘No. It was alright.’ But the fact that he would stick his nose right in to check it. He must have known what he was doing because he made the damned stuff. But again it was very interesting. I was quite interested there being able to talk to a lot of the young Germans who were employed there. Some of them could speak English. And it was interesting to, to hear their side of the story and what they had to go through in their own army. That [pause] in the main the most of them were very much like our own people. They [paused] I talked to quite a number of civilians as well as the chaps who were in the service about what the effect of the, oh what did they call it? The youth organisation in Germany. Hitler Youth. What they thought of that. And this was very interesting. But the mere fact of getting to talk to them was worthwhile.
AM: What did they think about the Hitler Youth?
BJ: They thought the Hitler Youth was excellent. And I think it probably was for the majority of them. It, it certainly was very much more, very much more militaristic than any of the organisations we had in this country. But that was the pattern there although they were controlled an awful lot more. But again for young people it took them out of their towns and out. Got them out. Took them away hiking and doing various different things. And to gymnastics and running and sports there which if it hadn’t had a militaristic end to it, it would have been very good. But I think the most of the ones the younger ones there they thought it was excellent. Never got around to talking about Hitler. That was a sort of conversation that was taboo. You didn’t want to get to that. But there wasn’t a great number of them could speak English but there was always one or two and they, they no matter when you spoke to some of the [unclear] that were there telling them what to do, what you wanted done there they’d always one would come up and he would want to translate for you. He was a boy who wanted to do, to make sure he got the jobs as time went on and being able to speak English when the English were controlling his country meant he could get the job as opposed to the others who didn’t know what they had been told. And there was always a few fly boys there. Again, interesting to see it. To see how it worked with them. And that’s an interesting period which I’m quite pleased that I even with the danger that was there with the gas bombs it was quite an interesting period at that time. But again just very much spending time waiting to get out.
AM: So what did you do when you left the RAF?
BJ: I came back to [pause] and joined the firm as a photographer. The chap I had known before I went in to the air force he had taken over the business which the old man I had worked with initially had and they, they had promised me a job when I went back there if I wanted to go there as a photographer. They really I wasn’t all that terribly qualified as a photographer. Although I had taken some [laughs] not classes but supposed to be getting some training from the air force as a photographer under the EVT system. The one day a week I got going to the photographic section to do something but really that wasn’t much use. But I was with them for oh what five or six months until the, I’d actually received an invitation for to go along to the Army Reserve. The unit. They asked me if I’d like to come along and see them and they’d handed the note in to the office where I was working but as soon as the bosses saw this they wanted me to take the camera along and start working there for them. This was a private invitation which I had had and when they knew what it was they wanted to get in there and start taking photographs there which I just did not want to do. Being invited along privately I knew some of the people who were running the Reserve. I can’t remember. Did I tell you? Something to do with the Territorial Army at that time and I didn’t think that was right so I had an argument with them and consequently decided to leave and I went back to the job I had given up was as a clerk in the insurance office but once I had started with the photographer people I had given that job up. And I went back to them and took a job as an agent. I purchased an insurance book there and started as an agent with them. And that’s where I spent the rest of my working life. With that insurance society. One of these things that you either think something’s right and you do it or no. And I wasn’t very happy there in the first place anyway. I didn’t feel I was really capable of handling the photography work. And they probably were quite glad to get rid of me. However, that was certainly a different story entirely. But the life in the services if you liked it was good. I liked it. It was quite a good life but you had to really like it and although I don’t know how it really would go for family life. Let’s say something if one was getting married your wife would have to be able to go along with that type of life and I don’t think it suits everybody. However, it is something if you like at and you’re good at doing your job with reasonable people then it could be a good life.
AM: So how do you think it affected you? Having your service in the RAF. How did it affect the rest of your life?
BJ: Oh, well it took a boy and made him a man very quickly. The [pause] the, most of the youngsters who were going there would be about eighteen years of age. Some might have been in jobs where they had a responsibility in the job and felt as a man a responsible person. But the majority of us were eighteen and nineteen year old. A lot were just on, just eighteen. And most of us I think were still sort of finding our way. The training I think was good. Although it could have been an awful lot better. As far as the engineer’s position was concerned I think it could have been better. The, as far as the other trades were concerned then I’m not so knowledgeable about them. I think the engineer’s training unless they were going to go on flying somewhere was the only one of any use to them in Civvy Street. And the, the [pause] with that you were then once you were trained you were in a position to make decisions which would affect other people and that sort of certainly made you have a different outlook I should think to what you went in as eighteen year olds. And certainly for myself made me always feel I wanted to be in a position of authority. Not being the one that was told to do things all the time but they were, you were the boss. And for most of my working life after that I was in a position of being the boss in a way. But it’s amazing how small things change life and it can change the whole of the rest of your life completely. But sometimes I regret not having stayed in the air force and other times I’m quite pleased I didn’t.
AM: Ok.
BJ: When I see some things that, and the way some people were treated I’m quite pleased I didn’t stay in. I don’t think I can tell you anymore.
AM: Ok. Well —
BJ: I don’t think there’s any more to tell.
AM: Well, Mr MacCormick thank you very much for sharing your experience with us.
BJ: I’m sorry I’ve taken —
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 Anderson MacCormick
Creator
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Brenda Jones
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-11-26
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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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AMacCormickA161126
Conforms To
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Pending review
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Pending OH summary
Format
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01:46:26 audio recording
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Anderson MacCormick grew up in Glasgow and joined the ATC while he waited to join the service. He trained as a flight engineer. He recalls the risks aircrew faced and some beautiful sight he saw in the air. On a flight as part of Operation Exodus an ex-prisoner of war was brought forward to the cockpit as they were approaching the coast and Anderson was struck by the emotion that this sight had on this returning airman.
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Language
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eng
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
Netherlands
England--Lincolnshire
Temporal Coverage
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1945
aircrew
flight engineer
Grand Slam
Heavy Conversion Unit
military service conditions
Operation Dodge (1945)
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
RAF Elsham Wolds
RAF Grimsby
RAF St Athan
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/682/10085/ABaileyB-J180605.2.mp3
0d5e52bdb8fd6803ecd26159f05218e1
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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Bailey, Brian and Jenny
Description
An account of the resource
Two items. An oral history interview with Brian Bailey (b. 1928) and Jenny Bailey (b. 1930) and documents relating to Jenny's father Charles Goy service with the National Fire Service.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Brian and Jenny Bailey and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2018-06-05
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Bailey, B-J
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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FCB: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre Digital Archive. The people who are being interviewed are Brian and Jenny Bailey. The interviewer is myself, Cathy Brearley. The date is Tuesday the 5th of June 2018 and the interview is taking place at Brian and Jenny’s home in Cleethorpes, Lincolnshire. So, Jenny, I’ll start with you then. How old were you when war broke out?
JB: Eight.
CB: And do you remember when war was actually declared?
JB: Yes. On the Sunday. I can remember very clearly. My mum wrote a letter to my grandma who lived at Louth and we took it up to post at the end of the street and I saw this lady crying and I couldn’t understand why. Yeah. And that’s always stuck in my mind. Yeah.
CB: Did you ask your mum why she was crying?
JB: She said it was just because the war had started.
CB: Yeah.
JB: But didn’t say any more. Yeah.
CB: So, at that age it wouldn’t really —
JB: No. No.
CB: And what was your father doing in the way of work when —
JB: He was a joiner. Yeah. And he went to, out to black out the hospital. They did the blackouts.
CB: Yeah.
JB: They did all the whole hospital there. Yes. Yeah. He was, he worked there at, for Wilkinson’s for a long time and then he, they drafted him down the, down the docks because he was too old to be, he was too old to join up, wasn’t he?
BB: Ship repair.
JB: Yeah. He went in to ship repair work. Yeah.
CB: Yes.
JB: He was posted in to that.
CB: Right.
JB: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: And did he do any war service? He did —
JB: He was fire. Fire. In the Fire Brigade. Yes.
CB: Auxiliary Fire Service. Yeah. And how often did he have to go out on duty?
JB: Every time the air raid went.
CB: Yeah.
JB: Yeah. And then of course he was called on if there was any big raids during the day where he was working. He went on there. Yeah.
CB: Did he ever say anything about what he’d seen or his experiences at the time?
JB: Yes. Some. Sorry, some of the, the bombing that had happened and the fires that he went to do sometimes were a little upsetting.
CB: Yeah.
JB: But he didn’t say a lot about it. No.
CB: No. So, at that time your mum was looking after you.
JB: Yeah.
CB: While he was out as a fire fighter.
JB: Yeah. That’s it.
CB: And did you have an Anderson shelter?
JB: Yes. Which we helped to build. Well, the hole to put it in. Yeah. We had to dig it all out. Yes. And we had an air raid shelter and we used to go in there every night when the raids came.
CB: And how often was that? How often were the raids?
JB: Oh, most nights for a long long time. We did have a lot of raids. Yes. And they used to sleep then in the air raid shelter and the next morning had to take the water out the sump because it was all full of water.
CB: So, what kind of comforts did you have in the Anderson shelter for your nights there?
JB: Well, dad had built some bunks and I don’t know, I suppose we had a bit of bedding. I don’t, I can’t remember that. I remember going in there every night and then, then of course when the raids really started out we came and watched all the searchlights from the bombs that were over the bridge which was on the sands. And when they were sort of like in a cross watch the German planes being bombed and brought down. We thought it was great.
CB: So, you could see the searchlights.
JB: Oh yes. They were very good like that. They crossed.
CB: Crossed.
JB: Yeah. Yeah. When they’d got the plane in the middle of the cross that was when they got them. Yeah. And then we could always hear all the shrapnel coming down on the roofs making an awful noise and, I don’t know where that’s gone. We haven’t got any now.
CB: You had some shrapnel that you’d saved.
JB: Oh yes. We had a lot. Thought it was lovely but it’s just disappeared now [laughs] Yeah, but it was quite a noise when it rattled on all the roofs you see. When this shrapnel came down.
CB: It must have been terrifying overnight.
JB: Yeah.
CB: In a shelter as a child.
JB: Yes. I think it was. Just seemed to accept it and that. I don’t know. I must have slept in the shelter because I mean I was up in the morning. Then do an ordinary day. So, yeah, but I remember. Oh, I can remember so clearly standing outside and hearing all these bombs. All these guns going off there because it is a lot. There were a lot of guns over there. Yeah.
CB: And there was a lot of bombs on Grimsby and Cleethorpes wasn’t there?
JB: Yes. Yes. We went to have a look at, there was a, called Hope Street and it was just about downed all the way from one end of the street to the other. It was completely bombed. That was very very bad. Yeah. Yeah, I think that was the same time as the Bon Marche was done when my dad, he was on there during the day and he got soaked from the rain. Not from the rain. From the water for the fire. You know, putting the fire out. Yeah. Because it was a full day there. It was a big, that was a big air raid. Yeah. We had quite a few air raids, didn’t we?
CB: Yeah.
JB: Yeah.
CB: And what about rationing? Do you remember?
JB: Yeah. I didn’t have many sweets [laughs] I can remember that. Not many sweets. We had the dried eggs. Mum used to bake with the dried eggs and then after the war the first time I’d seen a banana and didn’t know what it was. And then we had banana sandwiches forever more [laughs]
CB: And people made a lot of their own clothes as well, didn’t they?
JB: Yes. Yes. My mum made all my clothes. Yeah. Of course, you only had so many coupons that you could use so sometimes you could get some second-hand clothes and use that material, you know. Unpick it and use that material. And she did a lot for other children in the street and that with their clothes as well. Yeah.
CB: So, she did that to earn a bit of extra money then.
JB: Yes. Yes, she did. Yeah, because there wasn’t a lot of money during the war. I remember we weren’t very well off at all. Not until my dad went down, down the docks and was working like a shipwright. Well, it was a shipwright, I think, wasn’t it? Shipwright. And he got more money. Never had so much money then as all the time because we weren’t very well off at all.
CB: What kind of ships did he work on?
BB: Damaged warships mainly.
CB: Damaged warships.
JB: Yeah.
BB: Yeah.
JB: He was there all the time, wasn’t he?
CB: Yeah.
JB: Yeah. And during the war, yeah before he was sent down the docks he was still on the money and when they didn’t work they didn’t get any money you see. In the winter, being a joiner, in the winter, bad weather they were laid off and there was no money. There was no, no money for us or for my mum so during the time she had to, in the, what in the summertime she had to save money enough to keep us going during the winter when he was off.
CB: Yeah.
JB: But then when he was sent down docks that finished and so there was plenty of money. Yeah.
CB: And they only had you.
JB: Yeah.
CB: As a daughter.
JB: That’s it, yes.
CB: No other children.
JB: No.
CB: No.
JB: No. They waited six years for me [laughs] Yes. Is that alright?
[recording paused]
CB: So, Jenny, did your mum do any war work at all?
JB: No. She was a teacher before the, before she got married and then when she got married you’re not allowed to teach because they wouldn’t have any married women.
CB: Yeah. And what about the other local people in your area where you, the part of Cleethorpes where you were growing up?
JB: Yes.
CB: What was the main occupation then?
JB: Fishermen.
CB: Fishermen.
JB: Fishermen. Yes. And I was most of their family are grown up and had gone to the war, like in the Wrens and all in the Forces and of course, being the youngest I went amongst the family and I was brought up with them a lot. Yeah.
CB: So, you grew up with the —
JB: Fishermen.
CB: Fishermen’s families.
JB: Yes, yes and I got, you got all the superstitions because they were very superstitious. And of course, I still remember all those superstitions.
CB: Oh, tell me about those.
JB: Oh, one if you did if a husband went out to trawl.
BB: Friday.
JB: No.
BB: Oh dear.
JB: Went out. Went to sea.
BB: Yeah.
JB: To fish. Yeah. Well, you don’t wash on that day. Never when they go out because if you do you’re washing them out and they’ll never come back any more.
CB: I see.
JB: Yeah. I can’t remember any others. There was so many superstitions that they had. Yeah. And they stuck to all those superstitions. Yeah. And my dad’s best friend he took the trawler down to —
BB: Dunkirk.
JB: Yeah. Dunkirk.
CB: Did he?
JB: Yeah. To rescue them. He went three times. Yeah. So, it was quite a big thing because going up the Humber it’s not very wide and you’re going right the way out there in this little trawler. Yeah, because they’re not as big as, then they weren’t as big as what they are now. Yeah.
CB: How much notice do you think those trawlermen had for Dunkirk? For the evacuation.
JB: Not much.
BB: Not a lot.
JB: Not much time at all.
BB: Not a lot.
JB: No.
BB: I think probably about only a week or ten days. Something like that.
JB: Yeah.
BB: When the cry went out for the help from the small boats to go there so they could get in on the low water where the, on the shallow water where the bigger boats couldn’t go. So, the small boats went in to the, in to the shore, loaded up, back out to the bigger boats, offloaded. Repeat the journey. And so it went on. All the while being bombed and strafed by German aircraft. It must have been horrendous. It really must have been horrible.
CB: Yes. Yeah. So, Grimsby and Cleethorpes were quite badly bombed during the Second World War.
JB: Yes. They were. We got a lot of bombs. And from where this Fuller Street Bridge was at the end of the street we could go at the top of the bridge and you could see Hull where it was all, because very badly bombed and it was just like a, oh just fire all the way up in the sky from all these bombs that you could see from the top of the bridge. Yeah. I always remember that. But yes, we were badly bombed in lots of places.
BB: And the next one.
JB: Yes. I was going to school. I went to school on my bike and when I got to call for Mavis, my friend her house had gone. It was all bombed and I didn’t know. And this air raid man he wanted to know why I could go on there. Nobody had bothered me. I just went. That was it. Yeah. But she fortunately was saved and had got in somewhere else. So —
CB: Where had she gone to?
JB: Still in Cleethorpes. Across the road, a little way away. They had, did have, owned another house so they went in with these people for the time being. Yeah.
CB: So, as you arrived at the house and saw it, well —
JB: Gone.
CB: Flattened.
JB: Yeah. I just didn’t know what to do. I think I must have gone home. I don’t know what happened then but, yeah.
CB: Very frightening.
JB: It was quite a shock that. Yeah. It really was. That stands out in my mind. I can still see the big hole there that it was semi-detached and you know one side was alright and the other one had gone.
CB: Were many children evacuated?
JB: Yes. Quite, quite a lot. And mostly more or less from Grimsby more than Cleethorpes. I don’t know why. Yeah. A lot went to Louth and Spilsby and that area but a lot, mostly went to Louth.
CB: Brian, you’d said that school was suspended when the war broke out.
BB: Oh yes. School premises were taken over by authorities for various reasons and oh, it must have been the best part of nine months before they at long last got something organised and then until I was fourteen years of age school was mornings one week and after, and afternoons the following week. And so it went on. It, it was strange. And one silly thing I remember in particular. Air raid warning. Now, our school was one side of what is known as Town Hall Square in Grimsby. Our nearest shelter was the other side of the square. Air raid warning. Right. Scramble for the shelter. We were halfway across the square when the bombs went off a half a mile away. We were lucky the bombs were half a mile away and not in the square. But, oh yeah, that sort of life went on in those days. And then of course at fourteen I went to a different school and that was full time. But thirteen years of age I joined the Air Training Corps and learned a lot of things. Bits about Morse code and navigation and that sort of thing. We would be taken out to school playgrounds on Sundays to do the marching up and down to get up and down. To learn all that sort of thing. About once a month on Sundays we would be taken out to RAF North Coates which is oh seven or eight miles south of Cleethorpes on the Humber, on the Humber Bank. Coastal Command aircraft. Bristol Beaufighters, torpedo aircraft. We saw those. We were allowed to go and sit in the pilot’s seat would you believe? And we saw all sorts. We saw in the workshops where they were preparing ammunition, preparing the guns and all that sort of thing and on one occasion we even saw the damaged remains of a Mosquito aircraft which had crash landed on the edge of the airfield because it had been damaged in flight. On other occasions in the Air Training Corps, we would go to, for a week’s camp on an RAF station. And one in particular I remember we were taken to the command post at the edge of the runway where the man in charge would give a green light to each bomber in turn to go and take-off. And then when they’d all gone, in bed, in this caravan woken up again to greet them all coming back in the morning. And we were taken on a, on a truck to go down the runway with flame [pause] Yes, a flaming torch to light up the watering cans type of thing which were full of oil to form runway lights.
CB: That’s FIDO. F I D O. FIDO. Isn’t it?
JB: No. FIDO. It was something. FIDO was done to try and get rid of fog.
CB: Oh, fog dispersal. Yeah.
JB: Yeah. But these on a lot of these RAF stations they had no electricity down the runway and these were paraffin flares they used to use to light up the runway for the incoming aircraft.
CB: So, you had to light them up individually.
JB: Oh yeah.
CB: Yeah.
JB: Yeah. We went, went in a little van and hop out, light that one up, hop back in. Go around [laughs] For a, you know, youngster of sort of fourteen, fifteen years of age that sort of thing was very exciting. But home life it was strange. My home at that stage was about a mile and a half north of the main runway of RAF, what was known as Grimsby/Waltham. So, when they were taking off in that particular direction firstly in the early days they were Wellington bombers. Then they became Lancaster bombers. You’d see them struggling up in, up in to the air [coughs] excuse me. Only perhaps a sort of a quarter of a mile away from the bottom of your garden and to see the way they struggled to go some of those aircraft it was frightening.
CB: With a big bomb load.
JB: Oh yeah. I mean, when you think about it. And then ultimately and of course as, as we found out when we visited your site in Lincoln eight, over eight hundred men flew out from that airfield and never came back.
CB: You’re mentioning the Chadwick Centre and the Memorial Spire with that on it.
JB: That’s right. Yeah. In much later life when I eventually was, after the war finished because I was that much too young to be involved I was called up and I spent three, nearly three years in the RAF. Most of it at Binbrook. And whilst I was there I did manage on one Saturday morning to go flying in a Lancaster.
CB: Wow.
BB: My head was still thumping on Monday morning. How those crews ever managed to stick it for eight or nine hours at a time I would, never could understand and I haven’t, can’t understand to this very day. But, oh dear. Memories like that stick in your mind.
CB: I imagine. Yes. Was that service part of National Service?
BB: No. It was in the interim before National Service. National Service was fixed at two years. I was called up in 1946 when the original conscription rules still applied. So, I went in. I didn’t know, I had no idea when I was coming out. It was what were known as age and length of service. So having been called up early in 1946 I got home a few days before Christmas in 1948. Spent most of it in an office pushing a pen. But even that, I did, hopefully I did my bit. Somebody had to push a pen.
CB: Why was it that you chose that rather than any of the other services? I suppose you’d done your Air Training Corps hadn’t you? So —
BB: Well, Air Training Corps took me on to RAF. And of course, it had all been a bit of brotherly animosity I suppose between my brother and I. He was in, he was in the Navy and came back with gold braids so you had to be very careful if ever you were out, out in the street with him. And I didn’t want any of that. But as I say I had been, I had been RAF. Air Training Corps. So, RAF was the choice.
CB: Yes.
BB: And there we are.
CB: And you said as a thirteen year old in the Air Training Corps you weren’t entitled to have a uniform because they were only given to fourteen year olds.
BB: At fourteen years. Yeah. But we did. We did get one. We managed to get them before we were fourteen but one other thing that sticks in my mind from that time was being down the bottom of the garden one tea time to feed the one or two chickens that we were, we had at that time and the sound of an aircraft coming and I looked up. There was a Heinkel 111 coming across. Not more than about a hundred and fifty feet up and I could see the crew. See the outline of the crew inside it. I went inside that, inside that chicken hut a bit quick. Out of sight. But you know those sort of silly things that stick in your mind.
CB: And do you think the Air Training Corps was good preparation for when you did spend time in the RAF?
BB: Well, yeah. You’d, you’d learned a certain amount of discipline. The routine of marching in, and that sort of thing which helped when you first did your first six weeks of so-called square bashing. But beyond that no because they weren’t looking for people with knowledge of navigation and Morse code and that sort of thing.
CB: But you got your badges in the Air Training Corps.
BB: Not now. No.
CB: No.
BB: No. They all, they all went back with the uniform when it was handed in. When you, when you, when you ceased being with the Air Training Corps all your uniforms went back in.
CB: But you said to me earlier that it was because you ‘d got the badges that you got your uniform earlier than you might have done.
JB: That’s right because they had to be sewn on. There was somewhere all the badges were sewn on and we’d nowhere to sew them was our argument and that’s, that’s how we won that one.
CB: And they must have ranks in the Air Training Corps.
JB: Oh yes. The ranks within the Air Training Corps were exactly the same as RAF and you were [pause] quite what the basic, you couldn’t call them an airman. You’d call them a cadet. An Air Cadet. But then of course you could be a corporal cadet, a sergeant cadet and so on but by the time you got to sergeant cadet you were call up age so you vanished into the RAF.
CB: And your brother Peter, he was older than you.
BB: Oh, he’s seven years older than I.
CB: So, he was in the Navy.
BB: He was in the Navy. He started as, in the sick bay as an attendant. Sick bay attendant. And then for whatever reason managed to get transferred to the Fleet Air Arm. Went to Canada for training and came back from Canada with gold braid all over his sleeve and then had an accident playing rugby and was invalided out as unfit. So as far as I’m aware he never fired a shot in anger. He spent some time in civvy street as it was known and then was recalled to the Fleet Air Arm in time for the Korea crisis.
CB: Oh really?
BB: Then of course he eventually returned to civvy street and carried on a civilian life for the rest of his life. But —
CB: It must have seemed strange to you as a teenage boy with your older brother disappearing off to Canada.
BB: Well, it was one, it was the sort of situation in those days where a serviceman would go and he would seem to vanish from the situation. From the day to day life and letters were a rarity coming from overseas like that. And I had very little to do with, oh for what, two, three years or more. Never saw him because he was away in Canada. And then again, the age gap was such that his interests were vastly different to mine and he was away and carrying on his civilian life. He got, he was married and got a child long before I did. I mean, Jenny and I married in 1952. He was married in 1944. You know. So —
CB: And did you have any other brothers and sisters?
BB: Sorry?
CB: Did you have any brothers and sisters?
BB: No. No. There were just the two of us. Yeah.
[recording paused]
CB: And then just coming back to Cleethorpes and Grimsby and this area there are two Humber Forts aren’t there? In your area.
JB: Yes.
BJ: Yes.
CB: Can you tell me about them?
[pause]
BB: The only thing I can really say about those that they were built First World War and a net was stretched between them to prevent submarines access.
CB: Oh.
BB: And of course, they had the usual complement of guns and whatnot. During the, in between the wars the nets were all removed but when the Second World War started those nets were reintroduced and between the forts and the shore there were concrete blocks. Rectangles probably measuring six feet, six foot cube.
CB: Right.
BB: And a row of those from fort to shore on both sides of the river. And there was, I believe a gap somewhere in the middle to allow our trawler fleets and our other, and naval vessels access in and out. And then of course it was all removed at the end of the Second World War but the forts are still there. They’re semi derelict. They’re not put to any practical use at all.
CB: I think one’s for sale, isn’t it?
BB: I think so. There’s been all sorts of bright ideas of having them as sort of holiday lets and recuperation centres for the drug addicts and all sorts of things but nothing has ever really ever happened. Would you agree with that Jenny?
JB: Yeah. I don’t, I’ve not heard anything.
CB: No.
BB: But they’re still there today and occasionally when, if you, if we’re down on the Promenade strangers might ask, ‘What are they?’ But that’s a bit of a rarity anyway.
CB: I imagine they, in the Second World War they would have been a good gun position.
BB: Oh, I imagine. Yes, indeed.
CB: That must have lit the sky up. Yeah.
BB: Yeah.
JB: It would.
BB: But all the way down the coast —
JB: Because of course they, during, during the beginning part of the war they chopped part of the pier off. The end on the pier off because they didn’t want the Germans to go, come up on the pier and if they cut it off it wouldn’t be able to —
CB: They couldn’t land the aircraft on it.
JB: No. No, they were thinking of coming up the Humber and then —
BB: Using it —
JB: Walking up the pier.
CB: Oh, I see. Oh, access by land. Yeah.
JB: But I mean, I don’t think they would have waited to have got on the pier. Because they chopped quite a bit of the pier off.
CB: I think that happened in other places. I’m aware that happened to some on the south coast as well.
JB: Which to me was a bit of a stupid idea because they wouldn’t be waiting to come up. They’d come up the other way wouldn’t they?
CB: I know the ones on the south coast they were deliberately destroyed.
JB: Oh yeah.
CB: By the locals there and Home Guard so that they couldn’t be landed on by, by the aircraft coming over the Channel.
JB: I think this was when they were thinking that we would be invaded.
CB: Yes.
JB: I think it was that way they thought.
CB: Yes.
JB: That’s why cut the end off.
CB: Yeah. So, there wouldn’t be a landing.
BB: But here it was done in case they wanted to bring landing craft up and off load the men on to the pier. Well, which was a daft idea. You don’t do that. You offload them straight out and on to the sands and up. But one of the strange things about Cleethorpes Pier during the war having removed a section to avoid, to obviate walking access if you like there was a café at the far seaward end and one night that got on fire and nobody knew how that got on fire because there was no way of getting down to it. Strange. That was a strange one that one.
CB: And there were Americans, Air Force based in the area as well, weren’t there?
JB: Yes.
BJ: Yes.
JB: Well, we had German, German prisoners of war in the woods, didn’t we?
BB: Yeah. Oh yeah. We were, we were thickly populated by American troops. I mean they were all over the town.
CB: Whereabouts were they based? Which was their base?
BB: Well, some were based just off the, now then. Yeah. The A46 as it comes through Grimsby and heads for Cleethorpes. There’s a wooded area there and the Americans were there for a while. Their Air Force bases were north of Grimsby and Immingham. Further up the, up towards Hull on the south side of the Humber Estuary and we used to see them around but one of the sights we used to see if we ever went down the main street, the main shopping street in Grimsby were the crowds of these American forces people at one of the little shops. What’s the word I’m looking for? A laundry. A laundromat. And they would go there and they would, they’d take turns to go in, take their trousers off, have their trousers pressed, put the trousers on, come back out again. And they used to queue up in that little shop there in Freeman Street. Oh dear.
CB: And how were the Americans on the streets in Grimsby and Cleethorpes viewed?
BB: Well, again I mean we I suppose we just tolerated them you know. We put up with them.
JB: Well, the elder people, the elder people were busy going out with them.
BB: Oh yeah.
JB: They had a lovely time.
CB: There was a lot of romances were there?
JB: Oh yes. Yes.
CB: Oh yeah. I remember.
JB: They had a really good time. Yeah.
CB: The silk stockings.
JB: Oh yes. Yes. The nylons for the first time.
BB: Chewing gum.
JB: Yeah.
BB: That was another favourite.
JB: That’s it.
BB: But one thing that happened in here in in Grimsby there were clubs for the American boys. The whites went in the one up there, the blacks went in the one over there.
CB: Really?
BB: Socially they were not allowed to mix. Just as it was in, way back in America at that time.
CB: And that would have been unusual here.
BB: Oh, it was. I mean it was a thing unheard of here. But then again until the coloured Americans came over here during the war coloured people were a rarity.
CB: In this area. Yes.
BB: Yes. In this part of the world.
CB: Yeah.
JB: Yeah.
BB: There really —
CB: Was there a sense that the British were pleased that the Americans were joining forces with us?
BB: I suppose looking back in hindsight over all these years we couldn’t have done it without them.
CB: No. We —
JB: Well, we didn’t know a lot about the Americans. We weren’t old enough to go out with them. No.
BB: Well as children of course. As children and early teenagers.
JB: We couldn’t.
CB: No.
BB: These sort of things —
JB: No.
BB: Didn’t occur to us. But you know all these years later and you think about, think back about them. Yes. They were a necessity. I mean we could, we could never ever have built enough aircraft, tanks, and other aircraft and ships to be able to carry on on our own. We needed the help that came not only from America but from all the Commonwealth countries, Australia, South Africa, Canada, you know. We couldn’t have done without those. No way. If it hadn’t been for those people coming in and help I think jolly old Adolf would have had his way. But thankfully he didn’t.
CB: Indeed. What about conscientious objectors? I know there was a lot in the First World War and people were given badges to wear if they were on home leave or if they were exempt or injured out so that they wouldn’t be given the white feather.
JB: Yeah. That’s it. Yeah.
CB: Did that happen a great deal during the Second World War?
JB: I don’t remember.
BB: I’ve no idea.
JB: I don’t think we were old enough to understand sort of thing.
CB: No. No.
BB: It’s something we, we couldn’t comment on because we just didn’t, we didn’t meet up with it did we?
JB: No.
BB: No.
JB: Well, we weren’t old enough were we? When you think.
BB: Well, no. I mean —
CB: I suppose it also depends on people’s ages in the sense of whether they were too old to be conscripted or too young.
JB: Yes.
CB: And therefore, people either were exempt for age.
JB: That’s it. Yes.
CB: Or they served.
JB: Yeah.
BB: Yeah.
CB: As opposed to anybody objecting. Being a conscientious objector.
JB: Yeah.
BB: Yeah. In many respects amongst all the other memories we have I’m thinking about, I’m talking of my own experiences. Jenny can probably come up with something very similar from the area that she lived in in those days. Next door but one there were two brothers. Again, they were older. They were my brother’s age. One was, they both went in the RAF. One was a fighter pilot in the Battle of Britain. The other one became a navigator. The fighter pilot survived the war and became a school teacher. The navigator stayed in the RAF and several years post-war was killed in a flying accident. Next door but one beyond them again there was two boys. Similar of age group to my brother and I. The elder boy, paratrooper was sent to Arnhem and didn’t come back. I mean that was in the space of what half a dozen houses. Go around the corner and there was the eldest boy in the house and another family down there. He went and didn’t come back. Those are the sort of things that this interview with you are dragging up from the back of the grey cells you know. Whether these sort of recollections will mean a great deal to the younger generation.
JB: I think they’re more for the what happened to us. How we felt things during the war.
BB: Yeah.
JB: Aren’t they?
BB: But —
CB: I think it’s an important part of our history and there’s a lot of these sort of stories that are listened to by young people and in schools and part of education programmes. Visits to the Chadwick Centre.
BB: Yeah.
CB: And other memorials and it is being kept alive which is important.
BB: Yeah.
CB: So what would happen, obviously mourning the loss of a family member or family members would be very different because so many people died overseas. Obviously, somebody dies here today you know there’s a funeral.
JB: Yeah.
CB: And there’s a mourning isn’t there? But I guess in wartimes and when people died overseas there wouldn’t have been any sort of memorial event.
JB: No.
CB: At the time.
JB: No. That’s quite true.
BB: No. The only thing that I can comment on and this is because I’ve been reading about it recently would be an aircrew didn’t come back and within a couple of hours of knowing they weren’t coming back ground staff at their base station would go to wherever their bed space was, clear all their gear out, swap the bedding and probably the next night a different, different set, different crew of men would be sleeping in those beds. Their personal effects parcelled up and sent back to their families. That’s, you know, that’s the only thing I can really say about what you, the question you just asked.
CB: And I imagine there are memorials in Grimsby and Cleethorpes obviously to honour those—
JB: Yeah.
CB: Who served and died.
BB: Oh yes. Yeah. In several churchyards there are groups of graves. I mentioned North Coates earlier on. There‘s a, the church there is on a corner in the village and just over there they are. Men that died or came back wounded and died or were dead when the dead, they were buried there in that village. And another village halfway between here and Louth just off the village square there’s a grassed area and on that grassed area there is a circle of paving and inset in to that paving are the names and ranks of seven members of a crew of a bomber which was flying around near that village, giving aircraft a tech practice to a fighter which was the case. You know, the fighter comes in and the bomber does his evasive. The bomber took the evasive and a wing snapped off.
CB: Oh.
BB: There were probably only five, you know probably weren’t above a thousand feet. They hadn’t a, hadn’t a chance to get out. And it crashed a few, you know very, only a few hundred yards from the village and the Memorial is there in the village square. That village now has an annual Forties day or weekend and we always go, don’t we to that and have a look at it and it brings back a few memories.
CB: I imagine. I was going to ask you about that. Yes.
BB: Because of the people who have the memories of, you know the Forties Association and all these various things and they will come along with the jeep and the lorry that we managed to keep in working order all through the years. But when, when we go Jenny and I, we always sort of walk around and just pay our respects at that particular little memorial.
CB: It’s a very big annual event, isn’t it?
BB: It is.
CB: And quite rightly so.
JB: Yes. I think so. Yes. I do.
CB: And they put on an air display as well, don’t they?
JB: They do. Yes. Yes.
BB: Yes. There’s one scheduled.
JB: I think there’s got to be something like this though for the young ones because when we’ve gone there will be nobody else to say anything will there?
CB: That’s right. That why it’s so important to capture —
JB: Yeah.
CB: Your memories now and they are listened to.
JB: Because they won’t, well there can’t be that many more years for any of us can there?
CB: No. But there is a lot of interest.
JB: Yeah.
CB: A lot of interest. And a lot of students, historians, researchers, academics. But there’s also a lot of young people.
JB: That’s good. Yes. Good. Yeah.
CB: And Grimsby and Cleethorpes was the first towns to be bombed by the butterfly bombs. The anti-personnel bombs.
JB: Yes. We were.
BB: Yes. Southampton was the other one.
CB: Right.
BB: They were the only two places.
CB: Yeah.
BB: One other thing we experienced too was the V-1. There was just one, maybe two nights. The V-1s, a load of V-1s were brought and dropped from aircraft out, out beyond the Humber, coming in off the North Sea. And we remember them coming over here and going inland. None of them fell locally here that I, I can recall. But the, the butterfly bombs. Oh, they were finding them tucked away in gutters on top of premises for years after the end of the war. And that particular night it caused quite a lot of havoc around Grimsby. We had trolley buses in that, in those days. The trolley, the power lines were down and a friend of mine and I on that following morning we were on our bikes and off going to have a look round to see what had happened in town and I can remember cycling in in the centre of town and coming across a number of little sandbag enclosures. Only probably three feet square. A couple of, two and a half three feet high and as you cycled past you looked down and there was a butterfly bomb in the bottom. And you know, again we’re talking very early teenage and the implication of, you know what they, what they were and what they could do just didn’t register.
CB: So those bombs were different in that they didn’t explode on impact.
JB: No. They were very different.
BB: No. They didn’t explode on impact. It was when you moved them. Somebody moved them off they went.
JB: Or walked into them.
BB: Oh yeah, I mean people would sort of walk along and they would —
JB: And this is why, going down the [unclear] that’s why so many were killed, I think. Because you see you didn’t, we didn’t know anything about them at all. We were the first ones so of course when it happened it was too late to tell anybody then wasn’t it?
CB: And I suppose if there’s a lot of rubble that’s being cleared.
JB: Yeah.
CB: You came across them in that way.
JB: Yeah. This is it.
BB: Oh, and then —
JB: And they got into some peculiar places, you know.
CB: Yeah.
JB: They really did. Because they weren’t very big.
CB: No.
JB: So —
BB: Oh no. It’s not very big but oh there were tales —
JB: It seems a long time ago now though, doesn’t it?
BB: Oh, it is. It’s an awful long time ago but no it’s [pause] this discussion today has stirred up a lot of memories for both of us.
CB: It tends to do that.
JB: Yeah [laughs] yeah.
BB: Some things which you’ve, you’ve forgotten. Almost totally forgotten, you know.
JB: You must have seen an awful lot over the years.
CB: I’ve heard lots of stories.
JB: I bet you have.
CB: And my mum being a child.
JB: Yeah.
CB: In London.
JB: Yeah.
BB: Is that still, is that —?
CB: Yes. She [pause] it was part of my mum’s stories and my grandparent’s stories.
JB: Yeah
CB: Were a part of my childhood.
JB: Yeah.
CB: But obviously for future generation it‘s different.
JB: Yes. That’s it.
CB: But thank you ever so much both of you.
JB: That’s alright.
CB: For giving us this interview. Really, really fascinating and very interesting to hear how it was for you as children growing up.
JB: Yeah. It was different.
CB: And young people.
JB: Yeah. Very different. Yeah.
CB: And in this particular area as well it shows that —
JB: Yeah.
CB: You know, it was literally everywhere that was affected. So, thank you ever so much.
JB: That’s alright.
BB: And thank you to you for your patience in listening to us.
JB: Yeah [laughs]
CB: You’re very welcome.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Brian and Jenny Bailey
Creator
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Cathy Brearley
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2018-06-05
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ABaileyB-J180605
Format
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00:49:33 audio recording
Coverage
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Civilian
Language
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eng
Description
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Brian and Jenny Bailey were children during the war and witnessed the bombing of Cleethorpes and Grimsby. They could also stand on a local bridge and see Hull in flames. Jenny recalled walking with her mother on the day war was declared and seeing a woman crying in the street. When she asked her mother why she was crying she was told it was because of the news of the start of war. Her father worked as a fireman and was also employed in the docks. She recalls seeing Hope Street reduced to rubble. One day she went to call on her friend to go to school together and found her friend's house was destroyed. She describes the superstitions of the fishermen and their families to ward of tragedy.
Brian’s house was a mile and a half from RAF Grimsby Waltham and could see the airfield clearly. Eight hundred aircrew from this airfield were killed on operations. The air raid shelter for his school was across the square and once as the air raid siren sounded they made their way across the square as bombs began to fall a half a mile away. Brian joined the ATC and took great pleasure in the activities of his squadron including time spent on the airfield lighting the paraffin lamps on the runway to guide back returning aircraft.
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Yorkshire
England--Hull
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Carolyn Emery
bombing
childhood in wartime
civil defence
home front
RAF Grimsby
shelter
superstition
V-1
V-weapon
-
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/500/8391/ACrossleyD150904.2.mp3
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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
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Crossley, Don
D Crossley
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Crossley, D
Date
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2015-09-04
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Description
An account of the resource
Two items. An oral history interview with Don Crossley (1924 - 2017, 1592825 Royal Air Force) and a photograph. He flew as a Lancaster wireless operator on 100 Squadron.
The collection has been licenced to the IBCC Digital Archive by Don Crossley and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
GR. This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre, the interviewer is Gary Rushbrooke and the interviewee is Don Crossley. The interview is taking place at Don’s home in Upton West Yorkshire and the date is the 4th September 2015. Right Don, thank you. If you can just tell us a little bit about where you were born and your actual growing up.
DC. Yes, well I was born in South Emsall, and all these villages around here are very much alike in that they were based on the coal board, all private enterprise in those days and I was born in 1924.
GR. Right, and did you go to school locally?
DC. Never anything else other than the local school which at 14, you finished at 14 years old, and the first job I had was down Upton Colliery on a very mundane, dark murky job and that was coupling empty tubs coming off the chair. You know what a chair is – it’s the lift.
GR. It’s the lift.
DC. That lifts coal up and down, and that was the very first job which I hated. There was a man who took the tubs off the, off the cage and he was a brute, because he did nothing but swear at me and fetch this fetch that, not a kind word, I had no training I just went on.
GR. How old would you have been then Don?
DC. 14.
GR. 14.
DC. Yes very like that.
GR. And was that actually underground?
DC. Yes, in the pit bottom.
GR. Yes.
DC. Coupling empty tubs as they came off the chair, they went in different districts of the pit.
GR. Yes.
DC. And we were coupling them up going directly to each part of the pit they were needed if that makes sense.
GR. It does, and how many years or...
DC. Oh I was on there I can’t remember how long but I was on there a short time before I saw the lack of wisdom in going down the pit in the first place because I hated it.
GR. Right.
DC. So I got a job at local brick yard and that were fine, but I was only there a year when, when war broke out really or getting in that direction.
GR. And so you would have been about 16, 17, 16 when war broke out?
DC. I think I was a bit younger than that.
GR. Bit younger yes.
DC. About 15 maybe, yes.
GR. And so did you carry on working, in the first few years?
DC. I was at this brick yard, and then I went to have a little job where they made tarmac of all things for the runways they were putting down for the airfields.
GR. Oh right.
DC. Making tarmac, a stone quarry [pause]
GR. And that would have carried on?
DC. That carried on until I knew I was going in the Air Force, at least I was going to go in the services because the war had broken out by then.
GR. Yes.
DC. So.
GR. So am I right.
DC. Just went on in the quarry until I was old enough to go in the Air Force.
GR. I’m right that obviously when conscription you would have been conscripted if you didn’t volunteer.
DC. That’s right, as you probably are aware all aircrew were volunteers, there were no pressed men.
GR. No.
DC. Everybody was a volunteer so I was waiting my turn, but I never thought I’d get in, education requirements were relaxed rather alarmingly to get the numbers they wanted.
GR. Right, so did you, I know everybody aircrew were volunteers, so did you, was there literally an RAF recruiting office, did you, how did you volunteer for the Royal Air Force?
DC. They notified you, Ministry of whatever.
GR. Yes.
DC. When you became a certain age, and the interviewing panel consisted of all the three services and it was held where the Sheffield United ground, football ground, they took those premises over and confiscated them for interviewing different service personnel who were coming in for service, in the, in whatever service they chose.
GR. Right.
DC. Lets see now, so they asked me, there was a panel and they asked me to say why I wanted to join the Air Force., I said well, my brothers been at Dunkirk, he didn’t like the Army too much, I am frightened to death of water so I wouldn’t have gone in the Navy. I can’t swim yet, now, it used to be a requirement for aircrew that they had to be able to swim, I can’t put one foot in the water without being frightened to death of it.
GR. Right.
DC. They didn’t like it, but they said then why have you volunteered for aircrew then, why don’t you, and if you’ve volunteered for aircrew why haven’t you gone for a pilot. Oh, I said, that’s simple, I’m just not clever enough. I didn’t have the education, I left school at 14 I didn’t start till I was 6 so that’s not much of a recommendation.
GR. Right. And so was there any specific role?
DC. Yes.
GR. On the aircrew that you wanted to do or did they tell you...
DC. There was yes, naturally anybody would want to be a pilot but, I were living in cloud cuckoo land that I even got in the Air Force with my lack of education really, so they said well if you’re that keen why don’t you become a gunner. Well in those days gunners, the gunners were getting knocked out of the sky quicker than you could shake a stick at.
GR. Yes.
DC. So I told them that, I said well I want to volunteer but I don’t want to kill myself, not yet I’m still only 18 so if you don’t mind, they said well what would you like to be. I said I’d like to be a flight engineer or a wireless operator. A gunner is too quick, the waiting lists for gunnery, for gunnery recruiters were very quickly used up.
GR. Yes.
DC. And I was amazed when I got a letter this was in 1943, June 1943, to join the Air Force but first you had to have an attestation, go before the attestation board. I couldn’t even spell it never mind know what it was, I didn’t know what attestation was, but it was for three days at Doncaster where they had requisitioned the new Court building again for this attestation. They tested you on maths and English and things like that, and health gave you a very thorough health check.
GR. Check up, yes.
DC. So they said well the fact that you are still breathing shows you might have something, so...
GR. Oh good.
DC. So I was accepted, as a potential cadet and that required being sent to ACRC, that’s imprinted on anybody’s documents ,who went for aircrew, which stands for Aircrew Receiving Centre and the first one was at Doncaster where they did all these checks. Next thing I got was a letter saying go to Lord’s Cricket Ground you are posted as a potential wireless operator so I thought well this is good, there’s me on hallowed ground of the cricket match, cricket pitch, on which people like Don Bradman had put foot on.
GR. Yes.
DC. I thought I was very privileged just to have been on there.
GR. And they used Lord’s at St John’s Wood for most of the war didn’t they as...
DC. That’s right.
GR. For RAF.
DC. Yes. Everybody, when I, when I was called up, I went from Doncaster Station and it was funny you could tell people were going like I was. There were two lads stood talking to each other and I went up to them and I said “ Are you going to ACRC” and they both said yes and they were from Mexborough, it is about 10 miles from here, so at least I had got somebody to travel with and speak to, all the way to London where I’d never been out of my own bed before and there I was on my way to London.
GR. I was going to say that’s the first time you’ve travelled away from
DC. Yes.
GR. This area.
DC. Right, right I had never been away any days holiday or anything, just, just on my way to London, there’s me this loan miner, been a miner travelling all the way to the biggest city in the world.
GR. Yes and what happened after Lord’s? Did you come home or...
DC. After Lord’s Cricket Ground, training and swimming and doing there to my horror, you were posted to an ITW, Initial Training Wing, and these were where you’re training and your basic training for whatever trade you chose, we had been selected to serve in. It was... Getting back to the interview for going into the Air Force in the first place they were all cut glass people, we call them cut glass because they talked as though they had got mouthful of cut glass.
GR. Right.
DC. And that how I found the officers, but on reflection they were the right kind of people.
GR. Yes, yes. So what, what, what did training mean?
GR. Mean to you, where did you go?
DC. That was the first initial things was the ITW we were there for about 18 week, in which they taught you the basics about guns, Browning 303’s. I can remember one corporal teaching us and he said “you need Kings Norton Nickel Silver”, I said oh that’s a funny name I wonder what this is, and it was Brasso. He came from the Midlands and they must have called it a different title, Kings Norton Nickel Silver, that’s what you ask for in the shops.
GR. Right.
DC. Aye, I thought it was part of the course learning this word.
GR. [laughter]
DC. And it was the description, yes. Another one, why should this stick in my head, teaching you how a bullet leaves a gun. They said the bullet leaves, the bullet nips smartly up the barrel hotly pursued by the hot gasses which work with reflex to re-coil the mechanism first fired in the gun, and I had to learn that off by heart, and I thought well when I’m sat up there in a turret, if I’m going to be a gunner, that’s the last thing I want to be having to learn, at the end of a gun.
GR. Yes.
DC. It was a Browning, and it was a Browning 303, which is the same as a soldier’s rifle, the size of ammunition, and that was a bit of a handicap compared to the Germans cannon, and that’s a different story.
GR. It is. So you’ve done your initial training and...
DC. Initial training, and I failed on my passing out tests, I failed my, I didn’t quite get the speed which was 18 words a minute in plain language and 22 words on cord, and the officer had me in and said well you’ve failed, what are you going to do, are you going to go on the ground crew. I says no if I can’t be in the Air Force to fly, I’m not in the Air Force, I said I’ll go back down the pits I think. Anyway he gave me another test that afternoon and I passed it so.
GR. Oh well done.
DC. I did get in one way or another.
GR. Yes, so that’s training as a wireless operator/air gunner?
DC. Yes, let me just explain, on the original war, on the ex war, pre war aeroplanes, the gunner was the main man as regards all auxiliary duties.
GR. Yes.
DC. Wireless was part of his training so he was a duel role person; he was a wireless operator/air gunner.
GR. Air gunner yes?
DC. But, with the advent of four engine airplanes, the signaller as they re-named him, took on a different role, a bit more specialised, so they made him a straight signaller and its funny walking around a town with an S on. Everybody is acquainted with an N for navigator and B for bomb aimer, to a wing for a pilot they saw this S on my half brevet and said well what’s that for, I said you mustn’t touch that, that’s secret, that’s what the S’s meant, its secret. [laughter]
GR. And then later on they learnt it meant signaller?
DC. Yes, Signaller, it was a long training really for a signaller, and that was basically because you can’t rush learning the Morse code, it could only go at a certain speed, and you gradually built up and one problem I had, I didn’t realise at the time, you’re all sitting at different desks hammering away on a key with a pair of headphones on trying to increase your speed up to the required speed for passing out, [pause] where am I?
GR. Yes, well yes you were just talking about your Morse code training.
DC. Yes and the corporal instructor passed me and said “What do you think you are doing?” I said I’m doing about 10 words a minute, he said “Well not in this Mans Air Force you’re not, lad” he said “in this Air Force you’re sending with your left hand” he said “And you can’t do that”. The technique of sending Morse is the wrist action and you can’t get it with the left hand because you’ve got to, the Morse key is on the right hand side in an aeroplane and you’ve got to send with your right hand.
GR. Yes.
DC. So I says “Well I can’t I’m left handed” he said “Well by the time you’ve got a parachute on and a Maewest and different clothing thickness you won’t be able to reach the key never mind send Morse with it”, he says “you either send with your right hand or you’re off the course”. So I had to learn, forget my left hand and go up to speed with my right hand which took some doing.
GR. Yes
DC. And that is why you know me now as being ambidextrous.
GR. Yes
DC. Because I thought if I can send with my left hand, right hand, I can write with my left hand as well, so I wouldn’t have to write with my left hand and that served me in good stead later on.
GR. So you could do Morse, left hand, right hand.
DC. Yes
GR. And you can sign your name, left hand, right hand.
DC. That’s right.
GR. Very, very good, when...
DC. Go on.
GR. When did you actually meet your crew? How did all that come about, what happens?
DC. Well, just in between the radio school where you’re passed out from with three stripes, there was an AFU an Advanced Flying Unit, for wireless operators and that was on Anson’s, where you went up with a pilot and a navigator and that was what they called advanced training. We then went to OTU, which you were touching on, where serious flying started really and we did our crew assembly there, and you are probably familiar with every detail that tells you, that your not, your not selected you just go and mix with each other.
GR. Yes.
DC. You become a crew by consent.
GR. Yes.
DC. Talking to each other and saying yes, will you be my wireless operator, will you be my pilot?
GR. Yes, so did you ask the pilot, or did the pilot come and ask you?
DC. I was on an all Canadian crew my first, weren’t my choice it’s just that I think I was the only one left and we went flying on a night flying trip and I got some severe pains in my groin and so when we landed I went down to the hospital on the quarters of the airfield, and they said it looks like appendicitis, they took me to Doncaster infirmary to have my appendix out. So that meant that crew was without a wireless operator, because I was in there about a week and their training was ongoing, and when I come out they’d gone, and nobody ever to this day has told me where they went they just disappeared. I don’t know what happened to them, they were all Canadian apart from me.
GR. Right.
DC. And so how my crew came about, they’d already selected themselves they were just waiting for a signaller, a wireless operator and that turned out to be me and the adjutant had me in and said well there’s only two, two captains without wireless operators, and there’s a picture of either one, so you pick which one you want. So one was a Scotsman with a scarf round his neck a typical flying, fighter pilot, he liked the image, the other one was more like a vicar on the photograph and I thought well, there’s old pilots as you know and there’s bold pilots, and I said there’s no old bold pilots, so I picked the vicar looking one he looked a bit more steady and he had been flying Dragon Rapide’s, training navigators at Cranwell before he came to pick a crew up. Eygot they called him, he lived in Plymouth. [pause] What else can I tell you about him?
GR. So you’ve got your, you’ve got a crew.
DC. A crew of two Canadians, one Australian, one man from Cornwall, that’s the navigator, the pilot from Plymouth, and myself from Yorkshire.
GR. Yorkshire.
DC. A right motley bunch.
GR. Yep, and then did you then move on to Heavy Conversion Unit? or...
DC. Yes.
GR. Yes.
DC. After that flying that’s where we went, that was at Sandtoft, I don’t know whether you’ve heard of Sandtoft?
GR. I’ve heard of Sandtoft, yes.
DC. That’s a Heavy Con Unit, it was named Prangtoft, you know what a prang is?
GR. Yes.
DC. That’s a crash for an aircraft because there were a lot of accidents and they put it down to them being knackered crew, knackered aeroplanes so old, beyond fit for use on operations.
GR. Yes, because I, I must admit I heard somewhere that yes, the four engine aircraft they used at Heavy Conversion Unit was a lot of aircraft that had finished on ops or weren’t up to scratch for ops.
DC. That’s right, they were used.
GR. Yes and they were expecting you people to, to train on them.
DC. That’s right, yes that’s true, and it was a rough old place was Sandtoft.
GR. Did you have a prang free?
DC. Life?
GR. Conversion?
DC. A what?
GR. Did you have a prang free conversion?
DC. Oh yes we didn’t have any accidents.
GR. You and your pilot were alright?
DC. Yes we were ok, yes; you didn’t pick an engineer up until you got onto Sandtoft.
GR. Yes.
DC. Because there is no position in a twin engine aircraft for an Engineer, so that’s when we picked the seventh member of the crew up and he came from Birmingham.
GR. Right.
DC. He worked at the Austin factories in Birmingham before he came in the Air Force . [pause] what else can we tell you Gary?
GR. And then, so how, so from that very first day when you set off to Lord’s to finally finishing at Heavy Conversion Unit, how long did your training take? Roughly, six months, nine months?
DC. Oh about a year.
GR. About a year.
DC. I came, yes I went to Operational Training Unit in August ’44, joined the Air Force in June ‘43, so it would be about a year.
GR. Yes, So that’s a year of training?
DC. Yes.
GR. And then you were allocated a squadron, were you? Your crew?
DC. Yes.
GR. Your plane.
DC. We flew together at the Heavy Con Unit in that monster and then we were posted to 100 Squadron which is in 1 Group if you know the grouping numbers.
GR. Yes.
DC. Of aircraft, and we went to 1 group and we went to Grimsby, which was 100 Squadron.
GR. Yes. So not too bad that’s about, Grimsby is probably 50, 60 mile away from where we are so...
DC. Yes, and we used to get home whenever I could but you didn’t get a lot of time off.
GR. Yes
DC. And at Grimsby, [pause] it was a nice lovely run station it was great, there was a lot more freedom, a lot more tolerance.
GR. Yes, right.
DC. I did, in total I did 12 operations but, we did about 8 of those mixed with daylight and night bombing.
GR. Can you remember what the first operation was and what it was like?
DC. Yes, it was a bit rough. I don’t remember a lot of action though because I was listening to the wireless; my job was listening to the wireless, I just sat down.
GR. Yes.
DC. I can get my book and determine that.
GR. No, no, so what, what was it like though on that day, you obviously had been at the Squadron, I don’t know a week, two weeks and then you were obviously told you were going on operations. What did the crew feel like? Or what did you feel like?
DC. I would think somewhat apprehensive,
GR. Yes.
DC. To put it mildly, yes.
GR. Because by then there would have been, yes, the war was going into its fifth year.
DC. That’s right, it was getting close to the end of the war, but nobody knew that at the time.
GR. No .
DC. There were still enemy aircraft about and they were still, there was one funny thing at the briefing, they said that Jerry is sending up spoofs. I don’t know if you’ve heard of spoofs, but these are supposed to be Germany firing shells which gave the impression an aircraft had been hit, a big black cloud.
GR. Yes.
DC. Well I didn’t believe that, I thought they were real aeroplanes because why would he waste putting a gun together and putting a dummy bullet up the spout. I think they were aircraft blowing up.
GR. Right, I mean, perhaps, perhaps the Germans thought if they...
DC. Get the morale.
GR. Yes the morale if you saw lots of planes exploding around you.
DC. Yes.
GR. Yes, and morale.
DC. I just can’t see them wasting...
GR. Yes.
DC. Useless shells, well of course when its dark you don’t see them anyway because their black clouds, you just see the flashes.
GR. You see the, you see the flame inside that.
DC. Yes the internal, yes.
GR. But as you said earlier being in the, in the radio section you...
DC. Yes.
GR. You were enclosed, weren’t you?
DC. That’s right the one redeeming feature about it really was the astrodome, which was right alongside my seat, so I could stand on a step, put my head outside, virtually under the astrodome, because that’s where the Navigator took star shots and navigated.
GR. That’s right, yes.
DC. Yes.
GR. An incredible view
DC. All round, yes.
GR. Yes.
DC. In fact I’m deaf now, and I put it down to the effect of the engines because there is two either side of you, at eardrum level.
GR. Where the radio operator...
DC. Where the radio operator’s seat is.
GR. I have heard that, I have heard that before so yes, yes.
DC. Oh right, In that case I ought to get a pension for that [laughter]
GR. [laughter]
DC. We’ll ask the prime minister for a pension.
GR. Seventy years later.
DC. Actually its a bit more than that because, I was, just in passing I did twelve years, I had four war years, 1947 I came out, but then when the Korean trouble started, and the Berlin airlift, there were adverts for ex-aircrew to go back in the Air Force, because they wanted to staff it up again.
GR. Yes.
DC. There looked like there were going to be some problems so I went back in and the minimum I could sign for was eight years so that’s what I did, I went back into the Air Force in 1949.
GR. As a?
DC. As a Wireless Operator.
GR. As a Wireless Operator.
DC. On what is laughingly called Bomber Command with Lincoln’s.
GR. Right.
DC. Yes, I flew after the war; I flew with Lincolns in Lincolns, York’s, Hastings, [unclear] I mentioned Lincolns didn’t I?
GR. Did you fly the Washington?
DC. Oh yes three years flying the Washington, B29.
GR. That was the American bomber that [unclear] the end of the war, but then came back, came across here?
DC. Yes.
GR. And the RAF used it?
DC. The RAF used it and it was also the one which dropped the two atom bombs.
GR. That’s right.
DC. Which I thank, was most thankful for. It killed a lot of people did those two things but, what they did we were, it wasn’t decided quite what we were going to do at the end of the war, but there was rumour on all the Squadrons I think and certainly on ours, that we were going to go on Tiger Force which was Bomber Command going out and doing low level attacks on Japanese targets. That didn’t materialise because the Americans dropped the...
GR. Dropped the bomb.
DC. The V bomber, the...
GR. And can you remember was your Squadron down as Tiger Force?
DC. There was rumour on the station, but there was nothing proved, but the station [unclear] is that we only did about eight operations, and then the whole squadron was posted away from Waltham to Elsham Wolds.
GR. Right.
DC. Where 103 Squadron were domiciled.
GR. Yes.
DC. And we went there, and we only did four there so I did twelve in total.
GR. Twelve in total.
DC. But at the end of that number, 8 , 12 in total, our crew was picked to go on Pathfinders and we went down to Warboys and did a bit of a course on the 8 Group, 582 Squadron. 582 squadron saw the last Victoria Cross of the war in Bomber Command. He was shot down, a Captain Swales was shot, I can remember his voice quite clearly.
GR. Right.
DC. Directing them in force onto the target area, and he went very low and couldn’t get his height back and he bailed his crew out as I read.
GR. But he stayed in?
DC. Yes.
GR. Yes.
DC. And he killed himself.
GR. So then you, as you’ve just said you were going to do Pathfinder training but the war came to a close.
DC. That’s right.
GR. Then you came back into the RAF .
DC. In between that.
GR. Yes.
DC. I did, it was quite impressive numbers of prisoners of war we flew back from France.
GR. Yes.
DC. And Italy what they called Exodus, exercise Exodus.
GR. That’s right yes.
DC. And that was flying them from [unclear] France, and then we went on to what they called Exercise Dodge, flying the troops back from Italy, by along the south coast on the Adriatic, still with the Lancaster, with 24 passengers.
GR. Nice job that one.
DC. It was a good job yes.
DC. We’d get hooch from one of the local shops, hooch very cheap at that time the official changing rate of Lira for Pound was three thousand we could get 18 thousand [unclear] pound note on the exchange rate on the street.
GR. [laughter]
DC. So did a bit of lubricating of the back passages as it were. [unclear]
GR. [laughter] And you finally left the RAF in…
DC, January the 1st 1947,
GR. 1947 but then you went back in?
DC. Went back in March ‘49.
GR. Right.
DC. For the?
GR. Berlin airlift and Korea .
DC. Yes.
GR. When did you finally come out of the RAF?
DC. 1956.
GR. 1956.
DC. And I got two hundred and fifty six pound, for the eight years.
GR. For the eight years, as a thank you.
DC. That’s right, yes.
GR. [laughter] What did you do then Don, what did you do with the rest of your life?
DC. Goodness me, I had a variety of jobs, one unpaid was 25 years as a parish councillor.
GR. Right.
DC. That was a waste of time with the politics as they are. I had a variety of jobs making houses, building houses, all labouring jobs with me you see.
GR. Ah I see.
DC. I’d no trade, and there aren’t any wireless operators down a pit.
GR. No.
DC. So, and I ended up back down the pit twice like I’ve, like I’ve put in my little memory book, I can mesmerise bung [?] fly really, wasting time going down those jobs, because I ultimately ended up I had a very good job, I went mending televisions for one thing and putting aerials up. But a very good job I ended up with was with the Central Electricity Generating Board. Subsequently became a supervisor in the technical department in the instrumentation areas and it was a very good job.
GR. Good.
DC. Lovely.
GR. Yeah, Well I’ll bring the interview to a close and this has been recorded and hopefully in four weeks time today you’ll be attending the International Bomber Command Centre memorial at Lincoln for the unveiling.
DC. That’s my intention.
GR. So I’m sure we’ll see you there.
DC. Good, all the best.
GR. Thank you.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Don Crossley
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Gary Rushbrooke
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-09-04
Format
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00:34:29 audio recording
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ACrossleyD150904, PCrossleyD1501
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.
Language
A language of the resource
eng
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
Description
An account of the resource
Don Crossley was born in South Emsall in 1924. He tells of his time before the war working at Upton Colliery before joining the Royal Air Force. He volunteered and trained initially as a wireless operator / air gunner. He tells of his experience at the aircrew receiving centre and his training at the initial training wing before his assignment to an operational training unit for crewing up. After serving in a heavy conversion unit, he was posted to 100 Squadron. He flew on Ansons, Lancasters, Lincolns, Yorks and Hastings. He was in Pathfinders force with 8 Group, 582 Squadron, and took part in operations Exodus and Dodge. Don was demobilised in 1947 but returned to take part in the Berlin airlift and also in Korea. He finally left the Royal Air Force in 1956. Don tells about his post war life doing manual labour and then a job with the Central Electricity Generating Board.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Vivienne Tincombe
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Germany
Germany--Berlin
Korea
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1947
1956
100 Squadron
582 Squadron
8 Group
aircrew
Anson
B-29
bombing
crewing up
Heavy Conversion Unit
Initial Training Wing
Lancaster
Lincoln
Morse-keyed wireless telegraphy
Operation Dodge (1945)
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operational Training Unit
Pathfinders
RAF Grimsby
RAF Sandtoft
recruitment
Tiger force
training
wireless operator / air gunner
York
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1016/11305/PLusbyD1801.1.jpg
43773bdce380b6fd9a4b3dcba502bd26
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1016/11305/ALusbyD181217.2.mp3
a08ea7365e7bc89f530cfe319e4819d9
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
Lusby, Dorothy
D Lusby
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Dorothy Lusby (b.1926). She was evacuated and later worked as a seamstress making uniforms.
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
2018-12-17
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
Lusby, D
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
This interview is being conducted on behalf of the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewee is Mrs Dorothy Lusby and the interviewer is Mike Connock. The interview is taking place at Mrs Lusby’s home in Waseby, Lincolnshire on Monday 17th of December 2018. Also present is Mrs Lusby’s daughter, Pat Spotton. Okay, just let’s start at the beginning, tell me a bit about where you were born, about when and where you were born.
DL: Well actually, I was born at Cleethorpes, I can’t tell you exactly where, and I don’t like Cleethorpes, I don’t even like sand! But I was born at Cleethorpes but we lived on Laceby Road at Grimsby and we were there most, most of the war. The war started just before my thirteenth birthday, which was on September the 15th. I was born 1926, so there, I told you the truth about being 92 haven’t I! [Laughter] You’ll have to excuse me but I’m always having jokes and having laughs because I like it. My neighbour, that one, oh dear, I do get some laughs!
MC: What did your parents do then, what were your parents?
DL: My father, well he was in the first world war of course. Yes, but he was in the army, I don’t know what regiment it was, but it was the Grimsby something or other I can’t remember what it was called, but he wasn’t sent abroad. They wanted some cooks and he went in for cookery because his mother had taught him how to cook and so he was a cook actually, and I don’t know where he was based, I can’t tell you that either. Now he was only sixty nine when he died.
MC: How old would you have been at the time?
DL: Oh. About twenty seven, twenty eight.
MC: Oh right, okay, so it was later on.
DL: Oh yes. So that’s where we lived, on Laceby Road, and the war started whilst we lived there and as I say, just before my thirteenth birthday. Now, we lived there for quite a while and we had these Anderson shelters, everyone had one delivered and you had to dig a hole in the garden and put it in the garden as far away from your property, which we did. Well, living in Grimsby and being so close to Hull, which was the place they were going to, mainly, we were often up at night, and so my father decided we ought to move further inland. And so, I should think it would be a year and a half after the war had started. You see the other thing was, we, where we lived, not too far away from us was an army camp where they had these ack-ack guns were they called? I think that’s they were called. So of course they were banging off, you see, so you got no peace when you were in the air raid shelter. And so we, he decided we would move further inland and we went to live in Leicester. And that is the house where we went to live. And it’s, the other side is a park, it’s called Spinney Hill Park. Very, very nice and there were underground shelters right across so that so many blocks of houses would go into that shelter, and so many in that. And we were there every [emphasis] night probably from eleven until six in the morning, night after night, and eventually they dropped six time bombs across there, fortunately not close enough to where we were in the underground shelters, and so of course we couldn’t, the park was closed so we’d no shelter to go in to, so it was the cupboard under the stairs and it wasn’t very big. [Chuckle] So we spent time there and in the finish my father said to me, it, well, to mother and I, it’s no good here, we’re worse off here than we were at Grimsby: I think we’ll go back. And so we did.
DC: So did you experience any of the bombing raids in Grimsby and Hull before you went or just - ?
DL: Well, yes, there were some, but I didn’t know a lot about them. I suppose my parents thought you know, too young at thirteen to be telling you about the disasters so you didn’t get to know. So anyway the thing was that we lived in Grimsby more or less back in the area of where we lived before we went to Leicester.
DC: So what was life like as a school child, you know growing up in that area just before the war, you know?
DL: Oh, I had a nice school to go to, yes. It was in Grimsby and it was only a cycle ride away to school or we could even walk. I loved cycling, as soon as I learned to cycle I couldn’t keep off one, and it went on year after year after year, I cycled everywhere. But yes, [cough] we had a nice school, nice teachers and they built some extra school classes, the school -
[To other]: Thank you love, thank you very much. Did you put some biscuits in the hearth?
DC: So yeah, you were saying -
DL: So the schools had shelters built, these brick ones, in the school playground, so we used them if we had to, but strangely enough I don’t ever remember us having to come out of school to go in those shelters. We had practices, but I don’t ever remember us having to go in the daytime whilst we were at school. So I suppose that was a good thing. And when we got to Leicester, the schools hadn’t got any air raid shelters so children were not really going to school regularly or full day, full time, they would go when it was supposed to be the quietest. But unfortunately where we lived at Leicester, there were a lot of munitions factories and my father felt he wanted to do something so he went in a munition factory. So I became fourteen and it was no good me going to school by the time I got the shel, because it was going on for November. So I never went back to school really, after I turned fourteen in the September. So I thought I would look for a job, I thought well I ought to have a job, and earn some money, it might help at home and all this business you see, not knowing much about how difficult it was, and then of course there was the rationing, which I think we managed pretty well, with that. And so I did find a job and it wasn’t too far away from where we lived.
DC: This was in Leicester.
DL: Yes. But it was for a boy. But I applied for it and they told me what it was all about. They showed me what you had to do, so they said to me: ‘Can you pick that bale off that shelf, the one above?’ so I said, ‘oh yes I’m sure I can.’ I just got hold of it and I picked it up and said, ‘where do you want it?’, holding it. He says, ‘my goodness,’ he says, a lass as strong as that!’, I’ll always remember him saying that. And so he asked me a few things about where I lived and when I told him Mere Road, he said, ‘oh you’re not far away,’ he said, ‘you’re in walking distance.’ I said I would probably come on my cycle is there anywhere to put it. ‘Oh’ he said, of course there is.’ So I go the job and I worked there until my father wanted to come back. But the manager of that works, offered, because they were so pleased with me and what I did, they offered me to, accommodation to stay at the manager’s and his wife’s home because they had a daughter as well, I think they had two daughters, and my father said no we mustn’t be separated. Which I suppose my father was thinking that they were getting that much bombing there in Leicester. But you see the thing was they were aiming for Coventry and they did an awful [emphasis] lot of damage there, and they blew up that lovely cathedral. They did have a new one built but wasn’t the same. Well they were building it long after we left there, but I did see it because we went for a holiday there, took Pat and my other daughter with us and showed them the park and showed them where we lived.
DC: It’s nice to go back.
DL: Yes, but this place where I lived, these bales that were about that length and about that thick and that, were folded, into so many sheets. So what I had to do was get them down and put a marker on them with a, well like a pastry cutter if you like, but it was shaped like that, and it was toecaps for soldier’s boots. And the men on the machines were doing that, making toe caps. That’s what it was for. I didn’t know what it was for until they were doing it, and so I said to one of them, now I always remember his name, we called him Alec. And I said, ‘Can I ask you what you’re making?’ So he said, ‘don’t you know?’ I said ‘No’ I said, ‘I’m only putting the pattern on. Yes you do a good job,’ he said, ‘how old are you? I said ‘I’m fourteen.’ my goodness!’ so I said well are you not allowed to tell me he said they’re toe caps for the forces boots, mainly soldiers. ‘Because,’ he said, ‘there are different kinds for different forces, like if they’re a pilot or if they’re on a ship.’ And so that was it but then of course I had to leave to come back to Grimsby.
DC: So how old were you when you came back to Grimsby then?
DL: I would be getting on for fifteen I should think. Because I think it was beginning of the summer time, or late spring, I can’t remember exactly when. It was long after Christmas; we did have Christmas there, at, in Leicester, so, but I would, I can remember having my fifteenth birthday when we got there.
DC: Did you get a job when you came back to - ?
DL: Yes, I went, my father found it for me. It was a tailoring job. Well I was good at needlework and sewing and I was the only girl in the school class that could use a treadle sewing machine. They just had one, and the others would turn the handle on the, your desk top and so I used that because I learned to use it at my grandma’s, and I eventually got that sewing machine.
DC: So you saw out the rest of the war up in, back in Grimsby.
DL: Yes, yes I did. I mean it was still on of course, and so the job I got on the tailoring, it was an apprenticeship for making, I don’t know, I’ll call him an officer, but it was sailors’ uniform but it was the one, not where they wore the bell bottoms and the jumper tops, but a jacket and straight trousers and a peaked camp, but I just know it was an officer. And I was responsible for the two fronts and the lapels. Not to stitch, but to cut out and mark. And so I would pass them on this conveyor belt, but I eventually got on to doing the sewing and then using a button machine, putting, no buttonhole machine and I used to look at these buttonholes and I’d think I could do better ones than those by hand! Which I could! Eventually I left, whilst I was working there, there’d been a very bad raid that night, and there was a lot of bombing going on because they were aiming for Grimsby docks, and they dropped a bomb on a big department store on this corner, where I worked was on this corner, [sound of paper being prodded] all we lost was a bit of glass out of some windows, but the shop was flat to the ground, well more or less.
DC: A lucky escape!
DL: It was. And so we were able to stay at work if we wanted to, or if we didn’t want to because of the bombing. But I stayed, and it went on for a little while until it got to a time when I wasn’t very pleased about not being able to do a certain sewing job on these jackets, and so I thought I’ll look for another job. And it just so happened I saw a girl that used to go to my school and she told me where she worked and I said, ‘oh do they want anybody?’ Well they didn’t. But she says why don’t you go to Harrisons, on the corner of Town Hall Street, because they are doing officers’ uniforms there, but she said, ‘I’m happy where I am.’ So I thought I’d try it. So I went and tried and they said they well they could do with someone who was good at hand sewing because there’s lots of ribbons to stitch on and hand buttonholes. I thought that sounds good and so I said well I could do that because I liked hand sewing, so they said well that’s what we need, and so I was employed and so I was putting the ribbons down the trousers, round the cuffs, on the shoulders and doing the buttonholes. But the other thing was there were air force and naval officers uniforms we were doing and we were also doing what they called their tail suits. We used to call them penguin suits in those days. So there was a lot of sewing for me to do on those as well, so I used to love sitting there doing the hand sewing rather than on the machine. But it was considered war work so I was never in any of the forces and I carried on working, not at that same place, I went to the place that my friend had told me about to do men’s’ suits and so I went there and that was where I went on a buttonhole machine and a buttoning, button machine and I didn’t seem to get into the other tailoring, but it was very nice, but they opened, well I’ll call it a little factory, in Grimsby, not far from the one that I was working in, and the manager of the place where I was working was leaving to start up his own business on Cleethorpes Road, at, you know between Grimsby and Cleethorpes and so the manager for this other place was coming to take his place and they wanted someone across there to do something there. So they asked me if I would go as a charge hand. ‘Oh I said I don’t know if I want to do that.’ So they said you’ll be all right for it, you know, carried on talking about it, and I said well can I just go for a month’s trial: see if I like it? I finished up there until I was expecting Pat, working there because I went from charge hand to forewoman to manageress!
MC: Oh!
DL: So there I was, and of course I loved sewing so much I did a lot of my own dressmaking because I had cousins in Canada, that were on my mother’s side, she had two sisters over there, and they used to send a parcel every now and again. I used to get dress material and stockings sent to me and so I was always all right.
MC: Did you have any brothers and sisters?
DL: Yes, yes, younger than me. Yes.
MC: You were the eldest?
DL: Yes, yes, I was eight years older than my brother. Yes. But they’re no longer with us.
MC: So growing up, I mean there’s, the start of the war you’re thirteen, end of the war what you’re, nineteen?
DL: Somewhere about that age, coming up to that.
MC: That’s a marvellous age, you know, the teenage years, growing up to a young lady.
DL: Yes, yes it was.
MC: What sort of, you know, what was it like, you know?
DL: I suppose –
NC: I mean did you meet any of the RAF men?
DL: Oh you met a lot of them, because in Grimsby -
MC: I’m thinking you might have been a very popular lady.
DL: Oh I don’t know about that! [Laugh] My father was a bit strict anyway, about who you were going out with. And so, but I loved dancing, so there was a church that had a church hall and Saturday nights they had a dance there and the vicar would be there you see, not all the time, he would just pop home and then pop back again.
MC: So did the men from the RAF camps come there?
DL: Well, there was an RAF camp at Waltham, another village just away and there were a few of them came there. But I think maybe I did because they would come and ask you for a dance. They didn’t always have their uniforms on, in fact I don’t think, I’m not quite sure, but I don’t think they hardly came in uniforms, I think they were always in suits or jackets and trousers, you know, sports jackets. So I did get some dancing and then I got dancing with one young man one night, I thought he was probably from Waltham but he was a farmers’ son at Waltham, and he was a very good dancer, and so was I [emphasis] actually, and so we were regular dance partners and I was never short of a dance partner if he was there. He came fairly regular, except when it was harvest time or anything like that. And I met my husband there but, [emphasis] it took him a long, long time to come and ask me for a dance. So when we got to know each other I asked him why all that time he went to the dance why didn’t he ever come and ask me for a dance, I said, ‘you used to look across at me but never asked me.’ ‘Well’ he said, ‘I couldn’t I was frightened I’d stand on your toes or trip you up,’ he said, ‘I used to watch you with your partner that you used to dance with a lot,’ and he said ‘I couldn’t do those steps!’ So don’t know what, well this partner and I, we, there was a competition on one night and we won the competition for dancing the tango, and I’ve still got, it was a lovely padded coat hanger, hand made but it was lovely, and I’ve still got it, yes, my dressing gown hangs on it. I forget what he got, but anyway. So that’s what was happening then, and of course and then I noticed that this young man that turned out to be my husband in the finish, didn’t come any more and I thought oh he’s got fed up of coming and just standing about! Then eventually I go, I get two of the girls at work press me in to go to a dance on a Thursday night at the big dance hall in Grimsby. It was called the Gaiety. It had been an ice rink once, many many years before. I didn’t want to go, because it was too big, I liked the smaller places, but I went. They go off, and I’m waiting for them coming back and I thought I wonder if they’ve got dance partners whilst, I thought they’d gone to the cloakroom you see, I thought I wonder if they’ve got dance partners, so when the next lot of music started up, which was a waltz, I thought I’ll go and have a look, see if they’re on the floor, dancing. and I was standing there looking and I was like this and looking round, and I thought I can’t see them, then suddenly a tap on the shoulder – Eric!
MC: They’d set it up.
DL: And that’s where it started then. He wanted me to write to him so I did. And then he wanted a photograph of me and I sent him one and he sent me one, and when I got thisphotograph I thought isn’t he handsome! I never thought, sort of looked at it like that. But that’s -
MC: So I’m just going back to the war years and your experiences, rationing and things like that.
DL: Oh yes. You know you did pretty well really, working it out, well your parents did, I mean I don’t know how they worked it out, but I mean you had to give seven coupons for a dress or a blouse, and I think it was seven coupons for a shoe, a pair of shoes I should say, not a shoe, and then I don’t know how the food ones worked out because my mother took care of that, you, but you, each person in the household got an individual book of coupons for clothing. So you could only get what you had coupons for. So I was very fortunate that I received these parcels from Canada, which the lady, the cousin that was sending me the parcel, her husband was in the Scottish Highlanders, he, was the regiment he came in from Canada and when he had his leave he used to spend it with us. So I did meet one of them. Well then the other one just had the one son, Robert, he was a pilot in the air force and he was over here and he was, got some leave and he was going to come and see us and he never came back from the flight out that night, so we never met him and so she lost her only child really.
MC: Were you aware of the raids that were going on, the aircraft that were taking off, the bombers streams?
DL: Well they weren’t near enough to where we lived. I mean Waltham was one, Binbrook was another and Hemswell. Now before I came to live here I lived in the next village to Hemswell for twenty two years before I came here, so and my husband, he went in the REME because his apprenticeship he did was for, REME was if you don’t know, it’s the REME is the Royal Engineers Mechanical Electricians or somewhere round there.
MC: Yeah, I know it.
DL: Anyway, it’s in here somewhere. So he set up a business and he did a lot of the work on Hemswell when it had closed because they were selling off the, all the buildings, and the officers mess some people bought and that is where the antiques place is.
MC: Yes.
DL: And my husband did all the lighting in there. Then he went to a place that was selling German tractors, believe it or not, beautiful things, huge, [emphasis] and so he’d got quite a bit of work. Well, then when farmers started having the corn driers, they had to have the things put in for it, and he did those, at a lot of farms until he finished updoing work for a lot of farms.
MC: How long was he in the REME for?
DL: Just the two years’ service which he had to do.
MC: His National Service, that was just after the war?
DL: Yes, yes it would be. Yes, yes it was. Yes, because we were married in 1949 and we were going out together for about a year and ten months before we were married, even though we sort of knew each other beforehand, because he was still doing his army service and I was writing to him.
MC: Yes.
DL: Yes. So he’d be there until 1947 to 48 maybe. I remember he came out in the January, so, and I would nearly think that was 1948, I would think so, but that was, that was about it. With rationing, I think you, well thinking about at home, you did all right because my mother didn’t take sugar, I didn’t take sugar, and there was, for your dried fruit if you wanted it for cakes or Christmas puddings and things, you had to save it through the year, but my father did the cooking Christmas day because it was my mother’s birthday on Christmas day, so he did the cooking, having done, been the cook in the army. Oh, he made the most beautiful puddings, oh they were lovely, and Christmas cake.
MC: Out of nothing during rationing.
DL: Well yes, because you see we saved the fruit up didn’t have too many fruity cakes, probably just sponge cakes or he probably even bought them from the shop in those days. And when we were in Leicester there used to be, I can’t remember the name of the firm, but they used to come round in a van, selling cakes and bread and buns and all kinds of things, and he would take your coupons and so I think about once in three, every third week, my parents, either my father or my mother, would go out and choose some cake and quite often it was that, I’ve forgotten what it was called, but it was square with marzipan round it.
MC: Oh, Battenburg.
DL: That’s it, yes. about once in three weeks, because I don’t think it was cheap, but it was a treat, that’s what it was – it was a treat. But no, I think, I mean I look back many, many a time and think I was very fortunate to get through it without a scratch and to be able build your lives up, not that we had that feeling because we were too young when the war was on, but to think that, to look back and think what it was all about, and what you’ve read about in books.
MC: I often think that that age, from thirteen to nineteen -
DL: Yes. Is someone coming to my door?
MC: I often think being that age thirteen to nineteen during the war was a very impressionable age, you know, living and growing up during the war.
DL: Yes.
MC: It must have been an amazing experience.
DL: Oh yes. I mean I can remember that when they were dropping the bombs, and we were back in Grimsby by this time, they were going for the railway lines in Grimsby, and they missed and hit the end of our parish church and also because they were aiming for the railway lines, a whole row of terraced houses: they hit those. I was never told about that, or knew about that row of houses for a long, long time afterwards and that must have been dreadful, really dreadful. The part of the church that was repairable, I don’t think there was any things of importance damaged inside the church, but there was, I think it was a stained glass window that had been put in for someone special, I don’t know what, maybe for a bishop or something I can’t remember, and I used to go to that church on a Sunday with one of the girls from work. We became good friends and in the summertime when we came out we used to get on the bus and go to Cleethorpes, walk the full length of the prom up to the bathing pool, then get our buses back: she would get the bus to take her home I’d get mine, and in the winter time well, we more or less always just came home. But it’s one of those things that you can’t help looking back on some of it, which I do sometimes, and some things stand out more than others. Yes.
MC: Yeah, I think you tend to remember the good times as well.
DL: Well you do, and as I say, I often think wasn’t I lucky to still to be here, you know and I think one of my aunts, they lost a son in the war, but this is aunts that lived in our country. Now I had an aunt and uncle that lived at Portsmouth and her husband was a wireless operator on one of the ships or whatever, and they had one or two narrow misses, but he came home, yes, he got home, and his wife, my auntie Olive, she went to work and help in one of the – what did they call the canteens that they used?
MC: NAAFI.
DL: That’s it, yes, she worked in one of those quite a number of years, well practically all through the war. And so on the whole I suppose I can look back at it and think well I didn’t know such a lot about it as a child, it was as I got older and it was nearly ending. But it, it was an experience that you weren’t expecting, and looking back on it, well you just think how fortunate you are to be here.
MC: Indeed. Well Dorothy, thank you very much for that interview. It’s been very informative and it’s interesting to see what you did during the war and I thank you for taking the time out to talk to us.
DL: It’s all right I’ve got plenty of it to spare!
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 Dorothy Lusby
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Mike Connock
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
2018-12-17
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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ALusbyD181217, PLusbyD1801
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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00:32:57 audio recording
Language
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eng
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Leicestershire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Leicester
England--Grimsby
Coverage
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Civilian
Description
An account of the resource
Dorothy’s was born in Cleethorpes, her father served in the Army during the First World War. They moved to Grimsby at the outbreak of the war, when she was turning 13 years old. She recalls the bombings and having to stay in an Anderson air raid shelter in her garden throughout the night. Her father decided to move the family to Leicester believing it to be safer. There were communal air raid shelters, but they were closed after six time-fused bombs dropped nearby. The family took cover under the stairs of their home. At 14, Dorothy had left school secured her first job, but the family moved back to Grimsby due to the severity of the bombings. Dorothy went on to secure a tailoring apprenticeship as she was able to use a Treadle sewing machine, having originally learnt the craft from her grandmother. She undertook several tailoring jobs during the war, usually sewing uniforms for officers, which was considered ‘war work’. Dorothy recalls the ongoing bombings on Grimsby, including when docks and railway lines were targeted. She also remembers rationing, including clothing coupons, and having to save ingredients throughout the year to make cakes for special occasions. Dorothy enjoyed dancing, often at her local church hall on Saturday nights, where she won a competition and met her future husband, Eric. After the war, he served in the Corps of Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers for two years’ National Service.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Andy Shaw
Anne-Marie Watson
bombing
entertainment
evacuation
home front
RAF Grimsby
shelter
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/620/8889/PPaineGH1616.2.jpg
c7fb40cc6f0bfbe3e8dfa9843065b6cb
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/620/8889/APaineGH160726.1.mp3
924472391843693055dda8d9ecb5466d
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
Paine, Geoff
Geoffrey Hugh Paine
G H Paine
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Paine, GH
Description
An account of the resource
14 items. An oral history interview with Sergeant Geoffrey Paine (1925 - 2019, 1894345, Royal Air Force) documents and photographs. He flew as a pilot with 100 Squadron.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Geoffrey Paine and catalogued by Trevor Hardcastle.
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Date
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2016-07-20
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and it’s the 26th July 2012 and I’m speaking with Mr & Mrs Paine, Geoffrey Paine the pilot and we’re in Croxley Green and we’re going to talk about the life and times of Geoff in the RAF and other activities. So, what are your earliest recollections of life Geoff?
GP: My earliest recollections of life? Oh, when I was a small boy do you mean? [Laughs] I lived at Gerrards Cross which is just down the road from here so I’m a, almost lived here all my life, yes always have, telephone [telephone ringing] always have done to be frank. [Telephone ringing]
CB: I’ll stop it just for a moment.
PP: I’ll go and get it.
CB: It gets.
PP: That was timed wasn’t it?
CB: I was going to say, yeah.
GP: That’s better, yes.
CB: Yes.
GP: So in Gerrards Cross I went to school first of all at —
PP: Not leaving a message, so can’t be important.
GP: I went to school first at High Wycombe Royal Grammar School and then I went down to Cornwall and went to Falmouth Grammar School, and of course when I was there the war was on and I volunteered for the RAF, I was in the ATC, Air Training Corps, down there I was one, actually joined the Air Training Corps when it was probably first formed quite early on and I volunteered for royal air force and as soon as I was eighteen I was whipped into it. [Laughs] No trouble at all. And then now where did I go first? Oh my goodness me I went to London first and then I was sent down, we had about, when I signed up in London, we had about three or four days in London and then I went to Aberystwyth, and we were billeted on, in hotels on the sea front at Aberystwyth and we used to have our lessons in the University Aber, Aberystwyth and our drill on the sea front of course, there was a great lovely big sea front there you could drill on, hard standing and then I volunteered of course for the RAF and my first recollections really I went to grading school, didn’t I, I think, I think perhaps it was grading school, No 6, yes, of course I went to an ITW first an initial training wing and then I, was on 20th September, at Aberystwyth, it was a nice place to be, billeted in the Belle Vue hotel, little hotel we were all in hotels there, we did all our drill on the sea front and we used their swimming pool, we had to go up to the swimming pool on a very cold morning, and the first time we went there we were all non-swimmers, we had to climb to the top diving board and jump in, and we were fished out with long poles, and there was one chap couldn’t do it, ground staff, [laughs] he wasn’t allowed to join aircrew, amazing. I felt sorry for him because he was very, completely gobsmacked he was. It took a bit to jump in because they’re quite high the top boards, and they had this great big long pole, and you grabbed hold of it and they pulled you in and you soon learnt to swim, I mean within a couple of days you were swimming the length of the pool so it was a good way to start, I think.
CB: Yes.
GP: A good way to start that. That was Aberystwyth, gosh, what did I do then?
PP: Well you’ve got it all written down old man, use your notes, use your notes!
CB: I’m just going to stop it a moment.
PP: Yes, go on.
GP: Elementary Flying Training School, Ansty, I went first, I did my first solo at six and a quarter hours, which was quite early I think ‘cause me instructor was leaping about, he’d beaten everybody else getting me in the air [Laughs]. Then I went to ITW at Cambridge just for a short time this was, they moved you about just to fill up time. Then I went to 100 Sqn, RAF Waltham, and there I packed thousands of blooming incendiary bombs. They were going on big raids then from Waltham and it was a continuous packing of incendiary bombs, thousands they, the whole place, must have put Germany on fire I think. Then what happened then? Bomb damage repairs Hornchurch, [?] where did I get to? Heaton Park, 18th of July ’44 and then Hornchurch, bomb damage repairs, and then Kew, bomb damage repairs, and then Hendon, again bomb damage repairs, and then I was put on a boat, the ‘Andes’ to go to Cape Town and from Cape Town you go on that beautiful train all the way up to Bulewao, I think it took three days, two days and a night I think and we went to RAF Guinea Fowl to start our elementary flying training on Cornells and then from there I went to RAF Ternhill to fly on Harlands, and then I think it was getting a bit near the end of the war. Twenty-five, five, forty-five, oh my giddy aunt yes.
CB: OK, we’ll stop again a mo’. Could you just explain the bomb damage repair you were doing, so what was the scene?
GP: Well we, there were about I think twenty, twenty-five of us, and we had a chiefie, you know an RAF sergeant.
CB: Flight sergeant, um.
GP: Nice old chap, and a lorry and when a bomb had dropped and blew all the tiles of roofs, blew the windows in we were piled off, given a place to go and there we had all the necessary stuff to, yellow calico stuff, to nail to the window to keep the wind out because all the glass had gone, we put stuff on the roofs, if there were tiles we put tiles, if not we put tarpaulins on the roofs just to make the place habitable, habitable after the bombing, that’s what happened then.
CB: So some of this was in East London?
GP: Yes it was, it was in East and West, and West London too, yes.
CB: And what about Hendon, that’s an airfield, so?
GP: Yes.
CB: What happened there?
GP: I went to Hendon just for a few days. They’d had a, a doodlebug had landed in the evening when they were all having showers and things right onto an accommodation block.
CB: An RAF billet block?
GP: And we had to clear the site which meant clearing human remains as well, it wasn’t very nice at all. It meant shovelling bricks, shovelling it on a lorry and off it all went, that was it. A complete barrack block got a direct hit, unbelievable really they picked that one building out on the station.
CB: Amazing. And what with the human remains this was a sensitive thing but what did you do with them?
GP: Well, you find yourself a hand with a bit of the, bit of the —
CB: The bone, yes.
GP: A bit of bone sticking out, you didn’t know whose it was.
CB: No.
GP: You just put it in a pile, no way of finding out at all.
CB: So what did they then do with those?
GP: I think they were buried somewhere ‘cause they didn’t know whose they were. They knew who’d died in the blocks obviously but the remains you couldn’t really match them up, impossible. Didn’t find any heads or anything, mostly arms and legs and bits and pieces like that. Not very pleasant but it was as if you were in another place, it didn’t mean much because there was no body with it, just an arm or a leg, wasn’t very nice at all. Oh gosh what did I do after that?
CB: So going on from there you were on the ‘Andes’ yes?
GP: Yes.
CB: Which route did that take and how long?
GP: Oh, it was lovely we called in on the way, it was a posh boat the ‘Andes’, a cruise ship and we called into, what’s it called half way down?
CB: You didn’t go via Canada?
GP: No, we didn’t, no. [unclear]
CB: You went in the west coast of Africa did you?
GP: Of Africa, I’m trying to think.
CB: OK, and who were the people being transported, were they only air force or?
GP: Only air force yeah, I’m trying to pick it up on here. All here, near Gwelo. Yes, that’s right. It was back a bit, arrived at Cape Town.
CB: Yeah.
GP: We went on this nice boat to Cape Town on 1st March.
CB: 1945?
GP: Then we were heading for Southern Rhodesia.
CB: Yes.
GP: I think it took two and a half days to get to Rhodesia.
CB: OK.
GP: Two days and a night. Each carriage had bunks to sleep six so we arrived in Bulewao on 4th March and spent twelve days there to become acclimatised, being so high up above sea level I think it was, I think it was about six or seven thousand feet above sea level.
CB: How did they acclimatise you?
GP: Well just a matter of —
CB: Exercise or?
GP: Matter of doing a few marches, they used to take us out and drop us out on the bush and we had to find our way back and you had to be very careful because if you didn’t pull your socks up or your trousers down you got ticks sticking in your knees all over the place because they used to be on the undergrowth and they’d burrow into your skin.
CB: Yes.
GP: And —.
CB: How did you get them out?
GP: With a cigarette if you had a cigarette, you’d put a bit of heat behind them and they reversed their way out, that was better than doing it any other way otherwise they left the beak in there didn’t they you see? So you got a cigarette behind them and they soon came in reverse [laughs]. Yeah, oh gosh.
CB: And how did the flying go when you were there, you were flying Cornells?
GP: Cornells, well the weather of course, every day was like this, beautiful weather, beautiful weather, lovely flying, and it was, the airfield was out, well out in the countryside and we did a lot of low level flying. We used to beat up the native villages, I can see them all now cowering underneath their little shelters. They lived in thatched roof, you know rough little places, we were pretty horrible to them really. [Laughs]. We used them as a target, we didn’t hit anybody but we used to go in very low and —
CB: Yeah.
GP: And then what else, I think, the war finished and we were shuffled off down to Cape Town and we were there for several weeks, we had a wild time because we climbed all the, well I climbed all the mountains. As you know Cape Town goes all the way round, I climbed all the mountains there, I used to live on the mountain. We’d go to Muizenberg and we’d learned to surf, lovely surf at Muizenberg and the people there were ex-pats who’d moved out there before the war and they were very nice, if they saw you coming down the mountainside they’d call you in and you’d have coffee and cakes and goodness knows what, they looked after you which was jolly nice. We were there for some time before they shipped us home again you see, it was really like a nice holiday really.
CB: What was the ship like that you returned on?
GP: A bit rougher than the one we went out on, we went on the ‘Andes’, came back on the ‘Reina del Pacifico’, which was a bit of, I think the ball had blew up in Belfast when we came back, it was a real old tramp steamer, [chuckles] packed with RAF people coming home.
CB: So we’re talking about May 1945?
GP: May ’45 yes.
CB: And you then went where?
GP: I went to, can you find it below, yes this is it here, yes. I went to RAF Ternhill, on the 25th May we went to Ternhill.
CB: What did you do there?
GP: I’m trying to think, um.
CB: That would be where you the advanced training. [Dialogue confused with interviewer].
GP: Flying Harvards. Yes I was flying Harvards there. I went solo in three hours forty minutes which was quite good and received my pilot wings and along came VJ day, got my pilot wings there and then a victory in Japan day and the second world war —
CB: Yeah.
GP: All flying training ceased.
CB: OK.
GP: We all returned to Cape Town to await our boat home to England, four wonderful weeks in Cape Town climbing the mountains.
CB: So that’s what you did earlier?
GP: Yeah.
CB: So if I just interrupt you again?
GP: Yes.
CB: We come to the end of the war but in the war you were in the Air Training Corps but you were also in the Observer Corps were you?
GP: Yes, no.
CB: That was later?
GP: That was later.
CB: OK, so we’ll come to that in a minute.
GP: Yes.
CB: OK I’m just going to stop for a moment. We’re just doing a correction here, because it’s not Ternhill in England, it’s RAF Thornhill, before coming back. Let me just.
GP: Yes, we went down to —
CB: So after Guinea Fowl then where did you go?
GP: We went down to Thornhill.
CB: Right.
GP: Another RAF training school, No22 Flying training School at Thornhill, and on, along came VJ Day, that was on Harvards, but along came VJ Day and all flying ceased and we were just enjoying ourselves, put on a train and sent back to Cape Town. And when we got to Cape Town there was no boat. We saw the boat going out, we missed the boat, and so we had about four or five weeks in Cape Town to do what we wanted so we climbed the mountains, I did, I climbed up the mountains went all along the back behind Cape Town [Colossal?] and then down over, it was interesting, coming down Oloch[?] you had to get down on to the main road if you wanted to get back to where camp was and there were all these people who, ex-pats who’d built lovely houses there, obviously moneyed people, and they used to welcome us with open arms, ‘Do come in’, used to open a little gate and they’d give you cakes and tea, coffee and drinks if you wanted it. We had rather a nice time, four or five weeks there, before we came back on the boat to come home. And we got on this tramp steamer I called it, ‘Reina del Pacifico’ it was a rough old boat, a lot of people on it, very much overloaded, I’ve got pictures of it here we have, we kept. We stopped at Mafeking going down through, that was interesting coming down to South Africa and —
CB: On the train?
GP: Yes, I got off the train there ‘cause the train was there for a while. They were changing engines so I said to the driver ‘How long are they going to be?’ he said ‘Half hour, three quarters of an hour’ so I went down to have a look at Mafeking and there, there’s Rhodes.
CB: Statue?
GP: Cecil Rhodes statue. Which was quite interesting.
CB: Yes, yes.
GP: And this was when we spent time down to Cape Town and I spent my time climbing mountains there.
CB: So on this boat then, ‘cause you’re going back on the boat.
GP: Yes, back on the boat.
CB: What was that like?
GP: Yeah.
CB: What was that like?
GP: A bit overcrowded.
CB: Um.
GP: But we came out of Cape Town and then we came up the coast and we called in at St Helena which was interesting because Napoleon had been banished there.
CB: Yes.
GP: And the people came out, and I remember buying my mother a tea cosy made out of local raffia or something. [Laughs]. Had quite a good time really. Now what else happened, what happened after that, oh gosh?
CB: So then where did you dock when you got back?
GP: Liverpool.
CB: Um. And where did they send you when you returned?
GP: Trying to think, Liverpool.
CB: I’ll just stop for a mo’ hang on.
PP: Dad.
CB: Right so you’ve landed at Liverpool then what?
GP: Yes, we went to, went down to West Kirby in October ’45. I don’t think we did very much there at all, we were just swanning around, didn’t know what to do with us and then they sent us to Stansted. Stansted was an airfield that had closed and we were put in the hangars and lorry loads of equipment from closing airfields came in and what we did we built little bivouac’s underneath some of this equipment and hid there, nobody knew we were there, otherwise we were given a job. So, we were there for about four or five weeks, hiding away [laughter] otherwise you would, they just gave you something to keep you out of mischief I suppose really. And then 28th November ‘45 I went to number, Bircham Newton, No27 FSTS Bircham Newton, and then I went to Little Rissington, 6FS, solo flying training school at Little Rissington on the 18th January ’46, then I went to Ternhill where I got my wings on 3rd September ’46, quite a long process wasn’t it?.
CB: What were you flying then?
GP: Harvards. That was in Harvards.
CB: So all three of those you were flying Harvards were you?
GP: Harvards yeah.
CB: Right.
GP: [Indistinct]. Kirton-in-Lindsay, oh I flew everything then, doesn’t go on there. I flew Oxfords, Hansons.
CB: So how did you convert to twin engine?
GP: No problem at all.
CB: Yeah, but where?
GP: Gosh, where’s my logbook, where’s my logbook?
CB: OK, we’ll look at it in a moment.
GP: I can see in my logbook —
CB: But you had a good time with these other ones, flying single?
GP: Oh yes, excellent time.
CB: Yeah OK, we’ll stop there for a moment. So, from Kirton-in-Lindsay which is in Lincolnshire you went down to Oakington?
GP: Oakington yes.
CB: And what did you do there?
GP: Oakington? I think I did a little bit of local flying.
CB: On what?
GP: What was that in? Gosh, um, has it got it there Pete?
CB: But what was happening at Oakington which is in Cambridgeshire?
GP: Yes it was a flying training school and um —
CB: For? ‘Cause you went on to Yorks there?
GP: Yes, I went onto Yorks there. Gosh it’s difficult to think of it all now.
CB: OK.
GP: How it all pieced together now.
CB: OK, well never mind. So you went onto Yorks?
GP: Yeah.
CB: And what position were you flying there?
GP: Second pilot on Yorks.
CB: But you’d never been converted to twin-engine or four-engine?
GP: No, no, I just sat in the right-hand seat and enjoyed myself.
CB: Yes. And what did the captain get you to do as the second pilot?
GP: Well, keep an eye open, [laughs], I used to go back, I used to leave my seat and go back in the back and fill in the logs ‘cause you always had this great big log to fill in. I used to keep the logs in the aircraft and then when I finished that I’d sit back next to the pilot again.
CB: Yeah.
GP: But it was a bit of a swansong really.
CB: And the pilot what was his experience before being on Yorks?
GP: Well, he’d had been on Lancasters.
CB: Had he?
GP: Yeah.
CB: And a Lancaster only had one pilot so he was quite happy?
GP: Flt Lt Horry, ‘Horrible Horry’ they called him.
CB: Did they?
GP: And he flew the last York into the museum.
CB: At Hendon?
GP: At Hendon, yes. Horry, I got on well with him, they used to call him ‘Horrible Horry’ but he wasn’t, quite a nice chap, I had a very easy time.
CB: And where did you go in the Yorks?
GP: Oh, we went route flying. You flew across alongside the Andes, the um, —
CB: So you went down through France?
GP: Yeah, through France, and then you turned left along the Mediterranean and you called in at various places.
CB: Would you stop at Orange?
GP: I stopped at several places there.
CB: In France?
GP: And what amused me at the RAF stations there in North Africa, we still had German prisoners of war, and the German prisoners of war would be given a big stick to keep the natives from coming in and robbing the things on the station, that was his job, yes, he had a big pole and that would keep the natives out, and he used it too [laughs]. ‘Cause they’d come, they’d pinch anything, they’d pinch anything. Oh dear, yeah.
CB: So your re-fuelling stops would be how long?
GP: Oh, sometimes we’d have a night, sometimes we wouldn’t have a re-fuelling on the gain, and we’d get as far as India, go up to Karachi and we used to land at Suez down the bottom there, and I used to love it there ‘cause you could hire a boat there and go sailing on the big lakes down the bottom there, and I used to go up to Karachi, we used to fly up to Karachi.
CB: Did you fly via Aiden?
GP: No, I don’t think I went to.
CB: So you went to Iraq did you, through Habbanya?
GP: Yeah, yeah Habbanya. Cor, it’s all a bit of mist at the moment.
CB: That’s OK and this was doing what?
GP: I was second pilot.
CB: Yeah, but what was the ‘plane doing?
GP: Yorks. Carrying freight.
CB: Freight.
GP: Freight, yeah we didn’t carry, well we carried a few, odd people who wanted to fly back, in fact we brought my brother back from, on one occasion, from Cairo, he came back in the aircraft with us.
CB: And what, what, you delivered freight to Karachi?
GP: Yes.
CB: What did you bring back?
GP: Freight came back as well. I can’t tell you what came back I suppose they were packing up the stations, and the important stuff we would fly back home. Then they moved us from, God where we flying from then?
CB: ‘Cause we’re talking now about the time of partition aren’t we?
GP: Yeah.
CB: Between Pakistan and India?
GP: It’s all in the distant past now for me.
CB: We’ll stop there a mo’. So, this delivery system you were operating was from RAF Lyneham?
GP: Yes.
CB: In Wiltshire.
GP: That’s right.
CB: In the aircraft could you just describe what was the crew? This is a transport version of the Lancaster so what did it carry in crew terms?
GP: We had a first pilot, we had me second pilot, and I was sitting in the right hand seat really as a lookout in a way, and we had a wireless operator and a navigator, that’s all we had and we’d fly down, call in at various places in North Africa.
CB: But you had an engineer?
GP: Flight engineer.
CB: Yes, flight engineer.
GP: We’d stop at various places in North Africa and unload freight, or load freight, a lot of freight came home because they were closing the stations when we came back, they were loaded with all sorts of stuff, stations, getting rid of it, getting it home.
CB: What sort of accommodation did you get on the route? So your first stop is Castel Benito?
GP: Well I’m thinking about Malta, ‘cause we went into Malta, I went into Malta.
CB: Yeah.
GP: I had nice accommodation there, very, very hot and humid in Malta, I didn’t like it at all when I was there, very humid, terrible. In fact one day I spent the whole day sitting on the edge of the shower it was so blimin’ humid, it was awful. On other occasions Malta was very nice, we just happened to get the weather that’s all. I did nothing but act as second pilot really.
CB: In North Africa, were you in tents or were they proper buildings?
GP: Oh I’m trying to think, trying to think. No, we were in proper buildings, we were in proper buildings, hard to place it now.
CB: Um.
GP: Yes, we were in proper buildings there, I don’t remember being in tents at all, I don’t remember being in tents.
CB: And how busy was the route? And you’re the lookout how often did you see?
GP: Well it was pretty busy because really because there was a lot of freight coming back. Some, little bit going out, but a lot of freight coming back from closing stations and so forth, so we used to have a lot of freight on-board. I would be up with the pilot and then once we got airborne I’d go down the back and fill in the log, we had a great big log to fill in, what we’d got on board and everything else, I used to do, keep the log. Then come back home, it’s all misty parts [laughs] —
CB: Yeah, yeah. So after flying in Yorks without training on twin or multi-engine.
GP: Yeah.
CB: Where did you go after that?
GP: Oh crikey.
CB: Did you go for twin-engine training?
GP: Where’s my logbook?
CB: So you went to Valley?
GP: RAF Valley.
CB: In North Wales?
GP: Yeah North Wales, that’s right it was very nice there.
CB: So what did you do there?
GP: [Laughs] Skive most of the time on the beach. [Laughter] because we had um —
CB: This was September ’46?
GP: The airfield was quite near the beach.
CB: ’47?
GP: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
GP: Yeah, was nice there. Cor gosh, it’s a job to remember it was a long way back.
CB: But the flying training was twin-engine training was it?
GP: Twin-engine training.
CB: In Oxfords?
GP: In Oxfords and Ansons yeah.
CB: So how did that go?
GP: And Ansons yeah.
CB: How did that go?
GP: It went very well really ‘cause there were a bunch of us, there’s a photograph of us in there I think, all pilots and navigators. Or is it in this one?
CB: Well, we’ll have a look in a minute. And the point of the question is you’d had experience on multi-engine?
GP: Yes.
CB: So I wonder how well that prepared you for twin-engine training?
GP: Fine, ‘cause I went onto Wellingtons.
CB: From?
GP: Middleton St George.
CB: Oh right.
GP: And flying UT navigators, they were all UT navs, I used to end up with sometimes one, sometimes two or three navigators in the back, and a wireless operator. Used to fly every day or every night.
CB: And then you went to Swinderby?
GP: RAF Swinderby.
CB: 201 AFS?
GP: Yes.
CB: So were you instructing there or what were you doing?
GP: What was I doing in Swinderby?
CB: ‘Cause you were on Wellingtons?
GP: Yes.
CB: And you were on familiarisation for a while, but what was the purpose of that?
GP: I did a bit of flying there. Can I have a look at —
CB: Yes, we’ll stop there for a minute. So, you went to Swinderby to the advanced flying school for Wellingtons?
GP: Yes.
CB: Then you went to RAF Topcliffe, which is clearly a nav school and you’re flying on Ansons?
GP: Yes.
CB: So.
GP: I was learning to be a staff pilot then.
CB: Right.
GP: So I could fly anything, Ansons, Oxfords, Wellingtons.
CB: Yes. OK.
GP: Used to mix it up.
CB: Right. So, um, at Topcliffe you were doing what?
GP: Topcliffe?
CB: So this is the No1 Air Navigation School and you’re flying on Ansons so.
GP: I think I was a staff pilot.
CB: You were a staff pilot OK.
GP: Yes.
CB: So you’re flying in an Anson, who else is in the Anson?
GP: Um, wireless operator.
CB: Um.
GP: And probably a training navigator to train, [unclear].
CB: Yeah.
GP: They were UT navigators.
CB: Right.
GP: So they used a couple, they used UT navigators, sometimes two UT navigators and one staff navigator.
CB: OK, who was the instructor?
GP: Yeah.
CB: Yeah, and were you being trained at the same time?
GP: No, I was just flying.
CB: Right, OK, right. So from there you then went onto Wellingtons again?
GP: Wellingtons.
CB: And this time you were at Middleton St George.
GP: Middleton St George, yeah I spent most of my time there then.
CB: So talk us through that, what was that, what were you doing there?
GP: Flying UT navigators all over the place, every day, every night.
CB: Right.
GP: I was a staff pilot there so.
CB: OK.
GP: I had my own wireless operator.
CB: Um.
GP: Forget what he was called now. He’s there somewhere.
CB: But the practicality of it is that that kept you busy for quite some time?
GP: Oh yes it did, until I finished I think.
CB: OK. So, when you, you were the captain of the aircraft, except when you had to be checked out occasionally?
GP: Yes that’s right.
CB: So that takes you to the end of your flying training by which time you’d done eleven hundred hours?
GP: Yes.
CB: So your biggest, where was your biggest hour accumulation, flying hours?
GP: Probably flying out to India.
CB: And on these Wellingtons you put in a few hours?
GP: No that was on, not Lancasters, on —
CB: On the Anson, on the Wellington?
PP: Yorks?
GP: No, Yorks.
CB: Yorks to India. Yeah, no, no, but this.
GP: Second pilot of Yorks.
CB: But at the end you were doing the training of navigators?
GP: I was training, UT navigators, in the back. Usually a staff navigator and UT navigator.
CB: Yeah, at Middleton, OK. ‘Cause you started there at six hundred and eighty four hours, and you finished up with eleven hundred hours.
GP: Yeah.
CB: That was pretty good going.
GP: There was a lot of flying see.
CB: And how did you feel about flying like that?
GP: No problem I loved it, I did, I enjoyed it, I really enjoyed it.
CB: And the navigators were telling you where to go so sometimes it wasn’t right.
GP: Which course to go on. I dozed off one night, I’d been on nights, I dozed off and got a tap on the shoulder, ‘Excuse me sir’.
CB: And to what extent could you fly on auto-pilot, or was it just trimmed for stability?
GP: Oh you could, almost entirely, almost entirely you could fix it.
CB: But you did have auto-pilot?
GP: We had auto-pilot, yeah.
CB: Yeah. How reliable was that?
GP: Very reliable, yeah, very reliable.
CB: So this is how you could catch up on your sleep?
GP: We kept an eye on things, you just sat there, you were just a passenger on the aircraft. Aircraft flew itself really.
CB: Yes. And where were the sorties, because Middleton St George is on the north east, close to the coast, did you fly?
GP: Well we used to come right down over the country, down to the, down to Cornwall and the Isle of Wight and up, up again up the east side, yeah we did all sorts of trips.
CB: By then we’re talking about peace time, so everything’s illuminated so to what extent could you check where you were without the navigator helping you?
GP: Well you could ‘cause you, as a pilot, you kept a check on where you were. You knew what course you were flying, or you knew the main places you could identify on the route and it was normally anti-clockwise, you’d go down across Wales and then across to the east coast then up, nearly always that way round.
CB: Right.
GP: For some reason or another, I don’t know why.
CB: So that was No2 Air Navigation School at Middleton St George?
GP: No2 Air Nav yes.
CB: So you come to the end of your time?
GP: Yes.
CB: What rank are you then?
GP: Pilot three.
CB: Right. As what rank?
GP: Well it’s equivalent to a sergeant pilot really.
CB: Right.
GP: But um.
CB: What had they done to the ranks?
GP: I was a pilot four, that was equivalent to a corporal ‘cause they changed it all you see.
CB: Right.
GP: And when the SWO found out I was still in the sergeants, I’d been in the sergeants mess, but because they changed the ranks he said ‘You can’t come in here now, you’re only a corporal’ but I went to the airmans mess and had a far better time in there I can tell you.
CB: At what stage was that?
GP: God only knows.
CB: Was that close to your leaving the RAF or many years?
GP: Yes a couple of years I think.
CB: Yeah.
GP: Yes, you can see from my logbook.
CB: OK. So, you’ve come to the end of your RAF term, how many years had you signed on for?
GP: Three years and four years reserve I think it was.
CB: Right. So, you came out of the RAF in ’49.
GP: Yes.
CB: What did you then do?
GP: Farming, [laughs], took a farm. Then what did I do then? I went in the Observer Corps didn’t I?
EP: ’61 you went in the Observers.
GP: Royal Observer Corps.
CB: OK, what prompted that?
GP: I became a commander in the Royal Observer Corps and —
EP: You went full time ’66.
GP: What was that darling?
EP: You went full time in ’66.
GP: Yes I went full time in ’66 yes.
CB: Fine. And how long did that last?
Unknown: [Indistinct]
GP: Three years was it?
EP: No until you retired.
GP: Until I retired yeah, yeah.
CB: Aged what?
EP: Sixty.
GP: Sixty, when I was sixty.
CB: And while you were in the Observer Corps what was your task?
GP: What was?
CB: What was your task? What were you doing?
GP: Pilot.
CB: No excuse me, I’ll stop it.
GP: Oh sorry, Observer.
CB: So as part of the history here —
GP: Yes.
CB: How did you come to meet your wife Evelyn?
GP: Well —
CB: And when did you marry?
GP: I met Phillip, her brother, first and we had motorbikes, and he took me home.
CB: What was he doing?
GP: He was um, he was in the RAF still, and I was in the RAF, but he took me home, and I met Evelyn then, and oh gosh, it’s a long story isn’t it?
CB: Go on.
EP: That was in ’45.
GP: ’45. 1945.
EP: When you came back from Rhodesia.
GP: I’d come back all sunburnt from Rhodesia, yeah. [Laughter]. Yeah that right, and we got, we just clicked didn’t we, we just got on so well. I think, never had any arguments.
CB: Well there you are.
GP: And her family were very nice to me, your father was very nice to me. He was a funny old chap her father but he was very nice to me indeed, in fact he gave you away, came up the aisle with you to me.
CB: Lovely. And he was a farmer was he?
GP: Oh no.
CB: Oh no, what did he do?
GP: Well I don’t know, [laughs], practically nothing I think. He’d um —
CB: So when did you marry?
EP: ’48.
GP: 1948. Twenty sixth of August, was it? 26th? 1948. Yeah, and he gave her away.
CB: OK.
GP: Doesn’t sound right somehow does it, how can he give you away?
CB: Well I’ve just done it twice.
GP: Yes.
CB: It relieves the financial pressure you might think.
GP: That’s right, that’s right.
CB: Doesn’t work that way at all.
GP: We’ve always got on, never had any upsets as far as I can remember.
EP: Show you the letter.
CB: I’m just stopping a moment. Now here we have a letter from the Queen which ‘gives her great pleasure to send you her best wishes on your sixty-fifth wedding anniversary on twenty-sixty August 2013’.
GP: We’ve got, we’ve got two haven’t we from the Queen? The other one’s hanging up there behind the lamp.
CB: Yes. That’s really nice.
GP: We’ve met the Queen.
CB: Yes.
GP: She’s very nice.
CB: You went down to Buckingham Palace did you?
GP: Yeah.
CB: Was there a garden party?
GP: Garden party.
CB: How did that go?
GP: We went to the garden party. At one occasion my nephew drove us there and the car conked out going down Whitehall [laughs] and we walked into Buckingham Palace. [Laughter].
EP: But we met her at Bentley Priory, that’s where you met her ‘cause we went to [?]
GP: Oh yes, I was in charge at Bentley Priory so I had to meet her didn’t I?
CB: Right. So now what we need to do if we may is talk if we may about your time in the Observer Corps.
GP: Yeah.
CB: So how did you come to join the Observer Corps and where?
EP: Because we were farming.
GP: Yeah, we were farming —
CB: Where?
GP: In Cornwall.
CB: Down in Cornwall, yeah.
GP: Who did I meet?
EP: You met, you went haymaking at next door neighbour.
GP: Next what?
EP: You went next door neighbour, helping with the harvest.
GP: Yes.
EP: And a ‘plane flew over and you went over to have a look didn’t you?
GP: That’s right yeah, ‘Are you interested in aircraft?’, I said ‘Yes, I was a pilot’.
CB: Yeah, and how did the conversation go after that.
EP: He said he had a post on his farm didn’t he?
GP: Yes that’s right he did. Who was that? That was um —
EP: Stevens.
GP: Stevens yes. Yes, he said ‘I’ve got a post on my farm’ that’s right. Um, he had these underground posts every, every four and a half, or five miles.
CB: Right. OK.
GP: They’re still there most of them.
CB: Yeah, hang on. So, this chap’s farm was where you started was it?
GP: That’s right down in —
CB: Where was that?
GP: Down in Cornwall, Pelynt in Cornwall.
CB: OK.
GP: And there was an underground post there. Um a bunker.
CB: Right.
GP: And we had a crew of ten.
CB: Right.
GP: So we’d man it with three at a time so you had a succession of people manning the post.
CB: So what did this compromise, the underground?
GP: The underground, you had a bomb power indicator, you had a battle assembly pipe outside which would record the over pressure of a bomb if it dropped and you would record it on a dial, BPI. BPI - bomb power indicator.
CB: Right.
GP: And then outside you had a pin hole camera, 360 degree camera with a cover on it and you had to load up sensitive papers in that, take it up, put it on its stand outside. If a bomb went off then it would record the height, the size of the weapon and the angle from the post, so you knew exactly, you know you could pass all this information onto your headquarters which were down Truro and they could plot it all on a big map and knew exactly what was going on. It was quite clever really.
CB: So this was with a landline reporting?
GP: Yeah. Landline.
CB: On a landline?
GP: We had radio back up but mostly landline, but um —
CB: So this is Observer Corps, so people were out observing how did that work?
GP: Royal Observer Corps, and they’re from down underground. You had a bomb power indicator underground so if a bomb went off immediately you had, the bomb power indicator would show you how many pounds pressure there was.
CB: Yes, right.
GP: How big a bomb was, and then you waited about three minutes and you went up the ladder, got outside, lifted the lid of the ground zero indicator which was a pinhole camera.
CB: Right.
GP: With four pin holes.
CB: OK.
GP: And you’d lift the lid off, took out the papers to come downstairs and then sent the readings through to headquarters and they could plot that bomb and you had several posts call the same bomb and you’d get several angles they knew exactly where the bomb was, if it went, if you had one.
CB: So what sort of bomb was this supposed to be?
GP: Well a —
CB: A nuclear weapon or an ordinary bomb?
GP: A nuclear weapon probably yeah.
CB: But the Observer Corps itself during the war.
GP: Yeah. The eyes and ears of the RAF.
CB: Were doing something different was it? Was that doing something different?
GP: Eyes and ears of the RAF.
CB: Yes. They would be working above ground during the war.
CB: Right.
GP: Spotting aircraft, saying where they were going and what they were doing, and then we went to the nuclear phase where they built all these bunkers, they’re still there ‘cause they’re solid concrete underground, most of them are still there.
CB: Right.
GP: One or two of them have been excavated but most of the are still there, if anybody’s got the keys they can go down them.
CB: So what distance are they apart?
GP: It’ll be eight miles.
CB: Right, and where are they in the country?
GP: Eight to ten miles. [?]all over the country.
CB: Right.
GP: Everywhere. There was one at Pelynt, where was the nearest one to Pelynt?
EP: I’ve no idea.
GP: Oh, um, trying to think now. They were about every eight, between eight and ten miles apart.
CB: So you were doing this part-time to begin with were you?
GP: Um.
EP: Yes.
GP: Yes I was to begin with.
CB: At what point did you change to full-time?
GP: God.
EP: ’66.
GP: ’66 was it?
EP: Yes.
GP: Yeah, she would know [laughs]. 1966 – full time. Yes I became an observer commander so I had quite a responsibility, then I got posted to Preston, Lancashire but I still kept my home here.
CB: Yeah.
GP: Came home on Friday nights, and went back on the two minutes past seven in the morning to get into the office before anything started happening, yeah.
CB: So at Preston you’re now a senior man, what were you doing there?
GP: Preston, well we had, I had a headquarters there, quite a big headquarters, longer than this garden with offices all the way up with staff, ‘cause you had a local area, had a whole area. There was an area Commandant who was a spare time who didn’t really do very much except have a rank but he didn’t do anything, I was the, I was the one that did the work at Preston.
CB: How long did that last?
GP: ‘Til I retired didn’t it?
EP: Five years.
GP: Five years.
CB: Yes. And from Preston where did you go?
GP: Home.
CB: No.
GP: I was sixty then.
CB: Oh you were sixty. So how does the Bentley Priory part fit into this?
GP: Oh, Bentley Priory.
CB: I’m just going to stop a moment. So, from Preston you came to Bentley Priory?
GP: Yes, I did.
CB: Before you retired, what did you do there?
GP: Well I was in, oh what was I, I was in an office there, and I’m trying to think what I did there, cor dear.
CB: The Queen?
GP: Queen’s visit, we had a Queen’s visit to Bentley Priory.
CB: What did you do about that?
GP: We have observers from the whole of the country down there, bought them all down by train and we had a big garden party at Bentley Priory and I remember I went round one way with the Duke and somebody else went round the other way with the Queen, ‘cause we criss-crossed just to introduce to one or two extra people, special people on the way round, that sort of thing, Bentley Priory.
CB: And what was the significance of the event.
GP: [Exhalation of breath].
EP: Wasn’t it the closing down of ROC was it?
GP: I think it was.
PP: Anniversary?
GP: I don’t know, yes I think it probably was that we were anticipating being closed down, the ROC, and we had just this royal garden party and we invited the Queen.
CB: Yes.
GP: And the Duke.
CB: Right.
GP: The Queen, the garden party was split in two places with the, if you know Bentley Priory out the back is a fountain. One half was that side and we were the other side. So the Queen went round one side and we took the Duke round the other and he was hilarious [laughter], he really was the old Duke of Edinburgh, but we got a lot of fun, a lot of fun with him [laughs].
CB: Well he had a lot of background with the military.
GP: Yeah, yeah, he did.
CB: OK. Thank you. Now in the Observer Corps the people needed to be trained?
GP: Yes.
CB: And what did you do on an annual basis?
GP: On an annual basis we would have a big camp at an RAF station that was being closed.
CB: Right.
GP: And um we’d have a week, I think it was a week there, and observers come from all over England to do training there, which was quite good, but I used to go as a full-time staff and help do the training. It was quite good fun really.
CB: What was the training that they had?
GP: Aircraft recognition, mostly aircraft recognition, God, it’s hard to think.
CB: ‘Cause we’re talking about the Cold War time aren’t we?
GP: Yeah, we are.
CB: And um, so aircraft flying very high that’s no good, but so what were they looking for?
GP: They were still looking for aircraft, I’m trying to think.
CB: No more.
GP: Trying to think. There was still low level flying as well, you know it wasn’t all high level. Um, gosh.
CB: Because as well as recording the data.
GP: Yeah.
CB: About nuclear blasts they had to have training for that presumably?
GP: Yeah, we, trying to think about it now. Yes, we used to have exercises which were all planned, co-ordinated so that a post which was perhaps ten miles away would have a reading and a time, and a post which was ten miles away would have details of the same blast but different timing and different angles, you know the whole thing was co-ordinated as if the real attack had come, nuclear attack had come. Massive, massive, awful, awful to contemplate really, but the whole thing was planned nationally so that all the posts, all the stuff fed in would have co-ordinated properly you know? Quite a big job really. Quite a job, a lot of planning went into it.
CB: And where was this information fed to?
GP: Fighter Command, Fighter Command mostly I ‘spose, yeah, and local defence. Surprising we had scientific officers at each group headquarters, they would work out the fall-out, the radioactivity levels and so forth as if a bomb had really dropped and so we had scientific officers there, they weren’t in the Corps but they were scientists recruited to do that job. Great big screens, two big screens. Long range board and another big screen, and you’d plot on the back and the scientific officers would read the front but you’d plot on the back.
CB: Like fighter screens, and where were these regional headquarters located?
GP: God, all over the place. Oxford, big one at Oxford.
CB: On airfields or separate?
GP: No, separate from airfields.
CB: Right.
GP: One at Oxford, there was one here at.
EP: Watford had one.
GP: Here at Watford, the bunker is still there at Watford, and it belongs now to the vets doesn’t it? They use it down below ‘cause I went down it one night, I used to, when I was down at Horsham I used to come home and I used to go and check on the headquarters here at um —
CB: At Watford?
GP: Yeah. And I went in one night, a bit on leave, I came and couldn’t understand a light was on. So, I went in to put the light out and I could hear noises, der, der, der, der and I thought hello, I said ‘Somebody’s here’ so I walked on and there was a bloke there and what he was doing, he was preparing training material for his crew using all the tape and everything you see. So, I crept down there and I didn’t let him hear me coming and I walked up to him and tapped him on the shoulder. I’ve never seen a bloke jump so high in my life [laughter]. He didn’t think anybody could get in you see, because he had the key. He was using it, he shouldn’t have been using it really, using it to prepare all his training stuff for his crew. That was very funny and I was able to creep right up to him and tap him on the shoulder, I’ve never seen a bloke jump so high in my life. Frightened him to death [laughs], yeah, and that’s still there, that building. If you went to see the vet she’d probably let you in, if you said you’d — gosh when you think the money that was spent on it all.
CB: Yeah. Well this also linked in with the RSG’s didn’t it, the Regional Seats of Government?
GP: Yes, yes it did, that’s right the RSG’s. Yes, it was an interesting time really, in another few years it will all be forgotten nobody will know what it was all about will they?
CB: We’ll have to do research into that as well.
GP: [Laughs].
CB: Thank you.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Geoff Paine
Creator
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Chris Brockbank
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-07-26
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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APaineGH160726
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Geoff Paine attended High Wycombe Royal Grammar School and Falmouth Grammar School, joined Air Training Corps and volunteered for the Royal Air Force at eighteen. Upon competition of initial training he was posted at RAF Waltham (100 Squadron) then at RAF Hornchurch, RAF Heaton Park and RAF Hendon. He served in a bomb damage repair unit, and reminisces a V-1 weapon exploding onto an accommodation block at RAF Hendon. Geoff continued his training in Africa (Cape Town, Bulawayo, Thornhill) flying Cornells and Harvards. He qualified as a pilot near the end of the war but after august 1945 flying activities ceased. Back in Great Britain he was stationed at RAF West Kirby, Stansted, RAF Bircham Newton, RAF Little Rissington, RAF Ternhill, RAF Oakington, RAF Lyneham, RAF Valley, RAF Swinderby, RAF Topcliffe where he flew Yorks, Oxfords, Ansons and Wellingtons until he was demobilised in 1949. He subsequently went into farming and joined the Royal Observer Corps first part-time, and eventually progressing into full time role of observer commander retiring at sixty in 1966. Discusses Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh’s visit, Cold war bomb testing and observation roles.
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
Wales--Anglesey
Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe--Gweru
Zimbabwe--Bulawayo
South Africa--Cape Town
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Cheshire
England--Essex
England--Gloucestershire
England--Gloucestershire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Manchester
England--Norfolk
England--Shropshire
England--Wiltshire
England--Yorkshire
South Africa--Mahikeng
South Africa
England--Lancashire
England--Bishop's Stortford
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00:54:12 audio recording
Temporal Coverage
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1945
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
100 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
Cornell
demobilisation
Elizabeth II, Queen of Great Britain (1926 - 2022)
Flying Training School
Harvard
incendiary device
Initial Training Wing
Oxford
pilot
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (1921-2021)
RAF Ansty
RAF Bentley Priory
RAF Bircham Newton
RAF Grimsby
RAF Heaton Park
RAF Hendon
RAF Hornchurch
RAF Little Rissington
RAF Lyneham
RAF Oakington
RAF Swinderby
RAF Ternhill
RAF Topcliffe
RAF Valley
recruitment
training
V-1
V-weapon
Wellington
York
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/886/46460/SHarriganD[Ser -DoB]v270002.mp3
17d8d5e67eba8aa030b63b971450808f
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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Hudson, Douglas
James Douglas Hudson
J D Hudson
Description
An account of the resource
529 items. Collection concerns Pilot Officer James Douglas Hudson, DFC (755052 Royal Air Force) who joined the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve in June 1939 and trained as an observer. While on route to Malta in August 1940 his Blenheim crashed in Tunisia and he was subsequently interned for two and a half years by Vichy French in Tunisia and Algeria. After being freed he returned to Great Britain and after navigator retraining completed a tour of 30 operations on 100 Squadron. The collection contains letters to and from his parents and from French penfriends while interned in Tunisia and Algeria, newspaper cuttings of various events, logbooks and lists of operations, official documents and photographs. A further 23 items are in two sub-collections with details of navigator examinations and postcards of Laghouat Algeria.<br /><br />The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Elizabeth Smith and Yvonne Puncher and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.<br />
<p>This collection also contains items concerning Louis Murray and Harry Bowers. Additional information on <a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/202827/">Harry Bowers</a> and <a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/220410/">Louis Murray</a> is available via the IBCC Losses Database.</p>
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-06-16
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
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Hudson, JD
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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Interviewer: This is an interview with Mr James Douglas Hudson on the 4th of February 2011 at his home near Lincoln concerning his wartime experiences with the Royal Air Force.
JDH: What is beginning to please me now is the increased awareness that’s arising of what happened during World War Two in Bomber Command and by those who flew in Bomber Command of whom fifty six thousand or thereabouts gave their lives without counting the cost. There has been so little recognition for all this outstanding bravery and finally more is being told and more is being how can I say made aware to a viewing public or a listening public. We’re helped with the advance in techniques of recordings that weren’t available in the days of people like Group Captain, Air Chief Marshall Cheshire and Guy Gibson. They didn’t have the facilities that we have today. So this increase in awareness by the general public and particularly the younger generation is rewarding.
Interviewer: What made you join the Air Force, Douglas?
JDH: I joined the Air Force because I wasn’t particularly happy with my peacetime, this is 1939, occupation in in Manchester in the textile shipping trade and a colleague of mine had joined Fighter Command and was having such a good time flying Spitfires and Hurricanes and I decided I would like to do the same. So I made application and I was told, this is just before the war that junior officers may be able to live on their pay. So I queried this and I said, ‘Well, what do you mean by may be able to live on their pay?’ And a cousin of mine who was a colonel in the Army said, ‘Oh yes. That’s perfectly true.’ He said, ‘But Uncle Harold,’ that’s my father, he said, ‘He’d been able to look after you there.’ I said, ‘Well, Uncle Harold it so happens,’ I said, ‘Because of the depression in the textile trade is out of a job.’ ‘In that case,’ he said, ‘He would not be able to look after you.’ And he said, ‘You’ll be very unwise to seek a short service commission.’ So instead of that I made application through the Volunteer Reserves to do weekend flying and weekend training and this was in June 1939. So a couple of months after that war was declared and I was called up immediately and my training then began at Prestwick in Ayrshire. We were called observers in those days to be renamed of course navigators.
Interviewer: Did you always want to be a navigator or did you want to be a pilot?
JDH: Initially of course I wanted to be a pilot and I was told there was a waiting list forever. But I was told that if I wished to be an air observer which now of course is a navigator I would get in just as much flying which is true. And that’s what I did. Now, I’m jumping ahead now over a couple of years because I was a prisoner of war after this for a couple of years or plus and when I came back I was given the opportunity to remuster and if I wished I could remuster and undergo pilot’s training. I refused. I said, ‘No. I was a navigator and I wish to continue being a navigator and navigation is and was my metier. Although I say it now, perhaps I shouldn’t say it I was a good navigator and my books of which I’ve written eight are based on the title, “There and Back Again.” And it’s the back again which is the important part about it. It’s one thing to get there. It’s another thing to get back and to get there and back isn’t everybody’s good fortune. In fact, fifty six thousand or thereabouts never made that. I now at the age of nearly ninety five am sitting here in my lounge at home in Heighington near Lincoln talking to this lady. I’m a very fortunate person.
Interviewer: So you did the observer’s course at Prestwick.
JDH: I did the observer’s course at Prestwick.
Interviewer: And then went to Evanton for the Bomber and Gunnery School.
JDH: Went to Bombing and Gunnery School then at Evanton and after that, after completion of the bombing and gunnery in various aeroplanes including the Fairey Battle we were moved to Bicester in Oxfordshire where I was introduced to the Bristol Blenheim and I was posted to West Raynham in Norfolk where I did two months operational flying on the Bristol Blenheim. Unfortunately, we were sent to the Middle East and I had insufficient petrol to make the journey and crash landed in Vichy French North Africa where I was taken prisoner of war for two and a quarter years.
Interviewer: Can you describe that? The conditions that you lived in and –
JDH: The conditions under which we lived were appalling. The food was an abomination. It was based on the food they gave to the Arab soldiers but it wasn’t so much the food itself it was the filthy conditions in which this food was served up to us. Our living conditions were absolutely appalling. Overcrowding was a very significant disadvantage. We quarrelled with each other in consequence. You, you could be the best of friends, if you get six, eight, ten, twelve, or twenty of you all in one room ongoing tempers fray. And this is what happened and I think this is one of the most difficult parts of being a prisoner of war and of course, being taken away from operation flying.
Interviewer: It doesn’t seem to have been as well organised as German prisoner of war camps in that you know you didn’t have much recreation or organised activities to take your mind off the conditions. Is that right?
JDH: Well, we, we didn’t have so much organised activities. We were, we were able to do our own thing up to a point. There were no specific facilities.
Interviewer: No.
JDH: No.
Interviewer: You had your Red Cross parcels.
JDH: Had it not been for the Red Cross parcels I often wonder how we would have survived. When the Red Cross parcels began to reach us there were certain days when we would just ignore the food that was sent up to us and just live for the time being on the contents of the Red Cross parcels. The one problem was particularly in the desert I was a prisoner in the desert for over a year in the Sahara Desert. A place called Laghouat, about three, three hundred and fifty miles south of Algiers and when the food, when the Red Cross parcels arrived we had what was called the Klim, K L I M, milk which came I think from Canada. It was powder and of course when we mixed this, when we added water to it we were running into trouble because the water wasn’t fit to drink. And I used to, they also sent us prunes and we used to soak the prunes overnight in water and then add this Klim milk which had been what’s the word? Reconstituted. And of course, we were inviting trouble and we got trouble. We got dysentery. So it was an awfully difficult situation. Dysentery was rife. Dysentery I think was our biggest problem in the prisoner of war camp and we’d no medications you see.
Interviewer: No.
JDH: No medications at all.
Interviewer: You mentioned in your book about being depressed at this time. This –
JDH: Being depressed?
Interviewer: Yes. Obviously, the conditions and your dysentery and everything else.
JDH: Yes, because there was no future. We’d been taken away from the activities which we’d trained for and that was to fly operationally. As you will read on in the books I was, I had the good fortune to be repatriated in November 1942 and after five or six months of ground duties I became rehabilitated as it were and became fit to fly again and the rest is history.
Interviewer: Let’s go back to your, your time in the North African prisons. What did you feel about escape? Did some, did you want to escape?
JDH: I escaped twice. In the first prisoner of war camp, a place called Le Kef in Tunisia, a fellow prisoner Ted Hart who was another Blenheim man he and I we shinned over, I use the expression we use in the book, the shithouse wall because that’s exactly what it was. It was a filthy latrine and we managed to get over this wall and drop on to the other side and escape into the night. And I spoke limited French but we walked throughout the night, a matter of some thirty, some forty miles I think to a place called Souk el Arba and went into a local hotel and noticed they had bed and breakfast available which was on a notice board in the reception room.
Interviewer: Were you dressed in your —
JDH: We were dressed in a huge army greatcoat which the French had given to us. They were French soldier’s greatcoats and they issued us with these as clothing to keep warm because we were up in the mountains. In the hills. And we went out with these on covering our uniform which was underneath. You had to have a uniform because if not we could have been shot as spies and we had to be very very careful to conceal it. And when we arrived in the hotel I said to the lady at the reception, ‘Bonjour madame, deux cafe s’il vous plait.’ ‘Certainement monsieur.’ And that’s how it began. And after that I said, ‘E deux chambre lit?’ ‘Certainement Monsieur.’ And she took me up to the room and was talking, showing us the room and I realised that I couldn’t keep up this pretence of being French in general conversation. So I just said, ‘Madame, [unclear] Francais.’ As though I was American. I said that we were Americans and that we were doing geological studies with the Vichy French and we had been working during the night. That’s why we were in this scruff. She seemed to accept that and after two or three days we managed to get a train which took us across the frontier to a place called Souk Ahras.
Interviewer: Across the frontier into Tunisia?
JDH: Into Algeria.
Interviewer: Into Algeria.
JDH: Algeria. We were then fortunate when we crossed that frontier and everybody got out to have a check of some sort of reason. There was a chap on the platform obviously checking people and we stayed where we were right opposite and two French soldiers opened our carriage door and just said, ‘Permission militaire, Monsieur?’ And I said, ‘Mai oui certainement. Bon permission.’ And off they went. Ted said, ‘Well, what was that all about?’ I said, ‘They seemed to think that we were French on leave.’ And the chap who was doing the checking on the, on the station platform could see this therefore he didn’t trouble us anymore. Now the funny part was well it wasn’t really funny was that when we were recaptured we had to come back and cross this place in reverse and he was there. I just looked at him and I just said, ‘You remember me?’ He thought we were going to drop him you see. And then I did fourteen days cells and three days dungeons.
Interviewer: So they picked you up again and put you back into Le Kef.
JDH: But I escaped again. This time in this place called Laghouat which is in the Sahara desert.
Interviewer: Who did you escape with this time?
JDH: This time we started to dig a tunnel in November 1941 and the tunnel was completed in June ‘42 and it was sixty odd metres in length. A hundred and ninety odd feet. We used two bread knives which started off being about nine inches in length and finished up by being about three. And twenty nine of us got out and twenty nine of us were recaptured. There was nowhere to go. But we’d done it right under their noses and of course their hierarchy, the French Vichy hierarchy took it out on the commandant of the camp and various people they were all dipped in rank and things like that.
Interviewer: What nationality were the guards?
JDH: Mostly Arabic. Mostly Arabic.
Interviewer: Under French.
JDH: Under French. Vichy French. Yes. Mostly Arab.
Interviewer: And their attitude to you? Or you to them as well.
JDH: I suppose we would say then in those days [unclear] comme ci comme ca.
Interviewer: They weren’t over cruel or —
JDH: Not really. No. I mean you had to excise a bit of common sense. I mean they had guns. They were armed and it paid not to be foolish. I mean you know for example we had a ligne [unclear] which was a line running around the periphery of the camp before you come to the barbed wire. You could see it actually and if we were using the, playing with the ball and it bounced underneath there don’t follow it.
Interviewer: No.
JDH: Go up to the line, look up at the guard, ‘Permission?’ And they would say [Depeche trois] You know, ‘Get a move on then,’ and they’d train their gun and you’d go and pick your ball up and acknowledge it.
Interviewer: Yes.
JDH: Acknowledge it because they were doing their duty but had we proceeded they’d have shot us. Oh they would have shot us without any doubt. Yes. And the whole thing was flood lighted you know. They floodlighted it at night. So —
Interviewer: So you got out again and got how far this time?
JDH: Oh, not very far. We were recaptured the next morning because the premier spahi which are the crack horse regiment of that part of the world they just released them into the desert and they just sort of fanned, a sort of fan movement. They just picked us up. We had no alternative. I thought they were going to shoot us because they clicked their rifles back. They were brilliant horsemen. They could ride without hands, you know and hold their rifle. So we put up our hands. I shall never forget that. Just put up our hands and it worked. I’ll say this for them three of them jumped off their horses and threw their guns across to three others and they allowed us to have some water, to drink some water. And then they just got us on the back of that, one each on the back of their horse, beautiful animals.
Interviewer: Were you punished for escaping?
JDH: Oh yeah. Had about sixteen days in the cells. Yeah. Oh, I’ve done more cells than [unclear] and back.
Interviewer: The cells, the cells sounds particularly –
JDH: There were two of us in one cell because there were so many of us they hadn’t enough cells to put us one in a cell so they put two of us in a cell and its just a stone. A sloping stone slab. And they opened the doors in the morning into a sort of courtyard to enable us if required to use their so-called toilet facilities which were pretty awful. But they had, we had the churn. It literally was a milk churn in the centre of this quadrangle which we had to use. We’d just sit on this churn or stand on it and take it in turns to empty it. You know, each one get carrying one hand. So it was a wonderful experience you know. A wonderful experience. And I remember looking at a thermometer we passed one of their bureaus, their offices on route to the place where we took this contents of the churn and this was about 4 o’clock in the afternoon and the temperature was a hundred and four. And that was in early June and it soared into July August. At midday I don’t know what it reached. Probably about forty degrees centigrade, celsius or whatever it is. A hundred and twenty, a hundred and thirty degrees. Unbearable. If we did any washing we had very restricted facilities and I got some soap sent from England and I was very fortunate to get this soap. Carbolic soap. Go out to the wash trough when the water was on. It was only on for a restricted period of time. You put one articulate into the wash tub and then put it one side to do the other one by the time you’d done the second one the first one was bone dry just like a board. Unbelievable.
Interviewer: What affect did this experience have because it was about two years you were a prisoner wasn’t it?
JDH: Two and a quarter.
Interviewer: Yes, that’s —
JDH: About a year and a quarter in the desert and the other year in two other places. At one time we thought we were going to be repatriated, so did the Vichy French in exchange for the German submarine crew and we were sent to a place called [unclear] I write about it in there.
Interviewer: Yes.
JDH: I don’t know whether I do it in that book.
Interviewer: Yes, you did.
JDH: Yes, because I I refer to the brothel. Have you read about that?
Interviewer: Yes.
JDH: And the woman I was with she’d be about forty I suppose and she didn’t speak any English at all. All French. It was rather funny. She came up to the bar actually and was talking to us in French and she suddenly changed the conversation and said, ‘Pour vous monsieur dix franc.’ So Ted said, that’s my colleague, he said, ‘What was that?’ I said, ‘She’s just said to me for me it’ll be ten francs.’ He said, ‘How much for me?’ I said, [unclear] I said, ‘Same for you. Ten francs. I’ll toss you over who goes first.’
Interviewer: And that was while you were waiting when you thought this —
JDH: We thought we were going to be repatriated you see and I was terribly concerned about infection you see. This thing. And we used [unclear] potash which you put into solution and of course its virulent purple [laughs] A bit of a mess. But now, you see these are true things. This is what happened. It’s not biographical it’s autobiographical.
Interviewer: So when the repatriation fell through you then were put back again. Is that right?
JDH: Yeah.
Interviewer: So you were back in again after having your hopes built up. What did all these experiences, how did it you know colour your life afterwards or was it just a character building two and a quarter years or what?
JDH: I think in some respects its almost been helpful if you like because I know I’ve done it. You see I can walk down the road here. There are people who talk to me, they call across to me and I don’t have a clue who they are but because of these books you see I’m well known. And I’m on my own now because my wife died six and a half years ago. I think this is the hard part. Particularly when you’ve been to a do like that and then come back in the evening to a vacuum, to an empty house. No. The part of the war which is the most disturbing to me wasn’t the flying. It wasn’t the operational flying it was the prisoner of war side. But I’ll tell you this. My crew on the Lancaster my flight engineer was nineteen and my bomb aimer who was a huge chap six foot two, towered above me just made, just failed to make the teens and he was just twenty. I mean they were only boys really. I at twenty six, twenty seven then was an old man. And we got coned once in the master searchlight. This is in the Lancaster and the master searchlight is almost ultraviolet and if one of those catches you the other aircraft home in on it and then they push the flak up. You don’t stand a chance. I don’t know of any crew, aircraft that’s been coned in the master searchlight that hasn’t been shot down and I just was waiting for it to happen and what was it going to be like. And the pilot promptly put the aircraft, this is a Lancaster fully bomb loaded, fully loaded with bombs put it into a dive and spiralled. No good at all. I mean you couldn’t evade, couldn’t evade this searchlight and we lost altitude from twenty one thousand to twelve. Nine thousand feet in no time whatsobe and gravity pushed my head on to the table and I couldn’t [pause] I was just waiting for the explosion. But suddenly that light went out. We didn’t evade it. It went out. The gunners were firing away like crazy. Now whether they had succeeded in firing down the beam and putting it out or whether something else I don’t know but that light went out. And this little engineer of nineteen years of age with the pilot they hauled this huge Lancaster from the vertical almost into the horizontal with a full bomb load and it didn’t break its back and we went on to the target. I thought we’d get an immediate DFC but we didn’t. We didn’t get anything.
Interviewer: If I can just mention or just ask you about how you did get out of the prison you were eventually repatriated.
JDH: We were repatriated. The Allies and that’s the Americans and the British and the Canadians, the Allied forces invaded Algeria in November 1942 and the Vichy French surrendered. We wondered what would happen to us. My fear was when we heard that this invasion had taken place my fear was that they might take us away from the prison camp and whip us into Germany before our forces landed but they didn’t. They unlocked the doors and they dismissed any guard who they thought had been difficult and brought in a fresh lot of guards who were courtesy itself and couldn’t do enough for us. It was all hypocrisy, hypocritical and we spent the last four days just using the place for the passing of time until there was transport able to take us up to Algiers and we sailed home.
Interviewer: And you came back in HMS Keren, I think.
JDH: HMS Keren.
Interviewer: Yes.
JDH: It sailed out there with American troops I think it was. And I don’t know what its cargo was but they loaded it up with oranges. The hold was absolutely filled. Of course, you couldn’t get oranges in this country so we took it back loaded with oranges. Yeah.
Interviewer: You didn’t have scurvy when you came back did you? [laughs] So how did you feel when you got back? Did you want to get back into the fight?
JDH: Oh yes. Because the first thing, basically the first thing that we were asked when we got, we landed in, where was it? In Greenock in Scotland and we were taken by train under guard. With guards. No civilian was allowed to come anywhere near that carriage. We were taken by train to London and interviewed by top brass and virtually the first thing they asked us, ‘Do you wish to fly again?’ And having said yes then that’s when I got the opportunity to remuster if I wished and train as a pilot and I said no, I’d like to take up navigation again and do a refresher course. This is what I did. And I could do that more quickly you see. I thought I’d get back on to flying more quickly. And navigation was my metier. I liked navigation.
Interviewer: So it was back to, to an OTU for a little while while you —
JDH: I went to, it wasn’t an OTU to start off with. What would you call it? [pause] A place called Moreton Valence.
Interviewer: An AFU. Number 6 AFU.
JDH: AFU. And from there we went to Wymeswold which was an OTU. Operational Training Unit. And from Wymeswold I went to, wasn’t it Lindholme? Which was a Conversion Unit to four engine. And then to the squadron and did my first operational flight on a 100 Squadron on Lancasters to Brunswick, Braunschweig in the middle of December ’44 and finished the tour at the D-Day landings and saw the flotilla going over. Then we came back and we spoke to the crew, the pilot and myself and we said, ‘How do you feel about carrying on?’ We said, ‘We’re game.’ I said, ‘It seems a shame now doesn’t it?’ I said. ‘We’ve landed on the other side, or they have.’ I said, ‘Carry on. Let’s support them.’ So we went to the squadron commander and he was delighted. We said, ‘On the condition we get our aircraft back.’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘It’s gone. It’s gone out tonight or its going out tonight.' He said, ‘If it comes back —’ and it did come back, ‘Yes, you can have it and continue.’ I was in the Officer’s Mess on the following morning I think it was and the doc as we called him, the medical officer, Doc Marshall he came up to me. He said, ‘Dougie, what’s this I hear about you chaps volunteering to fly again?’ ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘That’s right, Doc.’ I said, ‘And we’re going to get our aircraft back.’ He just looked at me. He said, ‘Over my dead body.’ Just like that. I can see him saying that. I have used the quashed not squashed. ‘I have quashed it irrevocably.’ He said, ‘You don’t realise how sick you are.’
Interviewer: He could see in you strain and stress that you couldn’t feel or see yourselves.
JDH: I said, ‘Doc,’ I said, ‘They’re cross countrys from now on.’ I said, ‘We’ve landed on the other side. We’ve only got to go ahead and support them as they move along to occupy Germany.’ He said, ‘Cross country runs.’ The squadron at the end of that month lost another six Lancasters. Six. So –
Interviewer: Did you have the same crew in for nearly all your thirty ops?
JDH: No. When we finished operational flying they all went different places and I only met the bomb aimer again. I don’t know what happened to the rest. We’ve tried to contact them in the meantime you know over the period. We’ve tried on the internet website.
Interviewer: But for your thirty ops.
JDH: Thirty ops.
Interviewer: You was –
JDH: Oh, the first lot.
Interviewer: Yes.
JDH: Oh, they’re both dead. John [Riddick], he was the, he was killed in a crash very soon after we got back and my wireless operator Tony Randall there’s a picture in the book he was killed on his first operational flight on Halifaxes. I think he was from Pocklington or somewhere. I’m not sure.
Interviewer: Well, you were on the Nuremberg raid.
JDH: I was on the Nuremberg raid.
Interviewer: But because you’d gone, been one of the first to go you didn’t appreciate the catastrophe to come.
JDH: Well, as far as Nuremberg was concerned I can remember this quite clearly when we got back, back to the squadron at debriefing we were always asked the same sort of questions. ‘Well, how did it go?’ ‘What was it like?’ And I remember using the expression, ‘A piece of cake.’ The following morning [pause] firstly our ex-gunner, he got frostbite and was taken off flying and he was given ground duties and he sort of acted as a nursemaid for us for a little while until he got fit again. And he came into the billet at about mid-day or whatever when it was time for us to get up again and he said, ‘Well, chaps how many do you think you lost last night over Nuremberg?’ ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘Not many.’ I said, which is the entire command, I said, ‘Twenty.’ ‘No.’ He said, ‘Think again.’ I said, ‘More than that?’ He said, ‘Yes, more than that.’ ‘Thirty?’ ‘No.’ Then he finally said, ‘Ninety seven.’ I said, ‘Don’t talk rubbish.’ He said, ‘That’s what they say.’ And we did lose ninety seven and another thirteen failed to make their own bases and they crash landed in the UK and never got back to their base. So effectively we lost a hundred and ten aircraft that night. Ninety seven. Thirteen, a hundred and ten give or take, seven or eight hundred aircrew. And I say this, I’ll repeat it we lost more aircrew in that one night over Nuremberg than Fighter Command lost throughout the Battle of Britain. You see I know all this and therefore, oh I beg your pardon I don’t have to be prompted or asked or told. I know it. It just happened and I shan’t forget it. I never will forget it. And at ninety four, five what do I do? Do I go on? My publisher says, ‘Yes, you go on because you have a mission to fulfil.’ I said, ‘What is it?’ He said, ‘You’ll find out as you go along.’ And I think this is part of the mission. We thought we’d got five hundred pounds for that raffle.
Interviewer: This was –
JDH: Barton on Humber last Sunday.
Interviewer: This was a signing of your autobiography and –
JDH: Yes.
Interviewer: Later published.
JDH: I sold thirty five books.
Interviewer: Yes. So they see your mission is to continue spreading the word really and –
JDH: Spreading the word. Oh, I know where the book is [pause] This is my eighth book.
Interviewer: Yes. Just now, “Just Douglas: A Navigator’s Story.”
JDH: Yes. I’ve got the covers for another one called, “The Best of Douglas.” But I don’t know what to do about it. But I’m writing another one now and it’s called, “St Bernard and Puppies.” It’s a make-believe story for children of all ages. I hope to get it to East Kirkby in Easter.
Interviewer: Oh excellent.
JDH: We’ll see.
Interviewer: So you did your thirty ops of which Nuremberg was one of them and you came to the end and wanted to remuster and they wouldn’t let you. So you went to Sandtoft to do some instructing which –
JDH: Instruction work. I hated it. Absolutely hated it. It’s not so much the instruction work but I just hated Sandoft. I don’t know. It was just something about the place I didn’t come to terms with at all. And I did as much flying as I could. They’re, all the instructional flights are logged in the book. Well, I don’t think in that book but certainly in this book. So, you know what I talked to you about happened and I have the written proof of it here and I have the aircraft letters and numbers which is, is a good fortune. My wife’s family are in here too. He was a big man in the St John Ambulance. That’s my wife’s father. Her family were co-founders of Blackburn Rovers Football Club.
Interviewer: Goodness.
JDH: You know who that is don’t you?
Interviewer: Yes, I do. Just Jane at East Kirkby.
JDH: Yes. Those are the Pantons.
Interviewer: So you, you have your books to sell and you go to the various commemorations.
JDH: Yeah.
Interviewer: And that is obviously a very important part of your life now.
JDH: Very important. Here’s a great guy. Air Chief Marshall Sir Clive Loader. He did the preface for my, for that book. I’ll show you.
[pause]
JDH: Was it this one?
Interviewer: Yes, it was.
JDH: Yes.
Interviewer: There it is. It’s just by your finger.
JDH: “On Sunday the 27th of August my wife Alison and I had the great honour of representing todays Royal Air Force. I was deeply touched – ” This is Douglas Hudson, “I was deeply touched when he asked whether I would be prepared to write a forward to this, the sixth edition of, “There and Back Again: A Navigator’s Story.” I’m truly delighted to do so. Sir Clive Loader,” etcetera etcetera. He’s retired now and I don’t know whether I ought to try to contact him or not. I perhaps feel that it would be an intrusion into his retirement. I don’t know. It’s very difficult to say.
Interviewer: Can you see yourself having a different life?
JDH: Could I see myself –
Interviewer: Yes, you know it’s –
JDH: I don’t know. You see, look. It’s the life of now with so much in it which I can think about. Somebody said I’m a ladies man. So be it. That’s Sandra Morton. That’s the lady across the road who introduced you. That is Marguerita [Allen] She used to phone me from California quite regularly. She now is living in Preston. And that is Lola Lamour. In other words, Joanne Massey. Now, she and I will be re-enacting together at East Kirkby in May.
Interviewer: Well, that’s wonderful. Thank you very much Douglas. It’s, it’s been a treat to listen to you. Thank you.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with James Douglas Hudson
1024-Hudson, James Douglas
Identifier
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SHarriganD[Ser#-DoB]v27
Creator
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Claire Bennet
This Interview was recorded by Aviation Heritage Lincolnshire.
Date
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2011-02-04
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Language
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eng
Type
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Sound
Format
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00:40:51 audio recording
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
Pending OH summary
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IBCC Digital Archive
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Description
An account of the resource
James Douglas Hudson followed a friend to join the RAF. He trained as a navigator and was posted to 101 Squadron at RAF West Raynham. On his final operational flight with the squadron he ran out of fuel and crashed. He was taken prisoner by the Vichy French in North Africa and spent time in a prisoner of war camp in Laghouet and Le Kef. He attempted escape twice but was recaptured. Douglas was repatriated to the UK in November 1942. He volunteered to return to operational flying duties and was posted to 101 Squadron based at RAF Waltham. One of his operations was to Nuremberg and he was shocked to hear about the losses of that raid. He and his crew volunteered for a further tour but the Medical Officer intervened and declared he was medically unfit to fly. After the war Douglas wrote books about his experiences in Bomber Command.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941-11
1942-06
1942-11
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Algeria
Germany
Great Britain
Tunisia
Algeria--Laghouat (Province)
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Nuremberg
Tunisia--El Kef
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
100 Squadron
101 Squadron
aircrew
Blenheim
bombing of Nuremberg (30 / 31 March 1944)
crash
escaping
Lancaster
navigator
prisoner of war
RAF Grimsby
Red Cross
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1300/17898/PGreenJ1901.2.jpg
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1300/17898/AGreenJ190307.2.mp3
c4c66aa1cf8bc65f3c03434e1d4d9290
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Green, John
J Green
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with John Green (b.1921, 1213252 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as an air gunner with 100 and 12 Squadrons.
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
2019-03-07
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Green, J
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
GT: This is Thursday the 7th of March 2019 and I am at the home of Mr John Green, born 22nd September 1921 in Penge, South East London, England. John’s home is in Auckland, New Zealand. John joined the RAF in June 1942 as a drogue operator on the Isle of Man. Later, John volunteered for bomb disposal, and after fourteen months he volunteered for aircrew and trained as an air gunner in early 1944. From June 1944, John crewed up with pilot Flight Sergeant Leslie Flooder, or Podge, an Australian, at 30 Operational Training Unit, Hixon and then 1667 Conversion Unit at Sandtoft, Lancaster Finishing School at Hemswell and then on to operations with 100 Squadron at Grimsby late October, completing sixteen operations and posted to 12 Squadron at RAF Wickenby for fifteen operations. All on Lancaster Mark III aircraft. John completed his RAF operational flying in May 1945 with a total of one hundred and eighty four hours, day and night flying. John, thank you for allowing me to interview you for the IBCC Archives, so please tell me why, and how, you joined the Royal Air Force.
JG: Right. Well, when war broke out, I, all your mates were joining up, and I think I was eighteen at the time and I thought myself well if I wait till I get called up they’ll put me in the Army, and I didn’t want to go in the bloody Army I said! So I went down to the recruiting centre and joined in the RAF just as an ordinary airmen, nothing special. They said okay, we will call you when we need you. I think it was another year gone by before they called me up.
GT: And what were you doing while you were waiting?
JG: I was working in engineering factory and when I got the call up I was posted to Blackpool for six weeks training, you know, fitness training and education and all that.
GT: But that was a far cry from you riding a bicycle wasn’t it?
JG: Yeah!
GT: What was the bicycle thing about?
JG: Oh, the bicycle, that was in one of me jobs, was, I was, what d’you call them, errand boy! That was when I left school at fourteen, I went as errand boy riding a bike with a big basket on the front delivering all the goods and that to people who’d bought them from the shops.
GT: And whereabouts did you grow up there, and born?
JG: In Penge. Grew up in Penge, joined, volunteered in Penge, and then I got posted from Blackpool, I got posted to the Isle of Man; a General Duties airman. And when I got the Isle of Man they wanted drogue operators, people to volunteer to fly, which you got an extra shilling a week by doing that which I was interested in, cause a shilling was a lot of money in those days!
GT: What was the role of a drogue operator?
JG: He dropped the drogue. In the bottom of the aircraft, mainly Lysanders, or whichever one I was in, you had a trapdoor. You open the trapdoor and in front of you, you had like a drum, a big drum with three metal drums on it, filled with wire and you used to clip one of these wire onto one of the drogues and try and drop ‘em out the aircraft, then you stood up and controlled the speed of the drum with a handbrake until you got near enough all you want out, you lock it up and then the aircraft used to fly around, towing the drogue, training all aircrew to fire at it.
GT: So the other aircraft would bead on to you and -
JG: On to the drogue and fire.
GT: Your log book states you flew Lysander, Fairey Battle, Anson and Blenheim aircraft and that was all with the drogue operations.
JG: No, Lysander and Fairey Battle, and what was the other one?
GT: Anson and Blenheims.
JG: No, Anson, Anson they done, I flew doing me camera work. Instead of guns, instead of having bullets, you had a camera and you used a camera firing. and the Blenheim, Blenheim was just a trip you wanted and I think it flew me, flew me I was going on leave.
GT: So that were the gunners flying, aircraft, to shoot at the drogues, the Defiants or aircraft like that?
JG: Yeah, any, could be even the Anson used to fly along the side, and they used to open the window and poke their cine camera out, or the guns out and if you had usually three gunners in your aircraft they had different colour bullets so when they got the drogue back, dropped back, into a, had a special field you should drop the drogue back then fetched it back to headquarters then they could count the bullet holes whether they were red, blue, black, or yellow, they knew how many hits you had.
GT: They just dipped the bullets into paint, didn’t they.
JG: Yeah, to get the colour bullet and that’s how they knew, and course with the camera, they had a cine camera. Because one day I was up there doing camera and I saw, I think it was an Anson coming along, towing, towing a drogue so I took a photo of me shooting this Anson down! I got a right bollocking for it! [Laugh] But good laugh, but it was such a good target, I said, it’s there. And I didn’t use a lot of film!
GTL Any close calls? Did any of the aircraft nearly shoot you down instead of the drogue?
JG: I think it happened once on our station, drogue operator got killed like that. Whoever was using it, instead of firing at the drogue away from the towing aircraft they fired while they were coming in and the bullets carried on and hit the towing aircraft.
GT: They were all three nought three machine guns, yes.
JG: Yes, 303s.
GT: So you liked that, is that something you wanted to carry on with or you went to volunteer for something else?
JG: No, I liked that, getting paid and then it came up they wanted volunteers, you get fed up with it as a youngster, wanted volunteers on this Bomb Disposal Unit so I thought oh, that’ll be a change, so joined that and I was posted to Bath, Barford Manor, that’s a country village outside of Bath in this big manor house what the RAF had commandeered. I spent I don’t know how long, quite a long time there, and from there I joined up from, into aircrew training.
GT: What explosives disposal training did you have?
JG: Bom disposal, oh just the lessons on the fuses and how defuse and listen, if they were ticking and that.
GT: So the bombs could have been ticking and did you have something to tell you?
JG: Oh yeah, you had like an instrument you got here, stuck on there and if it was ticking, if the fuse was ticking that meant it was alive, ready to go off. It’s timed.
GT: So what did you do?
JG: Run! [chuckles] Yeah.
GT: And if they wanted to dispose of them, how did they dispose of them?
JG: They had a disposal officer who used to go, get down a hole, and it was surprising, the bomb, could unscrew the cap which allowed him to get to the fuse and he could undo the fuse and slowly [emphasis] get it out to defuse the bomb.
GT: It was the officer doing that?
JG: Yes, that was the officer’s job.
GT: And these were mainly German bombs you were training on?
JG: They were practically all German bombs. A few of them were English ones where the plane, English planes had crashed.
GT: So did they send you out on daily, or night?
JG: Yeah, whatever it was needed. I mean when we wasn’t out digging up, or digging after the bombs, we were in the schools training, what to do, you know, learning all about it.
GT: Did you lose any men?
JG: No, not on bomb disposal.
GT: That’s good. So from bomb disposal you looked at aircrew and they obviously accepted you. Was it difficult to do?
JG: Yes, took a long time to get accepted. You had to go to school, you had to pass exams and that, for education purposes, and once you pass all them exams then you start your bomber training, your air gunner training.
GT: So when you were doing your training though, did they look back at what you did at school?
JG: No, no.
GT: Was it open to everybody? Everybody had to do that training. School.
JG: Well everybody who was going to be a gunner like, it might be my turn to go to the aircraft to take the guns out and take them to the armoury and then strip the guns and clean it all and check the barrel, cause on one occasion, that was I think after I shot down that Ju, when I clean and checked it, the barrel had no rifling left, was smooth, and the other three was okay, so that meant the barrel was useless, you had to put a new barrel in the gun..
GT: So did they choose you to be an air gunner or did you ask them that you wanted to be one?
JG: I chose, I chose to be an air gunner.
GT: And you had good eyesight, good health.
JG Yeah, I had good eyesight, hearing, everything was good and I didn’t, well I wasn’t intelligent enough to be a navigator, and wireless operator, I couldn’t stand that dat dat dat dat dat Morse code and of course the engineer you had to study specific engineer, studied all the instruments and the engines, navigator, that was the main job in the Air Force, was navigator. I think he was the most important man in the aircraft. I think he was more important than the pilot. He was the one who got you there and got you back, or told you, to get there and get back.
GT: Did you end up back on the Isle of Man in the aircraft doing the drogue shooting or did you do that at another place?
JG: No, I think we might, I’m not sure, no, didn’t land on the Isle of Man again. Once I left there I went to Waltham like the training stations, the different ones. The main two was Waltham and then Wickenby and then when I, that was it and when I was and waiting for demob I was at a RAF training unit for all new people coming in, joining in; I was in charge of the stores.
GT: So how long was your gunnery course?
JG: I don’t know, only by looking, offhand, you know, quite a long time, cause you used to start off wearing a cap with a white bit in.
GT: As a cadet.
JG: That signifies you’re a cadet for an air crew.
GT: Once you were, graduated and completed, that was what, late 1943?
JG: Yeah, the training.
GT: And you moved on to crew up somewhere?
JG: Yeah, Hixon, should be, should be 30 OTU, Hixon.
GT: And your log book shows that to be the 9th of June 1944 when you met there, on Wellingtons, so you met your future crew there.
JG: On Wellingtons, yes.
GT: So tell me about your skipper and your crew.
JG: He was, well what they used to do to crew you up, all the aircrew are posted to this aerodrome and when you come out, or in the mess for a meal, you meet all the other airmen. You get friendly with one, or they get friendly with you, and then by the time, I think it was only about, only about a week, I got friendly with the rear gunner, he wanted to be a rear gunner, I wanted to be mid upper, so then we met Barney, he’s the navigator, oh we met Podge walking round and we said, you go up to him and hi, you know, and have you got a crew, no I’m just getting crewed up. Did you want a couple of gunners? Yeah, he said, right, that was me and Jack and a pilot, carried on walking, we picked up the bomb aimer, navigator and a wireless operator, he was Australian, that was six of us and we done a lot of training there before we got posted to another station where all the engineers had been posted to and we made up our seventh member of the crew.
GT: What was the aircraft types that you did your OTU work with? Wellingtons?
JG: Wellington and Halifaxes, Halifax. It shows you there in the book how many Halifax, and then from that, Halifax, we went to er -
GT: Well your Conversion Unit was 1667 and you flew in Halifaxes there for about two weeks.
JG: Yeah. That’s right, that was coming off the Wellington onto that Conversion Unit and we flew Halifaxes and then from there we went to another station, Lancaster Finishing School.
GT: You only did five days flying for that!
JG: That’s all! Yeah, then that was it, then you were posted to your, you know, whatever squadron you were going to be; got posted to 100 Squadron
GT: You were 100 Squadron at Waltham and did your first operation on Cologne on the 31st of October, 1944.
JG: That was something I always remember about that first trip. We wasn’t, we wasn’t scared to start with, but we was once we was up there, but being in the mid upper gunner that had a three hundred and sixty degree turn, where you turned all the way round and when your guns got round and it was your own aircraft, they had something there where you couldn’t fire ‘em. But as I was turning round, I looked up the front the way we were going and all I could see was one big mass of red, where Cologne was alight, and the flashes of the flak and that exploding and all the FE, all, it frightened the bloody life out of me. I never, ever [emphasis] looked again where we were going to go, until after we left. That once, I only looked that once, and that was enough. I looked a couple of times, Heligoland is in there, that was towards the end, that was with the other pilot. And that was, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and there wasn’t a German fighter in the sky either. We could fly round there as if we owned it, you know, they just didn’t have the fighters left, not the Germans.
GT: Well John, I’ve just got a list of your crew and if you’ll allow me I’ll just quickly read them out, for the record here. Flying Officer Flooder, Australian Air Force pilot; Sergeant Barnes, RAF navigator; Sergeant Williams, RAF flight engineer; Flight Sergeant Maslin, Australian Air Force, wireless operator and Flight Sergeant Armstrong, RAF bomb aimer. And yourself Sergeant John Green, as RAF mid upper gunner, [dog barking] and the rear gunner was Sergeant Everly. So you stayed together for your first part of your flying, on 100 Squadron.
JG: The first fifteen ops, yeah.
GY: And for those fifteen ops.
JG: Until he got grounded.
GT: It was your skipper that was grounded, was that right. What was the story with him?
JG: After the Dresden raid there, it’ll be in the log book, after the Dresden raid we got back all right. Next night, next day they sent us down out Chemnitz after we’d done canals flying, we were put on, and the navigator, we’d been flying about an hour, and said I’ve had enough of this skipper, I can’t do my job, I’m too tired. So he come back, he told the pilot to come back and the pilot got the rollocking for it, for not carrying on, you know, regardless, dropping the bomb sort of thing.
GT: So he brought the bombs back to base.
JG: Yeah, and then what happened we got back to base you’ve still got all your bombs on, go out somewhere the North Sea and drop the cookie and we had to go and drop the cookie to get rid of it.
GT: Did you drop them armed? Were they armed when you dropped them? Did you make them explode or just?
JG: The cookie? No, we just dropped it. No, what the, there’s one op there, that, we dropped the bombs, and I’ve got it in, got: ‘Dropped cookie manually on spare’. That it? What happened there -
GT: It was the 15th of December 1944.
JG: Yeah. We got out and bombs away the pilot said, and then as we went away, he said, “Bluey,” that was the bomb aimer, Bluey, “are you sure all the bombs have gone, he said it feels heavy, the way it’s flying, so he said, “all right I’ll press all these switches, John will you get down and have a look?” So I get out the turret and look through a window in the floor of the aircraft and I could see the bomb. I said no, the bloody bomb’s still here! So they said right what we going to do? I’m sure it was the bomb aimer: let’s go round and drop it. And all of us: no you f-ing well don’t! We, no, we’re not going round there again! So I said to ‘em look, we’ve got to fly back, we’re gonna fly over, somewhere over Germany, you notify when we’re getting near where to the bomb aimer and skipper, when he gets out, I’ll drop it, I’ll pull the lever and drop it manually. And that’s what we done. We suddenly come up, there’s a town ahead, John, place called Spau in Germany, and then I’m talking to the bomb aimer and he’s saying, “right John get ready, get ready, when I tell you go, pull that lever, get ready, go!” Pulled the lever and the bomb dropped, and we just carried on. We just saw a big flash on the ground and that was it.
GT: What height would you have been at to do that?
JG: About fourteen, fifteen thousand feet. Cause we all, all [emphasis] of you kept above ten thousand.
GT: You’d have been on oxygen at the time.
JG: Yeah, yeah. Though when I, actually, what I done, get out my turret, and then at the side of your turret’s a small oxygen bottle, pull that out, clip it on to your oxygen mask so you’re on oxygen from the bottle, not from the aircraft. Yeah. That’s how they done it.
GT: And that was an eight thousand pound cookie.
JG: Yeah, er, four thousand pound cookie, but they finished up making them twelve thousand, that one they built, imitation up at MOTET haven’t they. They built that one. Must’ve made a bloody big ‘ole!
GT: So that was on the 15th of December, you did a further three operations there, 24th Christmas Eve, 1944.
JG: That’s when we landed at Rattlesden.
GT: Ooh! So tell me about that. What happened there?
JG: When we got back, I believe our engine caught fire.
GT: Ah, okay, was that from enemy damage, or did it?
JG: I don’t know, just so, put the fire out [cough] and when we get back it’s a bit foggy and that, and we didn’t have, only three engines, we didn’t have the mucking about, so we got ordered to land at Rattlesden. Rattlesden was American drome, and that’s when they pinched me bloody gloves, thieving bastards!
GT: Did the Americans not have much kit?
JG: No, they, Americans, course everything with the Americans was souvenirs. Course when we landed, we’d taken one, two, four pairs of gloves, the gunners had, and they were all left in the turret and of course we went you know, for a meal and briefing and for a meal, and then bed. When went up the next morning to fly back, we get to the aircraft and me gloves and that were gone and we couldn’t fly back cause our plane was unserviceable. I can’t, I believe it says there, come back as a passenger.
GT: So you lost all four pairs of gloves, to the Americans?
JG: Yes.
GT: Did they grab anything else?
JG: No, and they, I know when I come back and reported it, the CO, oh, I was put on a charge because losing your kit, and the officer who interviewed me over it was a New Zealander and he said, look he said, you couldn’t lock up. I said no, we had no locks on the door, he said so how the bloody hell can you, either take all your kit with you, how can you stop if you can’t lock the aircraft up? And he made a verdict of not, well, I wasn’t charged, it was dismissed and I was issued a new set of gloves. Through this officer, Wheatley.
GT: Your log book states that was about the 18th of November that that particular incident happened. You managed to get back to your home base. So what happened then with your skipper? You were telling me that your skipper -
JG: Yeah, well when we got back from the Chemnitz raid, you’ve got Chemnitz there, haven’t you, Dresden ten hours.
GT: Yup, what happened after that?
JG: We were flying, next day we flew to Chemnitz, and that’s when we returned, the pilot, the navigator said he was ill, that’s when they grounded the pilot, said his eyesight is not good enough to fly a four engined bomber, and he’d already done seventeen trips.
GT: So the pilot took the rap for the navigator’s -
JG: Yeah, more or less, yeah. He wasn’t, obviously, that was when the Station Officer, was a real cocky sod, but he come unstuck cause Podge, being Australian, imagine coming, going to Australia and saying this is what they’re gonna to do to me, because they kicked up a hell of a bloody stink.
GT: But the station officer’s accused your pilot of being -
JG: Lack of morale fibre, that’s what he was going to do, to stop him flying, but then I heard it was six months after, he was sent back to Australia.
GT: Did he fly again?
JG: In Australia he did, but I don’t know what though.
GT: But what happened when he went to London, to the Australian Consul?
JG: He went to Australia House, and course Australian, as they said, that’s the RAAF, it’s got nothing to do with you, and you’re on loan to him, he can’t make you lack of moral fibre and not only that you’ve done seventeen bloody ops, and course their, whoever’s in charge up there, he kicked a hell of a stink up. It’s getting to know the people who to kick up the stink with, and said this bastard’s not going to do this to one of my men, Australian. Next thing we knew, I think it was about, must have been about the second day, that next, we saw him, one of the crew saw Podge, he said oh he’s had to apologise to me, the CO, he’s had to apologise for what he said and done. It made him look a real right fool, cause everybody, all of it, all the news went round the squadron, about it.
GT: So that was coming up into mid February 1945 in your old log book, you’ve noted that your pilot was grounded. Was that the end of your time on 100 Squadron?
JG: Yeah, cause then, we wanted another pilot and they said no, we, other station was short of gunners and they posted me straight away to that gunnery, to RAF Wickenby.
GT: So your crew, incidentally disintegrated.
JG: Crew was finished, yes. Oh, they give no thought, for you or anything, you know, not when you’ve got an officer like that in charge of you.
GT: So there’s about two or three weeks in between the squadrons in your log book here, so on the 7th of March, is your first flight with 12 Squadron. So how did it work then, did you join another crew straight away or did you have a choice?
JG: No, that was when, as I said to you, when I got there they posted me to, I gets in the squadron, you have to call in the guard hut, as you go through the gates, and they said right go to the Gunnery Leader and send you over there. I went there and that, he said to me well John look, I can’t see you now, and I told you, we’ve got ops on, so I’m busy, come back and see me tomorrow morning. That was when they posted me to this crew that got killed. And that’s when I went back to him.
GT: Tell me about that, what happened there, you visited another crew that night?
JG: They were getting dressed and we were talking and they said how many you done John? I said I’ve done sixteen, they said oh, we’re lucky then, I said why and they said we’ve done twenty nine, we’re doing our last one tonight. Never got back.
GT: You were in their nissen hut were you?
JG: In the nissen hut. I woke up at six o’clock in the morning with the noise, it was all the Special Police coming to collect all their gear, collect all their belongings and everything; it’s all taken away. Then when I went back to see the Gunnery Leader he said, that’s when he said right we’ve got three crews all want gunners, you fly with all the three and choose one of them. And you can see the three there through, one of them was Castle was it?
GT: You’ve got Raymond, Dickie and Granham.
JG: That’s it.
GT: So why were they short of gunners? What happened to the other gunners?
JG: Well one of ‘em, I asked that question. One of them had a bomb, what you call ‘em, little bombs, incendiary bombs, drop through the mid upper turret.
GT: From above, another aircraft.
JG: Yeah. That killed him. Another one, he was sick, in the oxygen mask, and obviously the pilot, his pilot hadn’t kept in touch with him enough, got lack of air, and I don’t know about the third one. But anyway, I chose one of the three and the other two got shot down on the next time we all went on a raid. So I was lucky. That’s when I got with Granham, but you know I can’t remember any of the names, except Granham of that second crew. There wasn’t the same feeling between the first crew and the second crew. I mean the first crew we was all mates, always out together at night and that, and the second crew, I know you’re friends and that, speak and everything, it’s not the same what you call it, camaraderie there, I can’t even, all I know is one was named George, I can’t remember the names of all, any the others, and the pilot.
GT: And you did fifteen ops with that new crew.
JG: Sixteen with ‘em, yeah. Or fifteen.
GT: On your log book, mid March you’ve got one thousand bomber raid on Dortmund.
JG: Yeah, I think we, I went on three or four, that was when, towards that time of the war, they had all these aircraft, used to send everything up, Bomber Harris.
GT: That’s March 45 that was Dortmund and Essen, so what was that like, you were mid upper at that time?
JG: No, I was rear gunner then. It should say there.
GT: Rear gunner. Oh yes, it does. So what was it like with all these aircraft around you, and above you, and below?
JG: Well, during the day it was all right, but at night you didn’t see, only when you nearly had a smash with one, we crossed like that, that’s how close we were and you know, nobody, he didn’t see us, we didn’t see him, and, was something else to do with flying.
GT: But you were able to warn the skipper of any aircraft above you.
JG: Oh yeah, I remember, oh with Granham, oh that was when this Ju88, perhaps that’s why I didn’t get sighted, because we’re flying along and next minute tracer bullets come up, come up underneath [emphasis] the tail plane and over the top of the wing, big long stream of tracer and the pilot - what the hell’s that, and I said it’s all right skipper, it’s only tracer bullet, just like that, not even thinking, and then I gave the order corkscrew starboard go, and he dived down.
GT: So that was on your twentieth operation to Nuremburg, on the 16th of March 1945, eight hours thirty at night and your log book states: ‘combat with Junkers 88, fired five hundred rounds, fighter destroyed, crashed in flames, exploded on ground, brackets: confirmed.’
JG: Yeah. That’s what, it was confirmed by this other man from another station but they said, I mean there was a lot of talk about Granham getting the DFC and me getting nothing. But.
GT: So your skipper at the time was Flying Officer Granham.
JG: Granham. Yeah.
GT: Granham is his surname there. So he already had the DFC.
JG: Yeah, already had the DFC. He got the bar to it.
GT: And he was awarded a second with a Bar directly for shooting down.
JG: Yeah. Shooting down.
GT: And you shot it down and you weren’t awarded anything.
JG: That’s what a lot of ‘em were saying on the station. How is it that he got a Bar to his bloody DFC and the gunner got nothing and he shot the plane down.
GT: You were a sergeant at the time? Flight Sergeant.
JG: Not sure, probably Flight Sergeant. Then.
GT: So you don’t know if you’d been accredited with the kill.
JG: No, never bothered about, you know.
GT: There was distinction there that you should have been awarded the Distinguished Flying Medal for your action.
JG: Yeah.
GT: And that never happened.
JG: That never happened. And then that’s how that came about, Paul.
GT: But in this case though your DFM, that others had been awarded for the same thing, you found out later that there was great disparity between -
JG: Oh yeah, between officers and airmen, non-commissioned officers and commissioned officers, big [emphasis] disparity, you try and get, and check out how many DFCs were awarded and how many DFMs were awarded.
GT: Did you find out the quantities of that?
JG: Yes, I’m almost sure it was what I said: twenty thousand DFCs and six thousand DFMs.
GT: And the shooting down of that Junkers that night for you saved your crew, and your aircraft.
JG: Well yeah, and if I’d have shot us down, I mean it’s lucky that the tracer bullets, if that’s your aircraft, come up under, underneath the tail plane, over the wing. That’s how.
GT: Normally every one tracer you see is another is four or five of rounds that are.
JG: All depends what they do, I think we had five, sometimes six, sometimes seven and then one tracer put in, you know, there.
GT: That’s pretty good shooting with three nought threes, to be able to get a Junkers.
JG: Yeah, but, that’s another thing what made me smile. On the training they’re telling you about your gunsight, your gun ring, you got a fifty, fifty percent crossing speed by half the gun sight, against a full gun sight, how you do this and that, and I said to ‘em, when they spoke to me about it after, some of the men, I said it’s biggest load of bullshit. What do you mean? I said I’ve ordered the pilot, I said, he’s corkscrewing like that, I said, all you’re supposed to aim at fifteen degree part I said all you’re doing is you’re firing a gun, the bullets are flying around and you hit lucky enough, hit a part of the engine what caught fire. And how the hell when I read sometimes on there or I read they got air gunners shot five or six, dunno, how the bloody hell, you couldn’t aim your gun, aircraft going like that. That was that you know, corkscrew come up the same way and then it went down again, till you ordered it, the captain, to stop. I know when we come up and the pilot, on one occasion, we’d just come out above the cloud, we’d dropped the bombs, flying back and he come above the clouds and it was beautiful [emphasis] clear and the pilot said Johnny, it’s pretty clear up here and we can be seen, what do you want me to do? I said can you go just in the cloud, just in the cloud so, and that’s what he done, for probably ten mile or so, flying just in the cloud. Made it a bit awkward, bit bumpy and that, wasn’t very good, but at least they couldn’t see us. Cause when you’re up, I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed, probably you haven’t but, if you’re about the cloud like that, that looks like sea above it, nothing there, just your lot, just looking at the cloud, yeah.
GT: On 75 New Zealand Squadron there was little documentation, but I’ve interviewed one chap who was an under [emphasis] gunner. Did you have any experience on 12 and 100 Squadron of Lancasters having under gunners?
JG: I know towards the end that’s when they found out the Junkers, instead of, he was firing upwards.
GT: Schrage musik. Upward firing cannons.
JG: Upward firing cannon. That’s why we lost so many aircraft before anybody knew about it! Then after that, when we’re searching, the mid upper gunner, the pilot every so often had to turn the plane down so he could look below and that way make sure there’s nothing underneath it.
GT: So the squadrons didn’t employ under gunners in any of the aircraft.
JG: No, not like the Americans, Americans had gunners in their Flying Fortresses. They had ten, ten gunners in their Flying Fortresses.
GT: For the gunnery side of things for you John, did you, that Junkers 88 you shot down did you have any other chance, or any other shooting opportunities with other attacking aircraft?
JG: Duren, we dropped, the Master Bomber called us down from seventeen thousand, called us down to five thousand feet, in Duren, dropped the bombs from five thousand, that was almost as if you’re on the ground, he called us down: it’s lovely down here. And we answered back and joked, yeah it’s f-ing lovely up here an all! We’re staying here! Of course, the Master Bomber couldn’t do nothing, he had no idea who it was!
GT: So you did all joined him?
JG: Yeah, so we slowly went down and joined him. You know, you’re talking amongst the crew, what do you reckon? Well look. if we go down, there’s a lot gone down, we’ve got more chance being in the crowd than staying up here on our own.
GT: But you risked being, having bombs dropped from those still above.
JG: Yeah, well that was my argument, but after this, seeing this plane dop bombs on another plane, how the hell, we were supposed to be the highest crew, usually round about sixteen, sixteen five, seventeen, seventeen five, eighteen. All depends how, I think on that particular night we were, our height was eighteen five hundred and yet there’s aircraft above us, and course we were talking, we’re supposed to be up the top, and the pilot saying what do you think they want these aircraft with these propellors for! They can go up higher! So long as the navigator knows, that if it’s, if he’s due to bomb at say sixteen thousand, then the instruments all set, but if we’re flying at seventeen, as long as the navigator knows, he can work it out, fiddle it out, that we’re a thousand feet higher than we should be.
GT: So by your twenty sixth operation which was Heligoland, in your log book you’ve stated: very good prang. Why was that a very good prang?
JG: Oh, l there wasn’t, well there was no cloud, it was a perfect sky like you get here, there wasn’t a cloud or anything in sight, not a fighter, no flak, you just flew round Heligoland. It was a u-boat place where all the u-boats dock, at Heligoland. That’s when they, they couldn’t, our bombs and that what we had, wouldn’t go through until they built the twelve thousand.
GT: Tallboy and the Grand Slam.
JG: That went through the bloody –
GT: Concrete.
JG: Concrete.
GT: So on the 29th of April, you started doing something different - Operation Manna. Tell us about Operation Manna, please.
JG: Yeah well, now we were given, [pause] first of all we were all told at a meeting that Holland is starving and that they’ve done a deal with the Germans that we won’t load our guns or fire on anything in Holland and we can drop the food, which we did do, the first time at six hundred feet I think it was. Was it, the first time?
GT: You’ve three entries in your log book for Valkenburg.
JG: Yeah, that’s Valkenburg was the first one.
GT: End of April beginning of May.
JG: So, and what happened, when we saw, it’s all in sacks, all stacked in the bomb bay, had a hell of a job with the bomb bay just opening like that a little bit to get the stuff in and course when it dropped, hit the ground we saw flour bursting and that, and we said, got back and reported it’s too high. They said right, go lower and the pilot said yeah, we can go lower, there’s nothing in the way at Valkenburg, and I always remember the second op Valkenburg, we’re going along, looking back and everybody’s running round the field and you’re dropping all these bloody great big sacks of food, and then we flew up the High Street and when I looked out the window, the church steeple’s up there! [emphasis] And we’re up the High Street and all the kids waving and that, to you, and you’re down flying up the Hight Street like a car and the church bloody steeple, I think Christ skipper, I said I want to go to Heaven but I don’t want to go this way yet! You know, and laughing and joking and all that, and then what we done then, on our particular, and evidently it was done. We used to fill up milk bottles and you know razor blades, how thin they are, you could bend it, bend it enough to put in the top and it used to open up, the blade used to open up jammed in the bottle and when they, you threw them out the turret it made a screaming noise, we used that a lot to frighten ‘em and what we done on our third trip to Holland, everybody on the station either had rag or handkerchief and cotton, you know the cotton, you know, parachute, you make your parachute, you tied it four corners and tied it round the choc bars. We all threw out we could see all the kids running with these little parachutes with the chocolate bars. Because that’s why, that’s why in the letters some of what Jack wrote, he went to Holland for two years running, they invited him over on the day they celebrate us dropping the food to ‘em, and the last time was Rotterdam, racecourse, flying along the racecourse about fifty, sixty foot high. Of course the pilots used to love it. So did we, flying like that! See when you’re young and that you never thought of danger, how dangerous it was. I think from what I was told, we only lost one aircraft on that and that was a Flying Fortress, on the way back, or something.
GT: Did you see any of the American aircraft doing the food drops as well, which was their Operation Chow Hound?
JG: No I never saw them, it was different timing and different places, you know.
GT: How many Lancasters would have been involved with the food drops that you saw?
JG: A few hundred, and then a lot of them, while that was carrying on, they went to pick up the prisoners of war.
GT: Juvencourt.
JG: Yeah, pick up all our prisoners of war, I wasn’t on that.
GT: Would you have wanted to be?
JG: One of me mates who was on it, he said we had twenty on the way back, prisoners of war, in our plane. Picked up twenty of ’em. Yeah.
GT: So you didn’t manage to do any more Operation Manna trips after that lot?
JG: No, I only done the four.
GT: That was your thirty one trips all together.
JG: Yeah. They posted me out.
GT: And you found out later why.
JG: He wanted to do some flying! I don’t blame him, I mean.
GT: Was that your gunnery leader?
JG: I went home on leave, they, I met the wife, and fourteen weeks I was home, fourteen weeks leave and while I was home on leave, I was a Flight Sergeant, I got a letter, on the, I got a letter on me demob leave promoting me to Warrant Officer which was another hundred and twenty pound!
GT: Good grief! That would buy a house, wouldn’t it! Now there were a couple of funny things that happened, funny when you look on them now, and one was when you were a mid upper on your first tour and the Lancaster above you was about to drop its bombs. They missed you but they got an aircraft below you.
JG: Missed us but got another one.
GT: What happened to the other aircraft?
JG: That’s what I said, the bombs had all dropped, we’d dropped our bombs and all, and the smoke cleared and the rear gunner, that was Jack, we’re on fire! I said shut up you silly sod, I said it’s not, I said it’s some poor sod’s had bomb’s dropped on ‘im! As the smoke cleared away, this other Lancaster bomber was turning like that, slowly turning to get back on course, with a bomb jammed in the wing. Told the skipper, and the skipper, we were going round, we went near enough to see it all and then skipper just carried on, you know, to get back himself, and we found out afterwards he landed, he made it, kept asking the people involved in our station and he said oh yeah, he landed okay, he landed in France on the emergency drome.
GT: The bomb hadn’t had time to arm itself before it hit the wing. Must have been so fortunate. That’s amazing. Now there was also a bit of an own goal, you were telling me about seven pound jam tins!
JG: That was the time I emptied it out the side.
GT: Tell me the story, come on, from the beginning!
JG: All the gunners had a big empty jam tin from the mess to use as their pee bucket cause we couldn’t get out our turrets to use the Elsan and this particular night I filled it up and I thought well what am I going to do? Am I going to empty on the floor, which it can go out through the bottom of the turret. I thought well, if I do that, the ground crew won’t be very happy that they’ve got to wash that out, and I slid the window at the side of me, in the turret.
GT: And what height would you have been at?
JG: Probably around eighteen thousand feet, I slid that open, and emptied the jam tin out. Within one second it had all gone round, straight back through the front of the turret – cause we had no windows, we took ‘em all out – all over me. We had no windows in our turrets, all the gunners took their windows out in front of ‘em, just had the guns there.
GT: So that would have been minus twenty, minus forty, is it?
JG: Sometimes it were really cold. We were cold, the rest of the crew were bloody ‘ot!. But the two gunners were nearly always cold. We had electric heated suits in the end, and I was colder still. Course when I told ‘em I looked like a bloody ice block, all they done was laugh. So did all at the station.
GT: So it all came back at you.
JG: Yeah, they couldn’t stop, they all thought how funny it was.
GT: And the jam tins there you said they were seven pound jam tins and the WAAFs managed to save these for you.
JG: Yeah. That’s what they used to have as their food: seven pounds of jam, in tins. That’s what all the RAF stations had, and I suppose the Army, Navy, and everything.
GT: Gee, you were lucky to not to have something frozen off.
JG: Yeah!
GT: So, the other thing was that during Operation Manna you’ve seen a photograph with the tulips and there was -
JG: Yeah, ‘Thank you boys.’
GT: There’s a photograph in one of the IBCCs books showing that and you remember seeing that.
JG: Yeah, I remember it was red tulips and ‘Thank You Boys’, probably from where we were about six foot long, so they must have had dozens and dozens of workmen overnight, planted all these in the middle of this field of tulips: ‘Thank You Boys.’
GT: You saw action with your, active bombing operations and then you did the Operation Manna and they classified that as an operation too.
JG: Oh yeah, we didn’t think they were going to, but they did in the end. Cause, and I remember at, what they done with the aircrew finished, they posted all the officers to one station and as many men to another one, filled up and they, let me tell you now, they got us on parade and said right, we’ll call your names out, just repeat your last number, your last three numbers and go and stand over there. They were calling all the names and this great big crowd got smaller and that one got bigger, and bigger and bigger, and in then end there was only about six of us left here, and we wasn’t in it. They were all going, being sent to Japan, against Japanese, Japan, we were too close to being demobbed, so they said it’s just a waste sending you out there, you’ll be sent back, and that’s when we got demobbed, you know. When we got our log book back, our pay book, there.
GT: The difference between the two, did it strike you then, that from doing the bombing operations that finally you were saving lives, of our allies?
JG: Oh yeah, with the food dropping, cause where we dropped, where we dropped the food at Valkenburg, it was surrounded by Germans. Actually I saw one German standing in the corner of the field, but, they had done a deal with the RAF not to take pictures and all that, and load the guns – like hell! We had our guns loaded, we weren’t going to take that chance with ‘em, but nobody got fired on.
GT: And nobody fired their guns.
JG: No, because, I found out afterwards by talking to somebody, of course they wouldn’t, cause they were starving as well. They wanted some of the food you were dropping: they were starving as well. Cause it was like, like a field, this part surrounded, all the rest is, a different, this part of Holland was surrounded by the Germans.
GT: You know there’s an Operation Manna Memorial in Rotterdam?
JG: I didn’t know.
GT: They hold a service every year and they thank you for your service to save them. It’s very special for the Dutch.
JG: I believe they’ve got to the last one or something, yeah. I know Jack used to go.
GT: Jack was your ex?
JG: Ex gunner. He used to go. Had a wonderful time he said. Said you never spent a ha’penny, you never spent anything. You wasn’t allowed to pay for anything.
GT: All the streets around the area are named after the commanders that organised everything in respect.
JG: What, actually what did annoy me, was this Dresden business, you know. Over the years they had meetings, cause they said there was three hundred thousand killed, in Dresden. Well it wasn’t all that long ago, only a few months ago, they had their last meeting over Dresden and they, all the people involved in the meeting are settled on nineteen thousand killed; well we had that in London! And they settled on nineteen thousand, killed in Dresden and not the three hundred thousand what they tried to say, you know, and that was only people over here, not over here, over in England. A lot of the do gooders, you know, you’re terror bombing, dropping bombs like that on Dresden and what annoyed me was Churchill blamed Bomber Harris for bombing Dresden, he said he had no need to do it! He went on the, yeah, he did, something there somewhere, I don’t know where I got it from, but he had no need to bomb Dresden. Well Bomber Harris had a letter from Churchill, ordering [emphasis] him, and he said I can prove how, I call him fat guts Churchill, whisky drinking gut, do you know if anybody speaks to me of Churchill, I say don’t talk to me about that fat gut! I said he put the blame on Bomber Harris for all these people being killed, I said, and he was the one who gave the order: him, Stalin, Roosevelt, at a meeting.
GT: And the very reason Bomber Harris was never given a peerage.
JG: That’s why though, when he finally come back here, they did do didn’t they, Memorial, they got the shock of their lives the way the people supported it.
GT: The Bomber Command Memorial in the Green Park. Now in 2011 and 2012 when New Zealanders went across, you being a British person.
JG: Couldn’t go.
GT: You were not involved, or not allowed to be involved with that. Have you been, yet, back to England?
JG: No, I’ve never been back; I won’t go back. I’ve never wanted to go back to England.
GT: Now if we can just move a little bit back from there. You emigrated to New Zealand in?
JG: 1979.
GT: And you followed your sons then, because you and Beatrice, or Betty, you had two sons.
JG: Yeah, and one of ‘em who’d already been back once to England, he went back home again and this time, he broke up with his wife.
GT: So you’ve got Mike who’s aged seventy two, living in Kent.
JG: In Kent.
GT: And you’ve got Paul here, living in New Zealand.
JG: Just over there.
GT: Who is fifty five, so you have your son close, and obviously you had a great time, Betty and yourself, here in New Zealand.
JG: You can go and see his garden, Paul’s gardens, see his swimming pool and all that.
GT: Fabulous, so Betty, she was, what did she do when you came to New Zealand?
JG: She was a dress maker, machinist, and in the end she had, we had a big machine up in that garage there, we made it into a, like a workshop for her.
GT: Fabulous. Now, at the, when you demobbed from the RAF, you went back as an engineer and then into the fishing tackle game, selling in London there. So you became a store owner, was that right?
JG: See, in England fishing tackle is a lot different to New Zealand. In New Zealand, I hate to say this, but all they think about is trout. Trout, trout. Can you eat it? If you can’t eat it they don’t want to catch it! Whereas the poms, we do it for the fun of catching the fish.
GT: You do the coarse fishing.
JG: Coarse fishing. And course, so therefore, the shop in England was selling ten times the amount of stuff than what they do in New Zealand, cause there’s so much, such a bigger range.
GT: And where was your shop?
JG: Down, opposite, opposite Penge Police Station funnily enough.
GT: And you sold that up to come out to New Zealand in the early seventies.
JG: Yes.
GT: You’ve already said you didn’t want to go back. Did you get homesick for England?
JG: I didn’t. The wife’s been back, twice, but I didn’t. Never been homesick and wanted to go back. And I told me son, when he left here and went back home, I said that’s the second time, don’t expect me to follow you, I won’t be following you, which I didn’t do, I didn’t want to chase after him. He’s happy enough, he’s married a Russian woman, got divorced. His wife was one of these moaning types, always got something to moan about! [Chuckle]
GT: Fabulous. So you’ve managed to keep your home that you purchased as soon as you arrived here. And so, when did you lose Betty?
JG: Eleven years ago.
GT: You’ve been very active here with the New Zealand Bomber Command Association.
JG: Yeah, I used to go there every Wednesday.
GT: So you were part of the, now in New Zealand we have a Lancaster that’s been rebuilt and is on display at the MOTET, which is the Museum of Transport and Technology.
JG: That’s right. We used to clean that.
GT: Right, so you were part of the Wednesday Bomber Boys. Was a group of you veterans over the years.
JG: Every Wednesday up there, and why I stopped in the end, driving here to there took nearly an hour, driving back was under half hour and driving on that motorway with all that, everybody going into Auckland, I couldn’t take it any longer and I had to pack it in. The Wednesday Boys.
GT: So for those who are unaware of our Lancaster here in New Zealand, it was donated by the French Navy and it was not an aircraft that had served during World War Two but was just after. But it sat for many years here and finally a group was put together to get it back to display status, and it’s a magnificent aircraft at the Museum of Transport Technology and at the current time it has 75 Squadron markings on it. But for your factor John, did you spend much time inside the aircraft when you were fixing it up?
JG: No, we, one of the jobs I had was, every week., four of us used to sit round the table with all log books, reading out what this one done, oh this one he flew so and so, so and so, and somebody like yourself is making a note of it, and all that was reduced to a disc, so that if you wanted, if you had a father or grandfather who was one of the aircrew got lost, you wanted to know what happened. Instead of you searching through all the records: it’s on the disc.
GT: Under that guy’s name.
JG: Under that guy’s name, and that would tell you everything. And that’s what we done. We used to sit there for hour, or couple of hours then it was tea time, cup of tea and a bun, and then some of us used to have a duster and clean the aircraft up. We, I took me mates up there once and they were, they had to pay to get in! [Laugh] They said no lads, sorry, but. I said they’re my mates, and he said yeah I know, he said but if we let them in then others will want it. I mean I didn’t have to pay, I could go in there any time: One of the Wednesday Boys.
GT: How many Wednesday boys were there all together? A dozen?
JG: Oh, couple of dozen. Yeah.
GT: Any left, besides yourself?
JG: Yeah, oh yeah, there’s still, still two or three left – like Peter Wheeler, I’m sure he was one of the Wednesday Boys.
GT: Peter’s not a veteran though, but he’s the executive of the New Zealand Bomber Command Association. He looks after the aircraft for MOTET, the aircraft’s not the MOTET particularly, it’s part of the Bomber Command Association.
JG: The last time, which is years ago, they had a Sunderland flying boat, outside.
GT: It’s inside now.
JG: That’s inside is it.
GT: It’s all been painted up.
JG: I know they were doing this Lancaster up, somebody said these two brothers got together and paying it out, paying for it out their pocket.
GT: You’re talking about the Panton brothers at East Kirkby, Lincoln. It’s Just Jane.
JG: They reckon there’ll be a couple of Lancasters flying.
GT: They’re looking at that. And this is where the International Bomber Command Centre has come about, now it’s not far, and this is where this recording will end up, with them in their archives and it’s been fascinating. Now what you have on your wall here is a huge framed effort with your rank slides, your medals and some photographs, and some badges of the squadrons you flew with, which is fascinating. Your son built that for you?
JG: No, he had it built by the chap owns the bed and breakfast at Russell, you know Russell? He owns the bed and breakfast [cough] right on the front of Russell. I don’t know, I think it cost a couple of thousand to do that. What he was charging.
GT: Awesome. That’s pretty neat there.
JG: Paul paid for all that.
GT: To have your information up on the wall.
JG: And then trouble is, one of the cards has slipped down and it’s too much bother to undo the back, because it’s sealed, so we just left it.
GT: So we see that you managed to secure the Bomber Command Clasp at least. So that’s good to see. Now John, you’re now coming up, in September it was your birthday, you were ninety -
JG: Seven.
GT: Ninety seven. You’re feeling good about yourself?
JG: Well, I’ve got all this problem now what’s going to happen about when they start knocking down my wall and pulling up me carpets.
GT: Bit of a flood in the laundry yesterday.
JG: I don’t.
GT: But the other thing too, John, you’ve just survived an accident on the road! Gosh, what happened there?
JG: Well that, on that mobility scooter, I’ll show you if you like before you go. Well coming down Buckman’s beach road you’re supposed to stay on the pavement, well I’ve been using the road, but on this particular time there was a lot of traffic so I went on the pavement. Coming down Buckman’s each but you know the houses’ driveways are slanted up like that, going along and we got to house and it was quite steep so I went to move over to the right to get nearer the wall of the house, and what I didn’t know, in front of me, the pavement ended, it was mud. And the wheel, ruddy wheel went down and threw me over the top.
GT: Were you hurt?
JG: I’ve done all this, out gardening more or less stopped now.
GTL And you also attend a lot of the Bomber Command services.
JG: Well I shall, I’m going this one June 9th at ten thirty. I’m going to phone up Kerry and Don, Paul said he would take the four of us there, you know, to the service. Well if he does, if they come, and we stop in the restaurant there, I’ll tell ‘em I’ll treat ‘em to breakfast. I know Carrie and Don won’t eat much - Paul will! [Laughter]
GT: So, the service is all about the Bomber Command stuff, right.
JG: Yeah.
GT: So, and you’ve been doing this every year?
JG: Every year, yeah, and Peter met, Peter said I haven’t seen you, was last year you saw me, cause he came here, Peter, to interview me over something. I will have to find his phone number and phone him up.
GT: The other thing John you mentioned to me, was that during your operational tours, you had a white scarf.
JG: Yeah, a white silk scarf.
GT: Tell me about that please.
JG: It was about eighteen inches wide and over six foot long, and every op when I come back, I used to take it with me on ops, when I come back, I had this WAAF used to embroider the name of the town we’d been to bomb. Even when we shot down that Ju 88, she embroidered a swastika on it. So I had sixteen names at the top and fifteen names, and fifteen names at the bottom with a swastika and I gave them to John Bannon to put on show.
GT: Well we’ll find out more about that.
JG: See if you can.
GT: It’s fascinating that you actually had that done.
JG: He died. When he suddenly died, I thought meself I wonder what happened to my scarf?
GT: We’ll have a look for that. So have you been up to see the Lancaster lately?
JG: No I don’t get out there now. You know, I mean I’ve got the address, 9th of June, Paul’s already, I can make a note, yeah, we’ll take you dad, him and his partner and I’m going to phone up Carrie or she’ll come over, and Don, see if they want come with us.
GT: Well you have got a amazing amount of your historical documents here: your log book is safe and is being scanned and copied. You have a folder full of all of the New Zealand Bomber Command Association newsletters for quite some years, you have some from the 100 Squadron in England.
JG: There’s two there.
GT: There’s two that you have managed to secure, and see what they have been doing and been up to, I have now given you have some IBCC material I brought back from England last year with me so you have some material there to check on, and when I arrived here to visit you today you were looking at your photographs on your big tv which is fascinating to see.
JG: I fetched the flying, the Lancaster flying with it, with it the Hurricane and Spitfire flying along there and then I fetch them flying over, practicing on that dam, all on my, but I’m not so good now with the computer, getting it, you know, cause I play poker a bit on it, on the computer.
GT: What did you do when you came to New Zealand? What was your career, job? What did you get up to?
JG: Er, [pause] I had a job with Shatlocks. You know, Shatlocks, I worked for them.
GT: The company that made stoves.
JG: They made all the stoves down Dunedin. All the electric ones and that, and Fisher and Paykel got their name on one of them.
GT: Fischer and Paykel are a very famous brand here in New Zealand aren’t they, John, making cooker tops and such.
JG: Well they done, well they didn’t actually make the cook tops, it was Jack Shatlock, Shatlocks made ‘em, made all the cookers.
GT: And you were a technician or a salesman?
JG: Technician. I’ve got, actually, see that red tin there, up there, there’s a red tin up the garden, there’s about twelve up there, that was what they used to enclose the dishwashers in and all the aluminium sheets up there, was all part of the plate what came out your cooker.
GT: You’re in a very large house here, with a large back yard which is not the same as what many English households have.
JG: I used to do a lot [emphasis] of gardening, but now, half hour and that’s me lot. I’ve realised now, when I start getting tired, I just come and sit down, read.
GT: And you’re the last man of your crew that you know of, John?
JG: Yeah, Jack was the, Jack was, he died a year ago now, and some of the others have been dead a few years you know, slowly getting less and less.
GT: You were involved with two different crews though. Did you keep in contact much with any of the other chaps?
JG: No, none at all.
GT: Once you demobbed.
JG: No, none at all, not even.
GT: Other than Jack of course.
JG: Jack and, talking to Podge cause he used to come over from Australia to stay at Jack’s place and he invited me, I spoke to him on the phone one day when he was visiting England, he said John, if you’d like to come to Australia and pay for half the petrol, I’ll take you all around Australia, flying, he had is own aircraft, type like Tiger Moth. And I never did go, but I could have flown all the way round Australia.
GT: You stlll can.
JG: All you got to do he said was pay for half the petrol.
GT: That’s amazing. You are amazing for the New Zealand Bomber Command Association to be one of the few left here in New Zealand, so, John, I am very honoured to be able to interview you today for the IBCC especially. You and I have crossed paths for many years at the services, this is my first time to sit and chat to you so I’m quite honoured to spend time with you today. I think is there anything else you would like to speak to with your interview here?
JG: No not really I think I’m quite surprised, you know that, I’m glad Peter Wheeler’s still there. I can have a chat with him, when I go. I will phone him up though.
GT: But this is your story, this is about your -
JG: If you remember, try and have a look for that scarf.
GT: I can do that too. But for your history and your remembrance of your time, serving with the Bomber Command itself, long before you were in New Zealand. I know I certainly can be proud to thank you for your service and you obviously served with distinction and pride.
JG: Thank you.
GT: And memories of those days: good, bad?
JG: Yes. Some good, some bad. I can think to myself, I must have been bloody mad volunteering for this when I was up there flying at times, when we was in trouble, you know, but then I realise, now, how lucky I was to be one [emphasis] of the men who got back. Like all, evidently, all [emphasis] that crew who you saw there, every one of them, survived. I don’t know how many ops Jack done, but I know he done a lot less than me, cause he done six food, no seven food drops, he told me, he done seven there so, if he done seven of them he didn’t do many, that’d been seven ops left. Can’t get, I’m lucky to have a son like Paul over there.
GT: Well John, I’m going to finish our interview here now, sadly, because I’d love to keep talking with you, but thank you very much for your time here, and I’ll make sure the IBCC have the recording from this, sent to them and I hope you enjoy reading their cards I’ve left with you.
JG: I will read all that. I’ll sort it all out and read it.
GT: They will have now your contact details and I’ll make sure they’ll send some to you. From me, from Glen Turner, of 75 Squadron Association, the secretary of the Association and my friendship with the Bomber Command gentlemen, I thank you and I thank you on behalf of the IBCC.
JG: I think thank you for taking the trouble to, you know, do this sort of thing. There.
GT: My pleasure for you. Thank you, John. Goodbye.
JG: Bye-by.
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 John Green
Creator
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Glen Turner
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2019-03-07
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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.
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AGreenJ190307, PGreenJ1901
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01:28:12 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
John Green was born on the 22nd of September 1921 in Penge, South East London. He registered for the Royal Air Force to prevent being called up by the Army and was drafted in 1942. He was posted to the Isle of Man, where he volunteered as a drogue operator during training operations, before transferring to bomb disposal in Bathford. In 1944, Green volunteered for aircrew and opted to train as an air gunner. He formed a crew at 30 Operational Training Unit, RAF Hixon, converted from Wellingtons to Halifaxes at RAF Sandoft, and attended the Lancaster Finishing School at RAF Hemswell. The crew joined 100 Squadron, RAF Grimsby, in October 1944. He recalls the conditions inside the mid-upper gunner turret, manually releasing their bombs over Speyer, and failing to complete their sixteenth to Kemnitz, which resulted in a Lack of Moral Fibre accusation to ground the pilot and disband the crew. In March 1945, Green was posted to 12 Squadron, RAF Wickenby, and completed fifteen further operations. He describes the lack of camaraderie with his new crew and shooting down a Ju 88 on an operation to Nuremberg, for which the pilot received recognition but he did not. For Operation Manna, he undertook three trips to Valkenburg, and one to Rotterdam, and recalls dropping chocolate bars for children and viewing a message of thanks written in tulips. Green describes his career after demobilisation, his opinion regarding the treatment of Bomber Command, emigrating to New Zealand in the 1970s, and his active membership with the New Zealand Bomber Command Association.
Contributor
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Tilly Foster
Anne-Marie Watson
Language
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eng
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
Great Britain
Netherlands
New Zealand
England--Bath
England--Lincolnshire
England--Somerset
England--Staffordshire
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Chemnitz
Germany--Dresden
Germany--Helgoland
Germany--Nuremberg
Germany--Speyer
Great Britain Miscellaneous Island Dependencies--Isle of Man
Netherlands--Rotterdam
Netherlands--Valkenburg (South Holland)
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Coverage
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Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Temporal Coverage
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1942
1944-06-09
1944-10-31
1944-12-15
1945-02
1945-04
1945-03-16
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
100 Squadron
12 Squadron
1667 HCU
30 OTU
air gunner
aircrew
bomb disposal
bombing
bombing of Helgoland (18 April 1945)
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
Ju 88
lack of moral fibre
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
military service conditions
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Operational Training Unit
perception of bombing war
RAF Grimsby
RAF Hemswell
RAF Hixon
RAF Sandtoft
RAF Wickenby
recruitment
shot down
training
Wellington
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2191/46454/SHarriganD[Ser -DoB]v220002.mp3
20688448837d2c55a1a2302fabf8a0d9
Dublin Core
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Title
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Reid, Kathleen
Reid, K
Reid, Kathryn
Reid, Katy
Description
An account of the resource
92 items and a <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/2219">sub-collection with thirty-seven poems/songs</a>. The collection concerns Kathryn (Katy) Reid (Royal Air Force) and contains memoirs, correspondence, poems and photographs. The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by David Stuart Miers Reid and catalogued by Nigel Huckins
Date
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2018-01-23
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Reid, K
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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Interviewer: Today is the 30th of September 2012 and I’m here talking with Katherine Reid about her time serving at RAF Waltham. So, Katherine please could you tell me a little bit about when you joined up?
KR: When I, when I did. How I came to sign up you mean? Well, I, I was an occupied person at work. I needn’t have joined up but I, I decided that I, I wanted to try and get into the RAF. I was very small and I didn’t know whether they would accept me but they did. I, I was very healthy they said so that was the main point and then of course I did the pre-training and I was sent to RAF Grimsby. That was my first station. I wasn’t very really very far from home so that was nice. I was able to go on my days off back to see my mother and father so, but the atmosphere [pause] I was at three or four other camps during the war. I think I had five places really to go that I was sent to but the lingering memory is of Grimsby. It was such a, you could call it almost a happy station. It is quite the opposite of what, of course it was running for and that was a dreadful number of deaths. But the atmosphere was always quite as cheerful as it could possibly humanly be and the lady, the woman officer we had for the WAAFs was exceptionally kind. And when we’d had an awful lot of tragedies I remember one Christmas she organized a children’s party for children in the village and we were invited to go and help there. And that, that was a very nice thought. She was particularly kind. I’m so sorry I can’t remember her name. But also the other officers were very good too. Now, I had, I was a volunteer but I had not got any particular qualifications for whatever. I decided what I wanted to be was in flying control and at first I had to do what all the volunteers, all the girls who were called up had to do and that was you had to do all the cleaning and you had to even use a duster on the ceilings you know, everywhere. And all the unpleasant things that you had to do and I think it was a sort of an early training to see if you were capable of doing that. Maybe they thought you were capable of doing further things. However, it was a rough time and we had a, if I could, I won’t name her but we did have a Scottish officer and when I and the girl who I’d met when we’d found we had things in common, she’d just been told that too. And we went in front of her and she said, ‘Oh, how good of the Air Force to send two volunteers to clean my station.’ [laughs] And that rather calmed us down you see and so we had to clean the station. We had to do the dusting up high on the, all the wires that were in the different rooms and everything and our life was rather sordid but we did adapt for a few months. And then she was lucky and she was given the, because she was a very good shorthand typist in civilian life she was given this job of of working with the head man who was, he arranged the bombing runs and what to do there and she stayed there all during the war and got a very high [pause] what do we call it? Well, something to signify her good work and so that was rather nice after starting right at the bottom as we did. Well, I was lucky and after a few months when I was there being, I was looking after the WAAF officers I used to sometimes do that but I could never get the fire going for them coming back into their room you know. That was a great worry to me because I could never get that thing going and I didn’t particularly like it there, the work although the officers were very nice. The lady officers. However, then I had to, so I was, one of the WAAF corporals in charge of the telephone, she said to me, ‘I will get you trained and you can go into the telephone office,’ you see. So I took the training and passed and so I went in. We had a very big, in Grimsby a very large telephone department and one night one of the officers came in. I was there alone. At night you did night duty sometimes by yourselves and I said, ‘But I didn’t join up just to be a telephonist. I want to be where the action is.’ And so he laughed but two days later I was, I worked from in the morning and a girl was shaking me and saying, ‘Come on. Come on. You’ve got to get a bus.’ And I said, ‘Why?’ And she said, 'Well, the squadron leader has said you are to go for a week to Waltham.’ Waltham Grimsby, and so I quickly got myself ready and got the bus and off I went to Grimsby and I saw those planes and I thought oh my gosh, isn’t that wonderful. However, then I spoke to the officer there and he was a very kind man and I said, ‘Well, you see I joined up to be where the planes are.’ I wanted to do something that was directly, you know, ‘Something directly with the actual actions of the war.’ And he, so he said, ‘Well, I can’t get you to Cranwell yet but I’ll send you upstairs to flying control and you can learn to do the work.’ So I was very fortunate and we had two girls doing the radio and so I joined them and after a few weeks I was able to take my own, you know my own time and duty with them. There was always two girls. One to do their notes, did everything that was said over the air from the airmen and everything that was said to us in the flying control had to be, you know written down so that it could at times any reason for going back on what had happened on, you know if there was a tragedy or something like that they knew what had been said to a certain extent. It was not shorthand but it was a sort of a very rough kind of English just so you could make out because of course people were talking quickly. You didn’t have time to go slowly and it was in English or whatever. I used to turn it and so that’s what happened and they, we had to bring them down at night and we stacked them. We stacked them at so many feet between we had a big wheel in front of us and we had some iron A B Cs at the beginning of their names you see and we put them on the hooks so we knew exactly when we had them in the air when they came back. And one was given the first course, lined up, and prepare to land and then the next one was brought in, ‘Prepare to land,’ when we told him, you know that he could come down. So we were very busy for over an hour concentrating on this. You never sort of thought of anything else. You concentrated on which aircraft. It was their number and their name. A for Abel and so on you see. I made that clear and you put the hook, you put their number, their ring on the hook. Looking at it we knew exactly where we had them stacked. And then afterwards you’d turn and look at the, at the end where you, we would go on for over an hour and you would look at the wall where the airman of the watch had put the names of the poor men who hadn’t returned. And we then, one of us would stay on duty all night and we’d get the airman of the watch. He used to sleep on the corner by one of the, well we had plenty of machines there. You know, big machines in big iron cases and he used to sleep there in the corner and, but we were alone there listening out for anyone who managed to come back or anybody else who wanted help and the officer of the watch used to be asleep in a room just next door to us so that if it was technical or something like that because I think that was one of the weaknesses at Cranwell when I got there. We were not given enough information on on the way that they needed help. Especially the young fliers who were training and when they first were on their own some of them were very very nervous and you had to get an officer to give them, you know any help that they might need with their engine if you follow me, on a plane there on saying that.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KR: And you, you know you felt well we should have been given some instruction because you could tell how nervous some of these young men were on their first flight by solo flying and we used to grieve for them about that. However, then [pause] oh yeah so we, so one of us stayed all night listening out. I hope I put that clearly enough and then we would have the day off. Part of it would be sleep and we’d be ready then to go back on duty the next night. But always two girls and, but about, during the day there were quite a lot of officers sitting around the table and they were there if we needed technical instruction, you know to give out to anyone. It was very very sad sometimes. We had a lot of losses. A lot of men not returning. But the atmosphere on that station to say that was absolutely wonderful and everybody was so nice to each other you know and so kind. I never heard an officer getting cross or anything like that or any, any trouble and the girls that were in the Nissen huts, that was always a happy time. We just had the old cook stove and the, the [pause] we had an officer in the photographic department and he used to go around the shops and sort of talk nicely to the shop keepers and he used to get things given you see in the way of food and then he used to bring some to our hut because one of his girlfriend’s was in our hut. And one night he got some mushrooms and we used to put it in the big, a long big pan that we had, iron one and put that iron one into the one stove we had in the, in the hut. And then we used to all sit around you see after one girl had cooked whatever he’d given us. And one night he’d got mushrooms and we were looking forward to eating these lovely mushrooms and then one of the girls called out, ‘Oh,’ You know. There was something there in the mushrooms that was the grubs [laughs] so we couldn’t eat them. It was rather disappointing but on the whole we were lucky and thanks to this man we always had something to eat in the evenings. Then so, but I I continued in flying control quite a year or so and then my, the posting came through to go to Cranwell. Now, I we had dances of course. Dances for, for aircrew. They, they always had glamourous girlfriends in beautiful dresses you know, and they had the room where they used to go to the dancing but we also had our dances and a little place we made up and for entertainment. So that was quite nice but we also had a few boys who could play instruments and so we had dances and you know they would come in groups of people and that was rather nice. And a few lectures. There was always something happening anyway, and we used to dance as well and because most of the girls in those days were not expert dancers and so, of course they didn’t know, the airmen who were dancing with because usually they’d had a little drink you know before they’d come to the dance. So it didn’t matter that we couldn’t dance either. They didn’t realise that [laughs] So that was nice. Happy parties we had. And then we used to go to the cinema down in Grimsby. So, so it was plenty of entertainment. Then from, well Grimsby well the worst night [pause] the worst night was the night we had the fog. They, now people in looking after the weather they didn’t seem to have an awful lot of equipment and going now you know to not in, it was a long way from the end of the war. We were about middle of the time of the war and they didn’t have, they did have equipment don’t get me wrong but they didn’t have a lot and they used to come up to flying control every day with balloons and put them up and something they could contact from the effect of this. They helped, would help them with their other instruments to say about the weather if I’ve explained that properly. Anyway, they had forecast that there would be fog stretching across a lot of the north of England but it would be clear. The air would be clear by the time that the men had returned from the bombing the capital of Germany. But as I say it wasn’t quite the modern equipment that they had and they were wrong. And so that was the most awful night because when our men came back there were so many crashes and so many deaths. We had ninety men killed coming back. Not from events being over the capital of Germany and come back alright but trying to land at Grimsby was almost impossible the fog was so very dense. And we, you see when they tried to come back in the darkness as I understand the way it was explained to me they were a wonderful plane but when even if their wings were to touch something else like another plane wing or or even a tree or something like that then that Lancaster would just drop and this is what was happening you see. Coming back more or less at the same time and we lost the ninety men and the doctor in charge was very upset that there was all of these men and he couldn’t save one. So you can imagine the atmosphere on the station and it was just a few days before Christmas. The WAAF officer arranged a children’s party for the children of the village and we were asked, the WAAFs were asked to help to organise it so that helped. And it, we made it quite as happy, and aircrew was taking part, the ones that were left to make it a happy Christmas for these village children. But that was typical of the station and of course we had the usual Christmas celebrations even though the atmosphere of the station had been so sad losing so many men and a Christmas dinner like all other Air Force stations had with the same amount of food. So that was quite good. But then I got my posting after I’d waited about a year and a half to go to Cranwell. And my boyfriend who, we used to go to the cinema. He was a Yorkshire boy, about, he was twenty one and he, we used to go to the cinema down in Grimsby and often we would walk back because, often and at other camps there was a bus and, but when you the first time I was on the bus coming back with all the aircrews who had been having a good evening out you know you oh you were quite shocked at the songs [laughs] and things like that. They were so happy but then you got used to it all and they were particularly very kind and considerate with me. It was amazing because I was the smallest WAAF on the station and they called me half pint [laughs] always addressed me as half pint. And so it was always a happy bus coming back from the cinema or any dancing that they’d been to down in the town. But so that was good and I think this was always every night a bus brought them back if you’d been down in to Grimsby to have a nice evening out. But we did have lovely dances. The officers had their separate one and as I say they, they, the women from around who were invited were always dressed very glamourous. We used to try to look as best as we could in our [laughs] in our uniforms but, and as I say most of us couldn’t dance in those days but nobody cared because you know you were just happy and you had little drinks some of us that did enjoy a little drink on special occasions. And then it was always sad when the night was over because you know you just thought well have had a celebration and what would tomorrow bring really. But you didn’t try to think about that.
Interviewer: Could you —
KR: We had a happy social life and then so, but and when I went to Cranwell just then about this time that I’m talking about the, my friend who was this Yorkshireman he, he ferried my kit bag up to when I’d go up the hill to the bus and we’d be off to Cranwell and we were on to each other then until in that terrible fog their plane as I say was lost. So that was very sad. But I did write to his people in Yorkshire and got a nice letter back and he was buried in the grave of his uncle there in Yorkshire. But he was only twenty one and it made you realise what a, what a waste of life war is. War is a waste. A precious waste. Then, but that’s almost the end of my time at Grimsby dear. I passed exams at Cranwell. They were Scottish instructors and I’d been teaching in Scotland when I was, before the war and of course I used to think why they don’t open their mouths more. It must be the cold weather in Scotland you know [laughs] But, and the same thing with these two men. They were very clever instructors but they didn’t open their mouths so you had to concentrate like mad and of course there was no heat at Cranwell. No heat at all. We had chill blains on our hands and feet and what we used to wear our greatcoats and our mittens even because no room was warmed up at all and, and then you had to concentrate like mad. Like mad on their Scottish accents. And they were excellent instructors but it was a very cold time. Believe me it really was. And we had the, we had, we were tested of course. There was written tests and twice, twice we had written tests and we had tests on the actual working of the machinery that we had to deal with. And it was a happy time but a very very cold time. Everybody was sitting in their warmest coats and put several socks on our feet, you know to keep warm and I remember that for the coldness and the food wasn’t very good there. We used to depend on the Salvation Army coming around and the other vans if we ever wanted. So after I’d passed all my exams I was hoping to get back to Grimsby but instead I was sent south. I was sent, that’s right, being with bombers I was sent down to Norfolk with the fighters. I don’t know whether you want to know about them or not because the difference was, the difference was how clever it was for whoever did it in the Ministry of the Air Force to select the man for a job. The fighters that were young men who were, you know get up and go and a bit more happy go lucky and the bombers were serious and were still happy some of them. Amazing how they could be happy in the job they had. But it was amazing how they were like family men and a lot were unfortunately and had children and that would make you even more sad when they didn’t return or were injured which so often happened. But it was very interesting how they somehow seemed to select in nine cases out of ten the right kind of man for the job. And that was more of course happy go lucky type of a station down there in Norfolk.
Interviewer: And how was it working with the Americans in Norfolk?
KR: Oh, the Americans. Oh, I was on an American station. That was after Grimsby. And they were separate even though we worked with them in this big station and that was actually in Norfolk. Not very far from Grimsby. Not Norfolk. Grimsby. And they worked separately even they had their own flying control. They used to bring down their bombers by having a plane up in the air and directing them from the air. And of course, their flights were mostly in the mornings. Daylight. They bombed by day and it was rather a sight to see them going off in the mornings you know. So many planes. Hundreds of them it seemed and they were brought down by somebody in an aircraft in the sky.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KR: Which was strange to us. And we always wondered why they had very good sentries at night on every plane that was left in the airfield. They had their separate, separate part of the airfield but like cut in half and they had their own machinery and everything. We didn’t have anything to do with them. But except if things went wrong a bit and they were worried about certain, the communication system and on the day of the, when war, the last day of the war, the last days of the war I should say their, their signals weren’t working so of course I remember this man coming around to me and getting very upset about this because it was very important. But they directed them coming, their planes from one plane up in the sky directing the landings from there. Well, of course we were still down in our office in the airfields and bringing our men down like that. But it was very interesting in that it was so, we were so separate but yet, and we didn’t ever have any functions you know for our spare time. But of course we, and we didn’t ever have their good food. They had wonderful food in but we did not have good food there and towards the end of the war it was very bad indeed. You could tell that our country was short of the necessary foods and so one of the girls whose father was a doctor said that we must put plenty of jam on our bread. You know, to get a bit of nutrition. So we did just as we were instructed and we were only too pleased to because we got so fed up of just having well yes, plain foods but it was plain too that our country was short of foods. We did have [pause] we didn’t have any of their ice cream and their luxury food. They had their, they were billeted away from the lake. We had the lake with the airmen stationed at one side of the lake and we were stationed far enough away on the other side of the lake but, and we had one dance with the, with the Americans and we didn’t even get any ice cream [laughs] which was very disappointing to us. But they on the whole it was you know you used to socialise with them but they were treated like children almost if I can put it that way. I don’t mean to be disrespectful but everything had to be reported and if, you never knew when if you made a date with them whether they would come because something else had gone wrong on the station. But on the whole the atmosphere was quite good and their uniforms were made of very I remember much better material than our boys you know [unclear] to keep them warm in the winter. But it was a wonderful sight to see them all going off in their planes. Their white planes every morning. And you’d often wish that you would have been able to be helpful in directing them because they were so busy. But so, but you could tell that at the end of the war food was not easy for us. I was with the fighters there and one night, oh it was a new station. I must remember to tell you that. We got the last station for fighters at the end of the war down there in Norfolk.
Interviewer: What was the name of the station?
KR: Pardon?
Interviewer: So what was the name of the station at Norfolk?
KR: Oh dear [pause]
Interviewer: It doesn’t matter if you can’t remember.
KR: I don’t know but it was the last one. Actually, I’m afraid I’ll have to leave you to find it.
Interviewer: That’s fine. Don’t worry.
KR: But you know, it was on this one and we had a very important man who was, who was taking it over and again I’m sorry I don’t have a remembrance of his name. But they were all fighters because we needed the fighters to escort the bombers to the last efforts of bombing Germany, capable of bombing every night and we, so but he was a very eminent man. Now, I was a highly, I was a highly trained RT operator and so I was going to get my, I was going to be made on the higher grade but instead I was posted to this new station. Me and one other girl and I must just tell you just quickly about this because they were all learners more or less and so one night they were doing circuits and bumps. That means going and flying off and just doing a few circular loops and then coming down again. There were sixteen new planes and they were all lined, lined up in front of me and I had to do the speaking and I had this girl with me. She was doing the racking and this very eminent doctor man I’m sorry I can’t give you the name, I’ve forgotten it. I didn’t write it down and you do forget over the years but, and he said to me, ‘Well, I think I’d rather do the speaking.’ And I took at that and I confess and answered the officer and I said, ‘But sir, I was trained at Cranwell. I’ve done three or four years of this work and I’m quite capable.’ So he just sat down beside me just in case [laughs] But he never said another word and I brought those sixty men in at night time, you know. Each one had to get up and then check them around and then come down and I brought them all down safely and I was very pleased with myself [laughs] But that was the first time I’d ever really taken a deep breath and thought oh gosh what does he think we’re here for. So that was, and that was then I got a scholarship so my life changed altogether because I had got a scholarship to a place in London for training for the theatre. And although I wish that I’d stayed another year or so to see how this new station got on but there we are.
Interviewer: Is there a, sorry —
KR: The only, the only, there was one tragedy when I was on duty. I don’t know. I think I should tell you about it. This was in Norfolk. Now, the bombers were disciplined but the fighters were not, I don’t know why and they used to chatter to one another when they were up in the air. And so when you were trying to get a message to them it was very difficult because of all the chattering and they were up for circuits and bumps. That meant that they were up and down you see exercising and there was twenty seven of them up that day and it was daylight. The weather good but they were busy chatting and then the call came through to me to say that there was something wrong with their engine and they wanted to come around the opposite way to land to what the whole twenty seven of them would do, you see. Instead of coming down in good order they wanted [pause] so I, because you couldn’t say anything like that with twenty seven men up. You couldn’t. You had to call to the officer sitting at a desk, sometimes not near enough to you as they should have been to ask permission. So, I had to get through all the tangle of their gossip because they were not disciplined as I say like the bombers to be quiet and only speak when it was necessary. They just chatted away. Be happy go lucky as it were. And so I had to get the message first to get permission from him for this plane to come and land the opposite way to what we were landing. I put it clear and unfortunately, they, they didn’t get my message because they couldn’t get, I couldn’t get through all the chatter that was on. Had that been bombers it would have got through and so they crashed and they were, I had to put down there were twenty six planes. I watched men die in a burning plane. When I got up I couldn’t ride my bicycle and anything, any food for a long time. It didn’t taste right. I was terribly terribly upset about it but they gave me pills and things like that and but I just felt oh dear. I can’t tell you how I felt because I, you know I just thought I tried to get back to them. I did get back to them but they didn’t get the message because of all the other pilots chattering. Not on what they were doing but joking to one another, you see. But that was the type of fighter. I suppose that was the type of fighter you really wanted. Somebody who was lighter hearted. But I couldn’t ride my bicycle when I got off duty and I couldn’t eat and everything so I asked, I asked for a posting. Nobody, I was, there was no criticism. I had done what I could so everybody was nice to me and after you know I was given a lot of vitamins and thing like that. But I thought no I would get away. So I asked for a posting and I finished the war on a station where we were dealing with, that was in Yorkshire and it was when they were fighters. So I was still with fighters. They were negotiating with them from the ground to find the enemy which was interesting. Very interesting. And so I finished the war there where you did twenty four hours and used to sleep there at night on the floor. Our only, well it was the rats. They, your sleeping bag got chewed sometimes where your feet were. The right place. But we used to do night duty sending the, we had the appliance to find where our aircraft was in the sky you see. To direct them to the bomber and where they were as well. And so I did more where the fighters again were after the enemy and it was interesting and the station [near a farm] But you were just, you did twenty four hour duties there but you did miss the station. They were just in this village twelve of us WAAFs stationed on farms. So the food was good but you missed that comradeship of the, of the other girls and the rest of the people. So I had a very interesting war.
Interviewer: I believe there is a poem that you want to share with us.
KR: Pardon?
Interviewer: Is there a poem that you’d like to share with us just before we end?
KR: Finish our —
Interviewer: So, did you want to read a poem?
KR: Oh well. I’d love to. I don’t really need to, I know it but perhaps I’d better so you can edit it. I’d better, I wrote it on the back of my book here. Have I said enough? Have I said enough?
Interviewer: No, you’re been more than welcome to read your poem if you like.
KR: Pardon?
Interviewer: You’ve been very very helpful. Absolutely.
KR: Are you sure?
Interviewer: Absolutely. Thank you very much.
KR: Is it still on?
[recording paused]
“Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-laden wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun split clouds, — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
High in the lofty silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air….
Up, up the long delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark nor even eagle flew —
And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.”
“At Cranwell in winter was a bind.
A colder place than Cranwell is very hard to find.
Why should I stand and shiver?
It’s time I used my head.
Instead of turning to a block of us,
Next Sunday I’ll stay in my bed.
My good idea turned to ashes,
Snug in bed on Sunday to find,
Two hundred WAAFs at Cranwell
Were all in this state of mind.
Two hundred WAAFs at Cranwell.
What a wonderful sight to be seen.
After two weeks of spitting and polishing
Cranwell had never been so clean.”
That’s because we had to wait outside the week before going into Sunday Service. We had to. The WAAFs had to be the last to go in of course because we were the least important. That was understandable but we were very cold. It was in the middle of winter and there was ice around us and everything but we hadn’t said we’d do this. We hadn’t said we’re not going to the service but we all must have had the same thought. So because we didn’t go to the service we were put on jankers for a fortnight.
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Title
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Interview with Kathleen (Katy) Reid
1013,1014,1015-Reid, Kathleen M
Identifier
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SHarriganD[Ser#-DoB]v22
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2012-09-30
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
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eng
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Sound
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00:52:08 audio recording
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Pending revision of OH transcription
Pending OH summary
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Dawn Oakley
This Interview was recorded by Aviation Heritage Lincolnshire.
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IBCC Digital Archive
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Description
An account of the resource
Kathleen Reid worked in reserved occupation but wanted to join the RAF as a WAAF. She was initially trained as a telephonist but remustered to flight control. Duty meant staying all night in the tower to guide flights home. Then they would be left with the grim sight of the board detailing the flights that had not returned. Her boyfriend was killed while trying to land in thick fog. After being based at RAF Grimsby she went for further training at Cranwell and was posted to a fighter station in Norfolk. Fighter discipline was different than what she was used to with bombers and on one occasion there was a tragedy when she could not communicate with a pilot in trouble because of the on-air chatter and the plane crashed.
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Contributor
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Julie Williams
control tower
ground personnel
RAF Cranwell
RAF Grimsby
training
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/222/3364/PCarrollT1601.2.jpg
6dcf778874a17c8eddc32754f15ef8a6
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/222/3364/ACarrollT160418.2.mp3
6fcf0cd59fbdbb3b017155d7d3cae483
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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Carroll, Thomas F
Thomas Carroll
Tom Carroll
T F Carroll
T Carroll
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with Thomas "Tom" Carroll (1923 - 2019, 184755 Royal Air Force).
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-03-07
2016-04-18
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Carroll, TF
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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JM: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Julian Maslin. The interviewee is Tom Carroll. The interview is taking place at Mr Carroll’s home, near Tarpoley in Cheshire, on the 18th of April, 2016. [Pause.] Tom, good morning. I wonder if you could start by telling us a little bit about your background, where you were born and brought up.
TC: Good morning to you. Yes, I was born in a place called Woodlands, Doncaster, in 1923, 5th of August 1923. It was a model village, and the king and queen came along and declared it to be so. I lived very happily there, with loving parents. My father was a miner, he came from Ballinasloe [unclear] in Ireland. And my grandfather – we all lived together in the same house at this stage – my grandfather worked down the mine when he was eight years of age. I think it’s – I’d like to say a little about him, because I asked him ‘wasn’t you frightened?’ when I was a little boy and we went walking with him around the village and so on, ‘weren’t you frightened, Grandad, at eight years of age working down the pit?’ He said ‘well I was at first.’ And I said ‘well what did you do Grandad?’ He said ‘well they put a piece of rope in my hand, and told me to pull it down, until I couldn’t pull it down any further.’ ‘And then what did you do?’ He says ‘they told me to release it.’ I discovered later on of course this was part of the fresh air that would be brought into the mine. [Pause.] He did, he did this, and I suppose – ‘were you allowed to, when you’re allowed, were you allowed [emphasis] to work down the mines?’ Well he said in those days there was a lot of poverty around, and if you got a letter, you could send a letter to the head teacher, and say that if you had a job they would allow you to go. So that’s how he worked down the mine. Grandad and I became very good friends, and on one of our little walks, he suddenly said to me ‘you know life Tommy? Life is nothing but smoke, magic and dust.’ Now I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about, but there was something about the words ‘smoke,’ ‘magic,’ and ‘dust’ that stayed in my mind until I began to write books. And then I thought, that’s a title of a, I gave to my novel ‘Smoke, Magic and Dust.’ Because, when I grew up, and had lived through the war, smoke, magic and dust made sense [emphasis] to me somehow. I’d been living a life not knowing where I was going or anything, and then, some magic came along and I realised that that was all part of it. And then Hitler, himself, became dust, towards the end of the war. And I thought to myself, really, life is smoke, magic and dust. We all I’m sure can say to ourselves at one time of our lives ‘where’s life taking us to? What is it all about?’ And then we experience some magic, perhaps we fall in love and get married, and that’s magic. But at the end of it all, of course, it all comes to an end in dust. Anyway, that’s how I came to write a novel later on, I’ll talk about that later on. But, everything was happy. We were living a simple life, walking out with my friends, and everything was farmland around the village. We would walk out, bluebells gathering, nuts we got from the trees in the little woods around the place, and then, we, when we were a little older, life began to change [emphasis]. Because of this man called Hitler, and what he was doing, and how he’d invaded this country, and yet another one, and by this time, my mother and father were getting very concerned, because my mother had lots of brothers who’d been in, not only in World War One, but Uncle Bernard had been in the Boer War as well [emphasis], and I remember sitting at his feet at our house and listening to his stories about the Boer War. One of them I’ll mention. At night time, they used to throw barbed wire entanglement around the troops because the Boers would perhaps attack them, and so they hung metal tin cans to the barbed wire which would sound an alarm if they were attacked, and they stacked the rifles ready just in case. And they were attacked, or at least they thought they were one night, the cans rattled on the fence, everybody leapt up, grabbed a rifle and began shooting in the direction of where the noise came from. And everything went quiet, and in the morning, when dawn broke, they found out what had happened. The mule that carried the water for them had somehow stumbled into the fence, and now it was dead, shot dead. But, later on in life I realised what these camps, prison camps were like. When the Jews were later imprisoned in camps. But at that stage, [shuffling] we just [unclear] going from there. [Beep.]
JM: Tom, could you tell us what it was that lead to your enlisting in the Royal Air Force?
TC: Yes. When I was, when I was fifteen and a half, I left school. I learnt to do shorthand and typing, and I thought it would be jolly nice if I could become a newspaper reporter. But, I didn’t. I became, at that early age [chuckles] an assistant cashier for an inter, an international company. Erm, the erm, I’m just trying to think – [Beep.]
TC: I was working for this international mining company, and the war had started, of course, and we were all speculating, young people working there, what would we do when our time came to join up. Immediately I wanted to join the Air Force. The prospect of flying was far more interesting to me than firing at people from a trench [emphasis]. So I must confess, it was excitement of the prospect of flying in aeroplanes that I thought of. And, it sounded much cleaner and scientific and everything else. That’s why I wanted to join the Air Force. And, when I went to be interviewed, by the authorities when I approached them I was eighteen years of age, they rather talked – I wanted to be a pilot, but they said ‘we’ve got a better job for you in the Air Force than being a pilot,’ I said ‘oh, how’d’ya work that out?’ They said ‘well you sit next to the pilot, you won’t be called the pilot, you’d be called a flight engineer, but you’ll be able to take part in operating this aeroplane, and you’ll be an engineer as well [emphasis]. So, that’s a very important role.’ So I said, ‘jolly good, I’ll do that.’ Up till then, the only thing I could do was mend punctures on a bicycle. But they said ‘don’t worry about that, you’ll be trained.’ So in due course of course I was called up, and I was trained at, I remember going to [pause] to, I think it was, it was, I think it was Mablethorpe I think it was, were we did our ground training. Drill and all that sort of thing. And this was where I met a guy called Ken Cameron, who became a friend of mine, a wartime [emphasis] of mine. Dear Ken was killed in the Air Force later on, but we were in it together. Everything [emphasis] we did together, Ken and I, Ken Cameron. He came from Scotland, he came from, he lived in Scotland, and [pause] we were at a dance I remember, at Mablethorpe, it was a very hot day, and we had the ice cream man outside. So we went downstairs to buy an ice cream, and ran slap bang into the arms of a, Warrant Officer Bloomfield, a flight sergeant, a sergeant and a corporal. Well, the outcome of all of that was the warrant officers taking the name of flight sergeant, taking the names of the flight sergeant, taking the names of sergeant, and the corporal, and took our names, and we were marched in and put on jankers for a week, scrubbing pans and all the rest of it. And Ken and I were also having to march up and down and round with a log held on one shoulder each, [unclear]. Anyway, it was a very interesting period. And eventually we went down on the first course of training, which was to be [pause, beep].
TC: So, after the misery [emphasis] of scrubbing all the pans clean, then it became the business of getting us prepared us for flying. And we, we did a course down at RAF Locking, in Holton, and then onto the actual course itself, down at South Wales, at, erm –
JM: [Whispers] St Athan. [Louder] St Athan.
TC: Holton.
Other: St Athan.
JM: St Athan.
TC: St Athan, rather. At St Athans. Erm, [pause] I must say this about the training, if I may. The training in the Royal Air Force, and all the other services I guess, must be the best training in the world, because if you didn’t understand a certain thing, they stayed with you until you did understand it. And in the end, of course, came the day when passed out, and we were sewed on our sergeants wings. That was tremendous. Tremendous. After that we were given some leave, and Ken Cameron, my friend I mentioned earlier on, instead of going all the way up north to Scotland in those forty-eight hours, he came home to Yorkshire with me, and spent a weekend at our house. That was tremendous. And our friendship blossomed [?]. We went back to, we trained then, as, with a crew – we had to be crewed up then. And we went to a place in Yorkshire called Lindholme, and I remember entering this room – how we even saw [emphasis] one another I don’t know. It was absolutely filled with smoke, everybody was smoking their cigarettes, and I was smoking too. But this guy came in, this officer came in, and said he would leave it to us to get crewed up. There were pilots in the room milling around, with air gunners and navigators, and they were all looking for a flight engineer to finish the, to finish the crew off. And a pilot came to me and said ‘would you like to be flight engineer in my crew?’ And I said ‘yes.’ I joined with them and it was terrific, that we were allowed to choose to fly with the people we wanted, we felt we wanted to fly with. So, I said ‘who’s that guy then?’ And someone says ‘oh it must have been a shrink’ [chuckles]. But it was very clever, I think, to be left to choose our own friends to work with. So, that’s how I became part of a Lancaster crew.
JM: What did you think of the Lancaster as an aeroplane to fly in?
TC: Well, we originally trained on a – it was a Halifax, which I thought was a very good aircraft. And then, halfway through the course on the Halifax, we were told we were going to fly Lancasters. And I thought the Lancaster was absolutely terrific [emphasis]. I was so interested, I knew every [emphasis] nut and bolt in that aircraft. I really, I really did. In fact, that’s how I gained my commission through knowledge of the Lancaster. I remember, we were posted then from this place to 100 Squadron at Waltham, and I remember the name of the group captain, Group Captain Newbiggin, and Wing Commander Patterson was the wing commander, I remember them both, and after – it’s very interesting to recall how, what happened when we arrived on the squadron. The [unclear] said ‘you go and see the [unclear – maybe wing commander] now boys,’ he said ‘you give us a buzz and you can go in and see him.’ Okay, we waited for the buzz, and eventually the buzz came, and we marched into his room and saluted. But to our surprise he wasn’t sitting down there to welcome us, he was lying flat out on a long table, and he was wearing, on this hot day, it’s true, he was wearing his overcoat [emphasis]. Somebody said to me, whisper, ‘he’s flak happy.’ Flak happy? [emphasis]. So he said – he told us he was going to take us on our first trip – second dicky. And we duly left. And the [unclear] saw us coming out with these long faces. Second dicky was – he was suffering from, obviously, flak happy, he laughed, he said ‘he’s not flak happy at all,’ he said ‘the reason he’s lying on that table is occasionally because he had a crash landing after doing so many ops, it’s affected his back and he has to lie on his back for a while,’ and the reason he was wearing that overcoat, he says ‘it’s just arrived this morning for him, and he was trying it on when his back went’ [JM laughs] ‘so he really is very, very good.’ And he says ‘the last time you’ll see Wing Commander Patterson flying around on his bicycle,’ and truly that did happen. But nevertheless, after a period of small cross countries to check out our navigator, who incidentally was a Canadian, we were declared fit to go. I was very happy with my pilot – I remember my first time we did a most wonderful landing together in training. The way that he looked at me and I looked at him, it was smashing, it was. So we went on our first op. I just can’t remember what [unclear]. Anyway, it was, it was somewhere in France I think, just my memory, and I remember the wing commander was flying in my skipper’s seat, he was sitting next to me. My skipper was sitting in my [emphasis] seat next to the wing commander, and I was sitting on a little rumple [?] seat at the side. Anyway, I reminded him at twelve thousand feet that he had to put oxygen on, so we all did oxygen, and everyone said yes they were receiving their oxygen, and as we approached France I saw, it was like kiddie’s sparklers, up in the air, and the wing commander says ‘don’t worry about that, light flak is, is, only goes up about twelve thousand feet, don’t worry about it.’ So we didn’t worry about it, and he said ‘I’ll explain what the heavy flak looks like when we get there.’ And, on we went. And suddenly, a searchlight came on, and began, and swept towards us, and he said ‘now, if a searchlight comes on like that to us, you have to do a corkscrew,’ and he described what to do, and he said ‘this is what we do,’ he says ‘you dive through [emphasis] it, you don’t run away from it, you dive through it.’ And then he had difficulty finding it again, well we dove through it, and the searchlight went out, it must have been faulty or something, but anyway we got the idea that you did a corkscrew through an aircraft beam, and you dived through it not away from it. So we thought that was very good training, I was very pleased with Wing Commander Patterson, by then. ‘Cause what we’d done, we’d called him Harpic, you know [JM laughs], clean round the bend [both laugh]. His nickname was Harpic as far as we were concerned, and he never, never escaped that name, but he was known with affection from now on as Harpic. Eventually, we saw what he’d been talking about, this heavy flak, I was rather frightened I must say, because the heavy flak, it lit up the sky with a flash as big as a motorbus. A fla – but out of it you can see big black pieces flying out of it, so we said ‘that’s heavy flak.’ Yeah. Well we had to keep on, with flying [?] and we got to approach the target with the heavy flak pounding away. I didn’t see any aircraft actually getting hit that night, but I thought, as bombs went, you know, I heard ‘bombs away,’ my foot [foot shuffles on the floor] felt peculiar [emphasis]. It had been hit up and down, I thought ‘God, I’ve been hit already,’ first trip! I didn’t tell anybody, I took off my flying glove, I put my hand down my flying boot and stocking, and tasted my hand to see if it was blood. Nothing there. And it wasn’t till a moment or two later, I thought ‘I know what it is.’ I’d been standing on a bomb slip cover. A bomb slip cover is a small piece of metal with a clip that you could pull out with your hand in case the bomb wasn’t released mechanically, you could release it by hand, and this had rattled of course under my foot when bombs were released. So I never told anyone about that, I kept that to myself. Then, on, on our – we landed back safely of course, and we were debriefed, and after briefing we went back to our place, and we were all sergeants at that stage apart from Jack Slater, the Canadian, ex-mounted [?] policeman, a bomb aimer, Goody navigator, a Canadian, he was an officer, pilot or flying officer – both, they were both flying officers, and our pilot, he was a flying officer as well. So our mid upper gunner was a chap called Robinson, and when I say we called him Robbo, we did, because he was a Czecho-Slovakian Jew I think, we could, nobody, nobody knew exactly where he came from, but he was a fantastic gunner, and we put up with him because of that really, although he couldn’t speak. We said ‘why [emphasis] Robbo, did you call yourself Robinson?’ He says ‘well, if we were shot down,’ he says,’ I give ‘em my name, rank and number, my name’s Robinson,’ he said ‘they’d think I was an Englishman.’ [Chuckles.] A Britain, oh dear, oh dear. Anyway, that was Robbie. But he had a little grammar phone, did Robbie, that he carried about with him, and in this Nissan hut where we were sleeping, it was a thin walled hut, made of metal, thin metal war hut, and you could hear the rats moving around in these thin walls, and Robbie and, erm, well he didn’t sleep very well to begin with bemuse, well we were still thinking about the trip, but eventually we, everybody fell asleep except Robbie, who got out, took out his little grammar phone and sat beside the stove in the, the stove in the middle of the room, and began to play records. ‘Shoo Shoo Baby’ was one of them, and what was the other one now, ‘Shoo Shoo Baby’ and [unclear], and another one, ‘Let’s Take the ‘A’ Train.’ And as the ‘A’ train went faster and faster I have to say it inspired the rats [emphasis] to move faster and faster [laughter] it’s amazing really, its true. The rats seemed to wake up and run faster as the ‘A’ Train was playing. Eventually Robbie got tired too, went to bed and fell asleep. I don’t know how long we’d been sleeping, but we were awake at – I woke up, I could hear somebody moving about the room very quietly – this is true – and what it was, there were people coming in, and there was one crew who hadn’t come back, and what they were doing, they were cleaning the bed spaces out from that and making it ready for the crew who were coming in the next day [emphasis] to take their place. So, that made me think, I’ll tell you, because I never ever [emphasis] thought I would die. I was – and all the young people I’m sure who flew, thought the same as me, they were too young to die. And so I was never really frightened very much. I always thought I’d get out of it. But anyway, we did a couple more ops, and by that time, we were legendary [chuckles]. We were the people who’d done three operations, and Group Captain Newbiggin, the group captain said to my pilot ‘do you mind if I borrow Sergeant Carroll and the wireless operator? I got so many hours to do every month to keep in touch, and I’d like to borrow them.’ So, the pilot couldn’t refuse the groupie [chuckles]. So off we went, and he was a nice, he was a lovely station commander [cough, followed by beep]. Group Captain Newbiggin was a, was a marvellous fellow really, I thought he was terrific, and we did about an hours’ training together, and we came back alright, and we said ‘we’ll have to do that again.’ And I thought ‘yes, if we’re not, [laughs] if we’re still here.’ At least, that’s what Mitch said to me, ‘that’s if we’re still alive.’ But we didn’t mean it seriously, we thought we’d go on forever. Anyway, I went up with him this next time, and we’d been flying around doing all sorts of [uclear] flying and all the rest of it, flying one-three [?] and all the rest of it, and then I noticed that our air pressure was going down, very rapidly [emphasis]. ‘Oh.’ He said ‘what’s wrong, Sergeant Carroll?’ I said ‘there’s something wrong, sir, our air pressure’s going down, we’ve got to do something about it because we’ll go off the runway be – we can’t land without any air pressure.’ He says, ‘can you do anything about it?’ I said ‘if I find where it is that, I can repair it.’ I was confident I could fix it. So I thought ‘I’ll check, I’ll check it first of all on the source,’ so I swung down into the bomb aimer’s compartment, and in the bomb aimer’s compartment on the port side was a container for compressed air, and I could hear, even with a flying helmet on, I could hear it’s ‘ssss,’ ‘ssss.’ The noise coming out, escaping. And it was, there was a loose connection on the pipe as it turned into a curve. A little gland had become adrift. So I did as all good flight engineers would do, I took out the chewing gum from out my mouth, stuck it round, I got some binding tape out of my bag, wound it round and that was a job done [emphasis]. So I got back again into my seat, he says ‘that was quick work, what was it?’ And I told him, he says ‘well that’s a story I can tell the wing commander flying tonight.’ And it was a short while after that I became a flying officer [laughter]. And, or I’m pretty sure it was because of the chewing gum and this tape.
JM: Would I be right in thinking it would have been quite unusual to have a commissioned flight engineer?
TC: Oh it was, yes. I was, I didn’t know any.
JM: No, I’ve never heard of any others.
TC: No, I was. There were others though, of course. But, later on in the war there were quite a few. But I was probably one of the first, I think. So [pause], oh there was Mitch, the wireless op who had been with me, he spread it about he said, ‘if it hadn’t have been for Tom,’ he said ‘we wouldn’t have been here today, we would have been off the end of the runway.’ So he said ‘we’re gonna take him out tonight, and we’re going on the razzle.’ And it coincided that – there had been a clampdown, and it coincided with a very special girl appearing on the stage. And she was the girl who appeared in all the new, in one of the newspapers, of Daily Mirror fame. Jane.
JM: Jane.
TC: And she was there at this theatre [emphasis] in Grimsby. Well, we all got there after several – I must say, I think we were a bit sloshed, and they came on the stage, she came on the stage, and of course the spotlight fell on us because we were in uniform, she’s, she said she wanted someone to help her, and of course the crew grabbed me, threw me onto the stage [laughs] and I was, I had to do a high kicks competition together with the rest of these, along with these little legged girls. And I with my short fat legs couldn’t kick very high. But nevertheless she gave me a huge big kiss afterwards as a reward, and it was a big greasy patent [?] kiss [JM laughs]. My lips and everywhere were smudged red. I got back to my seat and I began to wipe my face with a handkerchief, and the crew said ‘don’t you dare throw that away’ [JM laughs], you see. And the flight engineer was always the last one to get onto the aircraft. He got the final checks to do before takeoff. So the bomb aimer got on first, wouldn’t go up the steps until he’d kissed the handkerchief belonging to Jane. And that became the ritual, the whole of our trips. First he did it to Bill the pilot, then the navigator, then the wireless operator, mid upper gunner, then there was Mitch, the rear gunner. They all kissed this, we wouldn’t do anything – it’s crazy [emphasis] I know [JM laughs] –
JM: Not at all. A little.
TC: But that’s what kept people going during the war, these crazy things. So that was that –
JM: That –
TC: I don’t know what happened to that handkerchief in the end. But somehow it disappeared. I don’t know where it went, but it was, sometime after the war I think, sometime [chuckles].
JM: By now you’re operating in the summer of 1944 and it’s about the time of D-Day.
TC: Oh –
JM: Could you, could you tell us a little bit about –
TC: Yes.
JM: Your experiences of operating around D-Day?
TC: Yes. Well there were two things really. What we were really, we were a bit afraid of was the Ruhr. The Ruhr, we called it Happy Valley because there were fighters waiting for you before you went in, fighters waiting when you went out and on either side of the Ruhr there was big eighty-eight millimetre guns, and we were told on this occasion, oh we knew it was the Ruhr again, ‘don’t worry boys, we’ve got a crew going up the side of the coast dropping window. The night fighters will be there, and by the time they find it’s a ruse, they’ll be short of fuel and they’ll need to go back again, so you’ll be okay.’ Not on, somebody must have told the Germans about it, and I saw more aircraft shot down that night – there must have been about twelve [emphasis] I think I saw, and what, what was happening was, they were waiting for us approaching the Ruhr, what they couldn’t shoot down they somehow – well we had to get into the Ruhr to go – shepherd us, it was like shepherding us into a pen. And we went on like this, and we were supposed to be radio silenced of course, from the crew, but honestly this is true, a little voice spoke up, and it was of a Lancashire or Yorkshire voice I couldn’t tell, and it says ‘please God, let me get back from this one, and I’ll be good to Ethel.’ That, well, we don’t know who it was, we don’t know who Ethel was, and we don’t know whether, if he got back to be good to her or not, but that’s what I remember of that one. I remember some very, very brave things too. But, let me tell you about a couple of things then I’ll get onto D-Day. There was one time we were flying, and I remember Wing Commander Patterson telling us about doing a corkscrew through the, through the searchlights, and on this occasion, a searchlight took a lucky strike on an aircraft. We were at twenty-thousand feet, this must have been a bit higher, and it fell flat on this Lanc, illuminated this Lancaster, seven people in it, they knew all about diving this way and that way and corkscrewing, but it was like slow-motion [emphasis] in this searchlight, and then climbing up this beam, was MU109, and just, it got so far, you could see it, and just like a kid’s sparkle came from it, and the next thing was, the poor old Lanc blew up, never to be seen, a dark [emphasis] space where it had been, seven people in a Lancaster had been, and that was the end of that. That really did make us think, that one. And the other one that I remember vividly, was we hadn’t got H2SR, radar in our aeroplane at the time, and the MCs, Master of Ceremonies, were marvellous people, they were like commenting on a cricket match. ‘Right-o chaps, that’s bang on, lovely, now, instead of bombing the reds, bomb the greens, bomb the greens [emphasis], lovely, spot on.’ And off they went. And these people were fantastic in the, when they were marking a target, they were so brave [emphasis], I thought. This Lancaster, it was a Lancaster, because I heard him afterwards bailing his crew out, they were flying about twelve-thousand feet, they were shot at from every direction, and they were hit, and he bailed out his crew, and the engineer went last out of it, [unclear] was going out of it, but he was still talking when the plane blew up. And the deputy then came in and he [emphasis] then started talking just as though the other chap had been there. Yeah I’ve never ever experienced such bravery as I’ve seen in the Air Force. People just ignoring death completely. It was, it was, things I could never forget it, never ever forget it. So, that was that. And I’m going to explain about D-Day. It was decided that the thing to do, we’d been bombing all the railway tracks, marshalling yards, all that sort of thing, and we’re doing this on this particular occasion. And we seemed to be getting no flak hardly, no night-fighters, it was dead easy [emphasis]. Anyway, amazing, ‘keep a good look out for something, something’s going to happen.’ So we headed back home and then we were looking down into the early hours of the morning, I saw a number of ships, I’ve never seen so many ships in my life. They were, it was, you know, it was D-Day I was witnessing, fantastic. And off we went, and we were told at debriefing that was what it was. The other thing I remember about flying are the V-Bombs, you know, and we could see our fighters fling past us, to go and shoot down these [unclear]. Fantastic, well just before, just towards the end of the war, of course, you’ll remember the [pause], Holland was flooded. The dykes had been opened, and the poor people were flooded up to the rooftops, practically. And the RAF Bomber Command was asked if we could help. And 100 Squadron was taking part in, it was called Operation Manna. Oh off we went, I’d been twice, and we flew, we seemed to be just grazing the rooftops, dropping parcels of food and water, and children no older I would say than eight or nine, they were running along the rooftops like cats [emphasis] catching these, and having fun and catching these things before they could fall, drift into the water. And I remember the bomb aimer Jack Slater saying to me, he says ‘one thing Tom,’ he says ‘it’s far better dropping food and water than dropping bombs isn’t it?’ And I had to agree. And I thought about that when I was with him a short while afterwards. The war was over, and we were doing a three day trip to Germany to see the extent of damage. We didn’t want to go really, but somehow or another we had drawn lots or something and we had to go. And, it was, we were staying – we landed at Gatto [?] airport, we were duly met by a German chauffeur who drove us to, I think it was a Yugoslav Embassy really –
JM: This was in Berlin?
TC: In Berlin. And it was a magnificent, I had never been in such an opulent place. It was wonderful [emphasis]. And the food, drink, everything, fantastic. There was even someone there who looked and sang like Lili Marleen, woman who sang like Lili Marleen. And there was a member, there was an army officer there, I knew, I got to know him, he was a French Canadian I think, and he was sitting at a table, there were no other girls there, and we were all young and wanted to dance to the little orchestra that was there, and he was sitting with about eight most beautiful [emphasis] looking girls, they were all French or, different nationalities, they were all in opposite uniforms, but they were all beautiful. So Jack said to me and Goody, ‘you’re, you’re a good dancer Tommy. Go and ask him, ask him if he can, if we can dance with the girls.’ So I had a couple more drinks and I ventured over to him, and I said ‘excuse me sir, do you mind if I danced with one of your retinue’ or something, he said ‘yes,’ he looked at me, he was about six-foot-seven I think, a big heavy looking fella, and he said ‘but you will bring her straight back won’t you?’ That, it was the way he looked at me frightened me to death [laughter from TC and JM]. More than all the trips I ever done [laugher]. Yeah, so I danced with this girl, and I do declare that I, that the space between my hips and her hips was about three foot [laughter]. I was dancing away from her. All I, and she said to me, ‘excuse me,’ she says ‘but have you been wounded?’ [Laughter] in a French voice. I took her back, and he said, he told me to sit next to him, and I did, I couldn’t really stop it and he had, I never tasted brandy before. And he had this big goblet there and he topped it up with brandy, and he drank that. He kept me there talking, took me nearly, told me what he was going to do, he said he’d make sure that Berlin was alright and turned around,’ and I thought ‘I bet he does too.’ [Laughter.] He was so fierce, I thought ‘it’s bound to do what he wants.’ And that was, the first night |I think we’d stayed there. And on the second day Jack Slater and I decided to go down to the Birches [?] Garden, to try and see the Reichstag rather because that’s where the Germans were going with their valuables to try and get the new currency to try and buy food with. So Jack and I went along there with our packed lunches, and on the way we saw this girl, she had a baby in her arms, and she was so young looking and frail, and she indicated she was hungry. Jack and I promptly gave her our sandwiches for which she thanked us profusely, and then I remembered I had a tuppence-ha’penny bar of Fry’s chocolate in my pocket, which I took out and gave to her, and she give a bit to her baby, and I’ll never ever [emphasis] forget the look in that baby’s eyes, when it reached out for more. And I vowed [emphasis] at that time to myself ‘I’m never going to talk about war or have anything else to do with war after this lot, not now,’ not after seeing what happened in Germany, you know, what war had done. And I never did. I didn’t register with 100 Squadron, or 626 after this, or anything, I kept quiet, until I think we were talking about the war memorial in London.
JM: The Bomber Command memorial?
TC: Yes. And the Dutch had already done it for the, for us, but Winston Churchill or nobody else had ever done it for Bomber Command, which, that didn’t suit me at all. But anyway, the Gibbs brothers were very important, gave a lot of money towards it. And we went there, to the war memorial in London, and in fact I wrote an article about it which I sent to a colleague of yours about it, but on the way away Joyce was wheeling me in a wheelchair at the time, and one of the WAF officers said ‘oh, you mustn’t do that Mrs Carroll, plenty of big strong men here who can do that for you.’ And this fellow, he was about six foot odd, tall, and he had more medals than most of the RAF people there had on, and that’s because, although he hadn’t been flying, he’d been to Afghanistan I think three times, or was it six, I forget. And, as he wheeled me away, we stopped under a tree because it was very hot to get a bit of fresh air, and he says ‘my father was in the Air Force, you know, Flight [unclear] Carroll,’ I says ‘was he?’ ‘Yes, he was in Bomber Command.’ ‘Oh, what squadron was he on, do you know?’ ‘Yes, he was on 100 Squadron.’ Well, I says ‘really?’ And he pulled his bit of paper out of his pocket, and on the four, was it the fourteenth of March I think it was in 1944, he says he’d been on an operation, and Joyce, my wife, she pulled my operation book out of her handbag, and on the same date, we’d flown in different aircraft of course, to the same target. Well, he asked if he could take a photograph of me, and I strongly maintain, I know that the photograph he took, who he saw, was not me, it was his father. And he cried, we all cried didn’t we? Anyway, that was, that was the end of the war memorial there, and then I said that I wasn’t going to do anymore towards the Air Force or the RAF ever again. But, I thought later on, something at home happened –
Other: It’s okay – [beep]
TC: And then we came out, change of squadron. My partner [?] became squadron leader attached to 626 Squadron, Wickenby. We didn’t fly many operations there, we went, before war began, close to the end. I remember we went to Ludwigshafen, that was the twenty-fifth op that we did was Ludwigshafen, and we went to Dortmund in February, February of forty-five, [pause, shuffling papers]. And Cologne, we were at Cologne from 626, and then it, towards the end of the war, it became, the Dutch requested, they said the dykes had been opened, the rooftops were almost reached by floodwaters and would the RAF help. So we dropped, we went on the third of May 1945, we went to drop food in Holland. And again on the, I forget, it’s the second and third we went there dropped food for Holland. And I remember, we were flying over the rooftops, almost skimming the rooftops, and the kids were on the rooftops like cats [emphasis], just between the ages of say five and eight years of age, trying to grab the things before they landed in the water. Tremendous. And Jack, the granddaddy of the crew saying to me, ‘it’s far better dropping food and water than dropping bombs Tommy.’ And I had to agree with that.
JM: Did you take part in the operations to bring back the prisoners of war? Operation Exodus?
TC: Never brought – no, we didn’t take part in that, no. It’s after that, after we’d finished the operations, 626, the next thing I remember is being trained – what would it be after that? Oh no, yes, after we’d, the war ended, all I remember is everybody leaving and going to various homesteads. The Canadian people went back to Canada, Bill, he went back to Wales, still playing rugby [chuckles], breaking more bones I would have thought. I went – what happened to me? Eventually I went up to be trained as, I retrained as an air traffic control officer in the Air Force. And I was sent up to Scottish Command. That was a very interesting situation. All I remember was that we were responsible in the RAF for any, for the safety of aircraft, [unclear] air traffic control centre, Prestwick. We were responsible for the safety of all aircraft, military, civil, up to ten degrees west. Any other distance further west than that, that was the responsibility of America. And I remember, this particular room we had, we had our set up, it was fascinating really. It was about the size of this living room, and the wall I am facing now wasn’t a plaster wall, it was etched in glass. And on that glass was etched every airway and RAF station, main master airfields that we had, such as Kinross, Lochenrouse [?] and Leuchars and so on. And they had special equipment at these airfields, they had long runways to begin with, that was important. But they had a piece of equipment, that if an aircraft called ‘mayday’, or any other emergency, a light would shoot out, and it would emit a signal, would make a light shoot out on this etched glass board we’d got, and where the aircraft was deemed to be was where the light crossed in the cocked hat [?]. So there I was on this Saturday morning, sitting at my desk in charge of everything, on a Saturday, everything quiet, everything – nobody flew in the RAF on a Saturday in those days. And I was reading the Scotsman, feet up on the table, reading the Scotsman, having my coffee, I’d checked all around, the master airfield, everything fine, nothing to worry about. ‘Pan, pan, pan.’ This is so-and-so-so-and-so. I’ve got a flame out. I’m at thirty-thousand feet, heading from Abbotsinch up to Lossiemouth.’ Splash, coffee flew all over the place. I switched on what we called a gun in front of me, as a light shot out from, to form this cross up on the board. And what I’d got – we called it a gun but it flashed on there three hundred and sixty degrees of the compass on the board, which I could get a bearing on either transmitting into a course to steer, or they’d ring you showing distances, separating each wing with their [unclear]. So I was able to flash this gun onto the cocked hat [?], and see that this aircraft was in fact thirty miles from Leuchars, and he said, he was plunging down like a stone, it was no, it was a youthful voice, and I’m over forty of course by this time, experienced, he thinks ‘if I just get in touch with air traffic control, they’ll tell me what to do and I’ll be safe’ [emphasis]. He didn’t realise these things could go wrong. So ‘pan, pan, pan,’ so I get back to him, I forget his call sign, I said ‘you’re thirty miles east of, west of Leuchars. Turn right on the heading of zero-nine-zero,’ and he did that, and I knew the runway of course zero-nine-two-seven, main runway, and I pressed a switch on the controller at Leuchars came on, ‘what is it Tom?’ I said ‘I’ve got one for you, a flame out,’ he said ‘oh crikey.’ He says ‘I’ve put people on painting the runway.’ I says ‘well you get them off, quickly else because he’s got a flame out and he’s gonna,’ – ‘hang onto him if you can.’ So ‘I’ll hang onto him as long as I can’ I said, and of course the lower the poor chap got, the less these lights shone out from these respective airfields, until the end of it the only light I’d got on was the one from Leuchars. And as he approached Leuchars of course, he’s now getting low, he’s twenty-thousand feet descending, less than that, and then the light at Leuchars began to twiddle and, oh. I knew it was hoped, he was over the top of Leuchars by this time. So I maintained his heading out onto zero-nine-zero, timed him for a few seconds, turned inbound [?] two-seven-zero, and he broke cloud at seven thousand feet and saw runway straight ahead, he said [emphasis, JM laughs]. And the controller came in at that point and said ‘runway clear Tom.’ I said ‘well, he’s just landing now.’ That little chap phoned, he phoned back to thank me afterwards, but little did he know what a close shave he’d had. And I remembered a similar thing in Germany, I was doing air traffic control in Germany, and I was at Gutersloh, which happened to be Herman Goering’s airfield [emphasis], and you’ve never seen anything like that airfield. Perfect. No running around bits and pieces there boy, fifteen hundred weights and things like that, all by railway. Bomb dump [?], fuel, everything [emphasis] by rail. And I was sitting in the control, doing approach control on this particular occasion, with a CRDF tube in front of me, you know what I’m saying don’t you?
JM: I did, yes. Say it, would you say it for the, for the recording?
TC: Yes, yes. CRDF tube it’s – whenever an aircraft speaks to me on the frequency that we’re on, a light will shoot out from the CRDF tube and it will point to, and I can get either a steer for it to come to our airfield, or I can tell him where it is, where it is on the tube. Whereabouts it is. So that’s a CRDF tube, I hope I’ve explained that alright.
JM: You have. All these experiences that you’ve had as an air controller were after the war?
TC: Yes. Yes, this, this was after the war. But the RAF was strong, was very strong in Germany at this time because the Cold War on [?] with Russia. Anyway, there’d been a clampdown on at, I forget what squadron it was, but they’d been operating fighters from there. We were opping Canberras from where I was, there were Canberras. They took part in Suez, the Canberras from [unclear] airfield. I mean I could go on for hours about what happened there. But anyway, what happened was they diverted, I think it was eighteen, or was it twenty-four aircraft, to Gutersloh, where I was sitting in the chair there, and that was the most fantastic job. The people in a caravan at the end of the runway at that stage could talk them down, but it’s a longer job. You had to be really smart and quick to get people down in a hurry. So, it, I was absolutely thrilled by this opportunity to get them down. It was, I forget what it was, there was a green flight, a red flight and whatsoever [?], so many aircraft in each [unclear] stacked up, all above one another all coming in. And I took one after the other, one squadron after, one flight after another to bring them in. And I brought them in over, overhead [?] turned them out [?] parked them in [?], smack down the middle of the runway, then the second lot did the same. And of course, while you got this sort of thing going on, you’ve got the group captain to wing commander flying, all the, all the high persons [?] there, and of course I was congratulated afterwards by everybody. That was a tremendous thrill.
JM: That’s a, that’s remarkable. But I know that there’s another remarkable element to your career, which is that you’re now an author, writing about your experiences. Could you tell us a little bit about that please?
TC: Well, yes. I, I used to tell my grandchildren stories at night. I used to go, if I was babysitting with my wife, I would go and take, lie on the bed next to them, falling asleep myself [laughing] and make up a story to tell them. And they were so impressed by these stories, that in the end they said ‘Grandad, why don’t you write them down?’ And of course I did, and I wrote a story about wizards first, ‘The Angry Witch,’ ‘Witch’s Revenge,’ and ‘Witches on the Run.’ And they were the first three, and the next one I wrote about was ‘Somebody’s Kidnapped Santa.’ And the last one I wrote about is a solar powered dog, and that’s waiting for, I’m doing a sequel to that one, and I’ve got to do a sequel to another [emphasis] one I’ve wrote as well, which is ‘Smoke, Magic and Dust.’ Now ‘Smoke, Magic and Dust’ means something to me. I was out with my granddad, I mentioned him earlier on, and he said to me, on one of our walks, that life was only smoke, magic and dust. I was too young to understand what he meant by that, but the words ‘smoke, magic and dust’ remain with me, and always will remain with me.
JM: And that book is about your RAF service in part?
TC: Part. In, in book two it’s, yes. It leads up to the part where I joined the Royal Air Force. And everything in it, about the flying, training and the operations are all true, absolutely true. The only thing that’s slightly different is I’ve had to change the names slightly, about Jack Slater and Goody because, well, they did certain things and it’s better that they were private. So, some of the things I wrote about them aren’t true. Everything else is true, except when I went to college, there was a German girl that came to visit us at this college, this is true, and she spoke about Hitler and Germany and all the rest of it, she was a beautiful girl too, I fell in love with her, I was fifteen, and I wondered how on earth I was going to get her to talk to me. And I knew that if I could, and she was staying over Christmas, she would come to the Christmas Dance at the college, we always had one. So I thought, ‘well I wonder how I’m going’ – and then I remembered the Hitler planes, and the other fascist planes that had bombed Guernica. So I said to her ‘what did you think about Guernica?’ And the teacher at that time, he was called, he was called – he was a nice guy, but he was, he was annoyed with me. He said ‘you mustn’t ask questions like that Carroll. I’m surprised at you.’ Because, she didn’t answer. I knew she is [unclear] at home, and it turned out, so I kept quiet. But I knew she looked at me and she knew what I’d said about Guernica, and it came out that she was going to serve at Christmas and come to our dance, and she did come to the dance, and I got her to dance with me. All the boys were lined up one side of the gym, and all the girls along the other, and the teachers I know were putting bets on who would move with her [?]. And they said ‘well nobody will move,’ so I thought ‘well I’ll move,’ when they said, and they told us what to say, ‘please may I have the next dance with you?’ [Laughs] Joyce, my wife will tell you about that later. But, so I went, I broke ranks walked over, and said ‘please may I have this next dance with you?’ So we danced together. And we became quite friendly all the time she was there. But when, then when it was over she went back to Germany, and that was the end of that. But in the book, I kept her in my book that we kept in contact with one another, and, she came back on a further holiday and became more than friends. And so, during the war I never mentioned this to the crew. But in the book, I’m so concerned about ‘are we bombing her?’ Wondering if she’s alright and what will, what will happen to her. But you’ll, it’s all mentioned in the book.
JM: Tom, thank you very much. I think that would be a very appropriate place to finish the recording. Tom Carroll, thank you so much for sharing with us all your memories so clearly, so vividly, it’s been a very, very interesting interview. Thank you.
TC: Thank you.
JM: Wow.
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ACarrollT160418
PCarrollT1601
Title
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Interview with Thomas Carroll
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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01:14:31 audio recording
Creator
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Julian Maslin
Date
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2016-04-18
Description
An account of the resource
Tom joined the Royal Air Force as a flight engineer. He did his ground training at Mablethorpe, followed be a course at RAF Locking and RAF St. Athan. Tom speaks highly of the training he received. He went to RAF Lindholme where they crewed up as part of a Lancaster crew, although they originally started on Halifaxes.
Tom was posted to 100 Squadron at RAF Grimsby. He pays tribute to the wing commander and group captain. The former taught them to corkscrew and dive through a searchlight, reassuring them about flak. Shortly after sorting out a problem with the air pressure, Tom became a flying officer. He recounts the crew’s ritual on each flight with a lucky handkerchief.
Tom explains how they were anxious about the Ruhr and how they observed a Lancaster shot down by a Me 109. He also describes the bravery he witnessed. Tom noticed a huge number of ships coming back from a raid on marshalling yards and railway tracks; it was for D-Day. He was involved in Operation Manna, dropping food parcels in Holland.
Towards the end of the war, Tom moved to 626 Squadron at RAF Wickenby. They flew to Ludwigshafen, Dortmund and Cologne.
When war ended, Tom retrained as an air traffic controller in the Air Force. He was sent up to Scottish Command and describes a couple of incidents. He became an author, writing children’s books and about his RAF experiences.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
Germany
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Germany--Ludwigshafen am Rhein
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Cologne
Netherlands
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1945
Contributor
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Katie Gilbert
Sally Coulter
100 Squadron
626 Squadron
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bombing
crewing up
flight engineer
Halifax
Lancaster
Master Bomber
Me 109
memorial
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
promotion
RAF Grimsby
RAF Lindholme
RAF St Athan
RAF Wickenby
searchlight
superstition
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/374/6510/POtterP1606.1.jpg
e06ff23740749f93752d2c2470d6b82e
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Lancaster 'Able Mable'
ND548 HW-A
Description
An account of the resource
Six airmen standing underneath the nose of Lancaster 'Abel Mabel' after its 100th operation at RAF Grimsby (Waltham). One airman is wearing a Mae West lifejacket.
Additional information about this item has been kindly provided by the donor.
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One b/w photograph
Type
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Photograph
Identifier
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POtterP1606
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
100 Squadron
aircrew
Lancaster
nose art
RAF Grimsby