2
25
81
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1950/39395/SWhittakerH186316v10003.1.pdf
b3f0cef5bd351194a37240f6696e6218
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
Whittaker, Harry
H Whittaker
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
2017-09-24
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.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Whittacker, H
Description
An account of the resource
26 items. The collection concerns Sergeant Harry Whittaker (Royal Air Force) and contains his log book, documents and photographs. He flew operations as a bomb aimer with 158 and 635 Squadrons.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Simon Whittaker and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Harry Whittaker's flying log book
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SWhittakerH186316v10003
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Description
An account of the resource
Flying log book for Harry Whitaker, bomb aimer and navigator, covering the period from 21 May 1942 to 22 November 1946. Detailing his flying training, operations flown and instructor duties. He was stationed at 10 Advanced flying Unit RAF Dumfries, 19 operational training Unit RAF Kinloss, 1652 Conversion Unit RAF Marston, 9 squadron RAF Waddington, 158 Squadron RAF Lissett, 635 Squadron RAF Downham Market, 17 Operational Training Unit RAF Silverstone, 156 Squadron RAF Whitton, 35 Squadron RAF Graveley and RAF Stradishall and 148 Squadron RAF Upwood. Aircraft flown in were Tiger Moth, Anson, Botha, Hampden, Blenheim, Magister, Lancaster, Whitley, Halifax, Wellington, York and Dakota. He flew a total of 59 operations, one night operation with 9 squadron, 13 night operations with 158 squadron, 19 Daylight and 26 night operations with 635 squadron. Targets were Pilsen, Berlin, Leipzig, Stuttgart, Schweinfurt, Augsburg, Le Mans, Frankfurt, Essen, Nantes, Haines St Pierre, Calais, Duisburg, Dortmund, Aachen, Rennes, Angers, Foret de Cerise, Cambrai, Lens, Renescure, Wizernes, Coquereaux, Nucourt, Vaires, Cagney, Courtrai, Fervay, Falaise, Tirlemont, Stettin, Russelsheim, Kiel, Soesterburg, Le Havre, Domburg, Gelsenkirchen, Cap Gris Nez, Sterkrade, Bergen, Saarbrucken, and Bari. He also flew 6 operation Dodge and a goodwill tour of the USA with 35 squadron. His pilots on operations were Flying Officer Hale, Flight Lieutenant Johnson, Flying Officer Catlin, Flight Lieutenant Hardy and Flight Lieutenant Stockwell.
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
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943-04-16
1943-04-17
1944-01-28
1944-01-29
1944-01-30
1944-01-31
1944-02-15
1944-02-16
1944-02-19
1944-02-20
1944-02-21
1944-02-24
1944-02-25
1944-02-26
1944-03-01
1944-03-02
1944-03-13
1944-03-14
1944-03-18
1944-03-19
1944-03-23
1944-03-24
1944-03-25
1944-03-26
1944-03-27
1944-05-07
1944-05-07
1944-05-09
1944-05-10
1944-05-19
1944-05-20
1944-05-21
1944-05-22
1944-05-23
1944-05-24
1944-05-25
1944-05-27
1944-05-28
1944-05-29
1944-06-03
1944-06-04
1944-06-07
1944-06-08
1944-06-09
1944-06-11
1944-06-12
1944-06-13
1944-06-15
1944-06-16
1944-06-17
1944-07-05
1944-07-06
1944-07-10
1944-07-12
1944-07-15
1944-07-16
1944-07-18
1944-07-20
1944-07-21
1944-07-24
1944-07-25
1944-07-26
1944-08-15
1944-08-16
1944-08-17
1944-08-18
1944-08-25
1944-08-26
1944-08-27
1944-08-29
1944-08-30
1944-09-03
1944-09-05
1944-09-06
1944-09-08
1944-09-10
1944-09-23
1944-09-24
1944-09-25
1944-09-26
1944-09-27
1944-09-28
1944-09-30
1944-10-04
1944-10-05
1944-10-06
1944-10-19
1944-10-20
1944-10-23
1944-10-24
1945-07-05
1945-08-11
1945-08-13
1945-08-28
1945-08-30
1945-09-18
1945-09-21
1945-11-08
1945-11-10
1945-11-27
1945-11-29
1946
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mike Connock
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Belgium
Czech Republic
France
Germany
Great Britain
Italy
Netherlands
Norway
Poland
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Atlantic Ocean--English Channel
Belgium--Haine-Saint-Pierre
Belgium--Kortrijk
Belgium--Tienen
Czech Republic--Plzeň
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Norfolk
England--Northamptonshire
England--Suffolk
England--Yorkshire
France--Angers
France--Aumale
France--Bayeux Region
France--Caen Region
France--Calais
France--Cambrai
France--Falaise
France--Le Havre
France--Le Mans
France--Lens
France--Nantes
France--Nucourt
France--Pas-de-Calais
France--Rennes
France--Saint-Omer Region (Pas-de-Calais)
France--Vaires-sur-Marne
Germany--Aachen
Germany--Augsburg
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Essen
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Leipzig
Germany--Oberhausen (Düsseldorf)
Germany--Rüsselsheim
Germany--Saarbrücken
Germany--Schweinfurt
Germany--Stuttgart
Italy--Bari
Netherlands--Domburg
Netherlands--Soesterberg
Norway--Bergen
Poland--Szczecin
Scotland--Dumfries and Galloway
Scotland--Moray Firth
France--Coquereaux
France--Cap Gris Nez
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
148 Squadron
156 Squadron
158 Squadron
1652 HCU
17 OTU
19 OTU
35 Squadron
635 Squadron
Advanced Flying Unit
air gunner
aircrew
Anson
Blenheim
bomb aimer
bombing
Botha
crash
Goodwill tour of the United States (1946)
Halifax
Hampden
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Magister
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operation Dodge (1945)
Operational Training Unit
Pathfinders
RAF Downham Market
RAF Dumfries
RAF Graveley
RAF Kinloss
RAF Lissett
RAF Marston Moor
RAF Silverstone
RAF Stradishall
RAF Upwood
RAF Warboys
tactical support for Normandy troops
training
Wellington
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/934/36456/BLovattPHastieRv1.2.pdf
9b3858b8c21f871c9674fb0bb2df1994
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
Lovatt, Peter
Dr Peter Lovatt
P Lovatt
Description
An account of the resource
117 items. An oral history interview with Peter Lovatt (b.1924, 1821369 Royal Air Force), his log book, documents, and photographs. The collection also contains two photograph albums. He flew 42 operations as an air gunner on 223 Squadron flying B-24s. <br /><br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/1338">Album One</a><br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/2135">Album Two</a><br /><br />The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Nina and Peter Lovatt and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-09-27
2019-09-03
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Lovatt, P
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
Hastie DFC: The Life and Times of a Wartime Pilot
Description
An account of the resource
An incomplete biography of Roy Hastie. Only pages 1 to 46, 104 to 106, 128 to 133 and 34 additional unnumbered pages are included.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Peter Lovatt
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
United States
Rhode Island--Quonset Point Naval Air Station
Bahamas--Nassau
New York (State)--New York
Bahamas--New Providence Island
England--Harrogate
Scotland--Perth
Scotland--Glasgow
Scotland--Glasgow
England--Warrington
England--Blackpool
Luxembourg
France
Belgium
Netherlands
France--Dunkerque
England--Dover
England--Grantham
England--Torquay
Wales--Aberystwyth
Iceland
Greenland
Sierra Leone
Russia (Federation)--Murmansk
Singapore
France--Saint-Malo
Denmark
Sweden
Germany--Lübeck
Netherlands--Ameland Island
England--Grimsby
Germany--Helgoland
Netherlands--Rotterdam
Atlantic Ocean--Bay of Biscay
England--Lundy Island
Germany--Cologne
North Carolina
North Carolina--Cape Hatteras
Aruba
Curaçao
Iceland--Reykjavík
Greenland--Narsarssuak
Canada
Québec--Montréal
Rhode Island
New York (State)--Buffalo
Gulf of Mexico
Caribbean Sea
Virginia
Florida--Miami
Cuba--Guantánamo Bay Naval Base
Puerto Rico--San Juan
Cuba
Florida--West Palm Beach
Cuba--Caimanera
India
Sierra Leone--Freetown
Jamaica
Jamaica--Kingston
Jamaica--Montego Bay
Virginia--Norfolk
Québec--Montréal
Washington (D.C.)
Newfoundland and Labrador
Trinidad and Tobago--Trinidad
North America--Saint Lawrence River
Newfoundland and Labrador--Happy Valley-Goose Bay
Bahamas
Florida
New York (State)
Great Britain
Ontario
Québec
Germany
Russia (Federation)
Trinidad and Tobago
North America--Niagara Falls
Europe--Frisian Islands
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
England--Devon
England--Kent
England--Lancashire
England--Lincolnshire
Atlantic Ocean--Kattegat (Baltic Sea)
Russia (Federation)--Arkhangelʹskai︠a︡ oblastʹ
Virginia--Hampton Roads (Region)
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. Coastal Command
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Personal research
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
88 printed sheets
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
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
BLovattPHastieRv1
8 Group
air gunner
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
B-24
B-25
Beaufighter
Bismarck
C-47
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
crash
crewing up
Distinguished Flying Cross
evacuation
Flying Training School
Gee
Gneisenau
Goldfish Club
ground personnel
Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984)
Harvard
Hitler, Adolf (1889-1945)
Hudson
Initial Training Wing
navigator
Nissen hut
Oboe
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
Pathfinders
pilot
radar
RAF Bircham Newton
RAF Catterick
RAF Cranwell
RAF Kinloss
RAF Leuchars
RAF North Coates
RAF Odiham
RAF Oulton
RAF Padgate
RAF Prestwick
RAF South Cerney
RAF St Eval
RAF Thornaby
RAF Thorney Island
RAF Windrush
Roosevelt, Franklin Delano (1882-1945)
Scharnhorst
Spitfire
Tiger Moth
Tirpitz
training
V-1
V-2
V-weapon
Whitley
Window
wireless operator
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/934/36457/BLovattPHastieRv2.1.pdf
295406378e70aa4d2aeb43baeaddc085
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
Lovatt, Peter
Dr Peter Lovatt
P Lovatt
Description
An account of the resource
117 items. An oral history interview with Peter Lovatt (b.1924, 1821369 Royal Air Force), his log book, documents, and photographs. The collection also contains two photograph albums. He flew 42 operations as an air gunner on 223 Squadron flying B-24s. <br /><br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/1338">Album One</a><br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/2135">Album Two</a><br /><br />The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Nina and Peter Lovatt and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-09-27
2019-09-03
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Lovatt, P
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
Hastie DFC: The Life and Times of a Wartime Pilot
Description
An account of the resource
A biography of Roy Hastie.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Peter Lovatt
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2003-10
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
United States
Rhode Island--Quonset Point Naval Air Station
Bahamas--Nassau
New York (State)--New York
Bahamas--New Providence Island
Great Britain
England--Harrogate
Scotland--Perth
Scotland--Glasgow
England--Warrington
England--Blackpool
Luxembourg
France
Belgium
Netherlands
France--Dunkerque
England--Dover
England--Grantham
England--Torquay
Wales--Aberystwyth
Iceland
Greenland
Sierra Leone
Russia (Federation)--Murmansk
Singapore
France--Saint-Malo
Denmark
Sweden
Germany--Lübeck
Netherlands--Ameland Island
England--Grimsby
Germany--Helgoland
Netherlands--Rotterdam
Atlantic Ocean--Bay of Biscay
England--Lundy Island
Germany--Cologne
North Carolina
North Carolina--Cape Hatteras
Aruba
Curaçao
Iceland--Reykjavík
Greenland--Narsarssuak
Canada
Québec--Montréal
Rhode Island
New York (State)--Buffalo
Gulf of Mexico
Caribbean Sea
Virginia
Florida--Miami
Cuba--Guantánamo Bay Naval Base
Puerto Rico--San Juan
Cuba
Florida--West Palm Beach
Cuba--Caimanera
India
Sierra Leone--Freetown
Jamaica
Jamaica--Kingston
Jamaica--Montego Bay
Virginia--Norfolk
Washington (D.C.)
Newfoundland and Labrador
Northern Ireland--Limavady
England--Chatham (Kent)
Newfoundland and Labrador--Gander
Gibraltar
England--Leicester
Massachusetts--Boston
Egypt--Alamayn
Algeria--Algiers
Algeria--Oran
Algeria--Bejaïa
Algeria--Annaba
Italy--Sicily
England--Milton Keynes
Germany--Essen
England--Dunwich
Europe--Scheldt River
England--Sizewell
Germany--Hamburg
England--Kent
Germany--Stuttgart
England--Crowborough
Netherlands--Hague
England--Peterborough
England--Bristol
Germany--Homburg (Saarland)
Belgium--Brussels
Germany--Bochum
Germany--Dortmund-Ems Canal
Germany--Wanne-Eickel
Belgium--Liège
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Hannover
Germany--Aschaffenburg
Germany--Castrop-Rauxel
Germany--Mittelland Canal
Germany--Aachen
Germany--Karlsruhe
Germany--Neuss
Germany--Nuremberg
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Hagen (Arnsberg)
Germany--Leuna
Germany--Osnabrück
Germany--Ludwigshafen am Rhein
Germany--Ulm
Germany--Munich
Poland--Szczecin
France--Ardennes
Germany--Bonn
Belgium--Houffalize
Germany--Mannheim
Germany--Grevenbroich
Germany--Dülmen
France--Metz
Germany--Magdeburg
Germany--Zeitz
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
England--Dungeness
Germany--Mainz (Rhineland-Palatinate)
Germany--Wiesbaden
Germany--Dresden
Germany--Leipzig
Germany--Koblenz
Germany--Chemnitz
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Münster in Westfalen
Germany--Worms
Germany--Pforzheim
Germany--Darmstadt
Europe--Lake Constance
Germany--Bergkamen
Germany--Dessau (Dessau)
Germany--Wesel (North Rhine-Westphalia)
France--Aube
Germany--Augsburg
England--Feltwell
England--Croydon
Norway--Oslo
Sweden--Stockholm
Czech Republic--Prague
Italy--Florence
Portugal--Lisbon
Monaco--Monte-Carlo
France--Boulogne-sur-Mer
Netherlands--Venlo
Netherlands--Amsterdam
France--Paris
France--Lyon
France--Digne
France--Nevers
France--Lille
Norway--Ålesund
France--Saint-Omer (Pas-de-Calais)
France--Bailleul (Nord)
Belgium--Ieper
Belgium--Mesen
France--Cambrai
France--Somme
France--Arras
France--Lens
France--Calais
Germany--Emden (Lower Saxony)
Netherlands--Vlissingen
France--Brest
France--Lorient
France--La Pallice
Egypt--Suez
Germany--Berlin
Yemen (Republic)--Aden
Cyprus
Turkey--Gallipoli
Black Sea--Dardanelles Strait
Turkey--İmroz Island
Turkey--İzmir
Greece--Lesbos (Municipality)
Greece--Thasos Island
Greece--Chios (Municipality)
Greece--Thasos
Bulgaria
Turkey--Istanbul
Europe--Macedonia
Greece--Kavala
Kenya--Nairobi
Africa--Rhodesia and Nyasaland
Tanzania
Sudan
Eritrea
Ethiopia
Sudan--Kassalā
Eritrea--Asmara
Yemen (Republic)--Perim Island
Ethiopia--Addis Ababa
Sudan--Khartoum
Ghana--Takoradi
Libya--Cyrenaica
Libya--Tobruk
Egypt--Cairo
Iraq
Greece--Crete
Libya--Tripolitania
Tunisia--Mareth Line
Libya--Tripoli
Tunisia--Qaṣrayn
Tunisia--Medenine
Italy--Pantelleria Island
Malta
Italy--Licata
Italy--Brindisi
Italy--Foggia
Italy--Cassino
Italy--Sangro River
Italy--Termoli
Yugoslavia
Croatia--Split
Croatia--Vis Island
Italy--Loreto
Italy--Pescara
Trinidad and Tobago--Trinidad
North America--Saint Lawrence River
Newfoundland and Labrador--Happy Valley-Goose Bay
Bahamas
Florida
Italy
Poland
Massachusetts
New York (State)
Algeria
Tunisia
Libya
Egypt
North Africa
Ontario
Québec
Germany
Croatia
Czech Republic
Ghana
Greece
Kenya
Norway
Russia (Federation)
Turkey
Yemen (Republic)
Portugal
Trinidad and Tobago
North America--Niagara Falls
France--Reims
Europe--Frisian Islands
Germany--Monheim (North Rhine-Westphalia)
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
England--Norfolk
England--Suffolk
England--Gloucestershire
England--Lancashire
England--Leicestershire
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Oberhausen (Düsseldorf)
Greece--Thessalonikē
Germany--Herne (Arnsberg)
Atlantic Ocean--Kattegat (Baltic Sea)
Libya--Banghāzī
Russia (Federation)--Arkhangelʹskai︠a︡ oblastʹ
Great Britain Miscellaneous Island Dependencies--Jersey
Virginia--Hampton Roads (Region)
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
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
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Memoir
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
142 printed sheets
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
BLovattPHastieRv2
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending text-based transcription
1 Group
100 Group
101 Squadron
157 Squadron
2 Group
214 Squadron
223 Squadron
3 Group
4 Group
6 Group
8 Group
85 Squadron
88 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
B-17
B-24
B-25
bale out
Beaufighter
Bismarck
Botha
C-47
Chamberlain, Neville (1869-1940)
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
crash
crewing up
Distinguished Flying Cross
entertainment
evacuation
Flying Training School
Gee
Gneisenau
Goldfish Club
ground personnel
H2S
Halifax
Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984)
Harvard
He 111
Heavy Conversion Unit
Hitler, Adolf (1889-1945)
Hudson
Hurricane
Initial Training Wing
Ju 88
Lancaster
love and romance
Martinet
Me 109
Me 110
mine laying
Mosquito
Mussolini, Benito (1883-1945)
navigator
Nissen hut
Oboe
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
Pathfinders
pilot
Proctor
radar
RAF Banff
RAF Catfoss
RAF Catterick
RAF Chedburgh
RAF Cranwell
RAF Dishforth
RAF Farnborough
RAF Horsham St Faith
RAF Kinloss
RAF Leuchars
RAF Lichfield
RAF Lyneham
RAF Manston
RAF North Coates
RAF Oulton
RAF Padgate
RAF Prestwick
RAF Riccall
RAF Silloth
RAF South Cerney
RAF St Eval
RAF Thornaby
RAF Thorney Island
RAF Windrush
RAF Woodbridge
Roosevelt, Franklin Delano (1882-1945)
Scharnhorst
Spitfire
sport
Stirling
Swordfish
Tiger Moth
Tirpitz
training
V-1
V-2
V-weapon
Whitley
Window
wireless operator
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1009/18820/LMadgettHR147519v1.1.pdf
4bf7e61c956691422772fa0891cc6011
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
Madgett, Hedley Robert
H R Madgett
Description
An account of the resource
250 items. The collection concerns Pilot Officer Hedley Madgett DFM (1922 - 1943, 147519, 1330340 Royal Air Force), a pilot with 61 Squadron. He was killed 18 August 1943 on the last operation of his tour from RAF Syerston to Peenemünde. The collection consists of letters, postcards and telegrams to his parents while he was training in the United Kingdom and Canada. In addition the collection contains memorabilia, documents from the Air Training Corps, artwork, a railway map, diaries, medals as well as his logbook, photographs of people, places and aircraft. Also contains letters of condolence to parents and a sub collection containing a photograph album with 44 items of his time training in Canada'.<br /><br />The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Joan Madgett and Carol Gibson, and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.<br /><br /><span>Additional information on Hedley Madgett is available via the </span><a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/114690/" title="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/madgett-hr/ ">IBCC Losses Database</a><span>.</span>
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
2015-03-17
2019-06-14
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. 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
Madgett, H
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
Hedley R Madgett’s Royal Canadian Air Force pilots flying log book
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LMadgettHR147519v1
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Description
An account of the resource
Royal Canadian Air Force pilots flying log book for Hedley R Madgett, covering the period from 23 September 1941 to 15 August 1943. Detailing his flying training and operations flown. He was stationed at RCAF Swift Current, RCAF Medicine Hat, RAF Brize Norton, RAF Little Rissington, RAF Wattisham, RAF Kinloss, RAF Wigsley and RAF Syerston. Aircraft flown were, Tiger Moth, Harvard, Oxford, Whitley, Manchester and Lancaster. He flew a total of 30 night operations with 61 squadron, failing to return on his 30th operation to Peenemunde. Targets were, St. Nazaire, Duisburg, Berlin, Spezia, Stuttgart, Stettin, Gardening Baltic Sea, Essen, Dortmund, Pilsen, Dusseldorf, Bochum, Oberhausen, Cologne, Krefeld, Mulheim, Wuppertal, Gelsenkirchen, Hamburg and Peenemunde. His pilot for his first 'second dickie' operations was Flight Lieutenant Barlow.
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
Mike Connock
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Canada
Czech Republic
France
Germany
Great Britain
Italy
Poland
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Atlantic Ocean--Bay of Biscay
Alberta--Medicine Hat
Czech Republic--Pilsen Basin
England--Gloucestershire
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Oxfordshire
England--Suffolk
France--Saint-Nazaire
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Bochum
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Essen
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Krefeld
Germany--Mülheim an der Ruhr
Germany--Oberhausen (Düsseldorf)
Germany--Peenemünde
Germany--Stuttgart
Germany--Wuppertal
Italy--La Spezia
Poland--Szczecin
Saskatchewan--Swift Current
Scotland--Moray Firth
Saskatchewan
Alberta
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
1942
1943
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text. Log book and record book
Text
61 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
bombing of Hamburg (24-31 July 1943)
Bombing of Peenemünde (17/18 August 1943)
Harvard
killed in action
Lancaster
Manchester
mine laying
missing in action
Oxford
pilot
RAF Brize Norton
RAF Kinloss
RAF Little Rissington
RAF Syerston
RAF Wattisham
RAF Wigsley
Tiger Moth
training
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/921/22838/MLawsonHA19210824-161128-010001.2.jpg
7d5853423cff8969f16f988347b5708a
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/921/22838/MLawsonHA19210824-161128-010002.2.jpg
ef4f261230d3213b11f9f1759cbc64d1
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
Lawson, Homer
Harold Lawson
H Lawson
Description
An account of the resource
Ten items. An oral history interview with Susanne Pescott about her father, Flight Lieutenant Harold Lawson DFC (b. 1921, 1544881, 177469 Royal Air Force), his log book, photographs and album. He flew operations as a navigator with 10 Squadron.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Susanne Pescott and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-11-28
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
Lawson, HA
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
[underlined] HAROLD “HOMER” LAWSON [/underlined]
24.8.21 – Born Salford
22.9.41 – Signed to Join RAF. (see Letter)
19.1.43 – 13.4.43 – Training as Navigator @ Llanwrog [sic] (now Caernarfon Airport)
- Flying Anson’s 93 HRS
19.4.43 – Qualified as Navigator
8.6.43 – 19.8.43 - Based RAF Forres Scotland & Kinloss 19 OUT Met up with Crew & Pilot [underlined] Johnny Howitt [/underlines] Flying Anson & Whitley’s 105 HRS
25.09.43 – 20.10.43 – 1662 Conversion Unit @ Rufforth Yorks Flying Halifax MKII’s 33 HRS
5.11.43 – 20.7.44 – 10 Scon Melbourne 38 Opp’s Ist Completed Tour Flying Halifax MK II & MK III’s 170 HRS “OLRAM”
[underlined] Key Events [/underlined]
*29/12/43 – Ist Opp’s Berlin – Shot Down JU88
* /4/44 – Dusseldorf & Essen – Caught in Search Lights
*6/5/44 – Mantes/Gassicourt – Attack by Fighter
*** D DAY 6.6.44 – 2.55 am Mout Hevry gun Battery 22.30 – ST10 @2000ft.
*15.6.44 – Rennes Combat with JU88 Port Engine of Fire.
*24.6.44 – Noyelle En Chausee – Engine Problems featured
*25.6.44 – Baineville – [underlined] 3 Combats [/underlined] 1 ME210 Destroyed
*20.7.44 – Blothrop - Ammo Tracks on Fire
15.8.44 – 14.9.44 Forres & Scotland Flying Ansons 10 HRS
[Page Break]
6.11.45 – 18.2.45 – RAF Kinloss Scotland 19OTU Flying Wellington’s 14 HRS
*November 1944 – Awarded ‘DFC’
8.4.45- 2.5.45 – RAF Ruffoth 1663 Conversion Unit Flying Halifax III 40 HRS. Bombing and Fighting Affiliation.
[underlined] Moved to 77 Sqn [/underlined]
6.5.45 – 8.8.45 – Full Sutton (Yorks ) Met new crew – Pilot Pickin. Fling Halifax VI & Dekota’s [sic]56HRS
*Circuits & Bombs/Bomb Jettisoning/Formation Flying
5.9.45 – 12.9.45 – Broadwell Flying Dakota’s 7.5 HRS
*Supply dropping/Glider Towing/Formation Flying
22.9.45 - ? Transits to India & Based in Mauripur Kashmir Flying Dakotas
*Came home and returned to old employer
*Married ‘Maureen Chilun’ 31.12.55 Great Ballroom Dancer’s Dancing @ Tower Ballroom, Blackpool
*Died to early 12.9.75
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
Homer Lawson's Biography
Description
An account of the resource
The story of Homer Lawson from birth in August 1921 to death in September 1975. He trained as a Navigator in Wales and in Scotland before converting to Halifaxes in Yorkshire. He completed 38 operations then returned to Scotland for more training. Then he was transferred back to Yorkshire flying Halifaxes and C-47s after the war.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Two handwritten sheets
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Memoir
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MLawsonHA19210824-161128-010001,
MLawsonHA19210824-161128-010002
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Air Force. Transport Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Scotland--Forres
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Essen
France--Rennes
France--Normandy
Germany--Düsseldorf
England--Salford (Greater Manchester)
France--Mantes-la-Jolie
France
Germany
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
England--Lancashire
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
Claire Monk
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944-06-05
1944-06-06
10 Squadron
1662 HCU
1663 HCU
19 OTU
77 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
bombing of the Normandy coastal batteries (5/6 June 1944)
C-47
Distinguished Flying Cross
Halifax
Halifax Mk 2
Halifax Mk 3
Heavy Conversion Unit
Ju 88
navigator
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operational Training Unit
RAF Full Sutton
RAF Kinloss
RAF Llandwrog
RAF Melbourne
RAF Moreton in the Marsh
RAF Rufforth
training
Wellington
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/921/22837/LLawsonHA19210824v1.2.pdf
0b31cd5f1a7f8dc2383468fbb1e58e6e
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
Lawson, Homer
Harold Lawson
H Lawson
Description
An account of the resource
Ten items. An oral history interview with Susanne Pescott about her father, Flight Lieutenant Harold Lawson DFC (b. 1921, 1544881, 177469 Royal Air Force), his log book, photographs and album. He flew operations as a navigator with 10 Squadron.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Susanne Pescott and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-11-28
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
Lawson, HA
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Homer Lawson’s observer’s and air gunner’s flying log book
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Description
An account of the resource
Observer’s and air gunner’s flying log book for H A Lawson, navigator, covering the period from 19 January 1943 to 2 November 1945. Detailing his flying training, operations flown, instructor duties and post war duties with 77 squadron. He was stationed at RAF Llandwrog, RAF Penrhos, RAF Forres, RAF Rufforth, RAF Melbourne, RAF Balmageith, RAF Kinloss, RAF Full Sutton, RAF Broadwell, RAF Kargi Road and RAF Mauripur. Aircraft flown in were Anson, Whitley, Halifax, Wellington and Dakota. He flew a total of 38 operations with 10 squadron, 6 daylight and 32 night. His pilot on operations was Flight Sergeant Hewitt. Targets were Berlin, Kiel, Meulan le Meureaux, La Rochelle, Trappes, Le Mans, Tergnier, Ottignes, Dusseldorf, Karlsruhe, Essen, Mantes-Gassicourt, Cherbourg, Berneval, Trouville, Ferme D’Urville, The Hague, Mont Fleurie, St Lo, Lorient, Brest, Douai, Rennes, Noyelle en Chausee, Blaineville, Blainville, St Martin L’Hortier, Croixdalle, Heligoland, Mont Candon, Vaires and Bottrop.
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
Cara Walmsley
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
LLawsonHA19210824v1
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
France
Germany
Netherlands
India
Pakistan
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Atlantic Ocean--Bay of Biscay
Atlantic Ocean--English Channel
Atlantic Ocean--North Sea
Belgium--Ottignies
England--Oxfordshire
England--Yorkshire
France--Abbeville Region
France--Bayeux
France--Berneval-le-Grand
France--Brest
France--Cherbourg Region
France--Coutances Region
France--Douai
France--La Rochelle
France--Le Mans
France--Lorient
France--Mantes-la-Jolie
France--Meulan
France--Neufchâtel-en-Bray
France--Normandy
France--Rambouillet
France--Rennes
France--Saint-Lô
France--Tergnier (Canton)
France--Trouville-sur-Mer
France--Vaires-sur-Marne
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Bottrop
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Essen
Germany--Helgoland
Germany--Karlsruhe
Germany--Kiel
India--Kota
Netherlands--Hague
Pakistan--Karachi
Wales--Gwynedd
Scotland--Moray Firth
Great Britain
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
France--Croixdalle
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944
1945
1943-12-29
1943-12-30
1944-01-29
1944-02-25
1944-03-02
1944-03-03
1944-03-04
1944-03-06
1944-03-07
1944-03-08
1944-03-11
1944-04-04
1944-04-05
1944-04-10
1944-04-11
1944-04-18
1944-04-19
1944-04-20
1944-04-21
1944-04-22
1944-04-23
1944-04-24
1944-04-25
1944-04-26
1944-04-27
1944-05-06
1944-05-08
1944-05-09
1944-05-10
1944-05-11
1944-05-12
1944-06-01
1944-06-02
1944-06-03
1944-06-04
1944-06-06
1944-06-07
1944-06-09
1944-06-10
1944-06-12
1944-06-13
1944-06-14
1944-06-15
1944-06-16
1944-06-24
1944-06-27
1944-06-28
1944-06-29
1944-07-01
1944-07-04
1944-07-06
1944-07-12
1944-07-13
1944-07-17
1944-07-18
1944-07-20
10 Squadron
1663 HCU
19 OTU
77 Squadron
Advanced Flying Unit
aircrew
Anson
anti-aircraft fire
bombing
bombing of the Normandy coastal batteries (5/6 June 1944)
C-47
Cook’s tour
Halifax
Halifax Mk 3
Heavy Conversion Unit
Ju 88
mine laying
navigator
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operational Training Unit
RAF Full Sutton
RAF Kinloss
RAF Llandwrog
Raf Mauripur
RAF Melbourne
RAF Penrhos
RAF Rufforth
training
Wellington
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2282/41927/LForthHO19200321v3.1.pdf
10296361d63989640dc7bc9f065f36ee
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
Forth, Hugh Ogilvie
Description
An account of the resource
Eight items. The collection concerns Hugh Ogilvie Forth (b. 1920, Royal Air Force) and contains his log books, maps and a photograph. He flew operations as a pilot with 218, 58, and 77 Squadrons.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Ian Forth and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2019-12-18
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
Forth, HO
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
Hugh Forth’s pilots flying log book. Three
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LForthHO19200321v3
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.
Description
An account of the resource
Pilots flying log book three for H O Forth, covering the period from 2 January 1943 to 16 March 1946 and from 3 January 1950 to 20 May 1953. Detailing his flying training, instructor duties, operations flown, and post war flying with 77 Squadron. He was stationed at RAF Wolverhampton, RAF Carlisle, RAF Wheaton Aston, RAF Kinloss, RAF Forres, RAF Acaster Malbis, RAF Riccall, RAF Full Sutton, RAF Broadwell, RAF Kargi Road, RAF Mauripur, RAF Finningley, RAF Brize Norton, RAF Little Rissington, RAF Syerston, RAF Lichfield and RAF Pershore. Aircraft flown in were Tiger Moth, Oxford, Whitley, Halifax, Dakota, Expeditor, York, Harvard, Prentice, Meteor, Balliol, Auster, Mosquito, Anson, Chipmunk, Fury, Vampire, Firefly, Valetta, Varsity and Lincoln. He flew 2 night and one daylight operation with 77 Squadron. Targets were Harburg, Hamburg, Nuremberg.
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
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mike Connock
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944
1945-04-04
1945-04-05
1945-04-08
1945-04-09
1945-04-11
1946
1950
1951
1952
1953
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
India
Pakistan
England--Cumbria
England--Oxfordshire
England--Gloucestershire
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Staffordshire
England--West Midlands
England--Worcestershire
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Harburg (Landkreis)
Germany--Nuremberg
India--Dehra Dūn
Pakistan--Karachi
Scotland--Moray Firth
1658 HCU
19 OTU
77 Squadron
Advanced Flying Unit
aircrew
Anson
bombing
C-47
Flying Training School
Halifax
Halifax Mk 3
Harvard
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lincoln
Meteor
Mosquito
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
pilot
RAF Acaster Malbis
RAF Brize Norton
RAF Carlisle
RAF Finningley
RAF Full Sutton
RAF Kinloss
RAF Lichfield
RAF Little Rissington
Raf Mauripur
RAF Pershore
RAF Riccall
RAF Syerston
Tiger Moth
training
Whitley
York
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/520/8752/PLucasWE1501.2.jpg
dc00f6a0e3e1fc69c5c9cdae6c5e637c
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/520/8752/ALucasB150405.1.mp3
08574ac4f1191f6ee013bbf1624927f9
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
Lucas, Bill
William Ernest Lucas
W E Lucas
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Lucas, WE
Description
An account of the resource
15 items. Two oral history interviews with Squadron Leader Bill Lucas DFC (1917 - 2018, 1255396 Royal Air Force), his log book, brief memoir and photographs. He served as a pilot with 9, 15, 139 and 162 Squadrons. After the war he ran in the 1948 Olympics.
The collection was catalogued by Trevor Hardcastle.
Requires
A related resource that is required by the described resource to support its function, delivery, or coherence.
William (Bill) Ernest Lucas was born in Tooting Bec, London on the 16th January 1917, 3 years deep into World War One. Luckily for Bill he was not of age to endure with the fighting in the trenches. However, when Europe was engulfed into another worldwide conflict in 1939, this set way for Bill to become involved with the RAF and IBCC.
Growing up, Bill was an only child and left his school (Bec Grammar School) at the age of 15. He managed to get a job with a printers, which led to his second and only other job at an insurance company called the London and Lancashire. The company’s sports club enabled Bill to find his passion for athletics (especially running) and he was expected to participate in the 1940 Olympics until the war interfered. (https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/30884)
A photo of Bill in his running gear is shown in https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/30865 where he is running down 55 Graham Road in Surrey.
Bill instead competed in the 1948 Olympic Games as the games were also cancelled in 1944 due to World War Two. Luckily the games were hosted in London (https://olympics.com/en/olympic-games/london-1948) and Bill had retired from IBCC meaning that he had time to participate.
As seen in ‘Bill Lucas and the 1948 London Olympics’ (1948) https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/30866 Bill managed to come 6th in the Second Heat meaning he was one position off of being in the final on the 2nd August 1948! This collection also includes Bill in his older prime wearing his 1948 Olympic Games jacket and the official Olympic Games programme from 1948.
When Hitler invaded Poland on September 1st 1939, Bill was 22 years old meaning that he was eligible to be part of Great Britain’s Army. Combining Bill’s hatred of the sea and his fathers recent experiences in the trenches, the RAF seemed to be the most compatible choice with Bill. (https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/520/30884/B[Author]LucasWEv10001.jpg)
Bill was not involved in Britain’s mightiest air conflict against Hitler’s Luftwaffe however, instead watching ‘The Few’ defeat the Nazi aircrafts and succeed. Being considered to be Nazi Germany’s first ‘major military defeat’, this allowed for Britain to continue fighting in the war (https://www.raf.mod.uk/our-organisation/our-history/anniversaries/battle-of-britain/ and to an extent, allowed Bill to continue his path of becoming an Squadron Leader.
It was November 1940 when Bill started his pilot training, but due to a bomber offensive being the only way to properly counter the Nazis, this was huge not just for Bill but Britain as a whole. There had never been a bomber offensive before in warfare. https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/520/30884/B[Author]LucasWEv10001.jpg
As seen in Bill’s official Pilot’s Log Book: (https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/520/24264/LLucasWE122826v1.1.pdf) his training consisted of being part of 16 Elementary Flying School at RAF Derby from 1940 to 41 , 8 School of Flying Training at RAF Montrose in 1941 and 20 Operational Training Units at RAF Lossiemouth in 1941 . He flew three different types of aircraft during his training, Miles Magister, Miles Master and Wellington I’s.
Bill’s training finally finished in August 1941 and he was posted to his first official squadron, IX Squadron at Honington. Here he flew the Wellington Bomber.
Will Cragg
Record of Service:
4 November 1940- 4 January 1941: 16 Elementary Flying Training School at RAF Derby flying Miles Magisters
9 January- 4 May 1941: 8 School of Flying Training at RAF Montrose flying Miles Masters
31 May 1941- 13 August 1941: 20 Operational Training Units at RAF Lossiemouth flying Wellington I’s
14 August 1941- 4 November 1941: 9 Squadron at RAF Honington flying Wellington III’s
4 November 1941- 30 December 1941: 26 Conversion Fleet at RAF Waterbeach flying Stirling’s
30 December 1941- 1 August 1942: 15 Squadron at RAF Wyton flying Whitley V’s
1 August 1942- 3 August 1942: 218 Conversion Fleet at RAF Marham flying Airspeed Oxfords
4 August 1942- 18 August 1942: 19 Operational Training Units at RAF Kinloss flying Whitley IV’s
19 August 1942- 13 August 1942: 3 Fighter Instructor Schools at RAF Hullavington flying Ansons
17 September 1942- 18 September 1942: 19 Operational Training Units at RAF Kinloss flying Halifax II’s
18 September 1942- 24 October 1944: 19 Operational Training Units at RAF Forres flying Mosquito III’s
30 October 1942- 19 December 1944: 1655 Mosquito Training Unit at RAF Warboys flying Mosquito IV’s
30 October 1944- 19 December 1944: 1655 Squadron at RAF Bourn flying Mosquito XX’s
7 June 1945- 28 June 1945: 162 Squadron at RAF Blackbushe flying Mosquito XXV’S
28 June 1945- 29 January 1946: 139 Squadron at RAF Upwood flying Lancaster III’s
29 January 1946: Station Head Quarters at RAF Upwood flying Mosquito XVI’s
William Cragg
William (Bill) Lucas was born on January 16th, 1917 in Tooting Bec, London. He was educated at Bec Grammar School, and left at the age of 15 to work at a printing company before moving to the insurers London and Lancashire to work as an assessor. While working there, he developed his talent for athletics with the Belgrave Harriers, with his best discipline being the 5000 metres. His goal was to compete at the 1940 Olympic games. However, in 1940, Bill was called up to help the war effort and mindful of his father’s advice to avoid the army and his own dislike of the sea, he chose to join the RAF.
Initially he trained as a fighter pilot on Miles Magisters and Miles Masters, but by the time he had finished training, the Battle of Britain had been won and the need for bomber pilots was more urgent. So, he was reallocated to bombers and trained to fly the Wellington at RAF Lossiemouth. Bill Lucas · IBCC Digital Archive (lincoln.ac.uk)
Following completion of pilot training in August 1941, he was posted to RAF Honington and joined 9 Squadron flying Wellingtons. He flew 14 operational sorties – notably Cologne and Hamburg – before converting to Stirlings at RAF Waterbeach. He then joined 15 (Bomber) Squadron at RAF Wyton, flying the Short Stirling and, by August 1942, Bill had completed a full tour of 30 operational sorties (over 40 operations in total). Bill experienced tense encounters with German defences, having to take evasive action and also getting caught in a cone of five or six searchlights. To get out of the searchlight glare he had to do things with the aircraft which it was never meant to do. Returning from one mission they flew too close to Kiel and the airframe amassed a lot of bullet holes and an alarming loss of fuel. Crossing the North Sea, the tank indicators showed practically nothing and they had to divert into Woodbridge in Suffolk. The groundcrew estimated there was less than twenty-five gallons of fuel left (probably less than 6 minutes of flying time).
He was released from operational duties and was posted to RAF Lossiemouth as a flying instructor. Then in December 1944, he returned to operational flying and was posted to 162 Squadron, part of the Pathfinder force, to fly the Mosquito, an aircraft he described as “a bit quicker and more responsive; a nice aeroplane”. He completed a further 34 operational sorites with 162 Squadron, including missions over Kiel, Berlin, Hannover and Magdeburg. In recognition of his war services, Bill was awarded the DFC and was Mentioned in Despatches.
Squadron Leader Bill Lucas was released from the Service in January 1946 and returned to the insurance job he had left to join the RAF. Eventually, he left the company to become an insurance broker. He also returned to athletics and the Belgrave Harriers; he ran in various internationals and competed for Great Britain in the 5000m at the 1948 London Olympics. Athletics remained with him for the rest of his life and he gave his spare time freely, working in prominent roles in the administration of athletics. He remained a Belgrave Harrier committee member well into his 90s. He became known as “the golden voice of British Athletics” for his many years as stadium announcer at the White City .
In his later years, Bill remained prominent in RAF and Aircrew Associations. He, along with a small Band of Sussex veterans, was instrumental in helping to raise funds for the construction of the Bomber Command Memorial in London’s Green Park and the International Bomber Command Centre.
Chris Cann
1940: Volunteered for the RAF
4 November 1940 – 4 January 1941: RAF Burnaston, No. 16 EFTS, flying Magister aircraft
9 January 1941 – 4 May 1941: RAF Montrose, No. 8 SFTS, flying Master aircraft
31 May 1941 – 13 August 1941: RAF Lossiemouth, No. 20 OTU, flying Wellington aircraft
14 August 1941 – 4 November 1941: RAF Honington, No. 9 Squadron, flying Wellington aircraft
1941: Commissioned into the officer ranks
4 November 1941 – 30 December 1941: RAF Waterbeach, No. 26 Conversion Flight, flying Stirling aircraft
30 December 1941 – 1 August 1942: RAF Wyton, No. 15 Squadron, flying Stirling aircraft
1 August 1942 – 3 August 1942: RAF Marham, 218 Conversion Flight
4 August 1942 – 18 August 1942: RAF Kinloss, No. 19 OTU, flying Whitley aircraft
19 August 1942 – 13 September 1942: RAF Hullavington, No. 3 FTS, flying Oxford aircraft
17 September 1942 – 18 September 1942: RAF Kinloss, No. 19 OTU, flying Whitley and Anson aircraft
18 September 1942 – 24 October 1944: RAF Foress, No. 19 OTU, flying Whitley and Anson aircraft
30 October 1944 – 19 December 1944: RAF Warboys, 1655 MTU, flying Mosquito and Oxford aircraft
19 December 1944 – 7 June 1945: RAF Bourn, 162 Squadron, flying Mosquito aircraft
7 June 1945 – 28 June 1945: RAF Blackbushe, 162 Squadron, flying Mosquito aircraft
28 June 1945 – 29 January 1946: RAF Upwood, 139 Squadron, flying Mosquito and Oxford aircraft
29 January 1946: Released from Service having attained the rank of Squadron Leader.
Chris Cann
Transcribed audio recording
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AP: The interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Andrew Panton, the Interviewee is Bill Lucas. Mr Lucas was a RAF pilot in various aircraft during World War Two. The interview is taking place at [redacted] Rustington, West Sussex on the 5th of April 2015.
WL: My name is W E (Bill) Lucas. I was called to the Forces in 1940, and my first introduction towards that was to be seen by a doctor in a Croydon school who, all intents and purposes, er, was to see which — whether I was capable of going in any of the services, that is, if I’d got flat feet or something like that. So we came to the point when he said, ‘Which service do you want to go in?’ So I said, ‘Well, I don’t want to go in the Army’, because my father put me off, had put me off going in to the trenches, et cetera. He himself had won a military medal saving his CO, he was a sergeant in the Northampton Regiment. So, I said, ‘no Army, I don’t like water, so I must go in the RAF’. ‘Oh, what do you want to do in the RAF?’ ‘Oh well,’ I said ‘what is there to do in the RAF other than fly?’ So he then wields his stethoscope and he then said, ‘you will never fly with the RAF’. So I said, ‘why not?’ He said, ‘you’ve got an enlarged heart’, I said, ‘I know that I’ve got an enlarged heart. I have been an athlete for a number of years and that developed the heart’. In fact, I was quite a good athlete, I was up to County standard at that stage, so he then said, ‘you’ve got an uneven heartbeat.’ Well, here I am, um, God knows how many years later, seventy-odd years later, and I’ve still got an enlarged heart and I’ve still got an uneven heartbeat. But anyway, he said, ‘well, I appreciate your enthusiasm. I’ll put you forward’. Well, having, um, escaped the doctor and, er, gone to Uxbridge and been interviewed again there for flying duties, they passed me without any bother at all, and then, having gone through all the introductory things, ground work et cetera, I was then trained as a fighter pilot, um, flying Miles Magisters and Miles Masters. That didn’t work, um, because they didn’t — well, the need for fighter pilots was over because we had won the Battle of Britain with the Spitfires, et cetera, et cetera, so I found myself at Lossiemouth, er, faced with flying a heavy bomber, the Wellington 1C.
AP: And what was it like to fly? How did you —
WL: Oh, the Wellington was a comparatively easy aircraft to fly. It was beautifully situated, it was low off the ground. You could do three-point landings in a Wellington, which you couldn’t do with some other aircraft, so it was quite enjoyable.
AP: And the kind of operations that you flew on?
WL: Operations were, at that time, were entirely over Germany, main cities and things in Germany but, but, er, if I had my log book here I could tell you where I went.
AP: What about —
WL: My first, my first one was, what happened was that when you, at Lossiemouth, you were trained and you finished up at a squadron, and I finished up at 9 Squadron, Honington, and did three trips, um, as a second pilot with a qualified pilot, and then you were given a crew of your own. So, er, I was sent off my first one as captain, they called it a making learner, and it was to Boulogne, so that wasn’t very far so we came back again. And from then onwards it was targets like Cologne and Magdeburg, all those sort of things.
AP: You said you were on thousand bomber raids.
WL: No, that was on the Stirling.
AP: The Stirling.
WL: So after a period of, of, you know, not very long, I completed fourteen operations with 9 Squadron, I was picked and given the honour, they called it the honour, of being one of the first pilots to fly a four engine aircraft, and that was the Stirling. Now, the Stirling was an entirely different aircraft to the Wellington, you’ve only got to see a Stirling to see how different it is. It had a very high undercarriage, you could not do three-point landings on a Stirling, you had to wheel them in. I soon learnt that, because otherwise you would be crashing aircraft all over the place. And then I was then moved to Wyton, W Y T O N, in, in Huntingdonshire, and I then did another full tour, of something like thirty-odd trips, with a crew and the Stirling. The main one of those that I can remember, is the first thousand bomber raid on the 30th of May 1942, er, when we went to Cologne. It was followed the following night with a similar raid on Essen. The Cologne one was quite successful, it was a beautiful clear night, moonlight night. Essen was a bit different, it was too cloudy, didn’t see the target very well, and then two more, two more nights later we did Essen again, still without a great deal of success.
AP: And did you encounter any fighters or —
WL: Oh well, that went without, thing that you either get flak or you get fighters, you know. They weren’t sort of buzzing around you all the time, but you would, you would get one at some time or other.
AP: Did you take evasive action, corkscrewing?
WL: Yes, and your, your rear gunner, if you’ve got a rear gunner coming to talk to you, oh [unclear], used his guns [slight laugh] his eight, eight 303’s.
AP: And was that the corkscrew?
WL: Oh, yes, you did evasive action and, of course, the other thing, which was even more terrifying, was getting caught in searchlights, because the German defences were all geared together that if, er, if a search, if a searchlight got you, then they could swing guns and other searchlights, and if you happened to get caught in a cone of five or six searchlights it was pretty grim. You could, then you started to do things with your aircraft which it was never meant to do, to get out. I had two experiences like that, but I recovered [slight laugh].
AP: And what about the blinding light [unclear]?
WL: Oh, of course, if you’re in the searchlights, you are blinded by them, but you, you hit back, because you got all your gunners to fire down the beam. We used to do a bit of destruction that way [slight laugh].
AP: When you’re coming up to the target now, coming up close to the target, the last couple of minutes, what’s that like?
WL: Well you had to do a straight and level, generally thought to be two minutes dead straight and level, but normally I used to, had a little pattern of my own, where I would weave, um, gently you know, never to be too long on any one thing, up a bit like that down a bit like that, and down a bit like that, still keeping the general thing and it seemed to work.
AP: And the bomb aimer, he’s in control?
WL: He takes over control in the last, um, last run in, yes. He’s the one that supposed to spot the target and set it up. Left, left, you know, right, right [slight laugh].
AP: And then once the bombs had gone, what happens then?
WL: Well, as soon as the bombs had gone, you moved away and headed home as quickly as you could and the thousand bomber raid on Cologne on 30th May, which was in a Stirling, I brought back a picture which, um, showed my stick of bombs going right across the front of the cathedral and the last one emanated at the bridge, the Hohen, the Hohenzollen bridge I think it’s called, in Cologne, so I claimed that. Now, whenever anybody goes to Cologne, I say, ‘stand in front of the cathedral and look at the front, and you’ll find it pockmarked. I claim those pockmarks’ [slight laugh]. Sort of bit of fun but probably quite true actually but, er, you know, I’ve not way of proving it.
AP: And that was a thousand bombers all targeting Cologne that one night?
WL: Well over a period of time, they weren’t all there at once [slight laugh] ‘cause it was done over, I don’t know, half an hour or so or more I should think.
AP: So you did Wellingtons, then Stirlings, and then —
WL: Oh we had Whitleys, and everything they could lay they hands on, so out of partly trained crews from OTUs, flown by qualified pilots, OTU instructors, um, but the crews were, you know, a bit dubious [slight laugh]. Well, you’d be lying if you said you weren’t scared to a degree, but, you know, being nervous and perhaps is something that helps you on your way, but if you gave in to it of course, you would never do it again, and some people did give in to it, and they got taken off, and it was called LMF, lack of moral fibre, so they got reduced to the ground, ground crews.
AP: And the support of the ground crews and all the other people?
WL: Oh terrific, they kept you in the air really. There’s no doubt about it.
AP: So can you say a little bit about all the people that supported you, the mechanics, the ground crew? What are your thoughts about that?
WL: Well I can’t praise them more you see, because it’s like when people say, ‘which aircraft do you like best?’ My answer to that is, ‘all of them, they brought me home’. So that’s what I say about the ground crew, you know, they got us there and back, they entered into the spirit of the thing as much as we did, you know. Their sort of hours were as queer like ours, they were there to see us off, they were there to see us back, see. Counting, you know, the aircraft as they come in. Was our aircraft going to come back in, see? They could be just as upset, I expect, with loss of the crew, their crew.
AP: Are there any memories in particular strike you from those years? You know, when you were flying, anything really vivid, or you feel you would like to relate to today, when you look back?
WL: What do you mean, things that happened to me?
AP: Yes.
WL: Oh, I had one or two scares. I had an engine failure on take-off on a Stirling, the engine went on fire. We had an, we had an engineer on board then and he dealt with it, but we were fully laden and gaining height was very, very difficult. This was out of Wyton, or Alconbury as we were flying from at that stage, um, so we had to get around and we had to lose some fuel, but we still had the bomb load on board, what to do with it? We weren’t getting any height at all so we decided, I decided that we were going to drop it. So it was a nice clear night so we managed to find fields, wide open fields, and we dropped the bomb load, et cetera, et cetera and thought nothing more about it, then came into land on three engines, which was no great problem. Later that, or a few days later, when we were all together, drinking in Huntingdon, we heard a bod way somewhere saying, ‘I was bombed by the Germans this week’, he said, ‘broke a lot of windows’. So we listened to this, and I thought that sounds very much like what we might have done, so we enlightened ourselves, we introduced ourselves to him and said it was us who, who broke his windows, so he was so delighted with that. We had free beer for the rest of the night.
AP: What was the Stirling like to fly in the air?
WL: In the air, I enjoyed flying in the air but it was a horror in the circuit with a big -, had an electric undercarriage too which was not a bad thing, but if the electrics failed, you lost your undercarriage. Well if you didn’t, there was a means of winding it down. Took about half an hour to do it.
AP: And, and this was night flying mainly was it?
WL: All night flying, yes, we did no daylight.
AP: Did you ever use the FIDO for, you know, fog?
WL: No but I might have done, but that was later in the war when I was on, on a Mosquito. I, I was first one back on my squadron and, unfortunately, we’d been sent out and been told we would be back long before weather came down, but we weren’t and when we came back fog was thick. It was really thick, so I made two or three approaches on, on, er, Bourn, which was by Cambridge, and, without effect, decided the last time that I would stay on the ground so we went on the ground, fairly well down the runway into a ditch, tail came over, and then we were upside down there. The ground crew arrived very, very quickly and turned it back up again, so we escaped that one.
AP: So you escaped that one.
WL: They’d been trained individually at various places, whether they were wireless operators, or gunners or navigators and in their own trade. I had a crew which I soon learnt to trust. I did not interfere with them, I let them get on with their job. When you were in the air you, you forbid chatter and you only contacted them if you thought need be, and that’s what the captain would do every so often, he’d say to the rear gunner, ‘are you still alive? Are you still awake’ even. The Met Office had no real means of knowing what was going on, other than outside the realms of the United Kingdom. They used to send an aircraft out sometimes before a raid took place to [unclear], it changed quickly and we had nights when we lost a lot of aircraft. I was on leave from my Stirling squadron, um, I was down in Epsom and I bought a paper, and we’d lost something like eighty-odd aircraft. When I got back to squadron, we’d lost three off my squadron and it was proved later that most of them were lost in weather. They went down in the Channel because wind changes, they weren’t able to, hadn’t got the equipment in those days. We flew with dead reckoning which means that, you know, it was what you could see —
AP: That was it. There was no —
WL: That was it. Then we started to get certain things like a Gee box, which was a sat nav I suppose in a way and —
AP: Did you fly with H2S?
WL: Well I flew with H2S in a Mosquito when my marking days were —
AP: Could you talk a bit about that, because I haven’t met anybody who used —
WL: Well having, let’s say having completed my main tour which consisted of forty, forty operations, um, I then went and spent two years with an OTU instructing others at Kinloss, instructing other people on Whitleys [slight laugh]. Two years later I was withdrawn, posted down south, to find myself allocated to a conversion unit on Mosquitos with a view to joining 8 Group, which materialised, um, I went to a squadron, 162 Squadron, which was a newly formed, newly formed squadron especially for the war-time only, flying Mosquitos. Half of us were markers and the other half did diversionaries and that sort of thing.
AP: So did you actually mark the targets?
WL: Yes, I marked. Not all the time but depending. Mosquitos could fly when the heavies couldn’t, see. We could compete with weather better than they did and in those last two years of the war, er, we did a lot of Baedeker raids. I think going out, we took four, five hundred pound bombs and did Hamburg, Magdeburg, Cologne and somewhere else, came back home, you know, having kept the Germans in their shelters all night [slight laugh]. We used to go out at quarter of an hour intervals you see.
AP: Where did you fly from?
WL: I flew from Wyton.
AP: Wyton? Okay. So —
WL: No, in Mosquitos, I flew from Bourn, Bourn without an ‘e’, just outside Cambridge.
AP: Could you talk a little about marking the targets with the Mosquitos?
WL: Well the basis was that we carried, er, flares which lasted quite a long time and varying colours. I never knew which colour I was going, going to be carrying but we were instructed to fly a course, which we were able to do using H2S, er, essentially to be perfectly accurate, and then at a nominated height, and at a certain point, we would drop these flares, which would burst near the ground if it was a clear night or quite high up if it was above cloud. The main force then comes in and bombs the flares and it’s all worked out that if they hit the flare, then their bombs would hit the target, see.
AP: And was there different colours of flares?
WL: Oh yes. Greens, reds, yellows, everything.
AP: And did they have different meanings?
WL: Well the bomber crew coming in behind knew what they had to do, which ones they shoot.
AP: So they could [unclear]
WL: Well they have some warning you see. They might have a yellow one as a warning, then a green one, that’s the one to bomb or something like that.
AP: Right. And H2S, is that the one you were using, that’s the —
WL: It was a forerunner, really, of television. We had a screen in the aircraft, we transmitted a beam or something like that, er, which picked up the ground. It didn’t pick up, er, sharpness but we could tell the difference between water, and built-up areas, and rivers, and all that sort of thing, and we were provided with a map in the aircraft so we were able to follow that by watching the screen. The screen should agree with the map and therefore we knew — it wasn’t until 1943, ‘44 that we began to get accuracy because of that. There was another means called Oboe, that was done by Mosquitos as well. That was arriving at a point, a cock, a cocked hat as they called it, three beams transmitting from this country, all crossing at one point. They used to have, they would have warnings and then they really did have to fly, er, two minutes straight and level. But Oboe, of course, was only useful, couldn’t be done at great distance. The Ruhr was about as far as we could do with Oboe. We used to drop from anything up to thirty thousand.
AP: Any kind of low level bombing?
WL: No, I didn’t do any of those.
AP: Right —
WL: Not, not in a Mosquito. I did some low level stuff in Stirlings, dropping, um, sea mines off the coast of France and Holland, in waterways.
AP: What kind of height would that be?
WL: Three hundred feet. Flying inside the islands off the coast of Holland and shot at. It was the same with Lorient, on the approach into Lorient we were dropping sea mines there. We used to treat these trips quite mundane really, you know. I was never on any sort of thing like Amiens or those specialised jobs. No, I would love to have done it, but I couldn’t. I mean they made a mess of that one so —
AP: Did you go as far as Berlin in the Mosquitos?
WL: Oh yes, fourteen times [slight laugh]. There’s a story about that because, um, we didn’t go to Berlin for a long time after the war, but off of a cruise, we were on in the Baltic, we stopped at Warnemünde and, and got taken into Berlin, see. Met by a young man who was to be our guide for the day, and I knew what he was going to say, he was going to say, at some time, had I been to Berlin before? So we left him to it. Eventually he got round to it, and I said, ‘Yes, yes. Fourteen times but never on the ground’. See, so he looks at me and he said, ‘I know all about that’, he said, ‘I commend you, you did exactly what you were told to do’, and we had a very good day together [laugh].
AP: There you go. As you look back, is there anything specific? Any memories of your wartime experience —
WL: Well yes, in a way. When you got a big crew on board, we used to have seven on a Stirling and I had the same crew from my Wellington and Stirling days, we got quite matey. We always went drinking together, see. Some were commissioned and others weren’t. I was commissioned during my period on 15 Squadron Stirlings and, er, but we always used to go out in the evenings, start off anyway [slight laugh] together what we got up to later was Legion. That crew was still left when I finished my tour of heavies, with three or four trips to do. The ruling when we first started bombing, was that you did thirty trips, then they changed it to two hundred operational hours, which meant that you probably did more than thirty. Anyway, they were left with, er, two or three to do and I departed up into Scotland, and I’m thinking I was never going to see them again, see. Then I heard that the first time out with a new captain, they’d been shot down. I was quite sorrowful about that, because I’d spent, oh, something like twelve months with them altogether and, er, that, you know, so I was sorrowful about it and nothing happened ‘till about four or five years ago. I was rung up by a young lad who said, ‘I’ve seen a picture of you with your crew in the Sunday Telegraph’, and he said, ‘I think one of them is my grandfather’. So I said, ‘which one?’ And he said, ‘Jack Tailor’. I said, ‘Yes, Jack Tailor was my engineer’. It then transpired that Jack Tailor had been withdrawn on the morning of that, of the time they were shot down. He was then a sergeant engineer. He finished the war as a warrant officer engineer, which was quite something. He won himself a DFC and he died in 1996 [slight laugh].
AP: That’s amazing.
WL: He obviously thought I hadn’t survived and I was absolutely certain that he hadn’t, see, but all the time he was living within a really close distance. I lived just outside Croydon for a time, he was there. I moved down and got remarried to a lady which you might meet later, um, in the Horsham area, he was there, and his daughter and the, and the young lad who rung me were at, um, a place about five miles along the road, on the 272 from us, at Shipley.
AP: Amazing.
WL: Coming home, we came a bit too near Kiel coming home, see, and got lots of holes. We lost a hell of a lot of fuel. There we were, crossing the North Sea, with the tank indicators showing practically nothing, down to nothing, and fortunately we made it, because in those days, they had a special airfield, Woodbridge was the one in Suffolk, where they had three runways. The left hand one was you could go in if there was nothing wrong with you, the middle one if you weren’t sure and the right hand one if you crash landed it, see, so I took the left hand one and the, and we stayed the night there. The ground crew there refuelled, and he came to me and said, ‘I hope you realise how short you were of fuel last night’. I said, ‘Yes sergeant. How much are you going to tell me was there?’ He said, ‘well, according to our estimation, you had twenty-five gallons’. Now a Hercules engine, which is in a Stirling, uses fifty gallons an hour, so that’s two hundred gallons in, you had four, how far would have I got on twenty-five? If I’d overshot at Woodbridge, we would not be here today. You see we never, you got called on, on the day and said, ‘well sir, there’s a crew meeting at 2 o’clock this afternoon’, and you would go to this. The navigators would be taken off, they went to learn the target and go through all their maps and things like that, which didn’t involve the captains and the bomb aimers and things. Well the bomb aimers, yes, he will tell you about or has told you about that, and then of course, you got a long period when you were taken off, 6 o’clock or 8 o’clock or 10 o’clock, and the worse ones were of course, were when, we had a, you know, abortive. All the nerves had built up, see, and then suddenly, oh no, back to the mess, see. Then we got a bit of relief then, so a few pints, we used to go down, and one station I was on, they had a piano like that and so, you know, we would spend most of the evening singing round the piano, so —
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Interview with Bill Lucas. One
Creator
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Andrew Panton
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-04-05
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ALucasB150405
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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
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00:29:21 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
W E (Bill) Lucas joined the Royal Air Force in 1940, where he trained as a fighter pilot flying Miles Magisters and Miles Masters, before being posted to RAF Lossiemouth and moving into Bomber Command, flying the Vickers Wellington 1C.
Flew 14 operations with No 9 Squadron at Honnington flying the Short Stirling, before being posted to Wyton in Huntingdonshire where he did a full tour of over 40 operations on Short Stirlings.
He took part in operations to Cologne, Magdeburg and Essen, including taking part in the first 1000 bomber raid on the 30th May 1942.
He then spent 2 years with a Operational Training Unit at Kinloss, instructing on Armstrong Whitworth Whitleys and then he moved to 162 Squadron, flying De Havilland Mosquitos where he marked targets, and did 14 trips to Berlin.
Contributor
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Vivienne Tincombe
Carolyn Emery
Temporal Coverage
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1940
1942
1944
1945
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
Great Britain
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Huntingdonshire
England--Suffolk
Scotland--Lossiemouth
Germany--Cologne
15 Squadron
162 Squadron
8 Group
9 Squadron
bombing of Cologne (30/31 May 1942)
fear
grief
ground crew
H2S
lack of moral fibre
military ethos
mine laying
Mosquito
Oboe
Operational Training Unit
Pathfinders
RAF Bourn
RAF Honington
RAF Kinloss
RAF Lossiemouth
RAF Woodbridge
RAF Wyton
searchlight
Stirling
target indicator
training
Wellington
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/520/8753/ALucasWE170208.1.mp3
80ab136990a1e6cd2bf66c7acb839ff1
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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Lucas, Bill
William Ernest Lucas
W E Lucas
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Lucas, WE
Description
An account of the resource
15 items. Two oral history interviews with Squadron Leader Bill Lucas DFC (1917 - 2018, 1255396 Royal Air Force), his log book, brief memoir and photographs. He served as a pilot with 9, 15, 139 and 162 Squadrons. After the war he ran in the 1948 Olympics.
The collection was catalogued by Trevor Hardcastle.
Requires
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William (Bill) Ernest Lucas was born in Tooting Bec, London on the 16th January 1917, 3 years deep into World War One. Luckily for Bill he was not of age to endure with the fighting in the trenches. However, when Europe was engulfed into another worldwide conflict in 1939, this set way for Bill to become involved with the RAF and IBCC.
Growing up, Bill was an only child and left his school (Bec Grammar School) at the age of 15. He managed to get a job with a printers, which led to his second and only other job at an insurance company called the London and Lancashire. The company’s sports club enabled Bill to find his passion for athletics (especially running) and he was expected to participate in the 1940 Olympics until the war interfered. (https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/30884)
A photo of Bill in his running gear is shown in https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/30865 where he is running down 55 Graham Road in Surrey.
Bill instead competed in the 1948 Olympic Games as the games were also cancelled in 1944 due to World War Two. Luckily the games were hosted in London (https://olympics.com/en/olympic-games/london-1948) and Bill had retired from IBCC meaning that he had time to participate.
As seen in ‘Bill Lucas and the 1948 London Olympics’ (1948) https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/30866 Bill managed to come 6th in the Second Heat meaning he was one position off of being in the final on the 2nd August 1948! This collection also includes Bill in his older prime wearing his 1948 Olympic Games jacket and the official Olympic Games programme from 1948.
When Hitler invaded Poland on September 1st 1939, Bill was 22 years old meaning that he was eligible to be part of Great Britain’s Army. Combining Bill’s hatred of the sea and his fathers recent experiences in the trenches, the RAF seemed to be the most compatible choice with Bill. (https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/520/30884/B[Author]LucasWEv10001.jpg)
Bill was not involved in Britain’s mightiest air conflict against Hitler’s Luftwaffe however, instead watching ‘The Few’ defeat the Nazi aircrafts and succeed. Being considered to be Nazi Germany’s first ‘major military defeat’, this allowed for Britain to continue fighting in the war (https://www.raf.mod.uk/our-organisation/our-history/anniversaries/battle-of-britain/ and to an extent, allowed Bill to continue his path of becoming an Squadron Leader.
It was November 1940 when Bill started his pilot training, but due to a bomber offensive being the only way to properly counter the Nazis, this was huge not just for Bill but Britain as a whole. There had never been a bomber offensive before in warfare. https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/520/30884/B[Author]LucasWEv10001.jpg
As seen in Bill’s official Pilot’s Log Book: (https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/520/24264/LLucasWE122826v1.1.pdf) his training consisted of being part of 16 Elementary Flying School at RAF Derby from 1940 to 41 , 8 School of Flying Training at RAF Montrose in 1941 and 20 Operational Training Units at RAF Lossiemouth in 1941 . He flew three different types of aircraft during his training, Miles Magister, Miles Master and Wellington I’s.
Bill’s training finally finished in August 1941 and he was posted to his first official squadron, IX Squadron at Honington. Here he flew the Wellington Bomber.
Will Cragg
Record of Service:
4 November 1940- 4 January 1941: 16 Elementary Flying Training School at RAF Derby flying Miles Magisters
9 January- 4 May 1941: 8 School of Flying Training at RAF Montrose flying Miles Masters
31 May 1941- 13 August 1941: 20 Operational Training Units at RAF Lossiemouth flying Wellington I’s
14 August 1941- 4 November 1941: 9 Squadron at RAF Honington flying Wellington III’s
4 November 1941- 30 December 1941: 26 Conversion Fleet at RAF Waterbeach flying Stirling’s
30 December 1941- 1 August 1942: 15 Squadron at RAF Wyton flying Whitley V’s
1 August 1942- 3 August 1942: 218 Conversion Fleet at RAF Marham flying Airspeed Oxfords
4 August 1942- 18 August 1942: 19 Operational Training Units at RAF Kinloss flying Whitley IV’s
19 August 1942- 13 August 1942: 3 Fighter Instructor Schools at RAF Hullavington flying Ansons
17 September 1942- 18 September 1942: 19 Operational Training Units at RAF Kinloss flying Halifax II’s
18 September 1942- 24 October 1944: 19 Operational Training Units at RAF Forres flying Mosquito III’s
30 October 1942- 19 December 1944: 1655 Mosquito Training Unit at RAF Warboys flying Mosquito IV’s
30 October 1944- 19 December 1944: 1655 Squadron at RAF Bourn flying Mosquito XX’s
7 June 1945- 28 June 1945: 162 Squadron at RAF Blackbushe flying Mosquito XXV’S
28 June 1945- 29 January 1946: 139 Squadron at RAF Upwood flying Lancaster III’s
29 January 1946: Station Head Quarters at RAF Upwood flying Mosquito XVI’s
William Cragg
William (Bill) Lucas was born on January 16th, 1917 in Tooting Bec, London. He was educated at Bec Grammar School, and left at the age of 15 to work at a printing company before moving to the insurers London and Lancashire to work as an assessor. While working there, he developed his talent for athletics with the Belgrave Harriers, with his best discipline being the 5000 metres. His goal was to compete at the 1940 Olympic games. However, in 1940, Bill was called up to help the war effort and mindful of his father’s advice to avoid the army and his own dislike of the sea, he chose to join the RAF.
Initially he trained as a fighter pilot on Miles Magisters and Miles Masters, but by the time he had finished training, the Battle of Britain had been won and the need for bomber pilots was more urgent. So, he was reallocated to bombers and trained to fly the Wellington at RAF Lossiemouth. Bill Lucas · IBCC Digital Archive (lincoln.ac.uk)
Following completion of pilot training in August 1941, he was posted to RAF Honington and joined 9 Squadron flying Wellingtons. He flew 14 operational sorties – notably Cologne and Hamburg – before converting to Stirlings at RAF Waterbeach. He then joined 15 (Bomber) Squadron at RAF Wyton, flying the Short Stirling and, by August 1942, Bill had completed a full tour of 30 operational sorties (over 40 operations in total). Bill experienced tense encounters with German defences, having to take evasive action and also getting caught in a cone of five or six searchlights. To get out of the searchlight glare he had to do things with the aircraft which it was never meant to do. Returning from one mission they flew too close to Kiel and the airframe amassed a lot of bullet holes and an alarming loss of fuel. Crossing the North Sea, the tank indicators showed practically nothing and they had to divert into Woodbridge in Suffolk. The groundcrew estimated there was less than twenty-five gallons of fuel left (probably less than 6 minutes of flying time).
He was released from operational duties and was posted to RAF Lossiemouth as a flying instructor. Then in December 1944, he returned to operational flying and was posted to 162 Squadron, part of the Pathfinder force, to fly the Mosquito, an aircraft he described as “a bit quicker and more responsive; a nice aeroplane”. He completed a further 34 operational sorites with 162 Squadron, including missions over Kiel, Berlin, Hannover and Magdeburg. In recognition of his war services, Bill was awarded the DFC and was Mentioned in Despatches.
Squadron Leader Bill Lucas was released from the Service in January 1946 and returned to the insurance job he had left to join the RAF. Eventually, he left the company to become an insurance broker. He also returned to athletics and the Belgrave Harriers; he ran in various internationals and competed for Great Britain in the 5000m at the 1948 London Olympics. Athletics remained with him for the rest of his life and he gave his spare time freely, working in prominent roles in the administration of athletics. He remained a Belgrave Harrier committee member well into his 90s. He became known as “the golden voice of British Athletics” for his many years as stadium announcer at the White City .
In his later years, Bill remained prominent in RAF and Aircrew Associations. He, along with a small Band of Sussex veterans, was instrumental in helping to raise funds for the construction of the Bomber Command Memorial in London’s Green Park and the International Bomber Command Centre.
Chris Cann
1940: Volunteered for the RAF
4 November 1940 – 4 January 1941: RAF Burnaston, No. 16 EFTS, flying Magister aircraft
9 January 1941 – 4 May 1941: RAF Montrose, No. 8 SFTS, flying Master aircraft
31 May 1941 – 13 August 1941: RAF Lossiemouth, No. 20 OTU, flying Wellington aircraft
14 August 1941 – 4 November 1941: RAF Honington, No. 9 Squadron, flying Wellington aircraft
1941: Commissioned into the officer ranks
4 November 1941 – 30 December 1941: RAF Waterbeach, No. 26 Conversion Flight, flying Stirling aircraft
30 December 1941 – 1 August 1942: RAF Wyton, No. 15 Squadron, flying Stirling aircraft
1 August 1942 – 3 August 1942: RAF Marham, 218 Conversion Flight
4 August 1942 – 18 August 1942: RAF Kinloss, No. 19 OTU, flying Whitley aircraft
19 August 1942 – 13 September 1942: RAF Hullavington, No. 3 FTS, flying Oxford aircraft
17 September 1942 – 18 September 1942: RAF Kinloss, No. 19 OTU, flying Whitley and Anson aircraft
18 September 1942 – 24 October 1944: RAF Foress, No. 19 OTU, flying Whitley and Anson aircraft
30 October 1944 – 19 December 1944: RAF Warboys, 1655 MTU, flying Mosquito and Oxford aircraft
19 December 1944 – 7 June 1945: RAF Bourn, 162 Squadron, flying Mosquito aircraft
7 June 1945 – 28 June 1945: RAF Blackbushe, 162 Squadron, flying Mosquito aircraft
28 June 1945 – 29 January 1946: RAF Upwood, 139 Squadron, flying Mosquito and Oxford aircraft
29 January 1946: Released from Service having attained the rank of Squadron Leader.
Chris Cann
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 8th, Wednesday the 8th of February 2017, and I’m in Cowfold with Squadron Leader Bill Lucas DFC, and we’re gonna talk about his experiences of life, starting with what are your earliest recollections of life, Bill?
WL: Well, I was born on the 16th of January 1917 to poor parents and my father was a bricklayer, er, in Upper Tooting, er, we lived in Upper Tooting all the time. I went to a school, a primary school, and then I went to the Beck Grammar School, as it was then, in 1928 I think it was. I was there until 1942 and, er, that’s it [slight laugh].
CB: So, what age did you actually leave school?
WL: Oh, I was fifteen, was it?
CB: Okay.
WL: Fifteen.
CB: School leaving age was fourteen in those days.
WL: Yes.
CB: What did you do immediately after you left school?
WL: I, um, I worked for a firm down in Surrey somewhere and they were a printing firm, and I was there for about — oh, quite a few months, and then my mother, who had got me introduced to the insurance company, London Lancashire, um, Insurance Company, and I eventually joined them in — oh, don’t ask me the date but I, I did, yes.
CB: Yeah, and during that time you were quite an active, athletic youngster?
WL: Um, whilst I was in the insurance company yes. I was inured into athletics and became a good athlete with Belgrave Harriers, where I’ve just completed eighty-, eighty-one years.
CB: Brilliant. So, you were working for this insurance company and then doing your running in the evenings were you, and the weekends?
WL: Oh yes. Training at weekends.
CB: Training at the weekends.
WL: At weekends and the evenings. Yes.
CB: Yeah and, er, when the war started you were still with the insurance company, were you?
WL: Oh yes.
CB: Now, what made you choose to join the RAF rather than the Navy or the Army?
WL: Well, I was taken to a — or had to go to be seen by a doctor at some school in Croydon, and, er, he said to me, ‘which service do you want to go in?’ I said, ‘well, my father was in the Army and he said — he put me against that. I don’t like water so I’ve got to join the RAF’. So he said, ‘what do you want to do in the RAF?’ I said, ‘well, there’s only one thing to do in the RAF, that’s fly’ see. So he did a few probings around and said, ‘well, you’ll never fly’. I said, ‘oh, why not?’ He said, ‘well, you’ve got a large heart and you won’t pass the [unclear]’. So, you know, I persisted with, with this and said, ‘well, my large heart is because I’ve been an athlete and it doesn’t usually preclude anybody doing anything’. So — but, um, but eventually it worked out that I did.
CB: So, where did you report first?
WL: Oh, er, what first?
CB: For the RAF.
WL: Uxbridge I think it was.
CB: And what did you do there?
WL: Well, I was only just seen there, et cetera. Why did we go there? Now after that, we went down to Torquay.
CB: You didn’t go to Lord’s Cricket Ground?
WL: No, I don’t think so, no.
CB: Okay.
WL: I don’t remember that.
CB: And what happened at Torquay?
WL: We spent time doing ground work and that sort of thing.
CB: This was an ITW was it, Initial Training Wing?
WL: Yes, at Torquay and Babbacombe.
CB: What were the main activities there?
WL: Oh, it was going through ground work, weather, and all that sort of thing.
CB: And at what stage did you know that you were going to be trained as a pilot?
WL: What age was I then? Oh, you’ve got me on a bad day actually.
CB: Okay. Never mind. We can come back to that.
WL: What age was I? Could I have been?
CG: Twenty-one, twenty-two?
WL: Yes, something like that, yes.
CB: So, you joined up in ’39, did you?
CG: ’40.
WL: No.
CB: Not ’40?
WL: No, not ’39, no. I was dragged in in ’40.
CB: Okay. So, after Torquay, then where did you go?
WL: Where did I go?
CG: His log book will help.
WL: Oh, that’s what the log book’s for [slight laugh]. I went to, um, 16 EFTS at Derby.
CB: Right.
WL: That was flying little aeroplanes and then on to AFTS, Advanced Flying School, at Montrose, where we transferred onto a fighter type aircraft. That didn’t last long, and so we finished up at 20 OTU Lossiemouth on Wellingtons.
CB: So, what was your choice, really of — ideally would you have preferred to be in fighters or bombers?
WL: Well, seeing how I survived bombers, definitely that. I don’t think I’d have survived as a fighter pilot, I would probably kill myself.
CB: Too adventurous, were you?
WL: [slight laugh] Something like that.
CB: So, after you start, you did the OTU on Wellingtons. Where was that?
WL: That was in May ‘41.
CB: Yeah.
WL: Three months.
CB: Whereabouts?
WL: Mm?
CB: Whereabouts?
WL: Lossiemouth.
CB: Oh, that was Lossiemouth. Right. Which then took you to —
WL: 9 Squadron at Honington.
CB: What were the bombers there?
WL: We were there three months.
CB: What were you flying there?
WL: What was I flying? Um —
CG: The 1C.
WL: Wellington 1Cs, yeah, and 3s.
CB: But that was fairly short.
WL: Then to a conversion flight at Waterbeach, learning to fly the Stirling and then I went to 15 Squadron at Wyton.
CB: How did you like the Stirling?
WL: Oh, yes, I quite liked it. Bad on the ground, good in the air. Spending time with 15 Squadron at Wyton.
CB: Still on Stirlings, were you?
WL: I was on Stirlings, yes, and then with a conversion flight at Marham, onto Mosquitos.
CB: A bit different.
WL: Yeah. A bit quicker, a bit more responsive, nice aeroplane.
CB: And which role was the Mosquito operating in?
WL: Mm?
CB: Which role was the Mosquito operating in?
WL: Which role?
CB: Was it, was it as a bomber or was it as a anti-shipping or was it a night fighter or —
WL: Night fighter and a bomber, yes. Right. What next?
CB: Yes, I just wondered how you got on with the Mosquito and, er, what sort of raids?
WL: Oh, I got on very well with the Mosquito.
CB: What sort of ops did you do on them?
WL: I did marking for the main force and general, general bombing raids, yeah.
CB: This is before Pathfinders is it? Oh was it actually Pathfinders?
WL: During the Pathfinder period, yeah.
CB: Because Pathfinders gradually worked up, didn’t they?
WL: Oh yes. It was well run. It had a good leader and we did a lot of good work.
CB: On the Stirlings, were you on bombing raids with those or not?
WL: Mm?
CB: When you flew the Stirling —
WL: Yes.
CB: Were you — the raids? You went on ops with that did you?
WL: Oh yes.
CB: Bombing?
WL: Bombing raids.
CB: What sort of height?
WL: Night, night bombing raids.
CB: Yes. Was the Mosquito day and night or only night?
WL: Oh, only night. Yes.
CB: Okay.
Other: Apart from the three thousand bomber raid.
CB: In the thousand bomber raid.
CG: All three of them.
CB: Yes.
CG: In the Stirling.
CB: So what about — in the Stirling, did you go on the thousand bomber raid?
WL: Yes. 30th of May 1942.
CB: Mm. That was quite a busy —
WL: Cologne.
CB: Route.
WL: The thousand, yes. [slight laugh]
CB: To what extent could you see other aircraft when you were flying there?
WL: Oh, always.
CB: And then there were other large raids?
WL: Oh, yes. There were always more.
CB: What did you do after Mosquitos at Marham?
WL: What happened?
CB: Or, or was that a long tour?
WL: Well, it was only a two-day conversion course at Marham.
CB: Yes.
WL: I went to 19 OTU at Kinloss.
CB: Right.
WL: Oh my brain. It’s just not working.
CB: Do you want to have a break?
WL: I don’t think it will be any faster really.
CG: Have a break.
CB: We’ll just have a — stop there for a mo —
WL: I am a hundred years — [background noise] serving on two other four engine aircraft, squadrons, four of us, four squadrons up there doing that, and we were put in a newly built, um, building which was very damp et cetera and that’s where we slept. That was, that was —
CB: This was on operations?
WL: Well yes, yes.
CB: What were you flying then?
WL: I was flying — what was I flying? I was flying the Stirling, was I?
CB: You were flying the Stirling, yeah. And when the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau went through the Channel, what were you flying in order to —
WL: I wasn’t flying. I was just, um, I’d just joined 15 Squadron and on the same day that happened and the CO got everybody on board that could to look out —
CB: Look out for the ships?
WL: Yeah. As Cherry said, we —, I — we said that if we’d been — we did it from low down. If we’d emerged anywhere near them, we’d have been shot out, out of the sky.
CB: And what was the main attack? What aircraft were in the main attack?
WL: Er —
CB: So you were looking out but who was doing the bombing, supposedly?
WL: I was only just looking out, yes. The squadron were doing the bombing, if any.
CB: But this was with Stirlings?
WL: Mm?
CB: This was with Stirlings, was it?
WL: Yes.
CB: Right and the Navy were doing their bit as well.
WL: Oh yes, with what they call —
CB: Stringbags.
WL: Mm?
CB: Yeah. Stringbags, Swordfishes.
WL: Yes. Stringbags.
CB: Yes.
WL: Oh, you’re stretching my mind.
CB: Okay. We’ll stop again. So when you went to Kinloss, you were an instructor on the OTU?
WL: Oh yes, yes.
CB: So, how did that work? You —
WL: Well, you took crews out on night flights and all that sort of thing and cross country flights and, you know, trained them as, as bomber crews.
CB: Yes and, er, how, how dangerous was that?
WL: [slight laugh] Well, you were the passenger without any, any means of flying the aircraft.
CB: Where — so it had a full crew and the pilot, trainee pilot, was the captain —
WL: Well you trained the crew, you see?
CB: And so where would you be? Did it have dual controls?
WL: No, no, no.
CB: So you stood next to him did you?
WL: I sat next to him, yes.
CB: Oh, you sat next to him.
WL: Yes.
CB: Right.
WL: Well, on the step below the pilot’s seat. The pilot up, just up there and you sat down there.
CB: Could you see out, er, fairly well, or was it pretty difficult?
WL: Oh yes, yes. You’re stretching my mind.
CB: Yes. So did you have any hairy moments with the students?
WL: Not that I really recall, no.
CB: And those Wellingtons, were they new and up to date or —
WL: Oh, far from it.
CB: Were they old and knackered?
WL: Far from it. Old 1Cs.
CB: And could you fly on one engine with the, er, Wellington?
WL: Yeah, it flew on one engine. Yes. Most aircrew, most aircraft could fly on lesser engines. They were designed that way.
CB: How did you feel about being an instructor away from the front line?
WL: [slight laugh] I don’t know how I felt. I suppose, I suppose I was a good instructor and that was all they needed of you. [sigh]
CB: I’ll stop again.
CG: You had got a couple of ops more than the rest of your crew, hadn’t you?
WL: Oh yes, yes.
CG: And then his — the rest of his crew were taken on the next operation by another pilot and lost.
CB: This is on Stirlings?
CG: On Stirlings on 15 Squadron.
WL: All but one.
CG: But Bill didn’t know until about three years ago. He thought the whole crew had been lost and then through, um, Facebook and doing our Bomber Command things, somebody in the United States, somebody somewhere got to hear about it, and it transpired that —
WL: Well, I had a picture, I had a picture in one of the Sunday papers, Sunday Telegraph —
CB: Yes.
WL: And they picked it out and, and the boy, the boy said, ‘Oh, that was my father’, and, er, it followed from there.
CG: His — and his flight engineer had survived. He had been ill on this trip apparently and he’d survived and he —
WL: He did another trip. He was a sergeant as an engineer, he survived to do another tour and became a warrant officer and got a DFC.
CG: And Bill found out about three years ago and he was like a dog with two tails [laugh]. He was so thrilled and, and you had lunch with the grandson, didn’t you?
WL: Yes, we did.
CG: Bill, they’ll probably, they’ll want to record that so you’ll need to repeat it, but I just thought I’d jog it because, because this thing about losing your own, your crew. I mean, you was quite upset that another pilot had lost his life for him.
WL: Oh yes.
CG: That —
WL: I’d flown a number of trips with them so naturally to lose them was, was a great harrowing.
CB: What was it that caused you not to be on that particular op and another pilot had to do it?
WL: Because I’d done my stint. I’d, I’d come off, come off and left them to it.
CG: It was the stage when they did second dicky trips so he would do his — or he would do his dicky trips and those counted as ops, so the pilot was often two or three ops ahead of the rest of his crew, you see?
CB: Mm. Yes.
CG: Anyway, they will need to record that probably Bill, so —
WL: Mm?
CG: They’ll need to record it so you’ll have to say it all again [laugh].
WL: What exactly have I got to say?
CB: Okay. So the question — the point here I think is the trauma of —
WL: Of the loss of the crew?
CB: Losing a crew.
WL: Yes.
CB: And so if we could start, please, with why it happened. Is it, was it because you’d finished your tour of thirty ops?
WL: Yes.
CB: And then —
WL: Well bit more than thirty but —
CB: Okay. How many had you done by then, roughly? It doesn’t matter. You’d done your tour but the crew went on.
WL: That’s right.
CB: So what happened there?
WL: At the end of my period of —
CB: This is on Stirlings.
WL: Operational work on Stirlings, I finished my tour and, er, left the crew. The crew still had a few trips to do. Another captain took them over and, er, lost them, all but except the —
CB: The flight engineer.
WL: The — what is he?
CG: The flight engineer.
WL: Flight engineer, um, and lost them and, er, I was very sorry about that because, you know, we got very close together with a lot of trips behind us.
CB: Mm.
WL: Mm.
CB: How did the crew gel in general? So you did the full tour but how well did the crew gel during operations and —
WL: Oh very well, we went everywhere together.
CB: Yeah.
WL: Yeah.
CB: And what about on the social side?
WL: Yeah, and on social side. We all went drinking together.
CB: Yeah, and were — did you have a mixture of officers and NCOs or were, were all the crew at that point NCOs?
WL: No, no. I had a mixed lot, you know.
CB: What — when were you commissioned? Immediately you joined?
WL: When was I commissioned? I don’t know.
CG: May ’42.
CB: Some people were —
CG: May ’42.
WL: May ’42.
CB: Okay. Whilst you were on the squadron. That squadron?
WL: Must have been.
CB: Okay. Right, we’ll stop there.
WL: [background noise] Earlier in the war, um, he was there.
CB: Mahaddie?
WL: I didn’t know him well then but we got to know him very well later. And he remembered me, so he then put me forward to go onto Mosquitos.
CB: Mm. Right.
WL: That’s as how I see it anyway.
CB: And what was, what were, what were the main strengths that Mahaddie had? What was he particularly good at?
WL: He’d done God knows how many, um, bombing trips, early on. One hundred and twenty-odd of them.
CB: Mm and his role in Pathfinders was what?
WL: Mm?
CB: What was his role in the Pathfinders?
WL: Oh, I don’t know. I suppose he must have been second in command to the boss man, whose name I can’t think at the moment.
CB: But was his role to select suitable candidates for being Pathfinders?
WL: Oh, I think, I think he was, yes. That you’ll never know whether they were good, bad or indifferent.
CB: Right. So, in your OTU how did you grade some of these pilots because there must have been various different abilities? How did you find that?
WL: Well, they had to reach a standard before they could move on to go on to squadrons.
CB: Mm.
WL: That’s what we were teaching them to do.
CB: Yes and then you were required to grade between exceptional, good, average and below average.
WL: Was I? [slight laugh]
CB: [slight laugh] And I just wondered how you —
WL: I don’t think I did, I was. I think my, my CO did that. I certainly didn’t do it.
CB: No. I’m just intrigued to know whether you were consulted in that process in order for that assessment —
WL: Oh, no doubt I was but it was a long time back.
CB: Yeah, and some of the people didn’t complete the course, did they, or would you imagine?
WL: Oh, must have been plenty that didn’t. I can’t remember any of that.
CB: That’s okay. That’s okay. So after OTU where did you go then?
WL: Went to 3 FIS Hullavington. What did we do there? Oh, Hullavington was a training thing for, for, um, teaching and I had a course there on being able to fly and talk at the same time. [slight laugh] So —
CB: So was that before you went to OTU? Because you were learning to be an instructor?
WL: That’s right. That was learning to fly and talk.
CB: Yes.
WL: And then I went to 19 OTU Kinloss.
CB: Yeah. So after Kinloss?
WL: Oh, I had two years at 19 OTU Forres, part of Kinloss.
CB: Part of Kinloss, yeah, yeah. What was the accommodation like up there?
WL: It was quite good. We were in nice, nice huts. Yes, up the road from the mess really. We had to walk or we all had a bike and —.
CB: How were the instructors housed? Did you have two in a room or three or how did it work?
WL: Er, certainly more than one, two I think, yes.
CB: Wooden huts or Nissen huts?
WL: Oh, wooden huts.
CB: Suitable for officers.
WL: Now you put Nissen in? [slight laugh], it could, yeah, it could have been Nissen huts.
CB: I was thinking of the comfort.
WL: They were alright, yes, yes. We all had a stove in the middle of the floor et cetera, to keep you warm.
CB: Yeah, and what about the food? What was, what was the quality of the food like when you were at an OTU?
WL: It was acceptable, I suppose you could say.
CB: But on the operational stations it was different?
WL: Oh yes, they treated us well there. Had the expenses of giving you eggs and bacon before you went off and when you came back [slight laugh].
CB: Has that affected your long term interest in bacon and egg? [slight laugh]
WL: Hardly, I love bacon and egg.
CB: I do. Got to have fried bread though.
WL: Mm?
CB: You must have fried bread with it.
WL: Oh yes
CB: So after Kinloss, at the OTU for two years, and Forres where did you go?
WL: I went to an, the MTU at Warboys where I learnt to fly Mosquitos.
CB: Right [pause] and that was a fairly short course I imagine.
WL: Oh yes, a couple of days, that was all.
CB: Followed by?
WL: To be posted to 162 Squadron at Bourn, in Cambridgeshire.
CB: At where?
WL: Bourn.
CB: Oh, Bourn, yes.
WL: Bourn without an ‘e’.
CB: Yeah. Not to be confused with Lincolnshire. And what was your —
WL: And I was there for, er, six months.
CB: Right, and what was your role there?
WL: Oh, I was a bombing and marking pilot.
CB: Right.
CG: Pathfinder.
CB: So could you just talk us through a Pathfinder sortie? So the main force would be following, would be flying along and needing markers. Did you start — did you set off after the main force had already left because of your speed or did you integrate with it at the front? Or how did it work?
WL: Oh, we didn’t see the main force. We had to arrive at a time when we flew H2S on the Mosquito which —
CG: Did you have Oboe?
WL: Had Oboe, yes.
CB: You wouldn’t have had H2S on a Mosquito, would you?
CG: No, it was Oboe.
WL: H2S Mosquito. Yes. Yes.
CB: Oboe.
WL: Where you flew — where you flew — I forget what you did. You flew —
CB: Confluence of the lines.
WL: You flew a beam —
CB: Yes.
WL: Et cetera, and then photographs and et cetera, and you, you dropped the marker on that spot, yes.
CB: Did you have more than one colour marker so that you could go round again, or did you tend to just be in and out?
WL: Oh, in and out. Yes. I don’t think — I don’t remember any bombing raids where you went round a second time.
CB: Right. And I was think — yes. Okay. And was the — your sortie on its own or were there several Mosquitos together doing the marking on a single target?
WL: I can’t — I honestly wouldn’t know. It depended on what, what the bosses said.
CB: Mm. I was thinking —
WL: Funny question that.
CB: I was just thinking of the amount of flares that you’d be using, coloured markers I mean, um, whether your load would be enough?
WL: That’s all we had to do was fly the beam and then drop as instructed, so how many flares went Lord knows.
CB: Mm.
WL: Not within my remit.
CB: Okay. So you did that for six months.
WL: Yeah, something like that.
CB: How many ops were those roughly? Was it as many as when you were doing the —
CG: Forty.
WL: I haven’t a clue.
CG: It was forty Bill.
CB: Forty
WL: Forty-odd, yeah.
CB: Okay. So at the end of that six months, then what did you do after that? Did they think you needed a rest?
CG: It was the end of the war.
CB: Or did the war come to an end in Europe?
WL: Oh yes. It was finished and the, er, aircraft, we were flying did some trips round Europe dropping mail, um, where we landed at Blackbushe, and then I finished up at — you know, the squadron joined 139 Squadron at Upwood before being dismantled in January ’46.
CB: So this was all Mosquito flying was it?
WL: Yes.
CB: Yeah. So compared with the Stirling, which was clearly a different aeroplane, which one did you really prefer?
WL: When it comes to aircraft I love them all. They brought me home.
CB: Mm, people have different affections —
WL: Well —
CB: For different planes for different reasons.
WL: Well, you could hardly compare a Mosquito with a Stirling. So different aircrafts.
CB: Yes but my experience is that people have a huge allegiance to their aeroplanes.
WL: Oh we all loved them. [slight laugh]
CB: Yeah. Yes. Okay, we’ll stop for a mo.
Other: [unclear] Windows stuff.
CB: No, that’s different.
WL: Window was you’d have this strip stuff which —
CB: You didn’t drop Window —
WL: Big aircraft pumped down the chute.
CB: For jamming the radar, yes. You were with Pathfinders, but were you Pathfinding on every sortie, every op, or did you do other sorts of operations?
WL: Oh, I did plenty of others.
CB: And what would they be?
WL: Just dropping a — the cookie, yes.
CB: Yes, so could you describe the cookie?
WL: I can’t.
CB: It’s a four thousand pound barrel.
WL: Four — five thousand pound bomb.
CB: Yes. What’s in it?
WL: Something that explodes.
CB: [laugh] What about locations? What was the worst place to bomb?
WL: I suppose they all were because they were all, they were all protected, yes.
CB: Mm, and how many trips did you do to Berlin?
WL: Fourteen.
CB: What was your reaction to flying there compared with somewhere like Essen?
WL: It’s a target.
CB: The flak?
WL: Oh, well —
CB: The same everywhere, was it?
WL: Yes, it’s all —
CB: Or were they more organised?
WL: If you look at the picture there behind, that is what you see.
CB: Yeah.
WL: That is flak.
CB: Yeah. Were you pleased to move away from Wellingtons to bigger, more modern aircraft?
WL: Well, whether I was pleased or not, I was drawn off of Wellingtons and put on Stirlings, so that’s what the Bomber Command wanted, so that’s what they got.
CB: What were the limitations of the Stirling in your perception?
WL: Well, its speed wasn’t huge and it only had an operational height of about sort of twenty thousand.
CB: With the Mosquito, you could go —
WL: Oh well, you could go thirty-five thousand.
CB: So at what level would you normally fly on a typical Mosquito op?
WL: Oh, twenty thousand or something.
CB: And when you did the marking as a Pathfinder was there — how soon, how far ahead of the main stream were you to do the marking?
WL: Well, whatever the Bomber Command wanted.
CB: I was just thinking of —
WL: I didn’t have any say in it.
CB: No, no, but I wondered whether you could see them arriving almost immediately or there tended to be a, a lag.
WL: Well, it was flying home you could see the bombs dropping and well, you could see the explosions.
CB: Yeah and as the smoke got thicker, did another marker come along to re-set the target?
WL: I haven’t a clue.
CB: So you didn’t have to do that?
WL: No, no.
CB: No. I’m stopping for a mo. [Background noise]. So on a raid, as I understand it, there would be a master bomber. Would he be sometimes in a Mosquito, or always in a Lancaster or a Halifax?
WL: I couldn’t tell you.
CB: ‘Cause he was calling up what —
WL: Well, well you’d hear him but you wouldn’t see him.
CB: Yes. Right. What was your endurance on the Mosquito? Could you hold over the target if it was a long way away?
WL: Mm?
CB: Could you actually circle a target in a Mosquito if it was a long trip, or was the endurance not sufficient? ‘Cause the Lancaster master bomber would be circling, wouldn’t he?
WL: Well, you could. You are asking some impossible questions.
CB: That’s okay. I don’t mind if you can’t answer. I’m just curious because of some of the other bits that have come out. Yes. Thank you. Because we want to know what people’s perceptions were.
WL: It was a very long time ago.
CB: Yeah. I’m stopping again.
WL: [background noise] Scotland.
CB: Right.
WL: The Whitley was the aircraft at, er, Kinloss.
CB: Was it?
WL: Yes.
CB: Yes. So what was the Whitley like in terms of —
WL: Oh, a little worse than the Wellington. A slow aircraft.
CB: Yeah. They’d been all withdrawn from service some time before.
WL: Mm?
CB: They’d been withdrawn from frontline service.
WL: Oh yes. They were replaced by, by the Wellington I think, yes.
CB: Yes. What was the handling like because it was an old design?
WL: Very heavy.
CB: And, um, what about reliability?
WL: Of the Whitley?
CB: Of the Whitley, yeah.
WL: I haven’t a clue.
CB: It might have been its saving grace.
WL: The ground crews would look after them. They always seemed to be flying to me.
CB: Yeah. And on the topic of ground crew, what was your relationship on the — first of all on the Stirling squadrons, squadron, with the ground crew? How did that work?
WL: You had a ground crew, yes.
CB: Yes. How close did you — how closely did you liaise with them?
WL: Well you got quite friendly with the sergeant, yeah.
CB: Yeah, and you talked about the crew being very cohesive and social events as well as in the air. Did the sergeant, your chief, did he get involved in that or did the aircrew tend to —
WL: Not usually, no.
CB: No. Was he not invited or just not thought to be —
WL: Wasn’t protocol.
CB: Right. You also flew the Anson for a bit. Why was that?
WL: The Anson was only a transport aircraft, used when you wanted to transmit somebody or carry something, or, or go somewhere.
CB: Yeah. Now throughout the war people were supposed to be fit. You were a very fit person before you joined. How did you maintain your fitness during the war?
WL: Well, I tried to do a bit of running but I never really found time to do it.
CB: And your running was, um, well recognised before the war. What did the war do to it.
WL: [laugh] what did the war do to me? It deprived me of going to, er, two events 1940 and ‘44.
CG: The Olympics.
WL: The Olympics.
CB: Yeah, so what did you do instead?
WL: Mm?
CB: What did you do instead?
WL: I don’t know.
CB: Retribution.
CG: You bombed Hitler [laugh].
WL: I bombed Hitler instead, yeah. [slight laugh]
CB: So you missed those two Olympics, then what happened in ‘48?
WL: Well, I was in them.
CB: Were you in the Air Force at the time?
WL: No.
CB: Right. And what was it like at the Olympics in 1948?
WL: I don’t remember now.
CB: You — I mean it was a huge achievement to go there.
WL: Yes.
CB: But the winner that time was — in 1948?
WL: The what?
CB: Who was the winner?
WL: The winner?
CB: In your particular speciality in 1948?
WL: Oh —
CB: Emil Zatopek
WL: Zatopek. Yes.
CB: Did you meet him again afterwards? Or was that the end?
WL: Well, it was no good meeting him. He couldn’t speak English and I couldn’t speak Czech so —
CB: Right. [slight laugh]
CG: Bill did actually run against Zapotek in his heat.
CB: Did he?
WL: Yes.
CB: Yes. And after those Olympics did you — you still kept up your running did you?
WL: Good Lord, yes. I did eighty-two years with Belgrave Harriers.
CB: Yeah. Right. And you were running the Harriers, weren’t you?
WL: Well, I wasn’t running all the time, but I was doing administrations.
CB: Yeah. Did you feel after the ’48 Olympics that you would have a go at the next one, or did you think that was one step too far?
WL: After?
CB: 1952 in other words.
WL: Have a go doing what?
CB: At the Olympics, enter the Olympics again in ’52.
WL: Oh, not to perform, no.
CB: No.
WL: I couldn’t possibly, could I? Think of the age I was.
CB: Well, some people go on and on, as you have.
WL: Well, it depends on your event.
CB: Yes.
WL: But you can’t do fifteen hundreds or five thousands unless you’re pretty fit. If you want to run a marathon, then you might do it.
CB: Yeah. And how did you fit in your running and all your activities with Belgrave Harriers with your job?
WL: Oh, it was all evenings and weekend work.
CB: Yes. And the company itself was sponsoring you, was it?
WL: I didn’t need sponsoring.
CB: Your employer? I was thinking for time off and —
WL: Oh no. I didn’t take any time off because of it.
CB: Everything was done in those days differently.
WL: They did indeed, yes.
CB: Yeah. How did you develop programmes with Belgrave Harriers for people in future? As time was moving on, did you run? Did you work out training programmes to improve people’s effectiveness?
WL: Oh no, no. They’d all do their own [pause], oh, um, Belgrave met up at Wimbledon on Saturdays and during the week if necessary. Otherwise you did your, did your work on your own from home, running round roads et cetera.
CB: Right. Changing back to, um, your occupation, you left the RAF at the end of the war or were they — did they keep you on for a while?
WL: You had your option of going on a short service commission, without any assurance that you would be kept at the end of that period so I didn’t.
CB: So your promotion had got you to where?
WL: My?
CB: Your promotions got you to what rank in the end?
WL: In the war?
CB: Yes.
WL: Squadron leader.
CB: Right, and what were your responsibilities as a squadron leader at that time?
CB: I looked after a flight, um, in the Pathfinder Force.
CB: Right. Okay. How many people —
WL: I was OC a Flight.
CB: Right. How many aircraft in the squadron? So how many in a flight?
WL: Twelve probably. There you are. So, twelve I think.
CB: In the squadron or the flight?
WL: The flight.
CB: Yeah. Right so three flights in the squadron or two.
WL: Two usually.
CB: Yeah. Right. So you left because you didn’t feel you wanted to continue your career, is that what you said?
WL: No guarantee to it.
CB: Yeah.
WL: I had a job to go to so I came back to the job.
CB: Mm, and took up where you left off, effectively?
WL: Yes, yes, exactly.
CB: How did it progress from there? Did you keep going with that or —
WL: Oh yeah, I did quite well in it.
CB: Yeah. Good. We’ll take a break. Thank you very much.
CG: What was the equipment you were given? A blazer?
WL: Blazer and, um, shorts.
CB: Who gave you those?
WL: And, er —
CG: A cap.
WL: A cap.
CB: What? The Olympic Committee did that, did they?
WL: Yes.
CG: Just minimal and he got the — didn’t you get the train from home to go and take part?
WL: Oh yes, yes.
CG: There was no Olympic village or anything.
CB: So how did this work then?
WL: I lived in Sanderstead, which is outside Croydon. I had to take a bus down to Croydon, a train to Victoria, Victoria to, to —
CG: White City, was it?
WL: No.
CB: Wembley?
CG: Wembley.
WL: Wembley. Walk in from there.
CB: This is all for the honour of serving your country in the Olympics.
WL: All for the honour of serving my country and what am I getting for it? Sweet —
CG: Carol enclosed those in an envelope [unclear]. [Background noise]
CB: Now just going back a bit. The first thousand bomber raid was an amazing achievement, however you look at it, but was there any significance about some of the aircraft? What about the one you flew? What was that?
WL: Stirling.
CB: Yeah. And did it have a significance in itself on — who had paid for it?
WL: Er, I don’t think so. We had a little bit better navigation equipment.
CG: MacRobert’s Reply. You flew MacRobert’s Reply.
WL: It might have been, yes.
CG: I think you said it was. It’s in your book.
WL: Yes.
CB: So, do you just want to describe that? What was it, the significance of MacRobert’s Reply?
WL: Well, Lady MacRoberts had two sons she lost during the war and in return for that, she bought replacement, um, aircraft.
CB: Right.
WL: That was the sig— significance.
CB: And they were Stirlings?
WL: Oh yes, yes.
CB: Appropriate. Scottish family, Scottish name of the aircraft.
WL: Yes. Bound to have been.
CB: And you flew one of them?
WL: I few one of them, yes.
CB: And it was on that raid was it?
WL: I think it was, yes.
CB: Yes. When you were on a squadron, did you tend to fly the same aircraft all the time or did you move around to different ones?
WL: Oh, you had your own aircraft and you flew it whenever you could, according to availability, you know, whether it was serviceable or not.
CB: Mm, and that would be checked out with you, er, you had to sign for the plane before you took off, did you?
WL: Well, that was part of the ground, um, operation, yes.
CB: Yes, with, and who was the person who handed over the aircraft?
WL: Sergeant.
CB: Of the ground crew?
CB: Yes.
CB: Right and if, if yours wasn’t serviceable they would rustle up another, is that it?
WL: They would try to but if they couldn’t then they couldn’t.
CB: And you didn’t go.
WL: Didn’t go.
CG: Are you sure you haven’t done enough though?
CB: Yes.
CB: This interview was cut short because Bill was clearly was getting too tired. He’s done an amazing job when one considers his recent car accident and also his hundredth birthday celebrations as well as all the media attention associated with that. The interview was in company with Cherry Greveson.
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 Bill Lucas. Two
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Chris Brockbank
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-02-08
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ALucasWE170208
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
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Format
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00:49:45 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Bill Lucas DFC was born on the 16th January in 1917 and lived in Upper Tooting.
He left school at the age of 15 and went to work in an Insurance Company, before joining the Royal Air Force in 1939.
Bill was sent to 16 EFTS at Derby and then to an Advanced Flying School at Montrose, before finally ending up at 20 OTU Lossiemouth in 1941 flying Wellington Bombers.
He also spent time learning to fly the Short Stirling before being posted to 15 Squadron at Wyton, where he transferred to Mosquitos becoming a Pathfinder for Bomber Command.
Bill completed over 40 operations with Bomber Command flying various aircraft and after the war, competed in the 1948 Olympics where he competed against Emil Zatopek.
Bill spent time after the war with the Belgrave Harriers and took part and organised activities for over 80 years.
Contributor
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Vivienne Tincombe
Carolyn Emery
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
1942
1945
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
England--Cambridgeshire
Scotland--Moray
Germany--Cologne
139 Squadron
15 Squadron
162 Squadron
19 OTU
20 OTU
9 Squadron
bombing of Cologne (30/31 May 1942)
Distinguished Flying Cross
Flying Training School
Initial Training Wing
Mosquito
Oboe
Operational Training Unit
Pathfinders
RAF Bourn
RAF Kinloss
RAF Torquay
RAF Upwood
RAF Wyton
sport
Stirling
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/591/8860/PJonesF1511.2.jpg
793b04c59a074fc16cf9516d8c970d4b
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/591/8860/AJonesF150731.1.mp3
86afe35b0e7335acc49e9f49e10f4275
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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Jones, Frank
F Jones
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Jones, F
Description
An account of the resource
Three items. An oral history interview with Derek Jones, Frank Jones's son. Frank Jones flew operations as a bomb aimer with 158 Squadron. Includes photographs of aircrew.
The collection was catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-07-31
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
BB: We are going to erm, read some of his father’s notes, that he’s going to explain that
DJ: Disembarked and travelled to RAF Hednesford on the 16th of July 1946, then on the 20th of July with demob leave until the 30th of November 1946, to apply for a job and so ended my war time service of five years, nine months and twenty-eight days.
[recording paused]
BB: This is the interview with Mr Frank Jones’s son, Derek, as Mr Jones senior is, is an elderly gentleman and er, is, has a frail sounding voice, but he is present and er, he does give his permission. And so, I er, would just like to say that the meeting is being held in my house in Dunblane and it’s now twelve fifteen.
[recording paused]
DJ: I have found my Dad’s notes written in his own hand about his war time experiences. It covers in detail his enlistment, training camps, time abroad, how his crew were put together, bombing raids and his demobilisation, plus other interesting and unusual stories. They were written decades ago but they are primary source material and accurate. They will help with the recording and here is the information from those notes:
Prior to joining the forces in World War two, I had left school at sixteen and trained as a horticulturist with the Liverpool Corporation, having successfully passed my gardening exams, I decided to follow three of my brothers and join the forces. On the 1st of October 1941, I joined the RAF at Padgate, Warrington, aged eighteen. After basic training in England, I spent the next two years training in South Africa. I trained in Whitley, Anson and Oxford aircraft. The training included dinghy and parachute drills, I was continuously tested in subjects such as navigation plotting, astro navigation, compasses, maps and charts, instruments, reconnaissance and photography. I remember completing fifty hours in an Anson and twelve hours in an Oxford as detailed in my flying book. Er, when my training in South Africa was almost complete, I qualified as a navigator bomb aimer, at Queenstown, on the 29th of May 1943. In the following month on the nineteenth of June I qualified as an air gunner at ninety, er, No. 43 Air Gunners school.
Back in Britain, at the beginning of 1944, I continued flying training in the Whitley, this training was to hone my skills acquired in South Africa. My main role in those training flights was air-bomber, I also carried out simulation and bombing practice. My training in Whitley and Anson aircraft was at RAF Kinloss at No. 19 OTU, flying time totalled just over ninety-three hours. From May 1944 until June the 13th, there were more training flights, practising among other things, circuits and landings, three engine landings, bombing, fighter affiliation, instrument flying. By this time, I had completed two hundred and forty hours in the air since the beginning of my training. [pause]
I was based at RAF Lissett near Bridlington with 158 Squadron, whose motto was ‘Strength through Unity’. My crew for all the operations that I flew were, pilot Fred Meaden, Alf Shorter, Mac Harris, Ray Wells, Ron Evans and Dave Lockyer. On the twenty-third of June nineteen forty-four, I took part in my first op when we flew to [unclear] I was a bomb aimer, I was positioned in a streamline Perspex nose, with a single hand-held machine gun. From then on, I completed another thirty-four operations before being screened. I flew in a Handley Page Halifax Mk 3 with improved Bristol Hercules engines instead of the Merlin engine which was used in the Mk 2 Halifax. With a maximum speed of two hundred and eighty miles an hour and a range of twelve hundred miles fully loaded, the targets we went after were largely German industrial ones. [pause]
My, one of my most dangerous was the one in which I was awarded the DFM for, er, it was the 12th of September 1944 at Gelsenkirchen Nordstern, it was a daylight raid against a synthetic oil refinery. On the run-up to the target our aircraft came under heavy accurate flak and in the book, “In Brave Company”, Ray Wells, the flight engineer, described the attack as follows. ‘When pilot Fred Meaden arrived over the city, bomb aimer Flight Sergeant Jones was unable to pick out the aiming point through the banks of smoke and cloud, calmly he asked the pilot to make a second and then a third orbit, before he called, ‘bombs gone’. By this time, we had lost the main force and we turned to England as quickly as we could. The next morning our ground crew had found half of the rudder control cable severed by flak’. As my pilot Fred Meaden said in my citation for the DFM, I was always completely determined to press home the attack and to ensure the accuracy of my bombing, I frequently asked him to orbit the target.
BB: That must have been very annoying for the crew and very frustrating for the crew.
FJ: It was!
BB: But you had to get the picture and you had to get the photo of the last picture and you had to hit the target, so there was no, the pilot got you there, the gunners protected you, but you [emphasis] had to drop the bombs.
FJ: That’s right.
BB: And that was a very important part.
DJ: In total, I flew thirty-five sorties and my last one was on the 2nd of November 1944, on a night time raid to Dusseldorf. By this time, I’d completed two hundred and fifty-four hours of day time flying and a hundred and seventy-one hours of night time flying. Er, overall, I had fifty, fifty-five thousand men died in the air war and that is one in every two men who joined up. I was fortunate to be in 158 Squadron, which I believe had fewer losses than many other squadrons. Also, those flying in the Halifax Mk 3, suffered fewer casualties perhaps because of the improved ceiling limit and the greater manoeuvrability of the plane. When the war concluded, I decided that I would not return to my old job as a horticulturalist, instead I decided to become a teacher. Like so many of my generation the war had a decisive impact on my life and the course I followed thereafter.
BB: Thank you very much for reading that Derek and thank you very much Frank for telling us your story. It’s tremendously interesting to hear erm, these things first hand from people who were there, and that’s the whole point of this archive, so that generations in the future will benefit from your story and the stories of others, so thank you very much and we now will conclude this interview at twelve-thirty. Thank you very much indeed.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Derek Jones
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Bruce Blanche
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-07-31
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Sound
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AJonesF150731
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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.
Format
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00:08:10 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Bomb aimer Frank Jones wrote notes decades ago regarding his service in Bomber Command with 158 Squadron. His son, Derek reads his father’s story, which includes his early life, enlisting into the RAF and training in navigation at No. 43 Air Gunners school in South Africa. Frank was based at RAF Lissett after his training. He reads about Frank’s opereation over Gelsenkirchen Nordstern where he earnt the DFM for his bravery. Frank completed thirty-five operations and mentions the names of his crew. After the war Frank decided not to go back to horticulture but to become a teacher and states that the war had a decisive impact on his life.
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Cathie Hewitt
Carolyn Emery
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
South Africa
England--Yorkshire
Temporal Coverage
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1944
158 Squadron
19 OTU
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
Anson
bomb aimer
Distinguished Flying Medal
Halifax
Halifax Mk 3
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
RAF Kinloss
RAF Lissett
RAF Padgate
training
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1262/17135/PSmithDA1901.2.jpg
f068e3d6817394db0223c0a31545a439
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1262/17135/ASmithDA190219.2.mp3
2eabbde8694ea974c6013caea6c115c7
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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Smith, Douglas Arthur
D A Smith
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with Douglas Arthur Smith who flew with 76 and 158 Squadron as a wireless operator.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2019-02-19
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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Smith, DA
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DK: So, this I’ll just introduce myself. This is David Kavanagh for the International Bomber Command Centre interviewing, do you like, are you Doug Smith or —
DS: Yes.
DK: Doug Smith at his, Douglas Smith, at his home on the 19th of February 2019. I’ll just make sure that’s working. Ok. If I just put that a bit nearer to you. If, if I keep looking over I’m just making sure it’s still working.
DS: Yeah.
DK: So what I wanted to ask you first of all was what were you doing immediately before the war?
DS: Before the war I, I was living in a small village called Bressingham near Diss in Norfolk and I’m the son of an ex-World War One —
DK: Veteran.
DS: Veteran.
DK: Yeah.
DS: Who was also injured during then. And I was born three years after World War One. My family, they’re agricultural people.
DK: Right.
DS: My father was a farmer, and when the war broke out —
DK: I might just come a bit closer to you if that’s ok.
DS: Yeah.
DK: If I move that there. Is it ok if a sit here?
DS: Yeah. Sure.
DK: Yeah. Yeah. Ok. Sorry. You were saying.
DS: Yeah. As I said I was born the son of a farmer and well, you see the real Depression after the First World War.
DK: Do you know, do you know much about your father? What he did in the First World War?
DS: He, yes he was, he was a soldier that fought in the, on the Somme.
DK: Right.
DS: And unfortunately he got injured with shrapnel and had to be repatriated. And as I said from then on I came on the scene [laughs] and a sister. My sister. And when World War Two broke out. I just fancied I’d like to join the Royal Air Force because all youngsters at that time —
DK: Did your, did your father advise against the Army then, did he?
DS: No. He didn’t have anything. To be quite honest my father, I did all this on my own back.
DK: Oh, right.
DS: I didn’t have any discouragement or any encouragement.
DK: So what, what made you look towards the Air Force then? Was there something that drew you to it?
DS: Well, I think, I think the idea of flying.
DK: Yeah.
DS: I mean flying was in, well it was in it’s the initial stages in them days.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
DS: And I think a lot of youngsters. So I just went down to Norwich and enlisted and, and that’s where I started my career, and that was in 1940.
DK: So —
DS: October.
DK: Right.
DS: 1940.
DK: And how old would you have been then?
DS: Nineteen.
DK: Nineteen.
DS: Yeah.
DK: Right. So, what, what’s your first sort of posting then in the Air Force? What did you do first of all?
DA: Well, first of all —
DK: I mean, presumably were you looking to become a pilot? Did you think or —
DS: Well, in the selection board once you, when I went to Norwich to get enlisted, they took all particulars and I went through various examinations, tests and, and they asked you what your background was. And they then suggested that I became a wireless operator although I would like like everybody else to have been a pilot.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
DS: But I was enlisted as a wireless operator/air gunner.
DK: Right.
DS: And then from then on just went through the basic foot bashing stage of the —
DK: Yeah. Is that something you took to was it? Or was it something you liked? Or —
DS: Well, it was quite new to someone who lived in the country and it all came, well I was surprised. But that was intriguing actually really.
DK: Yeah. Can you remember where it was you did you square bashing?
DS: Yes. I went to Blackpool.
DK: Right.
DS: And done all the square bashing there, and after that there was a period when I had to wait for the training to do with the flying side because the square bashing was just a preliminary.
DK: So, presumably this would have been your first time away from home then was it?
DS: That was my first time away from home.
DK: Yeah.
DS: We were billeted in private hotels and in hotel accommodation sort of thing. Then once we’d finished that we had, we all, everybody had to be put somewhere and, while they were waiting for the air training side of the, of the Air Force and I went to, I was stationed at Norwich for a while. Attached to the signals to get some idea because they were [pause] what I had to face eventually because we got with, operating Morse Code and all that sort of thing. And then from then on I was, I went to an Air Gunnery School at Evanton in Scotland to learn all about the machine gunning. What the aircraft would be.
DK: So what was the training like then on the machine guns? Did you, were you taking them apart or —
DS: Well, you had to take them to pieces and —
DK: Yeah.
DS: Know how they operated if you got stoppages and just mainly getting to know. I think that they were, the guns were Brownings I think and just get general knowledge of what you actually might need to handle.
DK: Yeah.
DS: Although my main job really finished up as a wireless operator.
DK: Right.
DS: I never had anything further to do with the gunnery side apart from taking the course. The course in gunnery which everybody had to do. The first aircraft I think I flew was a, was a Botha.
DK: Oh right.
DS: Which was —
DK: Yeah.
DA: A lot of people haven’t even heard of today.
DK: I’ve heard of them. What was that like then? Your first flight in one of these old things.
DS: Well, as I say that was one of the first flights I did. I couldn’t compare that one with any other.
DK: No.
DS: Back then when I first got there. Looking back they were very daunting and they were [laughs] they were not over safe either.
DK: No.
DS: And then once I completed the gunnery course —
DK: Did you, did you do any air to air firing?
DS: Yes.
DK: At that point?
DS: Oh yes.
DK: At the drogues.
DS: Yes. That’s right.
DK: Yeah.
DS: Firing on drogues and I’ve got it all recorded in my logbook there. And, and then after that [pause] let me think. Get this right.
DK: It would have been for the wireless operations.
DA: Yes.
DK: Yeah.
DA: I think I went back to Blackpool again because that was where I had to learn Morse Code and —
DK: Right.
DS: And, and that’s, once again we were billeted in the hotel and guest houses, and our training, the training when we were learning was in a tram shed in Blackpool, and they were all set out for all the pupils to get to know what Morse Code was about. And you had, once you completed your course you had, you had to maintain eighteen words a minute.
DK: Yeah.
DS: Yeah. Once you passed that. And then from there —
DK: Is it, was Morse Code something you found you could pick up easily was it or —
DS: Well, for some. It wasn’t easy. But was interesting and same old double Dutch to start with but I got there in the end.
DK: Right.
DS: Which most of us did. Some of them failed.
DK: And how many words a minute did you have to do?
DS: Eighteen.
DK: Eighteen.
DS: Eighteen words a minute. Yeah.
DK: Right.
DS: And, and then after that I went to Abingdon where I met the, met up with the, where we met up with the crew.
DK: Right.
DS: You know. I went there as an individual. You met up and you formed. You formed a crew which my crew was Sergeant Hickman, and —
DK: And this would have been the Operational Training Unit.
DS: That’s an operational, yes.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
DS: That’s an OTU. An Operational Training Unit and that was, that was on Wellingtons.
DK: So, how did you think that worked with you meeting up with your crew. Just putting everybody together in a hangar sort of thing? Did that, that work out well?
DS: Yes. Well, of course we were, they were all, we were all strangers. We were all experiencing the same, the same problem, you know. Meeting someone for the first time.
DK: Yeah.
DS: But, but you became like a little family in the end because you social, you socialised.
DK: Socialised. Yeah.
DS: Socialised [laughs] rather together and you more or less lived together and as I said you became a family and we were, once we went through all the process of the OTU which meant —
DK: If I just go back to the OTU. What did you think of the Wellingtons then, as an aircraft? Were they —
DS: Well, they were much better than the Botha [laughs] At least that was the [pause] I think the Botha was a, I’m not quite sure if that was a single engine or not, but yeah that was a little step up going to the Wellington but —
DK: And your, your pilots name was?
DS: Sergeant Hickman.
DK: Hickman. Right. Ok. And was he, was he a good pilot?
DS: Yes.
DK: Yeah.
DS: I think so. He was, as I said they all had to pass to a certain standard so I mean, yeah. Yes. They were. He was, he was quite good and unfortunately later on he bought it as we called, used to say in the Air Force.
DK: So moving on from the OTU then what was, what was your next, next step then?
DS: The next step from the OTU was I went to [pause] to —
DK: Was it 76 Squadron?
DS: 76 Squadron.
DK: Yeah. Yeah. Is it alright if I look at your logbook?
DS: Yeah.
DK: Is that ok?
[pause]
DS: Yeah.
DK: So I just —
DS: To Linton on Ouse. I went to Linton on Ouse.
DK: Right.
DS: The station commander, or at least the squadron commander of 76 Squadron which I joined was Wing Commander Leonard Cheshire who became, eventually became Group Captain Cheshire.
DK: Just for the recording I’m just having a look at your logbook here. It says you were at Number 8 Air Gunnery School.
DS: Yes.
DK: Yeah. And then, then it was number 10 Operational Training Unit.
DS: That’s right. Which was at Abingdon.
DK: That was Abingdon.
DS: That’s correct.
DK: So that’s mostly all local flying and you’re the wireless operator there.
DS: That’s right. Yeah.
DK: Camera gun exercises etcetera.
DS: Yeah.
DK: And then just, then it’s, I’ve then got 1658 Conversion Unit.
DS: Yes. That was after we left, oh yes. I got ahead of myself there. We went to Riccall.
DK: Right. Ok.
DS: Yeah, to convert from the Wellington to the Halifax.
DK: I’m just looking on your logbook here. You’ve got the Halifaxes here. The aircraft serial number. It says BB304 and R9434, W1003, W1168 they were quite early Halifaxes, were they?
DS: Well, they, well they must have been. Yes, because that was, they were they were flying with the Merlin engines.
DK: Right.
DS: In those days.
DK: Yeah.
DS: Because later on we went on to radials. Hercules.
DK: Yeah.
DS: And —
DK: So, what did you think of the early Halifaxes at the Conversion Unit?
DS: Well, we, we liked them. Well, we thought we were going up from two engines to four engines but yes they were. Yes. We got on very well with them. Yeah.
DK: So, it would have been at the Conversion Unit then that you would have been joined by your flight engineer. Did you get an extra crew member then?
DS: Yeah. I thought we had the flight engineer from the start but —
DK: Oh, ok.
DS: I mean we had the gunners. The navigator and the bomb aimer, and as I said —
DK: Can you, can you still remember their names?
DS: Yeah, I might have to refer to it.
DK: Yeah. Ok. We can, we can go back to that later.
DS: Yeah.
DK: Ok.
DS: Well, our rear gunner was Scott. And our navigator was Keene. Bomb aimer was either Pringle or Prangle or —
DK: Yeah.
DS: And, yeah —
DK: So then in looking at your logbook again in April 1943 then you’ve gone to 76 Squadron at Linton on Ouse.
DS: That’s right.
DK: Yeah.
DS: Yeah.
DK: And that’s flying Halifaxes again.
DS: Yes.
DK: And can you remember were they the early Halifaxes again or the later ones?
DS: Yes. They were the early ones.
DK: The Merlin ones.
DS: Yeah.
DK: So, I notice all your flying there is with Sergeant Hickman.
DS: Yes.
DK: As your pilot.
DS: Yes.
DK: And so you say the squadron commander then was Leonard Cheshire.
DS: Yes.
DK: Did, did he make much of an impression on you?
DS: Well, we as young recruits saw, we didn’t see a lot of the commander.
DK: Right.
DS: We just, we just, we had a, I think a section commander. A Flight Lieutenant Ince. But no, we didn’t get [pause] I never really got in contact much with Cheshire but —
DK: Do you remember seeing him there though?
DS: Oh yeah.
DK: Yeah.
DS: I saw him. Yeah. Yeah.
DK: So what was his squadron like? Was it a well-run squadron would you say?
DS: Yeah. Yeah. He [pause] he, in the early days because he flew the Wellington on operations and apparently he brought one back with a great big hole in the side. They said you could get an Austin 7. Yeah. No. He was [pause] no, he wasn’t a character but he had, he was, and actually in later years he turned religious.
DK: Yes.
DS: That’s another story.
DK: Yeah. So, so his, so your crew then there was no officers on the crew.
DS: No.
DK: No.
DS: No.
DK: Right.
DS: No. No. Late in, the navigator was made up.
DK: Right.
DS: As a pilot officer later on but all the others were just, you know sergeants. That was the minimum you were was a sergeant if you were flying. And —
DK: So, I’ve got, I’ve got on here then it looks like you joined 76 Squadron quite early in April ’43 and then would this have been your first operation then? To Pilsen.
DS: Yes. That’s right.
DK: So what, what was it like to go on an operation then for the first time? What sort of happened?
DS: It was quite an experience really and it’s something I don’t think anyone other than the ones who were on these raids could really describe what it was really like. I mean, it was just something like out of this world, you know. There was the German searchlights trying to pick you up. I mean, they had a master beam which used to pick you up, and then a series of smaller searchlights would beam, would beam on you and then, then you were, well yes that was nearly fatal because the Germans used to fire up the —
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
DS: Up the beams and I mean we, fortunately we managed to manoeuvre and get, not get picked up by these master beams but we could see others that were being illuminated with the searchlights and that. Not awful but you could see people, the planes just exploding and, yeah. Yeah, that. But the thing that really amazed you was the, where the bombs and the flares and things were on the towns that we bombed. You could, it was just like a furnace burning. You know, like that. As I said it’s a sight, you can’t describe it to —
DK: No.
DS: To anyone.
DK: Right.
DS: That was, and then of course you had fighters chasing you around. Chasing you. Which were, you had to keep your eye out for and —
DK: Were, you were you ever attacked by a night fighter?
DS: Yeah.
DK: Yeah.
DA: Yes. But as you will see later on we shot down, well, we ourselves shot down two.
DK: Oh, right.
DS: Two Jerry fighters.
DK: So, your first operation then was the 16th of April 1943.
DS: Yeah.
DK: And then 20th of April ‘43 you’ve gone to Stettin.
DS: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They were all —
DK: I’ll just read this out for the —
DS: Yes. Yes. That’s right. Yes. That’s correct.
DK: So, and then 27th of April, Duisburg. Duisburg again on the 12th of May. And on the 13th May, Bochum. I’ll turn that around for you. So, 30th of May, Mönchengladbach.
DS: Yeah.
DK: And then Mannheim. 15th of September.
DS: They were with different pilots they were.
DK: Right. Yeah. That’s Troak. I’ll spell that out T R O A K.
DS: That’s right.
DK: So, then Mannheim on the 5th of September. Munich on the 6th of September. So, you’ve gone on two operations. One following the other. Mannheim and then Munich. Then you’ve got another pilot here. Smith.
DS: Yeah.
DK: So, that’s the 3rd of October. Kassel. And then the 4th of October. Frankfurt.
DS: That’s right.
DK: So that’s operation number nine then. Yeah. And the tenth op 8th of October to Hanover. And then 22nd Of October, Kassel.
DS: That’s right.
DK: Interesting here. So, the 26th of November 1943 you were in Halifax K. Your pilot is Lemon.
DS: That’s right.
DK: And its ops to Stuttgart and it says, “Emergency landing. Three engines with full bomb load.” Can you —
DS: Yeah.
DK: Recall that?
DS: Yes. I can. We, we had just got airborne and one of the engines packed up. So we called base for instructions and we went, we were told to go out to sea and drop our, our, the bombs because you, it was not known for an aircraft once you’d took off with a full bomb load to have been able to come back and land.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
DS: So, but the pilot was a regular pilot who was in the Air Force before the war.
DK: Oh right. So that was Flight Lieutenant Lemon.
DS: Yeah.
DK: Yeah.
DS: And he, he called back to base, said, ‘Well, I can’t get out. I can’t go to sea. I’m coming back in.’ And we did come back in, but I think what probably he did put on, when he went in to land put a few more revs on.
DK: Yeah.
DS: To compensate. And the next thing we knew they were following up the runway behind us with all the local fire engines.
DK: So you landed with a full bomb load then.
DS: Yes. We had a full bomb load.
DK: So that was quite unusual then.
DS: Yes.
DK: [unclear]
DS: I’ve never known, well it might have happened but as far as I know that had never been known before.
DK: Yeah.
DS: But —
DK: It must have been quite, quite frightening at the time.
DS: Well, it all happened so quick you see because we’d hardly got off the end of the runway and the engine blew up.
DK: I see here the total flying time was actually five minutes isn’t it?
DS: That’s right.
DK: So you’d just done a circuit and then straight back down again.
DS: Yeah. So that was a bit hairy, I can —
DK: Yeah. So then, carrying on from there you’ve got 3rd of December. Leipzig.
DS: That’s right.
DK: And then 7th of January 1944 now. So it just says, “Bombing. Night.” It doesn’t actually say where.
DS: That’s yeah that’s an exercise.
DK: Oh, is that an exercise? Then 20th of January 1944 you’ve got your twelfth operation and it’s to Berlin.
DS: That’s right.
DK: Do you remember travelling to Berlin on that flight?
DS: It was just like another place to us, you know because we were quite keen to go there because that was the, the capital of, you know of Germany when we got there.
DK: And that was with Flying Officer Falgate.
DS: Falgate. Yeah.
DK: Falgate. Yeah. So that operation then was seven hours twenty.
DS: That’s right.
DK: Right. So [pause] and then 21st of, 21st of January 1944, Magdeburg.
DS: That’s right.
DK: And then 28th of January, Berlin again.
DS: Yes.
DK: [unclear] And then you’ve got 27th of May here [unclear] That’s in Belgium isn’t it?
DS: Yeah.
DK: And you’ve landed at Bruntingthorpe.
DS: Yeah.
DK: Was there a problem with your aircraft then?
DS: Yeah. Yeah. I think we’d lost pressure somewhere in that. We had to, to, instead of getting back to base we had to make an emergency at Bruntingthorpe.
DK: Carry on then. I’d like to say you’re now in the Halifax 3s. So they’re the ones with the —
DS: With the Hercules.
DK: Hercules engines. So were they a better aircraft to the earlier Halifaxes do you think?
DS: Yeah. Oh yeah. Much better. Not only that they were safer for us because being air cooled radial there was no manifolds on the engines.
DK: Right.
DS: They’re, the Merlin’s had twin exhausts on each engine and at night time they got so hot that they illuminated.
DK: Oh right.
DS: And of course the Germans could —
DK: See them.
DS: I mean, so we were much safer once we got to the radials because the only way we were picked up by the Germans was either by the searchlights or night fighters which was bad enough.
DK: And I notice here your pilot then was Flight Lieutenant Forsyth DFC.
DS: Ah huh.
DK: So that was the 1st of June, Halifax 3 and it’s letter R and it’s off to Cherbourg. And then I see you’ve done operations actually on D-Day. 6th of June. D -Day support operations on both. Well, two operations on 6th of June, in fact, wasn’t there?
DA: Yeah.
DK: Forsyth DFC. St Lô. And you’ve put there invasion front. And then 4th of July there’s your first daylight operation.
DS: That’s correct.
DK: So to St Martin. And that’s with Flight Lieutenant Forsyth again. What was it like flying in daylight on the D-Day operations?
DS: We didn’t, we didn’t get any, any opposition from the Jerries at all. That’s, well as I said that was just a hop over the Channel and back, you know.
DK: Yeah.
DS: That was when you were going in to the, in to the heart of Germany when you were going in to the Ruhr Valley and there. I mean Jerry put up about thirty thousand extra ack ack guns when the Battle of the Ruhr was on. That was like hell on earth that was. But —
DK: So, though it was in daylight because it was over France the opposition wasn’t quite as deadly.
DS: No. No.
DK: So 18th of July then ops to, I’ll spell this out it’s A C Q U E T. That’s in France I think, isn’t it?
DA: Yeah.
DK: That’s twenty one.
DA: This guy turned out, after he came out of the, out of the war he was he was my solicitor right up until he died.
DK: Ah.
DA: Yeah.
DK: So, that was flight lieutenant —
DS: Crotch.
DK: Crotch.
DS: Yeah.
DK: Flight Lieutenant Crotch.
DA: Yeah.
DK: So he was your pilot on the —
DA: On that —
DK: 18th of July. And then he became your solicitor post-war then.
DS: Yeah. Yeah. Right up until recently. Until he died.
DK: Oh. So 23rd of July. France again. Then 24th of July Stuttgart. And so this is the 24th of July 1944. The pilot’s Flying Officer Macadam.
DS: Yeah.
DK: Had gone to Stuttgart and I see here it says two enemy fighters destroyed.
DS: Yeah. That was —
DK: What happened there then?
DS: Well, what happened was that we had been previously chased by a couple of Jerry fighters but we managed to, to avoid them because what was the known thing was once a Jerry fighter turned in to attack you, you turned into him.
DK: Right.
DS: So, so anyhow we evaded the first lot and the second ones I don’t think they saw us because we were, I think where they were, they had blind spot. What we used to call a blind spot if you were flying over an aircraft as a pilot and then there’s a plane underneath. I think we must, that must have been a blind spot for it.
DK: Yeah.
DS: Oh well, that’s only what we assumed. And then, we shot down the first one. We didn’t realise that he had a mate with him. You know, flying alongside. But then he came in to, to bring us down but fortunately we managed to get him as well. And that was recorded. That wasn’t just what we said.
DK: Right.
DS: Because what happens once you come back to do a briefing you have to state what you did or saw.
DK: Yeah.
DS: And lots of other aircraft saw these two fighters being shot down so we got it recorded and that’s how that happens to be.
DK: Yeah. So someone else had witnessed it then.
DS: Yeah. Exactly.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
DS: Yeah. Because everything that happens up there has to be logged if you see anything unusual.
DK: And who got them then? Was it both the gunners working together?
DS: Mainly the mid-upper.
DK: Right.
DS: Well, I think they both worked together but being as he was flying over the top he could see further.
DK: Yeah.
DS: Rather than somebody at the tail end.
DK: And can you remember the names of the gunners?
DS: No. I don’t. No.
DK: No. I thought we could check on that.
DS: No. No.
DK: So, do you know what type of aircraft they were that you shot down?
DS: No.
DK: Right.
DS: No.
DK: Right.
DS: I would think, I mean probably, I don’t know for sure but I think probably Junkers 88, I think.
DK: So, they were twin engined aircraft.
DS: Yeah.
DK: You shot down. Oh, right.
DS: As I say we didn’t have time to look —
DK: No.
DS: At them at the end of the day.
DK: So you’re, you’re sat at your radio at the time while all this is going on. What, what’s that like as you’re being, as you’re being attacked by a night fighter?
DS: You still had to, you were always listening out and you don’t make any communications with base.
DK: Yeah.
DS: Because of detection, you know. Jerry. So, but we just, we just log what we hear. But naturally we didn’t log the fighters.
DK: Yeah.
DS: Because that was, that was on the debriefing that we had to record those things but —
DK: I’ve just noticed here as well that in July 1944 you’d moved squadrons. You’re now with 158 Squadron at Lissett.
DS: Yes.
DK: So this incident then happened while you were with 158 Squadron.
DS: Yeah.
DK: And it’s, it was Halifax R and it was Flying Officer McAdam.
DS: Yeah.
DK: Yeah.
DS: See what happened previously was when I was flying with Hickman earlier I got tonsilitis.
DK: Right.
DS: And they wouldn’t let me fly so I had to go in the sick bay. They flew off to Hanover and they never come back and that’s where, that’s where their —
DK: Yeah.
DS: Why their names are on your —
DK: Right.
DS: Memorial.
DK: If can just go back to that then. That happened when you were with 76 Squadron.
DS: Yes. Because that’s, yeah —
DK: Yeah.
DS: When I was with Hickman.
DK: Yeah. And can, can you remember when that was that that happened?
DS: It was —
DK: Are they on here?
DS: Yeah, I think that’s —
DK: Can I take a look?
DS: Yeah.
DK: OK. Oh, this is the [pause] yeah. So, they were in Halifax DK 6, DK266 MP-O.
DS: Yeah. That would be it, I expect. Yeah.
DK: And this was on the 28th of September 1943.
DS: Yeah. Yeah. During that period. Within a few weeks of that I lost my wife and child at the same time.
DK: Oh dear.
DS: So I had [pause] they talk about people having trauma these days but I mean I had to suffer the loss of my whole crew and then shortly after that, in only a matter of weeks I lost my wife and kid as well. A child.
DK: I’m very sorry to hear that.
DS: Yeah.
DK: Yes. Oh dear.
DS: So, that was, as I say that.
DK: Yeah.
DS: But you see then once you get split up from your, from a regular crew you were, you were like what we used to call an odd bod. If somebody was short of a radio operator they picked on you. And then of course by that, doing that you never had a, you never had a full crew again. You just flew when they were short of somebody.
DK: Yeah.
DS: And then of course all the accolades for when the others got medals and DFCs and DFMs and whatever. You know, such as myself we were, not that I worried about the medal but just glad to be here but you just missed out on any gallantry medals.
DK: If you don’t mind I’ll just go back a little bit because you, you when all this happened you were with 76 Squadron at Holme on Spalding Moor.
DS: Yeah.
DK: So you did an operation on [pause] where are we?
DS: There must be a period of breaks somewhere.
DK: There is. Yes. I think it’s here isn’t it because they’re saying your crew was lost on the 28th of September 1943 and that was to Hanover. So you’ve flown on an operation to Munich with Falgate and then he was lost after that then.
DS: Yeah.
DK: Yeah. Oh dear. And that was because you had the tonsilitis.
DS: Tonsilitis, yeah. Actually, I think I was in hospital for about a couple of weeks.
DK: And just to clarify this for the recording then this was that the crew was lost on The 28th of September 1943 on a trip to Hanover. Do you know what, were they shot down then or was it —
DS: Yes. They were shot, yeah.
DK: Did you ever find out anything more about what had happened to them?
DS: Not. That they were shot down. I think it says in there where they were shot down and I wouldn’t have known that without what you’ve got there.
DK: Yeah.
DS: I just knew that they’d been shot down. I didn’t even know. I was going to contact the war cemeteries and see really where they were.
DK: Yeah.
DS: But —
DK: It’s got the Rheinberg War Cemetery.
DS: That’s right.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
DS: Yeah. That’s right. Yeah.
DK: Oh dear. So you’ve, after that terrible incident then you’ve, you have actually carried on flying haven’t you?
DS: Yeah. Yeah.
DK: Almost with different pilots.
DS: Yeah. That probably was a good thing in a way, I suppose.
DK: Can you, can you remember Falgate’s first name?
DS: Les.
DK: Les Falgate.
DS: Yeah. Yeah.
DK: Right. So going forward again, you’ve then gone to 158 Squadron.
DS: That’s right. I think that was out of Lisset. I think that was.
DK: Yeah.
DS: I think. Yeah.
DK: Yeah. 158 Squadron.
DS: It was Lissett. Yeah.
DK: And we’ve covered the, the incident when the night fighters were shot down. So then you’ve got three more operations here in August 1944. So these were daylight ones presumably.
DS: Yeah. They were.
DK: So, the 24th of August, Brest. 27th of August, Homburg. 31st of August somewhere in France. That’s not twenty eight operations and then September 1944, on the 9th 10th and 11th you went to Le Havre three times.
DS: Yeah. That’s correct.
DK: In daylight. The 15th of September to Kiel. And then 23rd of September 1944 to Dusseldorf.
DS: That’s right.
DK: So that was your —
DS: That.
DK: Thirty third operation.
DS: Yeah.
DK: Was that, was that the total you did then?
DS: Yeah.
DK: Yeah.
DS: Yeah.
DK: So can you remember much about Le Havre in daylight on those three operations.
DS: No. No. No. As I say two in one day I think they wanted.
DK: Yeah. On the 9th 10th 11th of September. In the same Halifax as well. LV940.
DS: Yeah.
DK: And the same pilot, Flight Lieutenant New.
DS: Yeah.
DK: So could you just speak a little bit about what your role was as, as the wireless operator? What you were. What you did on the operations.
DS: Well, on the operations the radio operator you had, you didn’t do [pause] you were mainly there to listen out for information from base. You never had to, you were not allowed to contact base because of the detection side of it.
DK: Yeah.
DS: You may listen though and made notes of what, anything that was going on within the plane. If the navigator says something or whatever. And mainly look out for enemy fighters. I had a window where I sat.
DK: Because in the Halifax whereabouts are you? You’re kind of sat under the pilot aren’t you? Or —
DS: Here [pause] Yeah.
DK: Right.
DS: Right there.
DK: So you were in the nose there.
DS: Yeah.
DK: Sort of below, below the pilot.
DS: Yeah.
DK: Pilot up there and then bomb aimer. Air gunner and then bomb aimer down there.
DS: Yeah.
[pause]
DK: So you did thirty three operations in total then and then it says here you were then screened.
DS: Yeah. Well, that means that then I went on to instructing.
DK: And this was at 19 OTU at Kinloss.
DS: That’s right.
DK: So you were back on the Wellingtons again.
DS: Yeah [laughs]
DK: What was that like? Going back to the Wellingtons.
DS: Not very good [laughs]
DK: So you were there for quite some time then weren’t you? Right through to 1945 on Wellingtons again [pause] So, right through to February 1945 you were training then. Oh, and carried on until March. There’s quite a few flights in Wellingtons by the looks of it.
DS: Yeah. Yeah.
DK: Training flights. So, you finished then March 1945.
DS: Yeah.
DK: Was that when you finished in the Air Force then or —
DS: No, I finished flying in 1945.
DK: Right.
DS: And I became redundant and we had to, we had to muster to some other part of the Air Force, and I was asked what my background was and that. I said I was, spent my few months or early years as a, working in a garage as a car maintenance and so I said I wouldn’t mind going back into transport or something like that. And then they, there was a position came up at a place called Shepherds Grove which is near Bury St Edmunds as a transport officer. So I took over the airfield as a transport officer.
DK: Yeah.
DA: And I was there. Well, the base closed. I closed the base down while I was there because that was no longer needed because the war had finished and that’s where I finished and got demobbed.
DK: So, how do you look back on your time in the Air Force now? All these years later?
DS: It was a great experience. It really was. At the time you just took things for granted and we never saw any fear. I mean if our names weren’t up to fly on a certain night we were disappointed. I mean there was no such thing as saying, ‘I’m glad I’m not going.’ We were so keen. We didn’t, we didn’t want to miss anything, and I’ve never, I’ve never ever heard of anyone saying that they were, they may have inwardly, never scared.
DK: Yeah.
DS: No. There was one of our biggest moans ever since was the accolades going along pre-war is all about Halifax, no all about Lancasters.
DK: Lancasters. Yes. Yes.
DS: The poor Halifax never gets mentioned.
DK: Yeah.
DS: If there’s a fly past.
DK: It’s always a Lancaster. It’s like the Spitfire, isn’t it?
DS: Exactly.
DK: The Hurricane gets ignored.
DS: Yeah.
DK: Yeah. So you liked the Halifaxes then as an aircraft.
DS: Yeah. Well, as I say we didn’t have a lot of choice really but —
DK: Did you ever fly in a Lancaster then?
DS: No. No.
DK: No. So, you can’t really compare the two.
DS: No. No.
DK: Yeah.
DS: The only advantage that they said the Lancaster could fly about another couple of thousand feet higher than us which the higher you could get the further away you were from the enemy —
DK: Yeah.
DS: Ack ack guns, because the point was they could get you wherever you went. But of course the fighters used to chase us back. Even follow us right back to the base. There had been certain, it had been known where our own aircraft were shot down over, over on the, on coming in to land on our own bases.
DK: Yeah. And —
DS: It’s unbelievable really when you look back.
DK: Yeah. How did you feel when you got back from an operation then?
DS: We always used to look forward to coming back because of the spread. It was the only time you got a decent meal [laughs] We used to have egg and bacon and as much as you wanted.
DK: And —
DS: You had to do the debriefing once you’d landed and you went back to be debriefed and that’s like if anyone saw anything unusual. That’s when the question of the fighters came in you see.
DK: Yeah.
DS: And anything that happens you had to make a note of. I mean I remember coming back [pause] that was when the first Doodlebugs went to London.
DK: Oh right.
DS: We saw this object illuminated. We knew it wasn’t an aircraft because we didn’t know what it was.
DK: Yeah.
DS: And all things like that we had to make a note of and then, then the radio operator on various operations we had to drop what they called Windows.
DK: Yeah.
DS: Which is a —
DK: It reflects the radar.
DS: A series of like tin foil to, to obliterate the German detection.
DK: Was that one of your roles?
DS: Yes.
DK: As wireless operator.
DS: Yeah.
DK: Yeah. So what did you do? Did you feed it down a tube?
DS: There was a chute.
DK: Right. Yeah.
DS: And we were told every, whatever —
DK: Yeah.
DS: Seconds or minutes, I can’t remember exactly you had to drop and that because everybody did the same thing because I mean lots of the raids we went on I mean they were four and five hundred bomber raids. I mean and usually however many there were, there was in the raid, we were, we bombed out like, half of you would be bombing at a certain time.
DK: Yeah.
DS: And then three minutes later the second wave.
DK: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
DS: Of course we relied on the Pathfinders to drop the flares because it’s the Pathfinders that gave us the exact target.
DK: Yeah.
DS: I mean today things are different now I mean with radar and —
DK: It’s all computerised.
DS: Computerised, you could pick out a needle.
DK: Not quite the same is it?
DS: No. But yeah.
DK: So, when you were with your crew then did you socialise together?
DS: Yes.
DK: What did you used to do on your time off then?
DS: Well, mainly we used to go to the local bar. Not on the base.
DK: No.
DS: We used to, we were stationed in Yorkshire and —
DK: Can you remember the names of the pubs?
DS: Yeah. We used to go to Betty’s Bar.
DK: Betty’s Bar.
DS: In York.
DK: Yeah. Yeah. I know it.
DS: And as I know the place, I think today they’ve got some inscriptions even in Betty’s Bar today.
DK: Is your name there?
DS: I don’t think my name is there [laughs]
DK: Probably not [laughs] You’ll have to go there and put it in.
DS: Yeah. Yeah. Well, yes we used to go and have a few beers. And then anyone who got newly commissioned they used to take his hat.
DK: Yeah.
DS: And pour a pint of beer in it to christen it or something like that. Yes.
DK: So, it must have been a great loss then when your crew went missing.
DS: Oh yeah. Yes. I mean we used to spend so much time together.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
DS: And —
DK: So after that you were just crewed up with wherever you were necessary. You didn’t join another —
DS: No.
DK: Another crew as such.
DS: I flew with Falgate for a while and actually I’ve come, been in contact with some distant relatives of Falgate. It’s, you know since the war and one of the young girl of this family got a lot of information from the 76 Squadron Association and —
DK: So, the crew. I’ve, I’ve just slightly misunderstood something. The crew that went missing was Hickman’s.
DS: Hickman.
DK: Hickman. And what was his first name? Hickman’s first name. Would it be in here? I’ve slightly got confused with the names of the pilots.
DS: Yes.
DK: Sorry about that.
DS: Yes, well that was I flew with several pilots.
DK: Yeah. So, it was Hickman who went missing on the 28th of September 1943 in Halifax DK266 MP-O.
DS: Is his, is his name up there?
DK: That’s George Scott. Was he one of the other crews?
DS: He was a rear gunner.
DK: Rear gunner. Ok. So it was, sorry I slightly misunderstood that. It was Hickman that went missing.
DS: Yes.
DK: To Hanover you say.
DS: That’s right.
DK: On the 28th of September 1943.
DS: That’s correct.
DK: So, it was after that you were flying with Falgate. Les Falgate.
DS: Yes.
DK: Etcetera. Yeah. Slightly confused there. So, have you got the names of your crew somewhere or were they, did you say they were written down somewhere? That’s only got the one crew. G Scott.
DS: They should all be there shouldn’t they?
DK: I can, I can check after. That’s ok.
DS: I thought they were all on there.
DK: Yeah. Just the one there.
[pause]
DA: Yeah.
[pause – pages turning]
DK: Because your last operation with Hickman was, or the last time you flew with him was 16th of May 1943. So it must have been soon after that you got the —
DS: Yeah.
DK: Tonsilitis. Yeah. And then as I say he went missing in the September.
DS: Yeah. That must be it. Yeah.
DK: Ok. Well, thanks for that. I’m just going to pause this for a moment and have a look at your photos there.
[recording paused]
DK: Just put this on again. So you’ve got a photo of your Halifax in the background there and your crew. Can you name the crew there?
DS: That was, that was Falgate.
DK: Falgate. He’s in the middle. Yeah.
DS: I can’t. I don’t know. I can’t remember them. The crew.
DK: Right. Are you there?
DS: Yeah. There.
DK: Ah you’re on the end. Ok. So you’re on the right and Falgate is in the centre.
DS: That’s correct.
DK: At the back. Yeah.
DS: Yeah.
DK: So, you’ve got another photo here. That’s, that’s your ground crew as well presumably.
DS: Yeah.
DK: So, that’s Falgate there again, is it? He’s in the middle isn’t he?
DS: Yeah. Yes. That’s right.
DK: Yeah.
DS: And I think that’s me there.
DK: And that’s you there.
DS: Yeah.
DK: Third from, third from the right. So, this is one of the earlier Halifaxes with the Merlin engines.
DS: Yeah. I think it is.
DK: Yeah.
DS: Yeah. Oh, yes. It is, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Douglas Arthur Smith
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
David Kavanagh
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
2019-02-19
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.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ASmithDA190219, PSmithDA1901
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:55:43 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Douglas Smith grew up in Bressingham, Norfolk. He joined the Royal Air Force in October 1940, at the age of nineteen, and trained as a wireless operator. He joined a crew on Wellingtons at No 10 Operational Training Unit, RAF Abingdon, before converting to Halifaxes at 1658 Conversion Unit, RAF Riccall. In April 1943, the crew joined 76 Squadron, based at RAF Linton on Ouse. He describes their first operation to Germany, the danger of searchlights, and visiting Betty’s Bar in York during their downtime. He recounts a trauma that occurred on the 28th of September 1943, when his crew, piloted by Sergeant Hickman, was shot down on an operation to Hannover, while Smith was grounded due to tonsillitis. He continued operations by filling in for crews lacking a wireless operator, including two trips in support of D-Day, and one emergency landing back at base with a full bomb load. In July 1944, Smith moved to 158 Squadron, RAF Lisset, and completed operations to Le Havre, Dusseldorf, and Kiel. He describes his role as the wireless operator, releasing Window through a chute, and an operation to Stuttgart where the crew shot down two night fighters. After completing thirty-three operations, he instructed at 19 Operational Training Unit, RAF Kinloss, before working as a transport officer at RAF Shepherds Grove until demobilisation.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Tilly Foster
Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Great Britain
England--Oxfordshire
England--Suffolk
England--York
England--Yorkshire
Scotland--Moray
France
France--Le Havre
Germany
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Hannover
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Stuttgart
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
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
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940-10
1943-04-16
1943-09-28
1944-07
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending revision of OH transcription
10 OTU
158 Squadron
1658 HCU
19 OTU
76 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operational Training Unit
RAF Abingdon
RAF Kinloss
RAF Linton on Ouse
RAF Lissett
RAF Riccall
RAF Shepherds Grove
searchlight
shot down
training
Wellington
Window
wireless operator
wireless operator / air gunner
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1049/11427/ANewhamDF170727.2.mp3
4317e63f3920f92373f45d230b14638c
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
Newham, Douglas Frank
D F Newham
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Douglas Newham DFC (1921 - 2022, 1337797, 156440 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as an observer with 156, 150, 10 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
2017-07-27
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
Newham, DF
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
GT: Now, I’m with Mr Douglas F Newham LVO DFC and Doug welcome and thank you for agreeing to be interviewed for your history and for the history of what you did with Bomber Command to be put forward for the Digital Archives. So, please tell us your story.
DN: Right. My name is Douglas Newham. I was born 13th of November 1921. Consequently, ninety five years of age at the moment. I started my life in, in the RAF by volunteering in 1940/41 and did my first operational tour as a sergeant with a serial number of 1337797. I did my training in the UK. I consider I was very fortunate to do, to do that because right from the word go I got used to flying in weather such as we have over here rather than in the blue skies of South Africa or Canada. So right from the word go I got used to crap weather. Any rate, I did my training in the UK as a navigator observer which was what I always wanted to do. I had no wish to be a pilot. I saw the duties of a navigator as more challenging. Any rate, I did my flying first of all on the dreaded Botha. The Blackburn Botha. And then very quickly they were grounded and we were on Blenheims. The short nosed Blenheim and the long nosed Blenheim for navigation. And my navigation training was from Jurby on the Isle of Man. And most of our navigational exercises were all up and down the Irish Sea and off the west coast of Scotland in glorious, glorious scenery and quite challenging from a navigational point of view. Having finished my navigation, bombing and gunnery training at Jurby, we were then moved up to Kinloss in Scotland, near Inverness. This time flying Whitleys. The old Armstrong Whitworth Flying coffin which looked like a coffin at least. And we finished there our navigation training up there prior to being posted to a Wellington Squadron and that would have been in the tail end of 1941 the beginning of ’42. Strangely enough we were first posted to 156 Squadron which was then still on Wellingtons. And it was the forerunner of one of the Pathfinder Squadrons. As a result of that at a very early stage I was given excellent training on the navigational aid Gee which I loved for the rest of my career. However, that was just as Pathfinder course. 8 Group was being formed and as a consequence of that our crew were posted from 156 to 150 Squadron down in North Lincolnshire. Again on Wellington 3.
GT: Ok.
DN: We stop.
GT: Yeah. Doug, where did you crew up? And who was your skipper and crew please? Could you, can you remember?
DN: Right. We crewed up at our Operational Training Unit at Kinloss in Scotland and I crewed up with a Canadian pilot, Bill Harris. Several years older than, than I was. As a mild diversion at the moment several years after the war I met his sister and married her. So I married my pilot’s kid sister from Vancouver. But that is another long story. Any rate Bill and I and our crew we started our first tour of operations on Wellingtons operating from Kirmington. I remember the first couple of trips were down the north west coast of France. Mining. Dropping sea mines in the channels used by the U-boats. And we dropped mines at probably something like oh five or six hundred feet and encountered a few flak ships. They were very very steep learning curves. I do recall that my [pause] somebody, somebody had suggested to my pilot that unbeknownst to me that it would be safer to do an asymmetric weave. Never to do a regular weave because that could be predicted but to do little bit one way a little bit more that way and then perhaps back. But nothing regular. Well, unbeknownst to me Bill tried this on our first operation. Suffice to say that I think we toured the whole of northwest France but we did find exactly where we wanted to drop mines. Did so and found our way back by which time they thought we were, we were gone because we were about two and a half hours later than we should have been and we were getting a bit short on fuel. Any rate, we carried on. Proceeded with our first tour with further mining operations and then bomber operations over western Germany. Still on the dear old Wellington. Our maximum load was four thousand pounds and we, we had one aircraft that did carry a four thousand pounder. It didn’t even have any bomb doors. It just had an open space and the four thousand pounder was pulled just, just up inside. Any rate, all was going reasonably well there and then there was the allied invasion of north west Africa. Of Algeria. And to our great surprise half the Squadron was sent on this invasion. So we, we flew down to Cornwall. And then from Cornwall down to Gibraltar. And then Gibraltar to an ex-French Air Force airstrip about thirty miles from Algiers. And we had, I think it was twelve aircraft. And our targets were mostly the German ports of Tunis and Ferryville. Then bounced back down the Tunisian coast or over to Sicily. Maybe up to Sardinia. But in the central Mediterranean we were fortunate on one of those operations that we were carrying our four thousand pounder and I did manage to get a direct hit on one of the lock gates at a German port called Ferryville which put the port out of action. Which was rather fortunate. Anyway —
GT: So from that point Doug you’d moved from Bomber Command through to the Mediterranean Command.
DN: Yes. To the North West African Strategic Air Force which consisted of, I think twelve aircraft. Yeah. And our command, commander in chief down there was Jimmy Doolittle who did the Tokyo raids off the carriers. Anyway, so we had started our tour in Bomber Command and then towards the end we went over to, well went down to, posted at away from the UK down to Algiers and moved in to the North West African Strategic. Anyway, came home. Finished there by which time we had lost, well our aircraft was the last remaining aircraft of the twelve that went out there. Most of them I must admit were either accidents or bad weather. Some being shot down. The casualty rate was considerably, considerably less than it would have been had we stayed in Europe. Very much. I mean, we were operating mostly between five and ten thousand feet. We were subject to a lot of light flak but compared to what it was like over Europe in those early days we were extremely fortunate. And recognised it. Germany had a few night fighters out there. Nothing like subsequently developed in Europe. Anyway.
GT: Yeah.
DN: Back to the UK where the crew were dispersed. I was dispersed to Abingdon which was an Operational Training Unit with Whitleys and I was in a Navigation School doing, trying to convert the navigators from their, their early theoretical navigation practices into more realistic operations. Training. Training flights and then more realistic of what it was like over the other side. Now, for some reason, and I have no idea why I was selected to go to the Central Navigation School for a staff navigator’s course. I have no idea why I was picked out. I get to this school and I find that I am the only NCO on the, on the course. They were mostly flight lieutenants and there was one wing commander and I was the lonely sergeant. As a result of that my social life was nil because they were all in the officer’s mess. I was in the sergeant’s mess. So I had, really had nothing else to do but study and I was absolute. I mean I I loved the course. I had, had always hoped as a youth that maybe I might get to university but that was not on in those days. But here I was on what was virtually a university course on navigation and everything to do with it. Astronomy, compasses, radio, tides, astronomy, huge amount of mathematics. And I loved it. I had got nothing else to do. Then I became an absolute bookworm and a swat and it got a bit embarrassing when the only sergeant on the course came out top and I was not very popular with my other course mates. But anyway my commission came through just as I finished that course and I went back to my Operational Training Unit only to find out that one of the conditions of such a course, the staff navigator’s course was that you were obliged to stay in a training position or a staff position for at least a year before you could go back on operations. Any rate I tried to wriggle my way around that and I very nearly got to the Mosquito Met Reconnaissance Flight but it was cancelled at the last moment and I was obliged to stay for that year. However, on the three hundredth and sixty fifth day after finishing the course I was called down to Group Headquarters and offered a job of navigation leader on a Squadron of Halifax aircraft up in 4 Group. So I grabbed that and from, from Abingdon, from my Operational Training Unit went up to Melbourne, just outside York on Halifax 3s. Initially I was not a member of 8 Group and I could only put myself on operations if somebody, somebody went sick. But then one of the flight commanders lost his navigator and he and I then lined up together. That was Squadron Leader Bill Allen who was on his second tour. And Bill and I hit it off precisely. We both had the same view on flying duties. We both trusted one another implicitly and equally the rest. Trusted the rest of our crew. He was a flight commander. I was the nav leader. We both had similar views on our administrative and leadership duties. Bill, for example would always ensure that if there was a new pilot he would never send a new crew up on a long distance difficult flight as their first operation. Whereas some of the other, other flight commanders would take a brand new crew and stick them on anything. I mean I’ve had a little bit of a tussle with one flight commander and indeed with my Squadron commander because we had a brand new crew and they put them on Leipzig which was a ten hour flight. And I objected to this for a new crew. I got overruled and they operated and the crew concerned did a bloody good job but that was, that was lucky. But any rate my own skipper he and I had very similar views and we would not infrequently take lame ducks with us. And any rate we Bill would too, too frequently choose the rough targets rather than the easy targets. But he, he believed in leadership in its, in its true sense. We did, on one occasion towards the end of the war lead a three hundred. I think it was three hundred and fifty or four hundred raid of Halifax aircraft. We were the lead aircraft on a German oil target north of the Ruhr. But in the end we got separated because we were operating more frequently then Group thought we should. They wanted us to stay so that we would remain in our admin capacity for a longer period. Frankly we didn’t give a damn about that. We operated when we wanted to. As a result of which Bill was promoted to a wing commander and moved elsewhere and I was disciplined. However, Bill, I’d say he was a bloody good pilot. He ended up with a and DFC. And any rate I then finished my spell with 10 Squadron during the ’39/45 European war. I would fly with anybody who needed a navigator and chalked up my operations. Anyway, the end of the European war came and the Squadron was immediately, I think it was the second day after the, after the European war was declared over if I remember correctly we converted to Dakotas for glider towing and paratroop dropping for the Malaysian invasion. Well, they wanted to put me in a staff post somewhere but the Squadron was going out on operational duties so I managed to pitch it that I stay with the Squadron. And we went out with, well we converted to paratrooping and glider towing down in Oxfordshire. That was quite entertaining too. We were towing gliders. Let’s see what it’s like to fly in one. These troop carrying gliders that have, I mean they had a descent angle like a brick. They had flaps as big as barn doors. You came down at a hell of an angle. And on the flight I was doing in a glider and we, we disconnected from the tug and the glider pilot stuck the nose down. I was standing behind. I lost all sight of the sky. All you could see was the patch of ground where eventually you hoped you were going to land and he’d get each flap as I say like two bloody great barn doors and very low altitude pull the stick back into his stomach and you’re down. I tried to have a go at seeing what it was like to join with the paratroopers who were, we were dropping. But I got down to the dropping zone and unfortunately the surface wind was too strong so we had to call that operation off. Otherwise I would have had a go at that. Anyway —
GT: Doug, before we leave the European theatre for you just quickly going back to the Halifax. It seemed to be always the third cousin of the four engine heavies. To you guys and where you flew it was she as good as the Lancaster? How did you guys feel?
DN: We on, on the Halifax, we frankly loved the aircraft and thought it was better than the Lanc. We believed it was tougher. It could take more damage than the Lancaster. It couldn’t, it’s true it couldn’t carry the same load and it couldn’t fly at the same altitude but we certainly in the last, the last few months of the war until the Halifax 3 came in with the uprated Hercules engine we were certainly below the Lancasters and we couldn’t as I say we couldn’t carry the same bomb load. Later however in the later marks of Halifax we were damn nearly as good as the Lanc in those respects. It wasn’t as convenient an aircraft for a crew. I mean the wireless operator was sitting almost underneath the pilot’s seat. Feet. In the nose of the aircraft. And the navigator was sitting in front of him. So, to get, if you wanted to get back or even get up towards the pilot’s compartment I had to get out of my seat, walk past the wireless operator and up a couple of steps. So as I say you were way down below the pilot’s feet. It wasn’t as sociable shall we say but I think those of us who were operating on Halifaxes had every much as faith in our aircraft as a Lancaster. There was always rivalry between Lancs and Halifaxes. I still say I’d just as soon fly in a Halibag as I would in a Lanc. Sadly, I never flew in a Lancaster. In fact I never even, no I’ve never even been on board a Lancaster. You know. On the deck. But a Halifax yes. I enjoyed that and had great faith in it. Yeah.
GT: Many of the crews I’ve talked with have talked of how corkscrewing with the Lancaster or the Stirling was was a special art and and most pilots managed it. Some did not. How did the Halifax deal and did your pilot master the art of corkscrewing?
DN: Yes. The early Halifaxes had significant problems in that they, they could get in deep trouble by stalling the rudders. That was when the Halifax had a kind of defect. A fin. And then later, it was in the later Halifaxes it was made into a rectangular fin which overcame the problem of stalling of the rudders. But Bill could certainly corkscrew the Halifax and throw it around the sky like nobody’s business. And he did [laughs] No. I say the Halifax did not have as good a reputation. Bomber Harris for example disliked the Halifax and would have, all his memoirs and books about him indicate that he would, he would have sacrificed a year of production of Halifax aircraft if the factories could have been turned over to Lancasters. But that was not agreed and the Halifax did not, never did have the same reputation. I think a bit unjustified but it was based primarily I think on the fact of it had less bomb load and less range than the Lancaster did. But as far as the attitude of the crews and the confidence in the crews in their aircraft it was certainly equal. Equal to the Lancaster.
GT: Now, Doug it has been made mention that if they lended total production to the Mosquito that having thousands more Mosquitoes and not the four engine seven man bombers they could have saved a lot more air crew but still achieved the bombing of Germany. What’s your opinion on that?
DN: It, I mean statistically it’s true. You’d have had to have had a lot more. A lot more Mossies. It was questionable whether we’d got, whether we got enough airfields because obviously you’d have to have three or four Mosquitoes for every Lancaster or every Halifax. You might not have had some of the precision of the mass bombing that the Lancs and the Halifaxes achieved although with [pause] with Oboe and some of the other navigational aids the Lanc — the Mossies were capable of accurate bombing but I can’t see the big mass raids being conducted by what would achieve the same bomb load per raid as the, as the Lancasters and the Halifaxes. I mean a raid comprising just of Mosquitoes would have been at most six seven of four thousand or five thousand pounds so you’d have had to have had two or two and a half times as many aircraft. And then there would have been the problems of concentration and mid-air collisions and the density of traffic. Have you got enough runways and aircrews in the UK to do that? So no. I think we probably had it about right. Although the Mosquito, Mosquito was a very fine aircraft. Again, I would have loved, I would have loved to have gone in those. But no. My own job as a navigator in a heavy bomber I I really loved it. I think I was good at it. My navigation aids of Gee and H2S and Air Position Indicator. I was paranoid about accuracy. Way over the top and quite unrealistic. I admit that. But I used to fix my position either by Gee or by H2S every six minutes. I had my Air Position Indicator and I was working to the nearest decimal of a minute. So I was working to the nearest six seconds and I was fixing every, every [pause] every six minutes. The reason being if I did it every six minutes I didn’t have to work out how many miles or knots I was doing in an hour. Just moved the decimal point. So I had a, a very very strict navigation procedure and discipline for myself which a number of others on the Squadron followed. I mean if you did a ten hour, a ten hour trip and you were fixing every six minutes, you know. That, you’d be doing ten fixes, ten calculations of ETA and track and distance of track I’d say every six minutes. They’d do that ten times in an hour. If you’re on a ten hour flight you got a hundred. It was a bloody high workload. However, I loved it. That was my job and I loved it. Yeah.
GT: Yeah. Yet the Americans obviously were pretty thick to the last couple of years of the war in the air during the day and I was also made aware that most of the flights of the American bombers only had a navigator aircraft. And so most of the aircraft didn’t actually have a navigator.
DN: Yeah.
GT: Did you have contact with the Americans in any way? And what’s your thought on the fact that they went in with one aircraft with one navigator for a bunch? With your experience on the Halifax there.
DN: I think that was probably misguided. But their whole technique was very different from ours. I mean, we were operating at night because, well we had to. We could not defend ourselves by day against the Germans fighters. We had difficulty doing so at night. I mean we were very near, I believe Bomber Command was very nearly overwhelmed by the German night fighters. Witness Nuremberg. The number we lost there. But the only way we could operate during most of the war was certainly at night where obviously you had to have one navigator per aircraft. When we were operating by day once we got air superiority and I mentioned the occasion that we led a three hundred and fifty or four hundred aircraft on on this oil target it’s true that the others could have followed us. I think it would be, it would be foolish to do so because you had no, no insurance policy. If that one aircraft got clobbered the others would be in trouble. I, I was of the opinion that most of the American aircraft had at least a second pilot was able to to have a fair bit of expertise at navigation but to be honest I’m, I’m not adequately familiar with what the Americans could do. We certainly had, well, to me navigation was an art and I loved it. Yeah. Very different for tactical if you were on tactical target by shall we say smaller aircraft like the Boston or the North American. That would have been a lot, a lot different from my type of navigation. It would have been a lot more map reading than. I mean I was doing mostly, would be by Gee and H2S and traditional DR navigation. Occasionally, very occasionally you’d resort to a bit of astro but Gee and H2S were my, my two main nav aids.
GT: And were they cutting technology for the time? Was, was that, was that really awesome designs and futuristic equipment that they gave you to work with?
DN: I think so. I mean there was other stuff coming along later. The Americans used Loran and I believe some of, some of 8 Group and 5 Group used Loran. They also used GH which I didn’t use. But certainly H2S was, I believe pretty cutting, cutting edge stuff. And they, I mean even in my time they, they got working to shorter and shorter wavelength. They, we had introduced gyro stabilised standards so the aerial scanner was, was stabilised. So you could move the aircraft and the, the Gee pitch, the H2S picture on your screen didn’t change because the scanner itself, the rotating scanner was gyro stabilised. We had variable rates of scan so you could change the speed of scan to take better definition or better accuracy. So we were getting better accuracy because the frequency reduction has got shorter wavelength. We had various variable speed scan and gyro stabiliser and those, those modifications were being introduced while we were operating. So I think that, I mean much of that stuff went on at Malvern which was a kind of centre of, one of the centres of research. And I think they did a bloody good job of keeping up to date. I mean there’s been a lot of criticism about navigational ability and bombing inaccuracy in the early part of the war and there was a government, government inspired survey of this. And results were pretty horrible. I can’t remember the details now but it was less than a fraction of our bombs were getting within kind of five or twenty miles. And I think that was justified but they were in the early days of the war and then at the same time there was a lot of development work going on with new compasses, gyro stabilisers, distance reading compasses, with H2S, with Gee, with the Air Position Indicator. There were lots of developments that were coming along in those early days of the war and kept coming along. And I think the development guys were doing, you know a brilliant job all the time in trying to improve things. Perhaps we in 4 Group didn’t see as many of those clever things that perhaps 5 Group or 8 Group but I think there was a lot. A huge amount of credit due to those guys who were in the development. Equally, on the, some of the radar counter measure stuff which is another one of my interests on how we, how we tried to fox the German radar and the German night fighters. Ok. They, they out foxed us with their upward pointing cannon and Schrage Musik and it was on, but it was on a programme with the BBC some years ago about the see-saw activity that was going on. The Germans would introduce something. We would either counter that or better it. And it didn’t matter whether it was radar or weaponry or tactics it was, it was a swings and roundabouts, see-saw developing, changing all the time. And if you look at some of the, I’d say the German radar and the systems of Fighter Control while they were changing that we were introducing new measures to detect their fighters to make life difficult for them. I mean, we, you probably know we had, we had microphones in the engine nacelles of our aircraft. So if we were over the other side our wireless operators would tune in to the frequencies used by the German fighter controllers. Then blast the noise of the engines on that frequency to drown out. The most brilliant thoughts of all were the Germans realised that we were doing our damndest to mess up their radar and their fighter control system and they suddenly introduced women controllers. So the German night fighters only took notice of a woman controller because they didn’t whether it was a German controller or a British controller. And at one stage we were carrying German speaking radio operators in 100 Group aircraft who would come up on the same frequency and German speaking Brits who would direct them to return to base. The weather was closing in. Or don’t take this vector take another vector. And they were, putting it bluntly they were trying to bugger up the fighter control system by using German speaking Brits. So the Germans overcame that by suddenly introducing women controllers. So the German night fighters only took notice of a woman controller. And within forty eight hours we had British German speaking women who were taking over and issuing conflicting instructions to the night fighters. I think the brilliant thinking that our own people had thought this was what they might do so we’ll be ready for it. And that kind of see-saw of activity and counter activity went on. Well, it wouldn’t have been just in aviation it would have been in anything else. But I found it fascinating.
GT: The crashed aircraft must have fallen into German hands. Do you think that, that Oboe and H2S and similar equipment the Germans managed to analyse that and better their own from it?
DN: Unquestionably. I mean all of those equipment had explosive devices in them with crash switches so that if the aircraft did crash there was an inertia switch inside which would set off the explosives and destroy the critical part of those bits of equipment. But inevitably that didn’t always work and the Germans did get at our stuff and were trying to, well they got certainly got into H2S and discovered, you know the frequencies in use and produced Naxos. I don’t know whether you know they was a, they had a session with the BBC some years ago. There was a German night fighter operating, operating out of Denmark, got itself lost. It hadn’t, it flew south west rather than north east and landed at Woodbridge, one of our emergency airfields down in Suffolk which was virtually running out of fuel. The German pilot and observer radio guy had got themselves completely lost. Our scientists got at it and found that it had got an equipment which was code named Naxos which could home onto our H2S. So the German night fighter could be directed by his ground controller in the general vicinity of the bomber stream and with this Naxos equipment he could home right in on our H2S. And anyway we then developed equipment to home on to Naxos. So some of our night fighters could home onto their night fighters. And it was this, and it’s a fascinating topic this see-saw in technical developments. Fascinating. Yeah.
GT: Now, the, the Schrage Musik.
DN: Yeah.
GT: The upward firing cannons —
DN: Yes.
GT: Of the German night fighters to, to, because the Halifax, Lancaster and Stirling didn’t have a, well —
DN: Yeah.
GT: Ball turrets.
DN: Yeah.
GT: As the B17s, and I’ve been made aware that some Lancasters had belly guns. Did any of the Halifaxes ever been modified with such?
DN: Yes. Yes, but you couldn’t have an H2S at the same time. And they were called Y aircraft. And they had, they, the blister with the rotating scanner that of course was removed and there was a half inch, a single half inch calibre gun on a hand mount with a gunner sitting there freezing his whatsits off. Just looking down.
GT: So, so there was an eighth member of the crew then. Deliberately.
DN: Yeah.
GT: An eighth member.
DN: Yeah. Yeah. And in fact one of my books over there on 10 Squadron operations and I’ve got one or two sample crew lists of before an operation and you’ll find here and there will be a Y aircraft with an extra crew member known as an under-gunner. But it’s not a power operated turret. I never operated on one of those. We always had upper turret, rear turret and H2S. Not that we had a choice. That was allocated by somebody I don’t know. But what my skipper used to do was he would every so often he would drop a wing one way and then drop a wing the other way so particularly the mid-upper could peer over the side and get a better view. And with the rear gunner and the upper gunner cooperating with one another and knowing that the Schrage Musik was around and they could come up from underneath you and with the wireless operator looking at Fishpond and some of the other devices which could detect other aircraft coming towards you. What with that and a bit of extra vigilance as I say. Rolling the aircraft. Somehow we managed it. But it was a very deadly weapon was Schrage Musik. Two bloody great cannons and right underneath you.
GT: With the aircraft and the streams did you ever encounter any aircraft above you that you managed to avoid?
DN: Yeah.
GT: Bombs dropping on you?
DN: Yes. I’ve been underneath an aircraft and looking up into his bomb bay where he probably wasn’t more than twenty feet above us. And you look up there and you could see everything but the kitchen sink up and he’s got his bomb doors open. Edging in to get on to target. And your bomb aimer was down in the nose telling the skipper left left or right and you’d be looking up and seeing a Lanc or another Halifax above you with his bomb door open and everything but the kitchen sink in there. The navigator. The bomb aimer would be saying, ‘Left. Left.’ And you’d tap the skipper on the shoulder and say [laughs] No. And there were, there were a number of occasions of course and the operational research people had worked out what the expected rate of bombs dropping on our own aircraft. In fact, do you know, have you ever heard of Bill Reid? Bill Reid was the last Victoria Cross and a good friend of mine. And Bill got his Victoria Cross on on an early operation and then went back later on a second tour. And he was hit by bombs being dropped from a Lancaster above him and managed to bail out and spent the rest of the war in a POW camp. So I mean it did happen. We knew it. We knew it would happen inevitably. The flight engineer and, and the mid-upper gunner and occasionally the pilot but certainly as a navigator once I had handed over to the bomb aimer I would be up there looking. Adding another pair of eyes. Trying to keep out of the way.
GT: So, in the bomber streams did you, you were in formations of Halifaxes and Lancasters?
DN: No. No.
GT: No. You were just all a mix.
DN: No. You [pause] you had each, each Squadron, each flight, almost each aircraft, not quite, you had a time span when you were, it was your turn to be on target. The raid might be forty minutes in length shall we say? Thirty to forty five minutes depending on the number of aircraft. And each Squadron had its own height band and its own duration on target. So it would have perhaps eight minutes on target out of a total of forty five. And each Squadron would have that. And each Squadron would have its own height band. So you knew darned well and of course the Halifax not having the performance of the Lanc it was generally the Halifax who would be at a lower level. Which would prompt you to keep a good look out. But I mean there were occasions when the aircraft, there might be an aircraft two thousand feet above you and you wouldn’t have a hope in hell of seeing anything coming down. But yes not only mid-air collisions but being bombed by your own aircraft was a known and anticipated factor but again the operational research people, the whizz kids with their mathematics and probabilities way beyond the Squadron activity did work out what was an acceptable risk and consequently worked out what was an acceptable density of a bomber stream. If you got it too dense then yes you’d be increasing the chance of mid-air collision. You’d be increasing the chance of being bombed by somebody above you. And they would adjust the density of the bomber stream to meet those parameters.
GT: What, what was the likelihood of you getting out of the Halifax if it was going down?
DN: Well, I had an escape hatch immediately under my seat. So if I had to get out in a hurry I had to stand up, lift up my, fold up my seat, get my parachute pack and clip it on my chest and kick open the door and just go straight out. Unless, which I’m sure would have happened you were checking. I mean there were four of us in the front end. There was the bomb aimer, the navigator, the radio man. Well, the flight engineer into there. And the pilot. And we were all in a pretty, pretty congested area. And then we, there was an escape hatch above the pilot and this one which was underneath my seat. I don’t know.
GT: Now, Doug, you mentioned earlier about the actual accuracy of the bombing raids. And you likened it with the navigational equipment you had. But the bomb aimer’s role was to direct the aircraft to drop their bombs on target. So was there a correlation of equipment between the navigational and the bomb aiming equipment? Did they combine together or were they totally separate items?
DN: On the actual bombing it was either one or the other. In the early days it was entirely visual and that was from a relatively, relatively rudimentary bombsight where you would, where the bomb aimer would make adjustments for the height of the aircraft and, and the anticipated wind. And then he would look down and get two pointers in line with whatever the target was. Now, later on later developments of the bombsight had gyro stabilised bombsights where much of that mattered. Many of the parameters that were essential for bomb aiming were undertaken automatically. The height would be fed in from a, from an altimeter computer. The speed would be fed in by the same system as would register on the airspeed indicator. And as I say some of those parameters would be fed in automatically. Nevertheless, you would be the bomb aimer and this is what one hoped for pretty well every time was that the bomb aimer could see the target markers, target indicators on the ground and would be instructing the pilot which way to turn in order to get that cross right on that player and then push the tit. Now, if the weather was crap and there was no direct vision then it would be the navigator who would do so either through Gee or more likely and preferably through H2S. And I had my H2S set here and I could, I could, for example if there were a lake or an open space, a known open space in the centre of the city and you, your aiming point you would have calculated back to what was given you at briefing. If you can’t see, get a direct visual sight on the markers then aim for, for one five four degrees, three and a half miles from this park. And if you could identify that park on your H2S which frequently you could do if you were a good H2S operator then you could. You could get yourself to that position in the right direction and then you, the navigator would push the tit. And then it would probably come up, that method probably twenty thirty percent of occasions because so frequently you get over land the bomb aimer couldn’t see the markers. So we had, we had the means of dropping on either H2S or on Gee. Gee was a bit different. But the navigator would, I’d say swap over with him. The bomb aimer ideally, and this would happen in a good crew the navigator would train the bomb aimer to be able to operate the Gee or the H2S as accurately as he could himself. So the navigator could, well could supervise the thing and, and refine it whilst the, whilst the bomb aimer would be following it on on the radar.
GT: Now, you’re initial navigation training. What was that like compared to when you went back as an instructor yourself? Had, had they progressed in those years? Did they move forward with the new equipment? And, and how did you feel then becoming the instructor?
DN: Well, when I trained in the early days it was, it was pretty basic. We were flying Blenheims and you were doing ninety percent of it by visual pinpoints or by bearings or a bit by radio. Perhaps, not very much, by astro. When I went back as an instructor by then Gee had come in. H2S was just coming in. The Air Position Indicator was just coming in. So your techniques were changing. And one of the things I, I did when I was an instructor down at Abingdon was to devise exercises that were, as I saw it, much much more realistic. That reflected the kind of situations and procedures that one would encounter in the nav, in the real. You take, you take a crew or a crowd of navigators through and then you’d say and now you have H2S has gone u/s. What do you do? You know. And [they didn’t really know] [laughs]
GT: And what was the, what was the result? Did they come up with the right —
DN: Well I, I’m pretty damned sure that, that I ended up as an instructor exposing my pupils to a much more realistic situation. In fact, two or three of my my old pupils had said and I’m not trying to spread my own bullshit, did say that, you know, ‘You introduced us to practical navigation.’ I mean, I did, I did love navigation in every aspect and if I wasn’t operating I I think I became a good instructor because I enjoyed it.
GT: So your instructing role actually made, made you a far better navigator then you would have if you’d have just done one tour and then gone away.
DN: I think so. Yes. I say I, my, my period as an instructor was not in the final stages of training of a crew but in a fairly advanced. Advanced stage of their training. And I tried to make that as realistic to the real thing as I could.
GT: So how long did you actually serve with Bomber Command?
DN: How?
GT: How long did you actually serve with Bomber Command in the end?
DN: Well, that would have been nineteen [pause] 1941 until ’45 with, with a break of a few months when I was down in North Africa. But in that period I was still, as an instructor I was still in Bomber Command. Yeah. And I didn’t really come out of Bomber Command until I went out to to India to do glider towing and supply dropping and other silly things. Yeah.
GT: And by the end of your Bomber Command time you had accrued operations. Forty odd. Thereabouts.
DN: I did thirty on my first tour. Then I did my second tour. We had, with my skipper a number that didn’t necessarily go in the logbook. Yeah. My eyesight without going through my logbook over there I can’t tell you exactly how many. But I guess it was somewhere around about sixty five.
GT: And the Squadrons you flew on in Bomber Command?
DN: 156, 150 and shiny 10.
GT: And where were they based at that time please?
DN: 156 was at Warboys. W A R B O Y S that’s in what became 8 Group. 150 Squadron was in Kirmington which is in North Lincolnshire. And then out in a place called Blida in Algiers. Then 10 Squadron was at Melbourne. Just outside York. And then, and then out to India. India and Burma. Yeah.
GT: So —
DN: Oh, and Abingdon was where I did most of my instruction. Yeah.
GT: So your Bomber Command time was up and you received new posting orders. Did you seek something new or was that just the next thing on the rack for you? Where did you move to from there?
DN: Mostly accepted that that’s what was on, you know. In later years I got to get bloody awkward and would challenge it. When I, when I finished on the Halifax they wanted to, because I got my staff navigators qualification when I went to the staff nav school I mentioned earlier they wanted me to go to some unspecified staff post. And for some crazy reason I said, ‘No. I want to stay with the Squadron on operational duties.’ A bit bloody stupid in retrospect but [laughs] one was like that occasionally. Yeah.
GT: So you headed off to Burma then. Was that the next step after Bomber Command?
DN: Yeah. Yeah. Well, we were in India on general transport duties because although you went out there to participate in the invasion of Malaysia and we, we knew all about or knew some about glider towing and supply dropping and paratrooping that was off the cards then. But we, we did have a period up in northern Burma where we were supply dropping to some Burmese tribes. When the Japanese, I mentioned where I went with Bomber Command when the Japs were in northern Burma to a large extent they lived off the land and they stole their food, or requisitioned it from the locals. And a number of the British political, political agents who had been in the Burma Civil Service were parachuted into northern Burma and persuaded the locals to burn their stocks of rice which made, made life difficult for the Japanese who then had of course to provide their own food for their troops. So when the war was over the Burmese tribes concerned having burned much of their stocks of rice including their seed rice were on the point of starvation. So obviously the Brits were morally obliged to re-supply them. Well, the army did a lot of this with trucks but in some of the high mountain regions in the extreme north of Burma where the Kachin tribes lived, K A C H I N, it was way beyond the ability to get trucks and there were no railways. So the decision was made to supply them, supply, re-supply them with rice by air which is where we came in. And the terrain up there is very very difficult terrain. The mountains. Some of the mountains go up way over eighteen, twenty thousand feet. But the lower ranges you still had to if you want to get into some of these areas you’ve got to get up to about eleven thousand, twelve thousand feet. And the villages are generally built on the ridges. On the spine of the ridges. They had to go over, go down, spiral down, do your supply drops, climb up and out. And we were flying in Dakotas and we had the rice in sacks. No parachutes. Rice in sacks. In three sacks. One inside another so that we chucked them out of the door, or toppled them out of the door. And when they hit of course the inner sack might burst and the outer sack might tear. The chances of all three going were pretty remote. So we would, we would fly to the area, circle down and then we would stack the sacks of rice up in the — no door. Take the door off the Dakota. Put the sacks up. My favourite position was to stick a sack of rice on the floor on the starboard side and get my shoulders against it and feet against these sacks of rice. And while the co-pilot and the pilot and co-pilot would bring the aircraft down, normally you would come along the ridge. Never go across it because you could never judge the, judge the approach altitude accurately enough, so you would come along the ridge, getting lower and lower and honestly you’d only be twenty or thirty feet above the trees until you came over to the, the centre of the nominated village and a light would change above the door and you’d heave and pop the sacks of rice out and then go around again and do this. And we were engaged in that for about a month. Living in tents on an old Japanese airstrip at Meiktila. And then one particular sortie to a new, new grid, never been there before. There were four of us. Four aircraft and we were number one. So we flew, let down, did our drop and climbed up again and then went back to an advanced base to pick up some more rice and we saw number two aircraft starting to circle down. Any rate, to cut a long story short number four aircraft, we don’t know what happened to him. He never came back. And numbers two and three didn’t come back from their second drop. So out of the four aircraft who was the lucky one? Yes.
GT: And that was 10 Squadron you were with.
DN: Yeah.
GT: And they converted to C47s to go out.
DN: Yeah. Yeah.
GT: To the Burma time.
DN: Yeah.
GT: Ok.
DN: And that, details of that is in the latest 10 Squadron booklet.
GT: Marvellous. So, how long were you in that area for? In Burma.
DN: Came back in ’46. Yeah.
GT: And you carried on in the RAF?
DN: No. No. I would have carried on in the RAF but they would only offer me a short period and I wanted to go. If I was going to go in I wanted to go in for a career and they were hanging up on me. I think it was something like four years. And I said no thank you. So I then applied as a navigator with BOAC. The forerunner of British Airways. And they said, ‘Ok. But wait ‘til you get — ’ I applied while I was in India. So when I came back I applied and they said , ‘We don’t need any more navigators.’ However, I did stay with BA. With BOAC, BA for the next thirty five years in operational posts on the ground out in, oh Cairo, Khartoum, Basra, Kuwait. And then back to this new airport called Heathrow. And then from a series of luck and luck believe you me from what I’ve already told you luck played an extremely important part in my life in the RAF and my survival. Anyway, luck played a bloody big part in post-war and I stayed in British Airways, BOAC, British Airways for the rest of my career and ended up as general manager operations control in charge of minute to minute operations worldwide. If everything went alright I didn’t have a job. If anything went wrong I did have a job. So it didn’t matter if it was crew sickness, aircraft unserviceability, somebody digging up a runway running short of fuel, a war, a bomb warning, a hijacking then that was mine. Which was very exciting. It called on all of my experience and all I knew and I loved the job and I stayed there for the rest of my career. Wonderful job. Best job in the airline. Very exciting. All, if anything went wrong it was mine and I enjoyed it.
GT: What were the airliners that were about at that time when you were? The airliners that they were flying for BOAC at the time.
DN: Well, we had Concorde and we had the Jumbo. I mean when I started it was the flying, the old Flying Boats and the Lancastrians and converted York which was a development of the Lancaster. I mean, by, by agreement during the war the Americans took on the development of civil aviation and a definite agreement that Britain would not do that. So when the war ended we did not have a civil aviation industry. So we adapted the Lancaster to the Lancastrian. We modified it to make a York. We had the Halton which was a development of the Halifax. But the Lancastrian would take, I think it was nine passengers. And we did a cannonball service from Sydney to London and it landed, I think nine times. With nine passengers. And that was the crème de la crème of British civil aviation. I mean we had Flying Boats. Well, you had TEAL. TEAL had Flying Boats down, down under. And we had those when I was in Basra. But it took a, took a long time. And, and Britain didn’t have the money. Didn’t have the dollars to buy American aircraft. Quite a long time before we managed to get ourselves on our feet with, with decent aircraft. But when I left we, certainly we had the, we’d gone through the Britannia. We’d had that. We’d gone through the VC10 and we had by then the Jumbo which was after 707 and then the Jumbo and then Concorde. But that was before we had any of the [pause] what do you call it? The French manufacturer. Anglo French manufacturer.
GT: Aerospatiale.
DN: Yeah. Yeah. Before that had really got, got in to many of the civilian aircraft like the Airbus.
GT: Did you have anything to do with the Berlin Airlift? Being involved.
DN: No. No. No.
GT: Not with the airlines you had there.
DN: No.
GT: What about family then Doug? How did you get on with family? You got married. Did you have children?
DN: Yes. Two sons. One who you spoke to and an elder one who lives in London. The younger one he’s lived a very unconventional life [laughs] Has spent more time in the Antarctic than anywhere else with the British Antarctic Survey. More in the Arctic. And the elder one much more conventional. He’s an accountant. Or was an accountant and he now is a senior executive with a manufacturing company. And I mentioned that I had married the kid sister of my, the first pilot I had. So, so we had a [pause] I’ve had a bloody marvellous life. Luck has played a huge, huge amount. Opportunities that have arisen. Sheer luck.
GT: I understand you had some time with the royal family.
DN: Yeah. One of my jobs in BA was any time royalty was travelling for example if the Queen was coming out to New Zealand then I would get a phone call saying now we’ve got a flight coming up for the Queen to wherever. Give me the date. ‘How many?’ ‘Oh, about the usual crowd.’ [laughs] Allow for seventy five and seven and a half tons of baggage. Which way do you want — well for example going to New Zealand, ‘Which way do you want to go? Do you want to go east about or west about? ‘ ‘Well, you know a bloody sight more about that than I do so come up with some suggestions.’ And I, I had, I’ve got a list of over two hundred and fifty flights that I did for members of the royal family. I mean if it was the Queen then [pause] then I would decide which way. What kind of range do we want? Do we want a long range aircraft to do it in a minimum number or perhaps a smaller aircraft? And then gut the inside of the aircraft and divide it up with bulkheads to provide a lounge area, a dining area, a sleeping area and what have you. And all of the arrangements. I mean, it was good fun. And I had a fairly small team who who would get involved in that and we all took it as a challenge. So we had a lot of those.
GT: These were BOAC aircraft that you would do that to —
DN: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
GT: The queen did not have a Queen’s Flight at that time.
DN: No.
GT: Of her own aircraft?
DN: No. She had a number of small aircraft. They were mostly, well in the latter years they were Vickers or, anyway twin engines. Small. I can’t remember it. The old mind. But they weren’t, their own aircraft on the Queen’s Flight were essentially for use within the UK or within Europe. Or if they were going to do a big tour we would position them out there. I mean, I remember we did one where we took the Queen out to New Zealand and then she went from New Zealand to Oz and then up through the Solomon’s and what have you. And the Queen’s Flight I think positioned some of their smaller aircraft for flights between the islands. And then we went then and brought her back. That was, that was quite amusing. Before they went I said to the captain of the Queen’s Flight, ‘Well, what happens if while you’re away there’s an election?’ Because we were in a ghastly political uncertainty at the time. He said, ‘Oh, don’t worry.’ Queen Elizabeth, err Princess, ‘Princess Margaret is authorised to dissolve parliament.’ I said, ‘I’m not worried about that but if while you’re away there’s an election we’ve got to get the Queen back in time to appoint the new prime minister.’ And I remember Archie, Sir Archie Winskill who was captain of the Queen’s Flight, ‘Good thinking, my boy.’ [laughs] So I said, ‘If the election is on the Thursday as it always is you let me know where you’re going to be every Wednesday,’ which included the Cook Islands and Solomons and what have you. I said, ‘You let me know where you’re going to be every Wednesday and I will develop a plan to get home.’ So, anyway I developed these plans. Labelled each one of them with an identification letter. I said, ‘You have a copy in your briefcase and I’ll have a copy in my briefcase so at least we’re ready for it.’ And it was, oh it was a long tour. I remember it was a couple of weeks later I get a phone call. I was at home at the time but I was working on my wife’s rust bucket of a Morris Mini and my wife came and said, ‘There’s Buckingham Palace on the phone.’ And the message merely said, ‘Plan Sierra.’ And Sierra being the identity of when we were going to get her back. And we didn’t exchange another word but on the day there was our aircraft waiting for her and brought her home. And that was the kind of [pause] if you like it was good fun and everything was different. Yes. It was important and you get in trouble if you got it wrong. But no. I’m, it was a very nice simple airline job wasn’t it? Rewarding and it was exciting in a different way as my RAF time. I mean, I was extremely, extremely lucky.
GT: How long, how long were you working with the Queen’s Flight for? Or for the royal family.
DN: For really twenty four years.
GT: And I understand you received an award for your time.
DN: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
GT: And that award is?
DN: That was the Royal Victorian Order. I’m a lieutenant of the Royal Victorian Order.
GT: And the letters are?
DN: Does it do me any good? No.
GT: And I understand also you were awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.
DN: Yeah.
GT: Can you please describe what that was for? And when?
DN: Well, that was for really for my second tour. Not for, not for any specific operation. For whether the citation refers to the standard of the whole Squadron. Navigation standard. The whole Squadron. And gives me credit for that. And and for leading. Leading the whole of the group on one or two operations like the one when we went for the oil target and I do, I can assure you that we were going over the Channel and my skipper said, ‘Doug, come back here.’ So I come from my little compartment in the nose. He said, ‘Put your head up in the astrodome and have a, have a look behind.’ And of course there’s three hundred and fifty bloody aircraft following me. I said, ‘I don’t want to know. Don’t remind me [laughs] Just shut up.’ [laughs] Oh well. No. I was extremely fortunate. I had lots of, lots of good friends. Lots of excitement. But the, I’d say one of which experiences was the way, the way these challenges seem to come out of nowhere and I enjoyed them.
GT: Bomber Harris, your boss at the time came in for a lot of criticism.
DN: Yeah.
GT: Specifically for carpet bombing and for that of bombing major cities.
DN: Yeah.
GT: That’s potentially weren’t strategic targets.
DN: Yeah.
GT: What’s your take on that? From, from being with it.
DN: We were in a situation of total war. It wasn’t a question of tit for tat. We were [pause] it was either them or us. And by then it was obvious that as far as Hitler was concerned he didn’t give a damn about what was right and what was wrong. Whether you should bomb civilians or not. And we were in total war and I for one accepted that. I know that there were times when I pushed the bomb tit and there would be grandma and grandad and the kids down below. Ok. Sorry. We were at war. I have, I regret having to do that kind of thing. I’m not ashamed of it. And if it happened again I’d do it again. I think towards the end Harris, what Harris did think he could do he could do it on his own. And it went, proved that he couldn’t. Nuremberg for example. The Nuremberg raid demonstrated very clearly that we were [pause] that German night fighters got their act together and we were, we were up against it so. But in the, in the perhaps slightly earlier days when we were really clobbering Germany city after city after city yeah. ok. War had descended in to that and I, I have no regrets. No conscience. And I think under the circumstances Harris was right. It cost many many many many of my mates. And others as well. But sorry. That’s war.
GT: Could they have done it any other way?
DN: I don’t think so. No. I don’t think so. We couldn’t, we, the army couldn’t have done it. And we didn’t have the capability of being that precise that we could pick out targets.
GT: Some have said that without the war happening and the methods and the designs of many things in aviation aircraft and your navigation equipment that that the world actually paced forward five years.
DN: Oh.
GT: Very quickly.
DN: Unquestionably. Certainly electronics, communications, navigation aids. A lot of, oh mechanical things must have developed at a hell of a pace. Plastics. Zips. You know, you can think of a billion things that came about through war. Stimulate. It did stimulate development. God, you’re up, you’re up against it. I mean, before I, before I joined the RAF I was in a UK government research, communications research laboratory, and funnily enough developing part of the radar. The ground. Ground defences radar that we had. So as a, as a youth I was exposed to that kind of development stuff pretty well soon after I left school. Yeah.
GT: In your later years you’ve been involved with Air Force Associations. Can you tell me something about the ones that you were associated with and the titles you’ve, you’ve ended up with?
DN: Well, I was very busy with the Bomber Command Association when I was living down near London and near Oxford and I was on the Executive Committee and we were very involved in the, in the Bomber Command Memorial in London. But then when we moved up here that was impractical and I joined, well I was in the RAF Association. So I joined the local branch where we have about [pause] we had I think twenty nine members when I joined the branch. And we now have sixteen. And [pause] we don’t do very much. That’s probably Brian. Is that you Brian?
Other: Yeah.
[recording paused]
DN: When I came up here I joined the RAF Association up here where we had a very small number of members and saw even fewer. And we’re, we’re now up to about seventy members. We, we rarely see more than about a dozen of them. So we’re not able to provide much in the way of social activity and as a result most of, most of our activity is connecting, collecting for the RAF charity. The RAF charity or the RAF Benevolent Fund. So I’ve done my stint of tin rattling. And as I say we have a very small band of loyal, very loyal volunteers. And we’re trying to, desperately trying to make it more active. To get ex-RAF people up here to participate more. We’re, we’ve got a website that will be up and going in the next few weeks. We’re on Facebook. And as I say one of, one of my problems is we collect money for RAF charity. We have problems in finding local people who need it or who will accept help. And it’s a pleasure if we’re, if we can, we can find somebody who, whom we can help. So much of the money goes into an overall pot and yet up here I’m sure there must be ex-RAF people who need help. And one of my ambitions has been to try and get those people to come out of the wood work and let us know they need a bit of help. I’ve found one or two but the number of, out of our seventy members we don’t have more than about ten or twelve people who between you and me get off their backsides to do much. So there we are. Anyway, that’s it.
GT: So currently you’re the president of the Royal Air Forces Association Cockermouth Branch.
DN: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Correct. Yeah.
GT: And I believe thank you for your services.
DN: You’re welcome. Yeah.
GT: Is in order. Doug, it has been a pleasure talking with you today. Thank you very much for allowing me to add to the IBCC’s Digital Archive. Specifically of your Bomber Command history and experience, and, and no less at all your experiences before and your time after. And so thank you very much for that.
DN: You’re welcome.
GT: And this —
DN: It has been a crazy life you must admit. Yeah.
GT: And you’ve obviously had a time and your, your willingness to sit and chat with me is —
DN: Yeah,
GT: Is very special. Thank you. On the 27th of July 2017 I’ve been talking with Doug Newham and he, from his house here in Upton Caldbeck in Cumbria this is Glen Turner from the IBCC Archives in Lincoln and the New Zealand 75 Squadron Association secretary. And we’re signing off now. Thank you very much, Doug.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Douglas Frank Newham
Creator
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Glen Turner
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-07-27
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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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ANewhamDF170727
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Pending OH summary
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01:33:33 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Burma
Great Britain
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Yorkshire
Description
An account of the resource
Douglas Newham enjoyed his career as a navigator. Over his career he saw the development of technology in his chosen field. He and his crew spent some of their time as part of North West African Strategic Air Force. Following time as an instructor at an Operational Training Unit he started a second tour in Europe. He then went on to operations over Burma dropping supplies. Post war he enjoyed a very interesting career in aviation working for BOAC and BA.
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
10 Squadron
150 Squadron
156 Squadron
aircrew
Blenheim
bombing
Botha
C-47
Elizabeth II, Queen of Great Britain (1926 - 2022)
Gee
H2S
Halifax
Halifax Mk 3
Lancaster
Lancastrian
military service conditions
mine laying
navigator
observer
Operational Training Unit
RAF Abingdon
RAF Kinloss
RAF Kirmington
RAF Melbourne
RAF Warboys
rivalry
training
Wellington
Whitley
York
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/878/11118/AHolmesEA160129.2.mp3
6370a9b710f91955ac01de568b0cbea5
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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Holmes, Ernest
Ernest A Holmes
E A Holmes
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Ernest Holmes (1921 - 2021, 1058581, 157389 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a pilot with 35 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-01-29
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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Holmes, EA
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
BB: Testing one two three. I’m here in Perth to interview Ernest Holmes, ex Pathfinder pilot, what we’ll do Ernest is just, I’ll get you just to tell me your name, what you did in the RAF in your own words, just try and tell your story as best you can
EH: What story is it you want?
BB: When did you join the RAF and just not in great detail but just talk it through.
EH: I am Ernest Holmes and at the age of nineteen I volunteered for service in the RAF to train as a pilot and on the 10th of June 1940 I then left home which was on my mother’s birthday to go down to Padgate. From there I eventually did training in Blackpool, the square bashing, then I was posted to Hooten Park where I was working in operations room. Then I eventually got interviewed and accepted for training as a pilot. I went to Desford where I did the, sorry, I went
BB: That’s ok.
EH: Squire’s gate I think it was to ITW, from there I went to Desford to do the initial training on Tiger Moths after thirty hours accomplishing, then went to Canada for further advanced flying on twin engine aircraft, I went there on a [unclear] factory that was called Swen Fine and that was torpedoed in 1943
BB: God!
EH: But I went there on a I think there is a photograph
BB: We will have a look at those later. Thank you.
EH: I don’t know where I then
US: Can I just interrupt, do you take sugar?
BB: I take sweeteners.
US: Perfect. Right.
BB: Thank you very much. So, you went to Canada.
EH: Went to Canada. And then returned to the UK after six months in Canada
BB: You got your wings in Canada.
EH: Got my wings in Canada [unclear] sergeant. Then I went to Abindgon on Whitleys
BB: That was number 10 OTU.
EH: Yes. There I was assessed as exceptional and proof is in my logbook [laughs] and from there I went to train on the Halifaxes and from there I went to 76 Squadron
BB: So, that was the Halifax XCU.
EH: Yes.
BB: Where was that? Somewhere in Yorkshire?
EH: Outside Oxford.
BB: Outside Oxford, ok. Remember that. And then from there you went onto the squadron which was 76.
EH: 76 Squadron.
BB: So you crewed up at the OTU.
EH: We crewed up there and from 76 Squadron I had asked to go onto the Pathfinders so we eventually moved, I can’t recall the actual dates but the logbook [unclear]
BB: Right. Was that the whole crew or just you? Sometimes the whole crew would [unclear]
EH: The whole crew, the whole crew went.
BB: Ok. Now was that a end of tour discussion well chaps what we do [unclear] or do we go onto Pathfinders?
EH: No, it was just a posting.
BB: Oh, you’re posted?
EH: But I had already asked.
BB: [unclear] Oh, you requested it. Ok. That’s good.
EH: And we went.
BB: [unclear]
EH: And then we had to do the training on the Pathfinders and then from there I was moved to 35 Squadron. [unclear]
BB: [unclear]
EH: So we’d already completed about twelve operations or so on 76 Squadron, then we started the training with
BB: Pathfinders.
EH: Yes, the operations with 35 Squadron.
BB: And I suppose that was pretty intensive, all the instructing the markers and sky marking and ground marking and all that.
EH: Yes, it was just a job for us.
BB: Yes.
EH: But I still recall quite clearly the change of attitude of each person, we were all friends, we referred to each other by name, nick names, I was known as Shirley, short for Sherlock, for a long time I was Sherlock, and there was no Holmes came along, so differentiate I am Sher-ee.
BB: Ok, I got you, yes. Ah, ok.
EH: No. And times operations you had on the crews and on my last operation when I was shot down we had a mixed crew. I had two Canadian gunners, my navigator became station officer now deceased and he had DFC DFM and the engineer DFC DFM also deceased., they became chief engineer and also chief navigation instructor, so they came off my crew and I got Johnny Stewart, Derrick came with me but that night I had eight of a crew, not seven.
BB: yes, I counted that up on the [unclear].
EH: Pardon?
BB: Were you carrying an extra wireless op?
EH: The wireless operator wanted to learn how to use the radar
BB: Right.
EH: There was no special training so he came along. Training, been trained on operations and I had a second wireless operator
Bb:
EH: But I also had two gunners. The two Canadian gunners had previously had asked for me to finished their tours with me, they finished, the Canadian scheme was after thirty ops they went back home, they were no longer required to do anything or get involved in any activities in the war unless they chose so but they too wanted to go back home [unclear]
BB: So they did.
EH: They went back home. So I had two new gunners and also a new engineer, the engineer was on his first operation
BB: God!
EH: And I’m not quite certain if the gunner was. David has my logbook.
US: Yes, I got wartime and I’ve also got the flight plans.
EH: You have.
BB: That’s
EH: No. You’ll have to know. Ask the questions and I’ll give you a brief [unclear].
BB: Ok. From the information that I had already, from David, plus my own research material, I’ve sketched out here a tabular form, your career is by unwonded from the information I had.
EH: Yeah.
BB: You enlisted on the tenth of June 1940 as an AC2.
EH: That’s right.
BB: Service number 105851.
EH: Yes, 105851.
BB: And you were a UT pilot basically at that time.
EH: Yes.
BB: And then you went to ITW and then on to number 7 EFTS at Desford.
EH: That’s right.
BB: Where you learned to fly Tiger Moths and they had some Miles Magisters there as well.
EH: That’s right.
BB: And then you went to number 35 AFU North Battleford, Saskatchewan
EH: That’s right.
BB: Where you learned twin engine aircraft on the Airspeed Oxford.
EH: In the Oxford.
BB: In the Oxford. And you were made a sergeant at that stage.
EH: Yes, when you got your wings.
BB: Yes, that’s right. And then you went, came back to the UK, you went to number 10 OTU at Abington Whitley
EH: That’s right.
BB: And your station commander was group captain H M Massey, who happened to be later on in the same prison of war camp as you, as the senior RAF officer in Stalag Luft III.
EH: North compound, yes.
BB: Yes.
US: Did you know that, Dad?
EH: I did, no, I didn’t know it.
BB: He was senior British RAF officer, he was shot down and taken prisoner, I got it here, I can let you have all of this and then you went to HCU on Halifaxes and was promoted flight sergeant.
EH: I was a flight sergeant at Abingdon.
BB: At Abingdon, ok, so, ok, [unclear] and then you went on to the squadron and were commissioned pilot officer on the squadron shortly after you arrived, I think.
EH: it’s on 35 Squadron.
BB: Yes.
EH: Yes.
BB: Yes. And by the time you got to 76 you were already commissioned, you were promoted to pilot officer with the new service number 157389. And then you did your Pathfinders, you went missing on the 22nd of May in Holland on a raid to Dortmund
EH: That’s right.
BB: Shot down and evaded capture, fought with the French resistance for a while but you were betrayed by the Gestapo and taken to Stalag Luft III.
EH: Yes.
BB: Prisoner of war number 0288.
EH: I don’t know the number of prisoner of war.
BB: Here we are. And you were involved in the long march.
EH: Both two marches.
BB: Two marches. Ok. Your aircraft was MD762 code E for Edward.
EH: Can’t recall
BB: Yeah. And it crashed, obviously a night fighter got you and you had to get out of the aircraft and landed in a place near Middlebeers in North Bravent.
EH: Yes.
BB: At 0522 in the morning.
EH: Yep.
BB: And then obviously you made it on the 21st of May ’44 you became an acting flight lieutenant [unclear] gazette illustrated on the 10th of October 1945.
EH: I knew nothing about that till a year later.
BB: I got all this stuff for you. And then you were liberated at Lubeck and then you opted for a permanent commission and went on to do lots of other things, flying on Yorks and
EH: yes.
BB: All sorts of nice things and then you were at [unclear] in Kinloss for a while. I was a member of the RAF reserve for thirty three years, in the maritime world and spent a lot of time at Kinloss briefing and debriefing crews as an intelligence officer and then I went on to, after maritime I went on to fast jets, doing the same with fighter [unclear], I did that in both Gulf Wars and it is very interesting and If I hadn’t actually researching the RAF for years and years and years, I knew about the intelligence cycle and debriefing crews and that interest stood me in really good sted when I had stop the aircrew to deal with in their flying suits, and they just wanted to get to the bar and I wouldn’t le them go to the bar [unclear] they had been debriefed so it’s funny how life but that’s a fascinating story.
EH: That I was [unclear] again.
BB: So.
EH: Can I speak about?
BB: Of course you can. Yes.
EH: When we were shot down, there was no warning, no indication, there was no warning, interception, [unclear] just [mimics a noise] and I lost control of the aircraft, went into a dive, I had my feet on, trying to pull it back but one thing fortunately, I had the loose fissing harness, eventually I was on the [unclear] panel trying to pull the aircraft up, what I was doing of course pulling myself out of the seat, now I had already abandoned the walk southwest, I was somewhere getting near the coast and I choose south west but if I was near the coast walk around the German defences and I also broadcast on my radio so that crews would recognise my voice and this was so, whilst I was on the underground, now is this the part that you are interested in?
BB: yes, yes please, yes.
EH: They started and I landed and I started walking but there was a lot of cloud around, I had to stand and wait to wait till I could see the North Star decide which was North South East and West and I walking South West and I saw someone, this is out in the countryside, light a cigarette and I heard dogs barking so I walked away from that, the person lighting a cigarette a later found out was Derrick, we went away [unclear] because at the time that the second explosion took place where the engineer was in the hatch [unclear] under the escape hatch, Derrick was there, standing with his parachute clipped on, Donnie Stewart the navigator pulled the curtain back, touched me on the shoulder, which was the sign and I am still trying to point [unclear] and then there was a third bang, big explosion, I lost unconscious and I woke up hanging over the nose of the aircraft still strapped to my side with the loose harness fitting your arm and your arm [unclear] I pulled myself back and found my legs were trapped with the control column so I kicked them free, released my harness from the seat and then eventually released my leg and pushed myself off and then pulled my parachute and I just waited, I didn’t know where it was going to land and lot of mud, I don’t know if you [unclear] at that time, we could wear what we liked on our operations, I had an old style army trench coat but I used to use it as cover, the Canadians had leather jackets, leather coats, so some of us did dress up in the hopes that if you were shot down some camouflage, now whence I came across this farm and I knocked on the door, didn’t get an answer but there was a well, water well, I didn’t get an answer so so I opened this gate and the thing about the gate that struck me was a concrete bomb had been used as a pillar to the gate unknown to me the Germans had been using that farm area as a precious bombing range [laughs]
BB: Gosh! [unclear]
EH: So I continue walking and I hear dogs barking and I start walking through water think if there were dogs they would get my scent water would help, remember I am still I once shock I was fighting
BB: Sure but you, you know, it’s a big experience that kind
EH: And then I came to a wood and I started going through the wood, it’s amazing the noise you make at night time when you walk through and I heard dog was barking again, so I came out of the wood and I continued walking
BB: You still have your flying boots at this stage
EH: No, I never used my flying boots
BB: [unclear]
EH: Normal shoes.
BB: Ok, right.
EH: In fact the only gear I had was the roll neck clover on my blazer and my roll neck clover on my jacket and underwear I had my pyjama trousers on, that was all. And my shoes but in my socks I had a Bowie knife, I lost that and I know when I landed and [unclear] I was [unclear]
BB: You couldn’t find it
EH: And then I came to this [unclear] and was the only [unclear], I could hear noises and I thought it was a blacksmith that must have been, I heard this and I thought that’s a blacksmith I think I was thinking that’s the blacksmith and he will have a big handkerchief with a sandwich and I think I was going to steal that, however I came to this [unclear ] and I could see this church steeple and I thought I gotta find a place to hide, twelve hours earlier I could have just jumped across I couldn’t I was so worn out, so I waded across up the ankle deep, knee deep [unclear] to the other side to get rid of any dog scent now I saw walking up to this park, the corn was growing high now and then oh I hate this bank noise I heard and there came a girl, she must be seventeen, eighteen cycling, she was going to and she had a runny bicycle which had small wheels in the front with a flat tray and she had a milk and she was the one that was and when she passed she said, Guten Morgen, and I thought she spoke to me in English, and I said, you speak English? nein, so I said, RAF, Flieger, and she pointed for me to hide in the corn and she went off back to the farm and I’m hiding in the corn as she was quite high at the time and I heard all the voices come by and eventually I stood up and there was [unclear] the father, he was a little man and along with him was [unclear] and was Jan, the elder son, well, the elder son was probably be about thirteen, fourteen, that was Jan, and then there were three others with him, they were all students, one was Willy [unclear], he was hiding form the Germans because the students were over the age of sixteen were to go to work in the defences so all the students went into hiding and [unclear], he was actually studying medicine at the time and he was in hiding and then there was another [unclear], we called him the painter, he was an artist, we could pick him out in a million, he wore a [unclear] type hat, it was a huge hat and a cloak, he didn’t speak English and I took an dislike him because he spoke to the others who spoke English [unclear] and [unclear] and
BB: Willy
EH: Willy and they laughed and then they asked me, I said, what did he say? He said, he wants to know if you have a gun, no, have you got any cigarettes, don’t smoke. And then it was laughter when this related to the artist or painter, I took an dislike to that chappie because he had said, he hasn’t got a gun, he hasn’t got any cigarettes, he is no bloody good to us, let’s kill him.
BB: I could see you take to dislike him, yeah.
EH: I took an instant dislike to that chappie, I met him once or twice after that, but then he said that they were going to help me so they took me to the farm and there they had the old tin bath hanging on the wall, they had to untie my shoelaces and help me take my clothes off and when my clothes were off of course I’d been circumcised, no reference me to that, far my concern, from the RAF and they were trying to help, well, a few things happened, I would say, I mean, I would say they had a fireplace, a brick thing found underneath water in this and on the top of that was a lid and that’s where they used to put the milk [unclear] once it had been because it had been and taken away but they held in that for a couple of days and then I went in the pigsty and that and then he came up to me one day and this is up to six days that’s the farmer, he came up to me with a bottle, a small bottle of whiskey and sixty gold flake cigarettes 1944 didn’t have the money to buy it, any ideas?
BB: Black market.
EH: SOE.
BB: SOE, oh yes, of course. The escape alliance.
EH: And he was tied to the SOE and was the only way he could have got it but anyway I didn’t drink and I didn’t smoke so I told him he could have them. And then they walked me into they called it the orchard, there was and there were about six beds there, this is where the students [unclear]
BB: Right.
EH: They were hiding, came to sleep and during the daytime they disappeared, look the headmaster of the village school had a spare room and the headmaster go to the library to get the medical books for Luke that continued his study and but I only saw him at night time and at meal times so I’m on my own most of the time but then Naty I come across at one time used to buy the biscuits came in a big tin box, in packets inside that box, and she used to bring one of these different types of grain and my task was to sort out those that were edible for humans and the rest for the animals so I used to sort these out, this she would have to do it cause she, she run that farm, she milked the cow, she did the shopping, and she was the one that had to go to the to get the licences to get the nes free papers for the family because the sons couldn’t go otherwise they were under and [unclear] himself couldn’t go so that, you know, she was the real workhouse I can write a book about her but I can tell you what happened I was there and eventually became when I was to get go to the next place, no whilst I was there I had a haemorrhoids and the doctor to come and he prescribed just a little tablet to insert
BB: Yes
EH: And he wanted something to remember me the only thing I had was a small protector [unclear] to give to him and then on the sixth of June which by chance was to be the date I was to be best man at my wife’s, at that time my girlfriend’s brother who was in the RAF, he was getting married and I was to be best man but [unclear] thought it was my marriage
BB: Right.
EH: But he came up to me and envasi, envasi, I knew the invasion had started
BB: 6th of June, D-Day.
EH: On the 6th of June, yes, so I said to him, whiskey so he went back and we had a little drink, just he and I, had a little drink and then, when I had to leave the farm, decided to take me a photograph, now a business man provided Frans with a suit, is that the photograph?
BB: That’s the photograph of Frans.
EH: Of Frans?
BB: Yeah, yeah.
EH: Yeah, well, the photograph of the dog,
US: [unclear]
EH: So this business man provided me with a suit but said to me, leave here, leave, get away from here or all be killed, they’ll all be killed, they and he give me ten guilders which was no use to me, I couldn’t use anyway but then my conscience risking their lives but they had to make the arrangements or point me in the right direction, true enough they made arrangements and the next place I went to was [unclear] the family Faro, the family Faro, they are all deceased, a woman, she had a son, she ran at a village a shop and to a different people coming in that’s people hiding and moving to the next place, I was then moved from there to, it was a big house and a little Dutchman but he had an American wife she was very tall and I don’t think they were happy to have me hiding in their house I was only there I don’t think forty-eight hours and I don’t think they were happy but he himself said that he flew aircraft in the First World War
BB: Alright.
EH: But then I got the impression this American lady, she was a bit concerned about me staying there, then I moved from there to a farm, it was just a single wooden building and there was an old man wearing clogs he didn’t speak English but his son I did discover was in the Dutch navy and this chappie asked me, you know, could I get him shoes, of course ration back here and he also on the tie of that suit I was wearing, he wrote his son’s name and address, service number so that if I got back to UK we could contact them through the embassy. Unfortunately I must continue now and then from there I was moved again, I lived in Holmegrun, you see, that’s a drawing, it’s a forst, and there was a hole on the ground and they actually made it into a, lined it with straw and then so that the wooden perch with and we were locked in there and at night time they would come give us something to eat and drink and then we would wonder round the woods to attend to mother nature and then come back and were locked and meantime I knew from the underground, four members of my crew had been killed, one had been captured, that was five of us, myself was six, then I was introduce to Derrick, is tappest, tappace place, Moregas I think was the name that, we later went back, Derrick had been hidden inside in this monastery and we were brought together with the underground to see if we were the persons we claimed, he recognised me, I with him, so from then on that accounted for my crew, there were seven now, the sixth man, the eighth man must still be evading capture, that was my hope. And the only man I wanted to hope was the original, Mack was the original wireless operator but he wanted to learn how to operate the H2S so that’s why unfortunately didn’t find discovered after the war was also dead. But then to this the last place in Holland I’ve forgotten the name now but somewhere in the records of my and there I gived them ten guilders that I had, that I couldn’t use into Belgium eventually came along and was a female and came half way and we were told she doesn’t speak English, she doesn’t speak French, for a person living in Belgium, however we were not to try to speak to her but just follow her so I was unhappy because this wasn’t the sort of reception that I had when I was moved to another place I was introduced, I wasn’t even introduced to this person, eventually we, to the bus and sitting on the back of the bus were youngsters, seventeen, eighteen years of age, all dressed the same, I think that they were Hitler Youth movements and they were all sitting at the back of the bus, we the only ones, I think that they were part of the ploy, that we were being betrayed, and they were there to ensure that tried anything funny they would have shot us, I’ve no proof of that, just a feeling, hunch I had, thinks are not going the way they should and I said to the French Canadian, he’s the navigator, he came from Montreal, I asked to speak to her in French but she declined, she didn’t understand, she didn’t understand English, she knew fine well what was happening, I didn’t but Derrick and I were a bit suspicious so we eventually were driven into Antwerp and she got off the bus and we followed but we went together, we just followed so he followed, I think the French Canadian first, then Derrick and then I behind, eventually we take into this large shop, it msut have been a big shop like McEwans, shop or something, but it was a coffeshop high ceilings and everything, lots of people in uniform and three people in civil clothes and there was an empty table with four chairs or fice chairs and we were told to sit down, then a chappie came and sat beside us, the girl we had followed, she produced a piece of paper and he produced a piece of paper, put them together and I knew straight away this is not, this is not right, Derrick knew, he wasn’t happy and the French Canadian, he didn’t pass a word about it, but I felt that there’s something not right, al these people around me, there was a slight hope cause I had been told underground possible at some stage in German uniform and take me down to Switzerland I was hoping that was it.
BB: But it wasn’t.
EH: But eventually this girl got up, they put the two pieces of paper together word or something it was a poor imitation of the real thing however the chap she went off and we were told to follow this chap and we went through a back entrance so this, just let me borrow something
US: There’s a photograph. You’re ok?
EH: This was the shop, you see, the woman here and we were taken through the back road down here and directly opposite was a church and the church was not on level ground, was raised, visible wall around it but raised.
BB: yes.
EH: I didn’t get the name and they went three people standing there and we were introduced to him, this chap that had met us inside and then we were told to get in the car so the three of us got in the back of this car and some girls went by in uniform, I hadn’t seen a female in uniform and I asked that young girl, oh, are those young ladies Germans? No, they were girls that work on the telephone section, they had their own dress.
BB: Uniform.
EH: So we start the car and we start driving on oh I would say about four, five hundred yards and they just pulled into an archway and they are standing outside with two [unclear] and this chap gets out of the car, follow me, we follow, I’m still thinking, oh, they gonna put me in a German uniform and take me into, when he got us inside he turned around, right gentlemen military police.
BB: Luftwaffe police?
EH: That was it. And they separated us and they put me in a room upstairs, I would say, it reminded me of my old school, a big room, high ceiling
BB: Master study.
EH: But aside of that, triple bunk beds and I was posted into a single room, there was one window, I tried to open the window which had been screwed tight, oh, I couldn’t open it, but in any case there was only, there was [unclear] downstairs, a space between the buildings and I could see a drain of pipe running from upstairs on that wall but I couldn’t open the window even trying and I wanted to try and go down but I was so exhausted by this time, I just [unclear] and fell asleep. And I was woken by kicked, of course I jumped up then lying dreaming rifle pushing my teeth.
BB: Were you still in your
EH: Civvy clothes?
BB: Yeah, but did you have your uniform underneath your civvy clothes?
EH: No, just civvy clothes.
US: That’s the suit, my dad was wearing, you can see the double two tails
EH: That dog belonged to the business gentlemen’s
BB: The one you didn’t like.
US: The one who, the business man who gave him the suit
BB: Who gave him the suit, sorry, [unclear]
EH: So, he then took me, stripped me and he took me I was both individually to this and then he turned round, he says, right, who are you, you are a spy. I got my dog tags, he took the dog tags off, he just threw them across the room, and he said, [unclear] my grandmother, I will see with lots of and two dog tags oh I am so and so this, I’m meaningless, said he. So I am now without my dog tags.
BB: Was he Gestapo or Luftwaffe please?
EH: Just something, the German military police, I think he was trying to
BB: Provoke you into something
EH: Well, it wasn’t physical but then he said, you’re a spy, we shoot spies, and then he stripped so I was stripped naked, he saw I was circumcised, he said, ah, you’re a Jew! Oh, we have special treatments for Jews. Note, at that time we didn’t know what was happening in the concentration camps, so we had thought so I could either be shot or there is a special treatment for Jews. And there was a little pressure put on me, asking questions but they are trying to scare you, frighten you and then they pushed me into a separate room, this big room with lots of bunk beds, obviously they were using it as a sort of barracks but there was no, I think it must have been a school or something at one time, but they put me in this room and I put my head out the door, everything was quite at the end of the corridor was a guard, German guard and he had a rifle and he start pushing the [unclear] up and down, Jew, Jew, [mimics a noise] obviously [unclear] from Berlin, we were in a terrible mess and I went back to the window was a chappie, I think he was a blacksmith cause he had a little fire there and I sang, my name is Ernest Holmes, I am RAF, just singing, [unclear] and there was only one occasion when he turned round, he was nodding but I hoped that would be the a blacksmith not a German but I think I got the message through to him that I was there but I didn’t want to be there and then, eventually from there they put us in a truck, it’s a fifteen hundred trucker [unclear] and there’s a gate and we had to go, they closed the wired type of gate so that we were trapped and then sitting outside there was a German with a machine gun and from there they took us into from Antwerp they took us to Brussels and they took us to a place called the castle, that used to be prisoner of war camp, no, used to be a prison, but then the Germans had taken and the three of us were then locked in a room and then you could see quite clearly a microphone and the window like a prison was high and we were given little food, little liquid, and we had biscuits, we can buy them over here, they’re nachabrot, it’s just, that was it, no food, no meat.
BB: How many of you were there at this point? How many people were you at this point?
EH: Three of us in this room. And then we were taken out, I can only speak for myself, I can tell you what happened to Derrick cause we were separated and then I was taken downstairs naked, no, before that the intelligence officer was there and he was dressed in an RAF type uniform but he had buttons with a red, white buttons with a red cross on,
BB: Oh, ok.
EH: He spoke very good English but he was huge. I think I described him as a fat however he [unclear] you know, oh they want to know who you are and I said, I clear my protection to the Geneva Convention, prisoner of war
BB: [unclear]
EH: No, he was quite content to sit and just wanted me to sit and speak, you know, and get frightened cause you know, then he started putting [unclear] oh, you’re a spy, we’ll kill you, Jew special treatment we are building up and when he stripped me and I was taken into the dungeon, when I got into the dungeon there was a German with a machine gun standing and he [unclear] on, what’s the name of the thing that you are standing on? You give, someone is giving a talk,
BB: A [unclear].
US: [unclear]
EH: There, against the wall, was a was this person but dressed as a [unclear], you could smell the newness of the suit, and I thought, no, I’ve seen that shape before but I didn’t want to admit he was the chappie the first as a red cross man you see but this chappie, Jude, Jude, Jude, Jude, and then I was there for some time, five, six minutes, with this harassment coming from this coming and there was this person and I think this is part of the ploy to actually test me to see if I was a Jew, cause he had been dressed in this suit there is no other a Jew in Brussels in 1945
BB: Very rare.
EH: So, I just as I went by, I said, don’t lose faith, don’t lose faith but in such a loud voice, eventually I was taken back and then I was asked to sign a form and this was to be a form that was printed from the red cross, but printed on the top of that form was printed in Berlin, so I knew straight away this is a show trying to get information so eventually we were, Derrick went through the same process, Derrick also had bene circumcised, now I don’t know about the Canadian cause from then on we were separated but eventually he decided that we were prisoners of war and this was after about seven, eight weeks, we were then, we were going to prison of war camp and it was whilst we got in the prison of war camp the escape had taken place on the 23rd of March,
BB: Great escape.
EH: I wasn’t shot down until the 22nd of May. And the prisoners were wearing black armbands they told me the story of what had happened but I was in the same hut, have we got the book?
US: I’ve got it, yes.
EH: There is a little logbook I was given.
BB: Yes, I [unclear]
EH: Now, I had been was given a logbook and the first thing that was in my mind was my crew, there’s lots of just the people
BB: Gosh, yes, go on. [unclear] the shower.
EH: The first thing I did was thinking of my crew, I tried, I was mainly concerned about this eighth men member and I hope that it was Mike, can you find the page David?
US: [unclear] which is the poem?
EH: Yes. One left.
US: Carl wrote a poem expressing his feelings about what had happened
EH: The drawing was on that side, the poem’s on the right.
US: Do you want me to read it out, Dad?
EH: Yes. It was [unclear]
US: [unclear] to sent a photograph of the crucifix
EH: Oh.
US: So, it is in memory of those members of the crew flying Lancaster E for Edward who sacrificed their lives for their country on the 22nd of May 1944, so I will remember, when the sun sets and darkness falls, I will remember, when the sun rises and another day is born I will remember, for remembrance is all that I possess of those I knew so well, those who flew with me into the silent night to fight the foe, they asked not for bloodshed nor did they start the fight, but when they heard the bugle call they jumped to fight for right, after they prepared for missions flying into the sleeping night to bring death and destruction to those who called right might, they did their job right, they did it well but this couldn’t last for on the 23rd of May we fell and became as the past, four aviator missing, these we know are dead, three more accounted for, the eighth man is still ahead, making his way for his own homeland, keep going, my friend, Tommy, Johnny, Mac and Jock have left this earth but we who live will remember, I with Derrick and Ron, from the setting of the sun to the rising of the [unclear] we will think of those who kept up England’s fame, will you and England remember.
BB: Moving. And we do remember and Bomber Command [unclear] a very bad deal at the end of the war
EH: Yeah.
BB: And I blame Churchill for that. Cause Harris, Harris had defied Churchill on a couple of occasions and Mr Dowding had done as well sending more Hurricanes to France and I think he was quite vindictive in that respect occasionally, great man but I think you know he’s human when he’s doing things but I think that Harris and Dowding got a raw deal.
EH: The whole of the RAF got a bad reputation but for what has taken place but if it hadn’t taken place, we would all be speaking German.
BB: exactly.
EH: Ah
BB: I mean, when you listen to contemporary newsreels of that time, particularly after the Blitz, the Blitz on other cities, the populations of those saying, go and give it back to them! Go and give it! And so Harris did exactly that, he was doing what he was bed by the war cabinet and by Churchill and he went and he fulfilled that as best as he could and then it all got [unclear] after the war cause [unclear] so well. But that’s all been, I think, Bomber Command went through that darkness
EH: Yes
BB: And then it came out at the other end and here we are
EH: There is a little gap
BB: That’s what these guys at Lincoln are trying to do
EH: Yes, but there was a little gap, someone [unclear] resentment as I did because a medal was produced that cost fifteen pounds and this was to, and I bought one
BB: This was the Bomber Command memorial, this
EH: No, no, this has nothing to do with Bomber Command,
BB: I beg your pardon.
EH: Someone had produced to say a thank you, to say that we had done a good job
BB: Oh my god, Right, right.
EH: But that was replaced seventy years later with the Bomber Command crest.
BB: Clasp.
US: The bar and the
BB: That didn’t [unclear] till 1945, yeah.
EH: So in a fact, I have, I told you about this medal, it’s now meaningless but that was the resentment that we had and that’s why I bought it
BB: Quite right.
EH: I have it, it’s hidden
BB: [unclear] let down by
EH: The thing
BB: Did you apply for your Bomber Command clasp?
EH: Yes, I have, we have the medal, but the sad thing was, after the war I went to Bomber Command, to Pathfinder headquarters [unclear] give me the choice of either going back at the squadron or going into Transport Command but he warned me, the squadron is preparing to go out to the Far East and being [unclear] tropical [unclear] I said at the time I think I have had my fair share of war, I remember that two forced marches and [unclear] so he arranged to go to Pathfinder, to the
BB: Transport, Transport Command
EH: To [unclear], I’m sorry Bournemouth, I went there with the squadron and who was the CO of the squadron? The squadron leader and Wing Commander Dan [unclear] he sent me on my last op and he was waiting for me coming back from that last op to show me the London Gazette and he gave me my ribbon to put on
BB: Oh, how wonderful.
EH: And he repost me, he said, you are improperly dressed, oh, I don’t know what I had, all I had was the thirty nine forty five, and he, from there he didn’t tell me but he took me with his we sat down and we went through all my operations experience through, I finished up with up with a France Germany medal and also the Italian star and I was wearing them until Kinloss when a group captain Caddy, a Canadian, he was a gentleman, he wanted normal story to, [unclear], the reason he wanted me was there was the coronation and there was seven medals allotted to Kinloss and I was to get one of them, so I had to get my other medals, when I applied for them I discovered I wasn’t entitled to the France Germany medal because I’m in Holland trying to get through, but I wasn’t in France, I wasn’t entitled to it, and also I had done [unclear] to Caen to [unclear], there is a bridgehead to Italy and the railway lines from Caen were feeding that and we went to destroy that railway line in Caen itself and we went down to four thousand feet to bomb and it was in aid of the [unclear] bridgehead
BB: Right
EH: And so I took those down, I had to apologize to the CO I had been wearing this because they told me I wasn’t entitled and he got really annoyed with the and he said, oh, I’ll speak to the OC, we already trained through the Pathfinder force [unclear] you went there so you didn’t get it, so I wasn’t entitled to the France Germany because I hadn’t been stationed in Italy, I couldn’t
BB: But you clearly got the France and Germany clasp, you get the aircrew Europe?
EH: No. No, I haven’t got a France Germany at all.
BB: No, I met sometimes
EH: I got a victory medal
BB: Right, didn’t get the aircrew Europe?
EH: Didn’t get the France because I am in Holland
US: But Dad, listen to the question again. Listen to the question again.
BB: Did you get the aircrew Europe star?
EH: Oh yes,
BB: Cause that would have been where you would have worn the France and Germany clasp on that star, had you been able to
EH: No, I didn’t have the, there was no recognition at all for the France Germany, the, I got the victory medal
BB: I see [unclear] put that right
EH: I actually, the many things that freshen my mind but when I think of my story that I have, can I tell you a little more?
BB: Sure, of course you can.
EH: Frances, Frances von der Heyden,
US: [unclear]
EH: After I left
US: She was Francis daughter
BB: Francis daughter
EH: And she was the girl that found me, she was the workhouse on the farm, she looked after us, she made food for us, and [unclear] for us, for the undertakers and there were six children, she was the elder but let me speaking two separate stories [unclear] after I left, the bridge too far does it ring a bell?
BB: Arnhem. Yes.
EH: Well, the aircraft going passed nearby, near the [unclear] where I was and [unclear] and she comes across an American airman who was wounded on a shoulder ands he made arrangements and she took him in the farm and he was in the pigsty where I had been but then [unclear] by this time the troops were not too far away and [unclear] went across, no, I didn’t see this, I am told by the family, he went across the fields to the British and said he had an American and he wanted help, take him away but they didn’t believe him, they thought that it was a trap and the Germans would be [unclear] of him but they gave him some dressing [unclear] so he went back somehow somewhere the Germans found out he crossed the line and they came to the village and there they found them in the church and they were going to shoot the whole family and France argued, he was master of his house and the family had to do he was [unclear] not them and they shot him in front of them
BB: Yeah, was that ever followed up after the war because if they went in and did all this stuff after the war [unclear]
EH:
US: There is a memorial to Frans
EH: Well, what did happen with I had to be taught but they what happened when I first went back however the family unfortunately went [unclear] dispersal remember was nature and young baby sister I think she is still alive and one of her brothers and that’s left and there’s grandchildren after them [unclear] I’m in contact with and I have been on contact with her family for over seventy years
BB: Oh, that’s wonderful. It’s wonderful. Other Bomber Command aircrew I have interviewed, were they, had they similar experiences to yours, have kept up with their people as well. It’s amazing the bond that existed, you know, there was these young, frightened aircrew, had the horrendous experience of getting out a bomber, landed in a foreign country, had done all the theory about what to do and you know Mi9 teaching them all sorts of things but at the end of the day, you know, they were given help and shelter and food and help you know by the resistance, well the escape line I should say.
EH: But what they did for me is not my story, it’s her story, there was Frans murdered cause he had helped this American, the same thing could have, if I had been there the same thing could have happened to [unclear] but there at one point came when I will switch now from Frans to [unclear], [unclear] was invited to go to America where the some Dutch friends of hers and while she was there, she fell in love with the brother in law of this couple she was staying with and she wanted to get married but she was visiting the States and was not allowed to stay so she in actual fact gave us a [unclear] I should have it somewhere, the second page of the [unclear] Express, and this was where they had approached someone in the government to ask permission and she was told by the senator that if she could prove that she was a fit and worthy person to enter the States, he would try to do what he could for her and she sent me the cutting of the paper where this article was in and I went to my lawyer and explained to him the position and he then [unclear], he actually wrote the letter and she got permission to stay and they got married. But that wasn’t the end of the story because Jan and her brother who was back home he found, he didn’t speak English but he and I, he and I could converse, we understood one another but he, he had an American correspondence [unclear] information so he approached this person and he give them the name and address and the service number of the American that was there and law and behold that American was [unclear] and the family went across, Nat was living in the States, and the family, members of the family, they went there and they actually saw,
BB: Oh, that was good.
EH: Yeah, Jan asked them, [unclear] and make sure so he showed them the wound and he asked, why didn’t you, oh, I thought you were all dead, I thought they shot all, he hadn’t even reported the fact that [unclear]
BB: Yes
EH: So that was a sad tale.
BB: That was a very sad tale, yeah.
EH: Yes.
BB: Well, Ernest, thank you very much
EH: Can I tell you one, just one more?
US: Dad, just two seconds. We are going to have fish and chips for lunch.
BB: Right.
US: I was just going to go and pick them up.
BB: Yes.
US: Would you like to join us? You will join us.
BB: I’d be delighted to, thank you very much indeed. Yeah.
US: I’m going to slip away to get some lunch. Alright?
EH: [unclear] tell the story that I could see it as a [unclear] for a love story [laughs]
BB: Ok, on you go.
EH: [unclear]
US: [unclear] if I leave at this point.
EH: When we were, when we had our last meal, you know, after operations and before operations you go and you have your meal, there was normally sausage, bacon and eggs, well, that night when we sat down, Derrick and I sat together and there was no eggs, and I said to the [unclear], you’ve forgotten the eggs, and she said, Jock he said, [unclear] I can’t go ops without eggs, I got the chop, and she said to me, I’m sorry there’s no eggs and I apologised to her
RH: While we are on the subject of things that crews took with them, good luck charms, whatever you want to call them, my uncle was in 9 Squadron during the war, Australian, he flew from Bardney and did his full trip with 9 and then married my mother’s sister and then he went off to an OTU to instruct staff pilot as an instructor but unfortunately he was killed in a mid-air collision at the OTU, he flew, he flew with apparently, the photograph of my aunt, was later his wife, which he put on the panel of the Lancaster in front of the control column and he swore that got him through every op that he did but that [unclear] did the last one at the OTU [unclear].
US: These are letters that we found that have been written by somebody from [unclear]
BB: Right
US: After the war and we don’t know anything about this person, perhaps Dad will tell you
BB: Okay.
US: I’ll get some lunch.
EH: Can I finish this?
BB: Of course, you can.
EH: I was telling you about this that was on my conscience, when I was hiding that [unclear] that girl
BB: Yes
EH: Was on my mind and I was [unclear]
BB: I can imagine.
EH: [unclear], received the [unclear], I mean I am an emotional person, but by God if anything gets up my nose I just [laughs] however when I went back to see Bennet after the war, he said to me, give me the choice and I said that I’d go back to Holland and he said, right [unclear] go back, go to [unclear] and tell the CO to fly you to Holland but you make your own way back, oh, I accepted that but then when I went onto the squadron I didn’t know a face a part from the navigator I had previously
BB: Right
EH: Gibbs and the [unclear] saw me and he called, don’t move! [unclear]! She’s still here! And he disappeared through the door of the kitchen and he came back with the girl that had served me last meal and the one that I’d said would get the [unclear] and she came right across and the mess
BB: Full
EH: I didn’t know a face other than the [unclear] and my crew member he came across and flung her arms around me and I held her, I [unclear], I apologised for [unclear] and she had seen the [unclear] and she said, oh, I’m glad you’re back and she turned round and tears streaming down her face and they were also mine but I left it to the navigator and the [unclear] to answer any questions about my [unclear] was, there was no physical connection
BB: No, no.
EH: Just that eggs [laughs]
BB: Yeah. That’s interesting. Well, that’s a very interesting story now David passed me this letter, must be to do with someone in the Netherlands, that’s interesting. Anyway thank you for talking to me
EH: No
BB: And it’s a fascinating story and it’s probably the best interview which describes the whole prisoner of war initial interrogation
EH: right. I hope it hasn’t swamped you
BB: Not at all, not at all, because
EH: [unclear]
BB: That’s probably the bit than your Lancaster
EH: Yes, that’s the bit of my Lancaster because after the war we went back this is years later because I’m in Transport Command
BB: Yes, flying your
EH: And then the [unclear] had started but before that we went, [unclear] came with us, and we went, the, Jan, that’s the elder son, now deceased, he had [unclear] with some [unclear], every year the [unclear]
BB: Yeah.
EH: And he had mentioned the fact to these people that he called me Shirley [laughs] and he told his folks that that was, where the aircraft was and we were the undertakers that were alive, Willy and Luc and [unclear] and Jan and they came with us to the farm and the farmer, the farmhouse [unclear] and I couldn’t recognise it, if this is the place, my aircraft came down there and I was in the field here and I came across [unclear] but there was a well here and the farmer said, you are standing on it, the story was lightning put the farm on fire so the farmer had to [unclear] the whole place and [unclear] not just the farm building [unclear] the animals the whole and there was another personal build, I have a photograph of that, we have a photograph of at the farm at [unclear] and we also have photographs of [unclear] got after the war but I had to give everything to David because with my sight gone
BB: Yes, yes
EH: I felt so helpless
BB: I know but I mean, well, fifty-five thousand [unclear] aircrew in Bomber Command didn’t make it
EH: Didn’t make it, no
BB: And the chances of survival of a bomber crew in at the height of the Battle of the Ruhr was four trips
EH: yeah
BB: Four trips
EH: Yeah
BB: So, if you survived four you were already dead.
EH: That’s right
BB: And all the aircrew that I interviewed and tracing my late uncle’s crew as well, who survived the war, they all had mechanisms that distanced themselves from that [unclear] and it was to live for today, everything
EH: [unclear]
BB: Everything was that, don’t think about tomorrow, don’t think about the next op, don’t think about the Grim Reaper, no, it’s just live for today, and they said, they guys that worried about it, were the ones that, you know, that weren’t concentrating, that made a mistake or something and it was just, I don’t know, a luck of the draw, but there was a certain, I perceived a certain mental attitude which got people through,
EH: Well, but after the war I [unclear] because there was only one survivor, Derrick and I, Derrick and I were in contact, but Derrick now is dead and but the chappie who was my wireless operator, her also has died but I got he was interview by a chappie who collected stories from DFCs and DFMs.
BB: Alright.
EH: And he, the same chappie asked me more information and he told, I said ,there was no indication [unclear]
BB: God!
EH: Yeah, seconds
BB: Was it Schrage Musik that got you at the end? You know, the night fighter with the upper firing gun? Below the Lancs?
EH: Yes. You see, I can’t
BB: You can’t answer that because it just so instant
EH: I can’t answer
BB: Yeah, it was just one big matter
EH:
BB: It probably sounds like Schrage Musik because as you know, they went underneath the [unclear]
EH: Yeah
BB: Between the two inner engines, straight in the bomb bay [unclear]
EH: Well, we had two close encounters, but we never had to fire the guns
BB: No
EH: Never
BB: No
EH: So the wireless operator [unclear] had been fighting this [unclear] and the other but there was no guns fired, there was no warning, within thirty seconds the whole lot was over
BB: Yeah. Lucky, you were lucky.
EH: He, no, is dead so I can’t, but I went round to visit the families of them so [unclear] the widow of Johnny Stewart, he was the navigator, he kept a diary and he’d written every time in his diary trips that he went on and he always mentioned my name and his wife asked me who Shirley was, he spent, a lot of people thought my name was Shirley
BB: Yes, yes, yes.
EH: Was Sher-lee
BB: Eee, yeah, and the wife was wondering who Shirley was.
EH: Now then we, this is part of the aircraft, the farmer after the Germans had taken away the aircraft, bits and pieces so David actually took this as a memento
BB: Oh, that
EH: That’s it, I found the aircraft, I’ve been there, and this
BB: You went back to the crash site for the family
EH: Yeah
BB: Not only that, my great grandson, my daughter lives in Belgium and she had a daughter and she was [unclear], Alison was my [unclear].
BB: Gosh!
EH: And but he’s a great guy but he died playing tennis
BB: Heart attack.
EH: He and I got on fine and a lot of people use do think, oh, any with Alison [unclear] but there was no, in fact when he wanted to get married, he wanted to come over to us for my permission, I thought it was pointless in coming just for me to say yes or no.
BB: Yeah.
EH: So I said, don’t bother coming. You come over and have the marriage here and that was all over. So their daughter, so my granddaughter, my grandson and Alison went to the place with, along with one of the grandson of the Van de Hayden family, Hank, this is his name and he’s the one that kept in contact, he is the one who actually took them and they went to the farm and they walked all the way back to where I found, where [unclear] found me but instead of wading across the stream there is a bridge [laughs] and of course there’s no well, is all covered over
BB: All covered over, yeah. How interesting. And of course, you took a permanent commission in the Royal Air Force and you went on to do lots of other things. I mean, flying the routes with Avro York, long haul to Singapore and all sorts of [unclear]
EH: Yeah,
BB: And everything in between
EH: Yes
BB: How did you find the York, cause the York was really a
EH: Well, the armed forces
BB: Basically a Lancaster
EH: The armed force thing was, either the country flying and I’d be away three weeks, back for a few days, come up to Scotland and flew back again, so I couldn’t keep in contact with Derrick, he could go to Holland, I couldn’t
BB: yeah
EH: Cause when I was [unclear], I was [unclear] the CO to take me there, I said, I, eventually you realise that you can’t go empty handed
BB: Yeah [unclear]
EH: You can’t go empty handed, I need money, I didn’t have any money, I don’t think I had my check book with me at the time and we didn’t have cards at that time and I thought, I can’t go across there empty handed so I decided not to go. And then [unclear] Berlin airlift of course, my boss Ben was flying his own aircraft there as a civilian
BB: Yeah.
EH: So I met
BB: Avro Tudor [unclear], is that American Airways [unclear]? No, he started up the South American
EH: That’s right
BB: Airways
EH: That’s right. But then he was
BB: Tudors, Avro Tudors. And Lancastrians and Yorks.
EH: Yeah. He was flying [unclear] petrol
BB: Yeah.
EH: And now, when I visited the other members of the [unclear] I found that the widow of Mack who was the original wireless operator now training on the H2S, he had written a farewell letter to his wife which I gather he wrote every time and kissed this is my last trip, I didn’t know that till his wife told me she was most concerned because he had a baby and there was something wrong with the baby I remember that when we went out as a crew, we, they gave us some little bottles of oil of olive,
BB: Yeah
EH: For the use, for the baby was something wrong but her problem was she didn’t have access to a bank account, it was in his name, she couldn’t get it and I was only visiting there for a short weekend and I couldn’t help her so [unclear] so trying to get the Pathfinder club, he wasn’t even a member, he was in the Pathfinder but he wasn’t a member.
BB: [unclear]
EH: He died so I hope someone did have a [unclear] because Derrick tried to find her living in London, went back, no one in the area knew what had happened to her but the humorous part was that I went to Derrick’s folks, his father was a navigator in the First World War, and he too was shot down, he too became a prisoner of war, now, my story is we were having a dinner with the Pathfinder organisation and now where was the dinner?
BB: RAF club?
EH: No
BB: Pathfinder club?
EH: I, we had, I couldn’t go to the many [unclear] living, I was flying back and forth [unclear] whenever I had time and [unclear] I was with the Pathfinder club in the [unclear]
BB: [unclear]
EH: But with Derrick’s father, there’s a book written by [unclear] Broom.
BB: Oh yeah, Broom. Yeah [unclear]
EH: [unclear] The Battle for Berlin.
BB: The Battle for Berlin.
EH: [unclear]
BB: Alright, I’ll make a note of that [unclear]
EH: And at this time, I was now pilot officer.
BB: Alright. And of course you clocked up seventy hours on Yorks and so the transition to civil aviation was multi-engined experience flying the routes with Transport Command
EH: Yes, but my experience was an actual fact trading fuel, I did a tour with [unclear]
BB: Yes, [unclear]
EH: [unclear]
BB: By the [unclear]
EH: Unfortunately, you see, I held senior appointments but not the rank, I was interviewed by the but I have forgotten [unclear] Scotland [unclear] Scotland at [unclear]
BB: Yes, I used to be at [unclear]
EH: And he, it was a good [unclear], thought I had a raw deal, you know, interview with him
BB: Yeah
EH: But then he said to me, you should just tell the fuckers to stick it up their [unclear] ass, that was the words he used to me, yeah, [unclear] at the time but then I later met him again when I was on Glasgow University [unclear], when I went there the [unclear] was actually using the old typewriters typing things and printing, print out with these
BB: Yes, yeah. [unclear]
EH: And I said, oh, this is nonsense, [unclear] so I want and I got a lot of equipment, I got a camera, projector and also a [unclear] and my esteem went up with the squadron and eventually the OC at the time, I’ve forgotten his name, he came round and I heard wing commander [unclear], not a nice man, he was singing my praise and the OC said to me, [unclear] we are in, and I thought, well, and I think I should have said, Coastal Command. But I said Transport Command cause it [unclear] the end, if I had said Coastal Command and he would have brought precious memories up and that was a third recommendation for me [unclear] so I held senior posts but not the rank.
BB: Yeah, well that was, that’s a shame, no, I went, I started my intelligence work at [unclear] Castle, it was sent HQ NORMA, Northern Maritime Region
EH: Yes.
BB: And I reported directly to the admiral and they received [unclear] the coast of Scotland and Northern Ireland [unclear] and yes, the black huts, the black wooden huts, [unclear] we used to sleep in those and walked down to the pits, down those stairs, yes, it was interesting time, was very busy but ,[unclear] mainly spent hunting Russian submarines in the North Atlantic. With Shackletons initially, the MR 1 Shackleton and then of course [unclear] and so on.
EH: Well, I flew the Shackletons at Kinloss.
BB: Was it ten thousand rivets flying in formation?
EH: When I first came to Kinloss and were only doing coastal cross I was [unclear] at the time.
BB: Yeah, so you were [unclear]
EH: And then I suggested, [file missing] Winston Churchill was coming back on the Queen Mary I think it was from America and I arranged for a flight on Shackleton to go and greet him
BB: Excellent
EH: We got full of praise for that.
BB: Excellent. Yes.
EH: That was the first time the Shackletons had actually flown over [unclear] wartime, was just doing coastal crawls all the time do to the intensive trial period but was an easy aircraft to fly
BB: Yeah
EH: And I flew them, I didn’t fly as captain but I flew the aircraft, take-off, landing and flying around and I did even did practice bomb runs on the Moray Firth
BB: Yeah, yeah.
EH: And well I didn’t do a lot of flying in it but I did fly the Shackleton.
BB: [unclear] it was [unclear] the Lincoln, you know, it went from Lancaster, Lincoln, Shackleton
EH: Yeah
BB: So it was lovely aeroplane.
EH: Oh, Yes. Oh, the Lancaster.
BB: Shackleton, [unclear] Shackleton.
EH: Well I had Mark I, II, Halifax, and the Mark III, now the Mark III was a complete change, it was a [unclear] aircraft, it had sixteen hundred horsepower Hercules engines radials
BB: Yeah.
EH: It was a heavy aircraft, what a difference was from the [unclear] so I got three stitches of [unclear], and then the Lanc, I flew the Lanc, that was a beautiful aircraft to fly.
BB: Did you fly the maritime version as well?
EH: Pardon?
BB: Did you fly the maritime version of the Lancaster as well?
EH: No.
BB: No.
EH: No. No, but I did visit one, there was one in a museum here
BB: Oh, that’s right [unclear]
EH: David was nursing at the time, was training at the time, [unclear] hospital and he heard about it and we went out to visit and there’s a photograph and on that photograph there’s the name Holmes and I reckon it’s a pity they hadn’t put they date on and I reckon as a photograph of an operation, you know, the names were taken off.
BB: Yeah, what a shame.
US2: Can I interrupt? Sorry. We need to [unclear]
BB: Ok, right.
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 Ernest Holmes
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Bruce Blanche
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-01-29
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
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
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AHolmesEA160129
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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01:37:23 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
Ernest Holmes joined the RAF and served as a pilot, flying operations first with 76 Squadron and then on Pathfinders. Gives a vivid and detailed account of when he was shot down over Holland: how he was given shelter by a farmer’s family and moved to different locations; his eventful escape to Belgium; his capture and interrogation by the Gestapo and internment in a prisoner of war.
Contributor
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Peter Schulze
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Netherlands
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940-06-10
1943
1944-05-21
1945-10-10
10 OTU
35 Squadron
76 Squadron
aircrew
animal
anti-Semitism
bombing
evading
fear
Halifax
Halifax Mk 3
Operational Training Unit
Pathfinders
pilot
prisoner of war
RAF Abingdon
RAF Kinloss
Resistance
Shackleton
shot down
Stalag Luft 3
the long march
training
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/576/8845/AGoughH150922.2.mp3
c57cda680fc05053c4ed864f4febb674
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
Gough, Harry
H Gough
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Gough, H
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Warrant Officer Harry Gough (1925 - 2016, 1590911 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a rear gunner with 10 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-09-22
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.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AM: Ok so it’s Tuesday 22nd September 2015 and we are in Tingly near Wakefield and this is Annie Moody for the International Bomber Command Centre and I’m talking today to
HG: Harry Gough.
AM: Harry Gough. So if you would Harry would you just tell me a little bit about your childhood, and where you were born and what your parents did.
HG: I was born in Dewsbury, er Dewsbury Moor actually. My father at that time was er worked in the steel industry at Click Heaton up to me being probably six or seven and then he er decided to leave that and er go into the licensing trade being er, what is it, er steward at a working men’s club that would be when I was six or seven er.
AM: What was it like being a child working in a, er living near a working men’s club then, where you living there in it?
HG: No no we lived away from it
AM: Oh, Oh
HG: But er at that time, funnily enough we were only on about this a few days ago er the way families were brought up, I think it was when Victor was up er, I was the youngest of seven and the house we had a small terraced house (pause) you couldn’t say it was a one up and one down but that’s basically what it was one large bedroom and a small one at the top of the landing so that was the earliest I remember being there er.
AM: What about the bathroom and toilet, where were they?
HG: Oh no bathroom (laughs) there there were sink in the corner
AM: And a tin bath
HG: Tin bath yeah and a toilet way up the yard and er you prayed every day that it didn’t you didn’t have heavy rain (laughs) er but we moved into a council house at that time when I was seven and er there again seven of us and it was a three bedroomed council house you know people just wouldn’t have that today would they and er from there er went to the local school, broke my leg playing football er recovered from that and we moved into a public house then in Dewsbury the Great (unclear) Hotel in Dewsbury and we were there for two years transferred our interest to Leeds another pub, another two years, or less than two years, back to Morley (unclear) Morley and that another pub eventually er and that when my schooling finished that would be 1939
AM: So how old were you then?
HG: Fourteen
AM: Fourteen
HG: My eldest my second eldest brother he worked in the textiles and he had to work at Putsey and he had to go by bike from Morley to Putsey on the night shift his wage was twenty six bob a week so he’d had enough of that and he volunteered for the army me being the stupid lad, oh no I’m not stupid, er if he was having action I wanted it as well so I wanted to go in the boys army along with him er, my father agreed to it but er mother said no you’re not and that was the end of that up to er 41 and er I joined the air training corps local squadron at Morley and er in there until volunteering for the air force in 43 and er eventually accepted and I did the er air crew assessment at Doncaster and er they were full up with pilots and full up with navigators
AM: Everybody wanted to be a pilot
HG: (Laughs) that’s right (laughs) right well if you got to be a gunnery course that’s it well I wanted to fly anyway so it was August 43 when I eventually went and er signed on down at Lords cricket ground, lad at 18 years old and going to London you know, never been out of his home town I don’t think, occasional holiday but not many of those I kind of remember going on holiday with my parents more than once
AM: How did you get to London then did you go on the train?
HG: Train yeah yeah, I suppose you get on the train and follow the crowd (laughs) er when we were there our initial signing and initial whatever it is medicals and er up to er for a fortnight to three weeks and then back up into Yorkshire to Bridlington
AM: So in that three weeks what were you doing?
HG: er getting kitted out
AM: What sort of things?
HG: Medicals er several injections whatever they call them er but er my sister was stationed in London at the time she was in the WAFS and er we met up a few times at er I think it was just routine things er drills whatever marching to the London zoo for meals and er yeah and I met up with a gunner we met on the first day we were there
AM: What was he called?
HG: Bill Field from Chester we were about the same age and er we were together right the way through to finishing flying
AM: Really
HG: We did a gunnery course did our basic training in Bridlington over to Belfast or near Belfast for gunnery school
AM: What was the gunnery school like what sort of things were you doing there did you have to strip em and put em back together and all that sort of stuff
HG: No no you had to do theory work on the guns but er mainly it was er rifle shooting for the clay pigeon shooting er then up in the Avro Ansons for air to air gunnery
AM: So when you say air to air what were you shooting at
HG: A draw yeah there’d be another Emerson dragging a draw if you were lucky he ate it (laughs)
AM: Did you
HG: Well I got a percentage of it whether that’s true or not I don’t know I think they just put this percentage out to get you through and make sure you had a rear gunner or something.
AM: Mmm
HG: But er that was I finished there New Year’s Eve we left New Year’s Eve in 43 that was it so from August I’d done all the basic training air gunnery training and passed out as a Sergeant air gunner before I was nineteen
AM: Blimey
HG: When you think about that you know think about that lady how stupid can it be but er it wasn’t just me everybody was on it er and after a short period at home then oh we finished up in Scotland on New Year’s Eve at Stranraer bit frightening (laughs) as an eighteen year old a bit frightening
AM: Laughs
HG: But er nevertheless we caught the train early morning and er early morning made our way home. After a few days at home up to er Kinross forest in Kinross in Scotland
AM: Scotland again
HG: That was for er crewing up and er operational training
AM: So how did the crewing up go cos’ you’d already got your mate with you
HG: Yes we stuck together all the time did Bill and I and er I don’t remember er well
AM: Who chose who?
HG: (Pause) I think the pilot chose us (laughs) why he did I don’t know er
AM: Maybe he could see there were two mates together and he wanted…
HG: Yes I think that had a lot to do with it we’d been together as pals and Harry Harrison the pilot er then he’d already met the er navigator Johnny Hall from Bradford from there we all got together Scottish wireless operator Cockney lad for a flight engineer and er I don’t remember where he come from South Midlands somewhere… Leicester and er how long did that last probably January late February early March
AM: So that’s where you flew together as a crew then
HG: Crew yes flying Whitley’s doing all the basic things turning dinghy’s over in the bath (laughs) when you can’t swim it’s er a bit of a nightmare but we got through it er
AM: Why turning dinghy’s over in the bath, in case you got shot down
HG: Yeah in case you got shot down
AM: Or crash landed in the sea
HG: Yeah yeah and er flying Whitley’s er the flying coffin some of the cross countries that we did six hours in the rear turret of a Whitley not very nice but it was enjoyable because that’s what I wanted to do er from there we went to er Marston Moor er heavy conversion unit flying the Halifax Mk 2.
AM: Right
HG: Which you don’t get to know until later that was the worst period of your service flying in a Halifax Mk 2 you were safer flying in the Mk 3 and 4 going on operations
AM: Why was that?
HG: They were very unreliable er basically because of the engine I think er and the tail unit the tail unit of the Halifax changed a great deal and they put revised engines in then and they were a much sounder aircraft
AM: Right
HG: But er we didn’t get none (unclear) you were in a death trap really (laughs) but er we got through that and we floated about then in Yorkshire for some reason (unclear) and Maltby, Driffield just for nightly stays and things like until we got posted to a squadron which was Melbourne ten squadron
AM: And there was ten squadron
HG: Mmm from there well
AM: What was your first operation like then
HG: What was it like
AM: Well can you just, I can’t imagine how it must of felt
HG: (Pause)
AM: I bet you can’t remember (laughs)
HG: No I can’t remember, no I can’t remember (pause)
AM: Bacon and eggs
HG: (Laughs) oh aye coming back to bacon and eggs that’s what that’s what you looked forward to but never when they all went out on operations did I ever think that I wouldn’t get back never never entered my head that I would never get back
AM: Did you have any close shaves
HG: (Pause) I suppose there were one or two where er the fighters were about but er in the main there were I think the biggest (unclear) were the night operations which you know they were a bit backwards at coming forwards at coming up in the dark they’d wait till the Yanks went over in the day light and have a go at them
AM: Have a go at them
HG: But er anti-aircraft fire unnerving but even then never entered my head that er I wouldn’t get back
AM: And you were right
HG: Mmm
AM: What was it like ‘cos you were the rear gunner so as you’re coming away bombs have been dropped?
HG: That’s right
AM: And you can see
HG: Yeah
AM: What’s, what’s happened
HG: Oh the in most cases the place was ablaze down below and er I suppose you think at the time oh great we’ve done a good job
AM: Yeah
HG: It isn’t until later days you know was it all that good you know what damage did we do I mean innocent people were killed but this is years later you think about this
AM: I was gonna say that because at the time you were doing it
HG: We were doing what we would been trained to do and er got satisfaction out of doing it as well but er pub visits at the night when you weren’t on operation a little bit naughty at times but er
AM: I’m gonna have to ask you, in what way naughty
HG: Well I don’t know it er probably drink more than what you should really
AM: You’re still only twenty by this time nineteen
HG: Nineteen yes I finished flying before I was twenty so I were only well at that time you were what you called kids at eighteen you weren’t adults at all you were classed as kiddies really
AM: Did you fly with the same crew all the way through
HG: Yes yes stuck together all the way through thirty three operations
AM: Thirty three, blimey, I can see we’ve got your log book is there anything
HG: Laughs
GR: Well your first operation was a daylight
HG: Yeah it was
GR: According to this yeah Macer Owen
HG: Taverni was it
GR: Yeah Macer Owen…and your last op was Christmas Eve (Laughs)
HG: Yeah yeah fly from the 23rd (unclear) the 24th
AM: And you said to me before about the fact that it was Christmas Eve and that was your last one
HG: Yeah
AM: About your mum and dad
HG: Yeah at the time it never struck me at all that it was any different to any other operation or you know you feel a sense of relief that the operations are over but it was only oh much later that I thought about these things. I don’t know what my parents were really thought about me being in the Air Force and what I was doing what it meant to them but what a Christmas box it must have been if that’s the way they thought about that I wasn’t in danger of being shot down or losing my life or whatever er after that particular time I never mentioned it to them in fact it was after they’d both passed I think my dad thought about it but er
AM: Yeah so what did you do after you finished your operations
HG: Oh dear I got kicked about and er
AM: (Laughs) did you do any training or TU stuff
HG: No I went into air traffic control actually
AM: Ahh
HG: Er when they finally got me settled down at Shawbury which was the number one flying training school was it, that’s where the (unclear) flew from when we went over the North Pole wing commander Mcclurough I think it was er I did a few months there I was there up to er VE day which was in May wasn’t it
AM: Mmm
HG: 45 and on VE day I travelled to Valley on the Isle of Anglesey and I was there until after VJ Day, (pause) VJ day what a night
AM: (Laughs)
HG: There was a black and tan drink then wasn’t there Guinness and beer black and tan
GR: That’s right yeah
AM: Mmm
HG: Still only twenty and I’m drinking black and tans I didn’t eat anything for four days (laughs)
AM: Laughs
GR: Laughs
HG: That’s when I learnt how to drive er air traffic control there was a (unclear) out there are you alright, yes I’m alright, never driven a van in my life (laughs) and there was some…how do I start this thing, (laughs) and away I went, but er bit precarious but er
AM: On a road or
HG: No no on the air field on the air field
AM: Just as well
HG: Yeah (laughs) well from the mess to the er traffic control and whatever to the end of the runway and back and things like that but er and from there not long after VJ Day I went back to Shawbury again well just how long I was there I can’t remember can’t remember and by this time I’d er already got my Flight Sergeant that was late 44 I got my Officer late 45 when I was still at Shawbury and then went to various places then just two or three days stopping at one near Warrington I can’t remember I can’t remember what place it was
AM: I wonder why, why were they moving you about like that?
HG: To find getting a posting you just couldn’t get (unclear) to come out I did want to come out anyway because I had the chance to come out on was it class B release or something because I worked in the textiles before I went in and there was no way that I’m going back into textiles after being in the air force and the excitement that I’d had or the life that I’d had and they kick you about a bit until er they get you a posting and I finally got a posting to er Austria just outside Vienna (Schwechat) but in the meantime for some reason that I don’t know why and I always thought it was a bit unfair you had to re-muster and you lost your seniority rank you were taken down from Warrant Officer back down to sergeant in rank but not in pay you still got your Warrant officers pay and it always hit me that er you know you’ve done this, you’ve volunteered for this, you’ve done your flying you’ve done your duty and everything that’s been asked of you and you’ve been fortunate enough to get through and then they demote you which didn’t seem fair to me at all, er but as I say the money was still there you were a Sergeant with a Warrant Officer’s pay and er went to Vienna (pause) mid July 46 July 46 that’s right er (pause) yeah and I enjoyed that er in air traffic control again er the surrounding area you were in the Russian border so you had to be very careful what you were doing but you were allowed out of camp and there was woodlands and through the woodlands you got to the er river what is it in Vienna come on Clarice what river is it in Vienna
AM: I can’t think I should know and I can’t it’s not erm
HG: I’ll be dammed
AM: No it’s gone I can’t remember
GR: Could be the Rhine
HG: No
GR: The Rhone
HG: No
AM: I can’t remember either
HG: Crazy isn’t it, crazy
AM: I’ll find it after, the river in Vienna anyway
HG: Yeah er out of camp and through this woodland I actually walked on the river it was that cold it was frozen over it was really really cold but er the camp that’s about itas much as I can remember about it other than we often visited Vienna itself not nightly but certainly two or three nights a week and really enjoyable and er the diesel in the truck that took us down would often freeze up so you were stuck there in the middle of the night (laughs) trying to keep warm
AM: Laughs
HG: But er I suppose the most that I remember about that there were three of us myself a Geordie lad ex air crew and a Scotch lad ex air crew and we got to like our drinks a little bit I always remember one afternoon we were drinking in the bar and we drunk that bar absolutely dry
AM: There’s a there’s a thread running through this story isn’t there (laughs)
HG: (Laughs) we drank that bar absolutely dry we finished up drinking port of all things and we sat in this bar and an electric light, (pause) can’t be a fire can’t that and it was and er the electrics in upstairs room had caught fire and er everybody had to bail out of course and this Scots lad he went absolutely berserk and we were just across from the er guard room and er the three of us were taken into the guard room and this guy was given morphine to quieten him down he was really really bad so that was almost the end of my service in Vienna we got kitted out and put in with the airmen for the rest of our stay there but er came back to er Blackpool and we were de-mobbed
AM: You were de-mobbed so you did leave in the end
HG: Yes
AM: What did you do afterwards, not textiles?
HG: Oh dear er I did for a very short period my brother worked in the textiles then my elder brother er and I batted it out (unclear) while the money lasted you know (laughs) er eventually I had to get a job so I went there and er oh I think three or four week I’m not sticking this (laughs) and er what did I do from there oh cigarette people Ardath cigarette people they had er they were based in Leeds and I met Gladys then well we’d known each other years but we got together then and er I was there for quite a while months not years months and then we got married February 48 wasn’t it
GH: Mmm
HG: And er these people kind as they are you know oh yes you can have a week off it’s your summer holiday that’s fine as long as I can have a week off we got married had the week off and went down to Kent on our honeymoon and came back and gave my notice in (laughs) they can’t do that to Harry and er from there I went into engineering in Bradford not a very happy time because I was working with people who’d been er what do they call when they weren’t called up
AM: Erm not (unclear) to subject as if they’d been in a reserved occupation
HG: Like a reserved occupation and you’re working with these guys and (unclear) so that didn’t last very long either (laughs) er and from then I went to the Gas Board
AM: Right
HG: In 49 and er that’s been my life I suppose ever since
AM: You stayed there ever since
HG: The Gas Board er finished and had a period with the water authority and I had one spell in between the Gas Board and the water what was that er what do they call it fibre glass moulds making moulds out of fibre glass and it was the summer of 49 I don’t know if you remember it and it was absolutely scorching I think it was 49 48 48 49
GH: There weren’t many in 48
AM: Late forties must’ve been 48
HG: Yeah around 48 49 really scorching and a perspex roof and you could see all this fibre glass
AM: I was gonna say dust I would imagine it’s
HG: Floating about I though oooh Harry (laughs) get out
AM: You don’t want that on your lungs
HG: That was enough of that so from there I went to an outside job with the water authority and thankfully was able to stay there
AM: Stay there ever since
HG: Until I retired
AM: and you know you said just just going back to the bombing bit for a minute you said that at the time what everybody’s said to me we had to do it that’s what we were there for you did it
HG: That’s right
AM: But later on you did start to think about
HG: Yes you did yes you did
AM: The women and children and what have you
HG: And I think what brought that to my mind more than anything was er Munich ‘cos they really did we never went to Munich but er they really did flatten Munich and there must’ve been thousands of innocent people that died because of that and er (pause) were we doing the right thing that’s the way I thought of it later but er but at the time yes that’s what you joined up for that’s what you volunteered for they want you to do it get it done
AM: And that was to bring the war to an end
HG: That’s right yeah
AM: Excellent, I’m going to switch off now.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Harry Gough
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Annie Moody
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
2015-09-22
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AGoughH150922
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Pending review
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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.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:30:08 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Harry Gough was born in Dewsbury, he finished school in 1939 aged fourteen, joined the Air Training Corps in 1941 and volunteered for the Air Force in 1943. He recounts his training as an air gunner and flying over the North Pole. After flying operations he was posted to Austria as an air traffic controller. He was demobbed and after the war he worked for the Gas Board and Water Authority.
Contributor
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Carron Moss
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Austria
Great Britain
Austria--Vienna
England--Shropshire
England--Yorkshire
Wales--Anglesey
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1939
1941
1943
1944
1945
1946
10 Squadron
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
Anson
crewing up
guard room
Halifax
Halifax Mk 2
Initial Training Wing
Operational Training Unit
perception of bombing war
promotion
RAF Bridlington
RAF Kinloss
RAF Marston Moor
RAF Melbourne
RAF Shawbury
RAF Valley
training
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/291/3446/ALorimerH160622.1.mp3
89e8541e9729f5d0b1d3205c8e3e4a55
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
Lorimer, Hugh
Hugh Lorimer
H Lorimer
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with Pilot Officer Hugh Lorimer (b. 1922, 183601 and 1369405 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a wireless operator with 10 Squadron.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-06-22
Rights
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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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Lorimer, H
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
PL: Well, first of all I’d just like to say my name is Pam Locker. I am interviewing Mr Hugh Lorimer of [redacted] Knaresborough and the date is the 22nd of June 2016. And can I just start, Hugh by saying thank you very much indeed for agreeing to give us your interview. We do appreciate it. And I guess if we just start the interview by you telling us a little bit about your, your childhood and how you came to be involved with Bomber Command.
HL: My pleasure. Thank you very much in the first instance for coming along to do this interview. I’m glad to take the opportunity to pass on quite a bit of my memories to people in the future who may be interested which I sincerely hope they will be. And I thought I’d sort of start by sort of telling you why I joined the Royal Air Force in the first place. I was just a young schoolboy. I’d be about maybe twelve, thirteen years of age and I was standing outside the house one morning and I saw this fleet of biplane aircraft flying over the house at low level. I wondered what the dickens they were doing. So I made a few enquiries and discovered it was one of these flying circuses which was going to operate from a field about three or four miles from my home. But unfortunately I was told they were only there for the sort of Tuesday and Wednesday of that week and I was at school. And I thought oh my goodness, I’d love to go and see that. So I pondered it. And I found out what the entrance fee was. It was sixpence and I didn’t have sixpence. I had to scrape around for quite a few days. I found a few of my father’s empty beer bottles [laughs] and took them down to the pub and collected six pence. And in the morning they started the exhibition I did what we say in Scotland I plugged the school. Played hookey. And I ran the three or four miles to this airfield and there was these lovely aircraft. And as I went in I paid my sixpence and they gave me a ticket. And somebody said, ‘Keep your tickets. There will be a lucky draw later on.’ So I stuck it in my pocket and forgot all about it and just spent most of my time watching this wonderful exhibition. Absolutely enthralled. And then I heard people shouting, ‘We’re just about to make the draw.’ And what happens? The first number out is mine. And the prize was a trip in one of the biplanes. And then there was three or four other numbers came out and they all got the same thing. I thought we would be going up in three or four planes. Far from it. We were all piled into the one plane and I sat on somebody’s knee while we flew around the country for about ten minutes or so and then landed. And that was me. I was hooked. Hooked line and sinker on that one. And that all finished. I went back and I went to school the next morning. ‘Lorimer, where were you yesterday? The headmaster wants to see you.’ So I went to see Mr Martin who was the headmaster. He congratulated my enterprise at trying to get there he said, ‘But never mind. Hold your hands out,’ and I got six of the best. He said, ‘Next time you want to go and see the air force come and ask. We’d be pleased to let you go.’ So that was fine. School finished and the war started. And by that time I was in a reserved occupation. And —
PL: What was that?
HL: And had I not, had I not wanted to go I wouldn’t have needed to go to war. In any event I couldn’t go until I was eighteen and I still had a year to wait. So I waited for that year and I found out that being a reserved occupation the only people that they would employ in the, during the war was in the Royal Air Force. I said that’s exactly what I want. And I said, ‘Please may I join up now,’ and I joined up on my eighteenth birthday. And then I went off for my training. And I wanted to be a pilot and unfortunately I had what they called excessive long sight, hypermetropia in one of my eyes. Which they said would probably affect my ability to be able to land it properly at all times so I’d have to look for some other post. And I finished up being trained as a wireless operator as it then was.
Other: Yes. It’s me.
[recording paused]
HL: My first posting was to Blackpool of all places which I thoroughly enjoyed. We lived in one of these houses with about thirty or forty of us. They were all boarding houses. And we had tremendous camaraderie. Joined up as crews in a way. But we had a, a sergeant who was a bit of a, a whatnot. None of us really liked him and he was always trying to get us into some sort of trouble. And one day we were down on Blackpool Pier and the tide was in. Who should come marching along the pier but our sergeant. And there were seven or eight of us at the time and we all fell across him and unfortunately he, he toppled over into the water and we had to go down and rescue him [laughs] That was, that was the first of our escapades. But it was all good fun. Good spirits. And we finished our training as radio operators or wireless operators and were posted out in the first place to units where we worked on the ground whilst we were waiting to be called forward for aircrew training. Which was, it was a very good insight into what the ground crews did. Apart from the aircrews who did all the sort of, the famous stuff so to speak. The unheard of lads. And we were one of them to begin with while we experienced both sides. I was at a, on a special course one day. At Chelmsford it was. I’d just arrived to do this special course and I was recalled to go on my aircrew training and I was pleased about that. And I started my aircrew training and I went through for about six months. Went up to Kinloss on my, as an individual wireless operator and found that we were to be crewed up there. There was pilots, navigators, engineers, gunners, radio operators. The whole lot. And we were told to spend a few days getting to know each other and form our own crews. And at the end of the day that’s exactly what happened. We all gathered in the square and we formed ourselves in to crews of seven each. And we all, and I happened to be with a crew who was real cosmopolitan. We had two Canadians. An Irishman. An Australian. Two Scots. And an Englishman. We did our training on Whitley bombers. And when that was completed we moved down to a place called Rufforth which is just outside York where we converted on to Halifax bombers. At the end of that training we were posted to form a Special Duty Flight and I wondered what that was. We discovered it was two Lancasters and two Halifaxes and we were going somewhere but we weren’t told where. But we were to go and get all sorts of inoculations and we were given KD uniforms so we knew it was somewhere hot. And we set off down the Bay of Biscay. Sorry. Before we get there, there was one little point I forgot which is very important. Because it was Lancasters as well as Halifaxes in this little Special Duty Flight the pilots had to be able to fly both aircraft. And my pilot, Doug Stewart from Canada was told to go to Royal Air Force Scampton and he had to take a navigator, sorry take an engineer with him and the radio operator. So the three of us went up to Scampton and we joined the 57 Squadron then that was there and we got on our first trip. Made quite a few circuits and bumps and doing very well. And then the instructor said, ‘Well, that’s fine. We’ll do one more trip.’ And that’ll be it. You’re quite competent.’ So we took off down the runway and unfortunately the undercarriage gave way. And we were doing about just getting close to ninety miles an hour at the time and the aircraft was written off. And we had, that was our first prang. We were sort of shaken a bit about but then we all, we walked out. And that was it. We were fine. We went back to join our Special Duty Flight. And then we set off for what happened to be a rather interesting trip. We flew down the Bay of Biscay to a place called [pause ] hold on for a second [pause] The name’s gone [laughs] What the dickens was it? [pause] No, never mind. I can’t remember the name of the place but it was in [unclear] . We landed in an airfield in French Morocco. And the interesting thing was it was broad daylight after a night trip across the bay and I heard these people shouting. It was eight young natives. They were selling newspapers and what they were saying was, ‘All the English football results,’ [laughs] So we, we bought a newspaper at our first stop. We had to wait there to be told where we were to go next. Went from there along the Libyan coast to Tripoli. It was called Castel Benito then and we saw that that was our first experience of seeing the effects of the desert war and the place was absolutely bombed to bits. Wreckage everywhere. But we were operating still onwards. We were going from there to Cairo West. I wondered where the dickens we were going to finish up. We thought that would be it. Middle East uniforms. We had rather an interesting experience actually on that trip. It was extremely hot and our pilot got a bit of heat stroke actually. It turned out to be. So when he tried to land the first time he misjudged. And he misjudged twice and went around for a third time and he misjudged again. But at this time he put the revs on the aircraft because we were trying to climb to get back airborne again and the engines were overheating. And we were just barely moving and our landing wheels were still down in fact we hit the top of a sand dune. And we bounced. Not downwards but upwards. And we were able to maintain, the pilot was able to maintain control and we came around and we went and made a safe landing but we had to stay in Cairo for about two weeks whilst our skipper recovered his, his health again. We thought well that was it. Well we wondered where we would be flying from. They said, ‘No. You’ll carry on from here to Bahrain.’ We went to Bahrain and there I saw an aircraft lying at the side of the road, at the side of the runway which was in a bit of a mess. And I went into the, into the sergeant’s mess at that time. At that time I was a sergeant. And I saw this fellow standing beside me. It was one of my old school mates. I says, ‘Who did that out there?’ He says, ‘It was me.’ He said, ‘I had a bad landing.’ [laughs] So we had a long natter of course and he wanted to know what we were doing. We couldn’t tell him. We didn’t know. Anyhow, we had to move on a couple of days later and we finished up at Karachi in India. And we thought this must be it now but it wasn’t. We carried on from there to a place called Salbani in Bengal. And there we joined up with the other three aircraft, the two Lancasters and the Halifax and we set up our own special unit there. And it was the home of a Liberator squadron which was operating against the Japanese. So we were in that area and really enjoying it but our job as a Special Duty Flight, we found out when we got there was to determine how these, these four engine aircraft could operate under these tropical conditions. And that was our job. And we went for all sorts of tests. One of our tests was to see if we could get over Everest but we couldn’t make the height. We got to about twenty five thousand and that was it. The aircraft wouldn’t take any more. One of the things about the weather out there was it changed dramatically from you know, without much notice. You get thunderclouds you’d be in trouble and such like. And that’s what happened to us. We were coming in to land at Salbani and one of these tropical winds blew up and it was because of this gust of wind that I actually came to join Bomber Command. Which is part of the story. This is, this is how fate dictates what will happen to you through your life. When we hit the runway we had a nice, nice landing, we were just taxiing down and this gust of wind caught us and it turned us right over and blew us right across the airfield upside down. Wrote off the aircraft. And fortunate, for some reason again we all walked out unscathed. But we had no aircraft. That was a bit —
PL: What year? What year was this Hugh?
HL: 1943. This story is in the, in the records for it. It’s all there. So we hung around for about a good six to seven weeks while our future was decided. We were set down, down the, on course for a bit of a rest. R&R they called it, which we thoroughly enjoyed, but when we got back they told us that we were going back to Britain and this is [laughs] we had to go back by train to Bombay. Well, that was a long long long long way. We were given sandwiches and stuff to get there which petered out long before we were half way down the journey. And the train stopped at this station and right opposite us was a big buffet and I said, ‘How long will we stop for?’ They said, ‘Oh a good fifteen, twenty minutes.’ So I volunteered to go out and buy the sandwiches. But what I had not reckoned with, reckoned on was the way the natives [laughs] didn’t think about queues. They just barged in and I kept finding myself at the back of this barge. I never got the sandwiches because I suddenly realized the train was moving and there I was. And I had to turn around and run but I couldn’t reach my carriage. There was a carriage near the end which had a window open and I just caught the top of the window and dived straight through. And inside there it was full of the local natives of the rather low caste. And they were packed in like sardines and I was jammed up against this door and I thought, ‘What the devil do I do here?’ Well, I thought, I just felt my hip pocket. My revolver was still there so I just kept my hand on it and waited and waited and waited until the train came to a stop again and I got out quickly and ran along to the front where we were travelling first class and jumped in. They said, ‘Where are the sandwiches?’ [laughs] I won’t tell you what I said but it’s not repeatable.
Other: He doesn’t normally talk much my husband. He’s making up for it this morning. He reads.
HL: I’m missing my slipper [pause] So, that was just a little bit of a what I would call the humorous side of air force life. And we had a lovely trip back on a rather nice boat. And joined these, went through the Suez Canal, through all the Mediterranean in convoy because there still were submarines about. And we got to Liverpool and one of the jobs I got at Liverpool Dock was to be in charge of the baggage. I was put ashore as the baggage master. And because I went ashore I had to take some food with me because I’d be down there for quite some time. And after about an hour or so’s work supervising what was going on we all stopped for a, for a meal. Including the local lads who were working with us. And I pulled out my sandwiches. Beautiful white bread and they came over, looked at it, ‘Oh my goodness that looks really good.’ I said, ‘It’s only a, it’s only a sandwich.’ But he was having his, and it was a dirty black brown bread. It was called the National Loaf. I said, ‘Oh my goodness. Look. Do us a swap.’ He said, ‘Thank you. I’m not going to take them. I’m going to take it home to my family. They haven’t seen white bread for two or three years.’ And it suddenly dawned on me at that time you know people are suffering. Particularly in Liverpool because they had a lot of bombing. And I think of that story often. Went on from there to join 10 Squadron which was our posting. And when I got there I found myself promoted to officer rank and the rank of pilot officer. Which was totally and utterly unexpected but for some reason they thought I was good enough. And that was it. I did a total of thirty one operations with 10 Squadron. Eleven of them were over France. Started from D-Day where our job was to disrupt as much of the enemy’s supplies to their, to our boys that who on the beaches down below as far as we possibly could. I think we did a reasonable job of it. It was a success in the end. But one of the interesting things about that is that what I didn’t know at the time was that on the beaches below my own brother was there. They were at Caen. And he was a corporal at that time in the Royal Scots Fusiliers and we were comparing, you know stories some time afterwards and discovered that whilst he was fighting down there I’d been dropping bombs, or my crew were dropping bombs on German troops at a particular position not far away from where he was. And I found out that Field Marshall Montgomery had awarded him the military medal for his efforts. Just a little story but part of a family and our effort together. And because of these [coughs] excuse me. These French trips and French bombing raids. Switch off for a second.
[recording paused]
PL: Restarting the tape. So Hugh you were talking about Caen.
HL: Yeah. Talking about the bombing we did following D-Day. And I did eleven trips to various French cities. Including Paris where we bombed marshalling yards and other places like oil depots and got to Le Havre where we bombed the troops themselves. The German troops. And as a result of that, lo and behold seventy years later the French president decided to award we veterans with a Legion d’honneure. And I was one of the lads who was able to pick up this award and the rank of Chevalier. Which I understand is the equivalent of a knight in France. I don’t think it’s quite the equivalent for a knight in this country. No Lady Lorimer [laughs] Yeah. Talking about that just going back to say to my training days when I moved, talking about roughing us out as I did earlier on in this conversation we had a rather an amusing incident. One of the things we all had to do as crews was to learn escape and evasion. Just in case we were shot down as a lot of our lads were. And some did manage to escape and evade and get back to this country. A lot of others unfortunately didn’t. But one of our jobs was to go out and practise evasion and escape. And it was midsummer really which was very pleasant from our point of view. We went up as a crew and were dropped off at Kirbymoorside. It‘s a way up in the north part of Yorkshire. And we had to get back to the base which was about maybe thirty odd miles away. Certainly by sun up if at all possible. We tried to work in darkness although there wasn’t much darkness at that time of the year. We were fortunate. We managed to escape most of the people who were looking for us because everybody was out. Home guard. Police. Firemen. You name it. All looking for us and we managed to evade them. But it was getting fairly close to about five or six in the morning and we were a bit hungry. And suddenly we niffed this smell of bacon. Oh boy it sounded, it was great. We wondered where that is? And somebody for a joke says, ‘You know they just told us in this, at the briefing that the best place to look for food if you’re shot down in Germany is to go to a farmhouse. That’s the best chance you’ll have of getting any food.’ So we said, ‘Right. Let’s sniff it out.’ And we found it was coming from a farmhouse, it was just about oh seven or eight hundred yards away. And we crept our way up there and in to the farmyard. And a door opened and this nice lady came out and said, ‘Who are you?’ We told her, ‘We couldn’t avoid smelling your bacon and eggs. We wondered if there might be any chance of a rasher.’ Cheeky we were but we did it. She said, ‘Come in lads.’ And she gave us a wonderful breakfast. All seven of us. Thoroughly enjoyed it. And then at the end she just stood at the end of the table and she burst out laughing. She was laughing her head off and we said, ‘What are you laughing? Are you laughing at us? We know we’re — ' ‘Oh no. No. No. No. I’m just waiting till my husband comes in. He’s been out all night looking for you. I just want to see his face.’ [laughs] Yeah. That’s a bit of, you know, humour. We got back safely and that was it. But going back to the actual Bomber Command raids and our, the rest of my trips were primarily over Germany. Cologne. Dusseldorf. All these places. We had our share of flak and share of fighters but again for some reason we came through unscathed. But when I think of it and heard of it later on the lads we left behind in in India were still out there. They didn’t see a single raid but we’d come back and completed our tour. Anyhow the war finished and I liked the air force so very much I decided I would like to stay in. And I made an application and they accepted me and I was given the permanent commission and I finished up as a wing commander in the supply branch. They didn’t want any flyers or wireless operators in the, in these recent days. Weren’t necessary. But it’s been a wonderful life with the Royal Air Force. And here we are in Goldsborough seventy odd years later able to talk about it and look back on the all the wonderful memories, friendships, relationships that built up. And one of the things I didn’t, didn’t mention to you but I will now mention now is that for some reason the Queen decided to award me with an Order of the British Empire which I went down and got in 1977 in her Silver Jubilee Honours list. And with that I think I can say that’s about it. Do you think?
PL: So after, after, after the war ended you stayed in the service.
HL: Yes.
PL: And so what sort of things, what sort of things did you do?
HL: Well, to begin with because I wasn’t flying I had to find a job which I wanted to do. And I was given free rein on a station. I spent six, about six weeks it was going around all the departments to find out what interested me. And the one that interested me most was logistics, because you were involved in everything that way. Movement of men, materials, stores. Working with civil industry. Rolls Royce. This sort of thing. And that intrigued me. It gave me an insight into, well modern life which obviously I hadn’t seen in the five years of the war because it was a very sheltered life. So I joined the, what was then known as the equipment branch and came lots of, lots of units. We served in England obviously. Spent some time in Malta. Cyprus. Germany. And that was it. I thoroughly enjoyed it. When we, when we finished at age fifty five I still didn’t want to finish work and I wondered what the dickens I could do. And one of my mates was a, worked for British aerospace so I said, ‘What’s my chances of landing a job? I’d like to go on this [unclear] contract that the British government is doing with Saudi Arabia at the moment if it’s at all possible.’ And he came back and said, ‘Yes. They’ll have you with pleasure. Would you like to go out?’ I said, ‘Yes. I’ll go,’ So I went and spent six years with them working on the [unclear] contract on the logistics side using my experience. Which was a real eye opener to, for what happens in civil life as opposed to service life. But fortunately a lot of my ex-service colleagues were there so we had friendships all the way through. It was, it was just like being back in the air force again. Yeah. And well that’s it really.
PL: What do you think the key differences are?
HL: Camaraderie. I think that is the big difference. You see you’re one big unit in the service and we’ve each just got one purpose in life and that’s to defend our country and we all work to that cause. Be it in peace time or war time. So you worked together. As a civilian in civvy life you were very much on your own. You made a few friends but never really had the same togetherness. That’s the big difference. To be quite honest of the two lives I would choose the service life all the time. And if there’s any of you listening in to this at the moment don’t have any worries about joining any of the services. You’ll find them wonderful. Go ahead and enjoy it all because that’s what life’s all about.
PL: That’s wonderful. And just, you mentioned your brother.
HL: Oh John. Yes.
PL: And he survived the war.
HL: He survived the war but he died before — he would have got that medal that I got from the French had he been alive. But he died and of course he didn’t. He wasn’t awarded it. Yeah. Yes.
PL: So going back to your, your tour over Germany with Bomber Command.
HL: In Germany.
PL: Yes.
HL: Yeah.
PL: You were saying you went over, after D-Day you were still —
HL: Oh yes. After D-Day I did. I did all thirty one trips. Eleven of which were in France. The rest were over Germany.
PL: Did you want to say anything else about those?
HL: Not particularly. No. Because there’s enough been said about it and I’d — no. No. No, the memories are such that I just want to keep these to myself.
PL: Of course. Of course. And so as we talked a little earlier what do you think about the way that Bomber Command has been treated over the years?
HL: Well, up until that rather drastic raid as it was called — was it Dresden? - we were all treated fine. But for some reason which escapes all of us because we only did what we were asked to do from that point onwards we seemed to get a name which we didn’t really deserve. And that hurt. Hurt terribly. I felt as if I was second class at one stage. Until it suddenly dawned on me it’s not really. It’s what I think personally that matters. Not what other people think. And I knew I did a good job. And that’s all that really matters. But we were treated shabbily. We waited all these years just to get the recognition of the, that Bomber Command clasp they made out. It should have been a medal. But every little helps. But for some reason the authorities decided no. Shame on them.
PL: Absolutely. Do you think that was a political decision?
HL: I think it must have been. Yes. I can’t think of any other reason. Yeah. And yet it was taken. I often wondered. Because Bomber Harris didn’t get all [unclear] at all. And whether there was some sort of a, [unclear] between them we’ll never know. I don’t know. But it was well known that they didn’t agree on many things. It could well be the cause.
PL: Well thank you so much Hugh. That’s been a fantastic story and is there anything else?
HL: I hope I haven’t bored you.
PL: Not at all. It’s been wonderful. Is there anything else at all that you would like to be recorded?
HL: I can’t really think of anything that’s of any particular interest to tell you about apart from what I’ve, what I’ve said.
PL: Well thank you very much indeed. Thank you.
HL: I could tell you, there’s one highlight strangely enough. Yes. After the war. I was at Cranwell at the time and the cadets there exchanged places with the cadets from the Air Force Academy in Colorado. And I was asked to go out there along with a few of our other lads and look after the cadets. And we had a wonderful two weeks in Colorado Springs. At the, at the American Air Academy. One of the highlights of being an air force during, after the war.
PL: Wonderful. Wonderful. And did you keep in touch with your comrades in the —
HL: Oh yes. I kept in touch with all of them until I think I’m last. The pilot, Doug just died last, January of this year. He was ninety nine.
PL: Goodness me.
HL: Yeah.
PL: Well, thank you very much again.
HL: My pleasure.
PL: Thank you.
[recording paused]
PL: So we’re resuming the interview and Hugh you were just telling me about the special ops that went over to India.
HL: Special Duties. Yeah.
PL: Special Duties. And what happened to the other crews that were staying there.
HL: Oh they stayed there until they finished their particular job but then they finished up flying troops. They didn’t come back to the UK until the war was finished.
PL: And so were they troops who’d been prisoners of war?
HL: No. Actual, our own military.
PL: Right. Right. Right.
HL: Yes. Yeah. That’s what it was.
PL: Thank you very much.
HL: A bus service. Not my cup of tea.
PL: Thank you.
Dublin Core
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Identifier
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ALorimerH160622
Title
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Interview with Hugh Lorimer
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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IBCC Digital Archive
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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00:40:56 audio recording
Creator
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Pam Locker
Date
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2016-06-22
Description
An account of the resource
Hugh Lorimer skipped school to see flying circus and won a flight in one of the aeroplanes. He later volunteered for the RAF and began training as a wireless operator. He was initially was posted to Special Duty Flight test flying in India. However, when their aircraft was written off they were posted back to the UK. He completed a tour of operations as a wireless operator with 10 Squadron.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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France
Great Britain
India
North Africa
Asia--Mount Everest
England--Yorkshire
India--Mumbai
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Carolyn Emery
Temporal Coverage
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1943
1944
10 Squadron
57 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
crash
crewing up
Halifax
Lancaster
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
perception of bombing war
RAF Kinloss
RAF Melbourne
RAF Rufforth
RAF Scampton
training
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/937/11294/ALyonJK180202.1.mp3
741ac5d555a5640deb1186b8e219f3a1
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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Lyon, Jack Kenneth
J K Lyon
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Pilot Officer Jack Lyon (1917 - 2019. 903044, 62667 Royal Air Force). He flew three operations with 58 Squadron before being shot down and becoming a prisoner of war.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-02-02
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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Lyon, JK
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB; My name is Chris Brockbank and today is the 2nd of February 2018, and I am here in Bexhill with Jack Lyon, to talk about his life and times, now he’s aged a hundred. So Jack what is your, what were your first recollections of life?
JB: Well I think a baby in a pram, and I remember going past a hoarding in Sydenham and I must have dropped something, yeah that’s my first, I was only about five years old I suppose then, apart from that I-
CB: What did your parents do?
JL: Sorry?
CB: What did your parents do?
JL: My father worked in the Smithfield Market, connected with the wholesale bacon trade, that sort of thing. He was a clerk in, George Bowles Nichols was the name of the firm. It had a, you know, a stake in Smithfield Market but they didn’t deal much in meat, mainly in products like ham and that sort of thing. George Bowles Nichols it was, he was a clerk in there. And he was a, oh right from a young child he had a, he was, had a bad health, in fact he had three brothers and they all did except one: they had a hereditary disease which gave them this hump back sort of thing. He nevertheless managed to work, to travel up to London every day, until in 1932 he had a, well he had a, and he died in 1932, anyway, of this, it was while we were on holiday my memory, in this town of Cleve. He didn’t die there, but he was in a very bad way and we only got home, a few days later he died. Well that was, what did I do then.
CB: And you lived in Sydenham then.
JB: I, we was living in Sydenham, and I attended Brockley County School. I’d passed what was the equivalent of the eleven plus from a, I began my school at five years old, in a, they call a church school I think it cost me, cost my mother about a shilling a week to get to, for this, a good education though, very good. I was going to say I passed this, the equivalent of the 11-plus and I went to this Brockley County until, well, I left school at sixteen and I went to work with a London gas company, the South Suburban Gas Company, which had an area extending from Lewisham right down to Tonbridge. I worked in their admin department. At the same time I was studying night school and, let me see that takes us up to, oh yes the, I left, I passed that what’s called the 11-plus and I was at the school and then the South Suburban Gas Company, I joined that in February 1934, and at the same time I tell you I was night school at a place in Knights Hill and I remember on the 30th, sorry on the 30th November 1936, somebody rushed in and said the Crystal Palace is on fire and of course that was the end: we watched that happen. Great pity because it, well it had, anyway I continued to work. In 1939 when I was still working for the South Suburban, I was studying night school as well - accountancy and that sort of thing - I passed stage one of the Royal Society of Arts bookkeeping, and the tutor was, worked for Shell and he poached me. He said, ‘you’re, you have quite good knowledge of accountancy and that sort of thing, would you be interested in transferring from the gas, from the gas company to Shell?’ Well I thought about it, and financially it didn’t, in fact it was slightly worse off I had to pay my train fare to London, but I thought well, it’s a good thing to be a small fish in a very large puddle and you couldn’t get much larger than Shell, could you? It was world wide then, Royal Dutch Shell, and I agreed. In fact I joined Shall about the 1st August 1939. I remember Shell opened an account for me with Lloyds Bank, 39 Threadneedle Street, where they banked themselves; they opened this account for me. But as I say, at that time we were working in St Helen’s Court and there was another famous RAF person also working there, Douglas Bader. He, when he lost his legs in a flying accident, he was invalided out of the service and he joined Shell as a management trainee, I remember that. Well, as I say on the 1st of September, Shell began, operated their wartime programme and that involved closing the London office. So they said well Mr Lyon we shan’t require your services during this present emergency, but in the meantime we will bring your salary up to parity with, what until it’s parity with what you’re earning now, and [emphasis] at the end of the emergency you will be free to rejoin the company if you so desire. Well that’s what, on 5th, war was declared on the 3rd of September, wasn’t it?
CB: Yes.
JL: That was a Sunday, wasn’t it.
CB: It was.
JL: On the 4th of September, I and a friend of mine, we made an effort to join the army because we had a connection with the Royal West Kents. They used to invite us to their annual, the Aldershot Tattoo, and we used to be entertained in their sergeants mess so we decided to join the army, but when we got to Parish Lane, Penge where their office had been, it was closed! [laugh] I suppose part of the war, we said well that’s a funny way to run a war but still, that’s it, there’s nothing we could do about that. And the next day, the 5th of September, somebody said oh they’re opening an RAF recruiting office at, in the Yorkshire Grey pub so we took a 75 bus from Sydenham High Street to there. We were examined and my friend was rejected because he had flat feet. I said he would have been more apt if he’d been joining the army, but still, that’s the way they work. I was accepted and I was told to go home, get overnight things and come back and I would be taken to RAF Uxbridge. I did that and, as I say, I was examined and accepted for, in the air force. They asked me then what trade I would like to be in and I said well what can you offer me and they said well cook and butcher well that didn’t ring any bells with me so I said hmm what else, and they said you could join the secretarial branch. Well I’d been pushing a pen for the last five years and in those days I think I want a change. They said well what about aircrew? I said well what about it? They said well if you complete your training satisfactorily you’ll be automatically promoted to the rank of sergeant, receive twelve and sixpence a day I think it was, plus so much flying pay, so there was really no contest was there. And that’s how, I passed the medical for flying and I was given a uniform which I must, was told to wear at all times because I was still actually in the air force. I was given two books to study. One was called mathematics for engineers and the other one was practical mechanics. Neither of them had much bearing on flying training, but there it was. Now this was the phoney war. I went back to my house, we were living in, oh, we had a little flat, my mother and I had a little flat in, just near the Sydenham Road, well as I say the phoney war dragged on until the 30th of December 1939. I had a telegram, “proceed to number one initial training wing, Downing College, Cambridge,” and that is where I went. Now the course was supposed to last for six weeks. In fact it dragged on to nearly four months. The reason was there were still no training facilities available. It had its up side. We were billeted in the, well what used to be the students home in, when they were there because when they were students there in Downing College, some of the colleges did have students as well, but we didn’t have that, we were permitted to use the clubs, that the College’s silver, yes, and we took turns at serving and washing up. So as I say, that relieved the monotony a bit. But this dragged on until as it were, what they say the nemesis, on the 10th of June, 10th of May 1940 the Germans invaded the Low Countries, Holland and Belgium, yes. I was, I was on fire picquet that night and the admin had been headed by a, well I must go back a bit. Before the second world war, Brigadier Critchley, his name was, was chairman of the Greyhound Racing Commission. Now when the war started he was given the rank of Air Commodore and he recruited quite of his old associates for various posts. Our adjutant was a name of Shaffey and I believe in peacetime was a tennis coach, he came and he was in a terrible state, he said LAC – we’d been promoted to LAC by the way after a number of weeks, which meant our pay was a bit better, Leading Aircraftman - what do I do with this LAC Lyon? I said well you must call, as soon as it’s light you must have a general, a roll call of all the students, all the would-be airmen, check for deficiencies in kit and that sort of thing, and the instructions were: ten recruits and each, name, not by name but by number, to various RAF stations, not necessarily air training stations and I and nine others were posted to RAF Kinloss which was not, at that time it was called 45 MU I believe, there was no flying directly from there, because as I say it was mainly material. Well we made the journey up, I had to stay, we stayed overnight I remember in the YMCA in Edinburgh, we managed to get a billet there. We travelled on the next day and we arrived at RAF Kinloss to be viewed with a certain suspicion because at that time it was stories of nuns in parachutes, coming down by parachute and all the rest of it, we were not exactly given a heroes welcome. However, they found us a billet where we could lie our heads for the night and after a day or so they received some sort of confirmation of our status and we were trained in air station defence. I think we, they, the weapon we had was interesting: it was a 20mm Hispano-Suiza cannon which had to be what they called “cocked” before it could be fired, the great thing is not so much the strength, dexterity because the story was if you lingered a bit you could lose a few fingertips, however we were trained in the use of it. And we were going to have a read out, two read outs, five of us in each, in each one, but the cannon was, overnight was requisitioned for service in the south of England where it was thought would be far more useful in the event of an invasion. It was replaced with a, I recall it was a 1912 Lewis, Lewis gun with a pan for ammunition.
CB: A drum.
JL: And even then it was a bit of a situation. We were told we must not open fire under any circumstances without consulting the Station Defence Officer. Well first of all we didn’t know who the Station Defence Officer was and even if we did we had no means of contacting him. So therefore, as I say it was perhaps a good thing that our skills were not called into account. This went on for a few weeks and the only outstanding thing I can remember is that one night, or one morning, we woke up to find on a stretch of uncultivated area in the camp were prone figures. They were guarded by normally armoured personnel and we were instructed not to attempt to approach these people in any [emphasis] circumstances. Well, they were in fact refugees from the evacuation of Dunkirk: they were up there because they were spread all around the country, they didn’t want too many in the same place, bad for morale. They stayed there, one night they disappeared and that was that. Not long after this, I was, we, yes, I and one or two others were posted to RAF Elementary Flying Training School at a place just outside, where the beer, Burton. Burton, that’s right, you know, there’s a sign he’s gone for a Burton, well that’s there. Burton on Trent. I was trained as a, in those days all aircrew were first of all trained to be pilots. I failed the pilot’s course – so the failure rate was quite high, something like thirty per cent - and then I was asked what I wanted to do, they said well the only question is becoming a navigator bomb aimer. The senior, the officer in charge of training there, tested my knowledge of mathematics, it was not a big test, it was comparatively simple, just sort of fourth fifth form geometry and that sort of thing. I satisfied him I was intellectually capable of becoming a useful navigator and bomb aimer and then I was then posted to RAF Manby, Number 1 Air Armament School, at a place near Louth in Lincolnshire, where we went through, wait a minute, no, no, one of them, sorry I’m jumping the gun, I was posted to RAF Prestwick, in Scotland for a navigation course. That went on until, that’s right, we completed the course in I think it was September 1940, and I was then posted to, wait a minute, that’s right, I was posted from Prestwick to this one, this Number 1 Air Armament School in Louth in Lincolnshire, that’s right. I satisfactorily completed that course and I was called to the Station Commander, or Training Commander in charge of aircrew training. He said, ‘LAC Lyon, in view of your passing out at the top of the class and your past service record you have been awarded a commission,’ pending what they used to call well, you know, gazetting, whichever, whatever the wartime equivalent of that was, where I would be promoted to sergeant, and I was posted then to, oddly enough, RAF Kinloss! But by that time it had become Number 19 Operational Training Unit, well, it gives you, it tells you, the name tells you what it did. That’s right, this, this was in, this would be about November 1940. I completed the course in early January and let’s see, I went to, oh yes, that’s right. Nothing particularly, well, you cut all the bits and pieces short. The course was completed in, oh yes, in about, I think it was, March of 1941 I was called to the admin office in Kinloss and said that your commission has been confirmed. I was given a week’s leave to get myself a uniform and that sort of thing and then I would return for operational training. I bought my uniform, I managed to stay with a family I knew, their name was Truss, I think it was, and he was an engineer and he was working actually I didn’t know turned out it was the largest, there was an article about it the BBC Channel 4 some time, it was the largest armaments factory in the whole of the country. I didn’t know the extent of it then, but he was employed there. I got my uniform and whatnot and returned to RAF Kinloss and after, in a few days, I was posted to RAF Linton on Ouse which at that time was, it had, it was unusual, a brick building very good accommodation. It was built in the intermediate war years. It also had the other squadron was, they had Halifax, they were being converted to Halifaxes but they were not operational. So that’s right, I stayed with them and returned. Right, well I completed at RAF, at RAF Linton on Ouse I remember I was taken a very bad cough and cold and I remember the medical officer said, ‘Oh, Pilot Officer you have a nasty sounding bit of congestion there.’ And within half an hour or so I was ensconced in this local nursing home to be treated for this congestion. After about ten days there I think, I was released and my training continued. Right. Now, here we come to our, first of all I was to join with a man named, was it Flight Lieutenant Walker, who I think he had the nickname Johnnie, well he would wouldn’t they, that name, but then that order was countermanded for some reason unknown to me, the rumour had it that he was getting a little too fond of his namesake, sort of rumours that are rife in war time. I was then teamed up with a crew the first pilot was Sergeant Roberts. I was the only commissioned member of a crew. Now I don’t know what you know about, can you see any particular reason that that would cause difficulty, you probably don’t now, but it did then. As I was commissioned and they were not I could only converse with them socially or otherwise, in two places: either in a crew room or of course in the aircraft itself, otherwise it was actually forbidden to associate with me as commissioned officer to associate with non-commissioned personnel on the camp area, so it did make things a little awkward, didn’t it. Very unusual situation, that. Anyway, on the, was it on the let me see there, the 1st, of, was that, would be May 1941 we were allocated a new aircraft and told that the, in the crew room, we were told that the target was marshalling yards and adjoining railway station in Dusseldorf, Germany. Right, and we were going to do a pre-flight air test, as you were operations rules insisted. We were in the aircraft waiting to start and well, Roberts, the captain, started the engines but calamity intervened: there were no chocks in the wheels, under the wheels and the aircraft rolled forward and collided with what I think was called a Huck starter.
CB: Oh dear.
JL: No one weas injured but the propeller blades of one engine the Whitley, they were, it was a Whitley 5 was the actual classification of the aeroplane. Well, there is, chaos reigned and it just about did because, I didn’t mention, but shortly after my arrival early at RAF Linton on Ouse, one night there was an air raid. Now I looked around and there were no instructions of what to do in the event of an air raid, I thought well, what do I do? I thought it was a question of Jack you’ll have to play it by ear and wait and see what happens. Suddenly there was an almighty bang! My bed lifted off its, it seemed about lifted about a foot in the air and came down well what do I do? If I rush out to find a shelter I may be going the wrong way. I thought no, I’d better stay put, so I did. The next morning I got up and I went into the Officers Mess and there was no hot water, well that was not unusual, what I didn’t know, overnight a shelter had received a direct hit and quite a large, I think about twenty airmen were killed, including the Station Commander, so that was not a very auspicious beginning to my stay at Linton, was it? Anyway, I did, I, well nothing I could do there then, just hold on. We, I, the station was in a really, a terrible, the pilot was confined to quarters, told he would face a charge of gross negligence and we were told that we would not be flying that night, so we returned to, the rest of the crew, returned to our quarters. Not two hours later there was a change once more. Group, you see it was Headquarters at 4 Group, Group wanted a full number of aircraft involved, no exceptions. They said you, we have allocated you another aeroplane. You must be ready within two hours for take off and your pilot will be Sergeant Roberts. Now there’s a volte face isn’t it, one day he’s considered not fit to fly and next moment it’s all over and he’s fully qualified to fly as captain again. Well, that aeroplane that they gave us should never, in my opinion, should never have been used. We’d only, we took off with the rest of the squadron, but after about only an hour and a half flying, the port engine began to overheat and the, Roberts could do nothing about that, we had to reduce speed, it meant we cut our speed by about ten knots. That in itself was not particularly of great concern, but what was far more important was that we couldn’t get above ten thousand feet. Now the previous briefing the recommended height had been fourteen thousand so theoretically we could have been knocked out with one of our own bombs, but I don’t think that that’s very likely. There was no, well there wouldn’t be any fighter aircraft, they were also using anti aircraft fire, in any case, I think all the fighter squadrons in that part of Germany had been withdrawn and were sent to the, what would be the east front in Poland and regroup and practice for the, what the plan, what was it called - Operation Barbarossa – which was due to and took place on the 21st of June, yes 21st of June 1941 so there were no. Well we, I, we flew on this and almost immediately [emphasis] we were caught in that blue light which locks on to you and it is so dazzling you cannot see your own instruments, it’s so, it’s, you’re virtually as good as blind. We, I released the bombs at what I considered, though I had no idea really where it was, but I knew we’d got to get rid of them, they went down, and we immediately turned and I gave, I gave Roberts a course for home, although we never had any time to check the variation from magnetic to compass course, but let’s hope it was alright. But not long after we turned on for home, the port engine caught fire! The extinguisher didn’t work so therefore we flew on. Now, then the pilot said to me, ‘look Jack I can’t contact the rear gunner. Do you think you could crawl along the fuselage and see whether he’s all right?’ I said, ‘yes I’ll try.’ I opened the door behind the wireless operator and I was immediately assailed by a cloud of fume and flame. I really thought my, my time was up. I didn’t feel particularly frightened, I don’t know why, but then of course the adrenalin snaps in, doesn’t it. I seized an oxygen mask, took a few gulps of it, and Rob looked around, and he said, ‘oh my gawd, abandon aircraft.’ Now, it so happens that the exit is, in that particular aeroplane, was right beneath where I was sitting, so I had to be the first one out otherwise I’d block the exit for the remainder of the crew. I opened the hatch, I jumped, I don’t actually remember pulling the cord, the release, parachute release cord, I obviously did otherwise I wouldn’t be sitting here, would I? I came to and I could see by that time the aeroplane below me and it was like an enormous [emphasis] torch in the sky, the entire plane was burning. Now how this happened, I don’t really know, but that was a fact. I saw it hit the ground with one tremendous kind of smoke and flame. I landed, and it was a windless night, so much so that the canopy covered me. I looked, I got it off and I looked around. Now I’d either landed in what was a probably a recreation ground, or what might have been a sports field, but I think it was a recreation ground. I know in the escape books they scurry around and bury their, bury their parachute. Well, you needed a power, power digger to make any impression on that soil: it was hard as a rock! But within less than a minute a German soldier turned up and well he didn’t, although he didn’t say it, had he done so I’d have been inclined to agree with him. “For you the war is over.” Well I wouldn’t have got far in the old fashioned fleece lined flying boot with no proper heel to it and in British battle dress, so there was little I could do but accept it. Now, this one, I could have walked in front of him and he could have walked holding on one hand on his rifle and the other hand his bicycle, so we accepted that the only other alternative: I sat on the cross bar and he did, we proceeded on a bicycle. Now either way, he stopped. Now it was, I wasn’t quite sure at the time, but depending on whether Germany had double summer British, double summer time, but it was well past midnight, he knocked on the door of this house, at that time I could understand a fair amount of German because I’d been studying German at night school, but that’s another, that’s another. He said I have a wounded British officer here, I’d like you to give him a little help. The lady produced some warm water. Head wounds always bleed a lot although they’re really only superficial and this was only a superficial cut, she bathed all the dried blood away, and believe it or not, she also made a cup of tea. Tea not coffee. I thought that was very impressive and I knew enough German to say vielen danke, kneidiger frau: thank you dear lady for your kindness. We then proceeded on for the rest of the journey to a town called Goch, G-o-c- h, not far from the Dutch border. Now for some reason that I never discovered, I did not end up, oh, first of all the policeman, he said give me your pistol, I said ich habe keine pistol, I have no pistol, which I didn’t, the sort of thing I didn’t want to be lumbered with that. He thought maybe a bit odd but he accepted it and that was it. I didn’t spend that night in the cells, he put me in the telephone exchange of all places. And all night, it was a manual exchange in those days, you hear the thing going up and down to finding its correct slot to go in to, anyway I can’t say I slept much but still, that was, I was dry and I’d saved my life so I couldn’t really grumble. The next day the, a Luftwaffe officer turned up and he said would you please come with me, and together with, at some stage or other, we picked up the rest of the crew so I must have had, I think, a slight case of concussion, but anyway, we ended up, he took us to the Luftwaffe base at Duisburg, and he said, ‘oh by the way, your comrade, the rear gunner is quite safe, but when he landed he broke his ankle and he is receiving treatment in a clinic near here, but he is otherwise he’s safe and well.’ And now believe it or not, these, they were extremely polite these Luftwaffe officers, very high standard of education I’d say, in fact some of them could speak English; some of them had spent time in England. We were entertained in the officers mess. There was no attempt made to extract information from us. We talked about cricket or the weather or something like that, and then they said, well we now have to hand you over to a representative of the German Air Force POW body and we went, we, they duly took us in hand and we went by I think it must have been a sort of a mini bus I think, yes it must have been. It wasn’t a, wasn’t a truck, it had seats in it, I know. Well, where do you think they took us? Believe it or not they took us to Dusseldorf and we got out of the thing there, and we stood on the platform. There was absolutely no sign of any damage whatsoever. [Emphasis] We were not the object of any kind of well, abusive attention from the Germans. They looked us up and down and took no, virtually no notice, in fact we had, it was a corporal with us, and he came back with some sticky buns for us. Well, so that was the, from we entrained at Dusseldorf and we travelled to Frankfurt, that is Frankfurt on the Main, the river Main, which at that time was the prison, the Luftwaffe prisoner of war body as what they called the Dulag dursrstadtlager’s transit camp. Now we, when we reached this transit camp, this is where we, they put me in the, I suppose they did with the other, rest of the crew as well, in the interrogation cell, which was really not much different from a second or third rate boarding house the only thing is there were bars over the window. Now before we’d had no instructions to what to do in event of being taken prisoner, of course they do it now, but they didn’t in those days, in 1941. But anyway, a Luftwaffe major came in and he gave me a form to sign and he said if you complete this, your details will be sent immediately to the Red Cross in Geneva and your relatives or whoever you’ve asked to be notified, will know within forty eight hours that you are safe and well. Now, we had [emphasis] oddly enough, been briefed about this. It wasn’t anything to do with the Red Cross in Geneva, it was actually prepared by the German Intelligence Service. I read it and I said, ‘I regret, Herr Major, I am not allowed to divulge some of the information that you require.’ And he accepted this without argument: that was that. And the next day I was released into the compound there. Well of course they had got far more on their hands to worry about than a rather insignificant crew. The last Sunday I think it was, in May, which used to be called Whit Sunday, there was a break out, there was a tunnel, the permanent staff at the gulag had been building this tunnel which they broke on I say, on the Whit Sunday. All were subsequently recaptured except for Roger Bushell, and that’s another story. So you might well say that I wasn’t the only failed bomb aimer, was I? We know that now. Anyway we travelled by normal train from Frankfurt, after Frankfurt. There were some guards there, but they were, they didn’t make themselves too obtrusive. We arrived at a place called Barth, which was the site of Stalag Luft I. Stanlager all that means is it’s a permanent camp, Stan means permanent, as opposed to Durst means transit. So that’s all. That was Stalag Luft I we found ourselves in. Now at the entrance to that I went one way because I was a commissioned officer and the rest of the crew went the other because they were not, because at Stalag Luft I there was an NCOs compound as well as an officers compound and that was in fact the last I ever saw of any of them. Any of them. Peculiar isn’t it, never mind. We were only there, well I stayed there until about April of 1942 and that was when Stalag Luft III was opened. The journey there was uneventful. We got to Stalag Luft III and I was allotted a, well a billet obviously, a room, [sigh] how much more of this do you want from me?
CB: Just keep going. We’ll stop for a break. I think you deserve it. So, you said you were shot down on the 3rd of June 1941.
JL: Correct. Yes.
CB: You had been in the squadron since, for a couple of months, by then.
JL: Oh, no.
CB: Three months was it?
JL: I think it was.
CB: April.
JL: So much happened, air raid and whatnot. I think it was about the mid April when I got to Linton on Ouse, yes.
CB: And you talked about the crew, but in the air, what was the cohesion like?
JL: Well, we could fraternise.
CB: Were you all on christian name terms in the aircraft on operations? When you were flying?
JL: Well, the only one I knew quite well was Robbie, that’s all, the pilot. I don’t remember. If they told me I, it didn’t sink in.
CB: No. Then you already mentioned, that in, outside the flying period, if you were, time, if you were going out and socialising, that was different.
JL: Some of the better class, you know the real, the nice hotels in Linton on Ouse, didn’t like too many non-commissioned ranks in there, they were fussy.
CB: They only wanted the officers in.
JL: They only wanted officers, yes.
CB: Yes. I suspect times changed quite radically later.
JL: Oh, they must have done.
CB: When the heavies came. Yes.
J: They must. But in the early days it was a, it was strict, I was given, no doubt about, I was given strict instructions I was not to fraternise.
CB: Yeah, that was the early part of the war.
JL: They were very particular about it in those days, the air force.
CB: Right. And because you were shot down so soon into your tour, you didn’t have a lot of time to get to know your crew well, did you.
JL: I had very little time, Robbie was about the only one I knew.
CB: Yeah. Fast forward again into Sagan, Stalag Luft III. How was that organised? You had the officers and NCOs. But in the officers’ side.
JL: There was an officers’ compound, and an NCOs compound.
CB: And in the officers compound, how did that work?
JL: Actually I went in to a the, they were quite small huts, and there were only two more in the room that I was in. I was billeted with a man with, a chap named Jules Silverstone, who was in fact Jewish and also this chap Pop Green, who in fact had served in the first world war. He was a, interesting history, at the beginning of the first world war he held a commission in the Oxford and Bucks Light Infantry.
CB: Right. We were in that. We were in that.
JL: Really. Yes well, he had a commission in that but he later transferred to the Machine Gun Corps because the Germans hopelessly outclassed us in that, in those, in weaponry. He survived the war, but he was told that he was only allowed to fly on training missions, but being that sort of man he probably got himself on an operation and he was flying in a Hampden and they were shot down, and he survived, without, he wasn’t injured, and as I say I was billeted with him. He said that Passchendaele was the worst he had ever [emphasis] encountered. People died there not in action, but in a mass of filth and slime. He said it was, it was appalling. What happened was, he said the Germans withdrew to higher ground and left us in these swamped trenches. He said, as I say, he hated it. And of course, well he, [laugh] he was the only man who was rather sorry when the war ended. The reason was he’d have to go home and rejoin his wife whom he hated the sight of, [laughter] and last I heard of him he was running a taxi service in Bray.
CB: Any reason why he hated his wife?
JL: I don’t know, but he did. He didn’t go into that. [Chuckling]
CB: Yes. What, you said there were three others. So you had Jules Silverstone, Pop Green, who was the other?
JL: Jules Silverstone. His father was a solicitor in Birmingham, but he didn’t follow in this father’s footsteps, he moved heaven and earth to join the RAF. Now I think he was, at age, I think he was thirty four. He was too old to join as pilot or navigator, he had to be classed as a gunner. So, that was it, he was a -
CB: Was an air gunner.
JL: Pilot Officer Silverstone, gunner. Interesting him, because he knew all about this stuff they used to call window, the one that, when they released it, it had black, black on one side and a sort of reflective surface on the other. It played hell with the tech -
CB: With the radar.
JL: With the radar, yeah. And it wasn’t, he said they won’t use it, he knew this, he said but they won’t use it till they’ve found a reason to overcome it. And it was in fact, it wasn’t used until that raid on Hamburg, that firestorm they created.
CB: On Hamburg.
JL: Hamburg. In 1943. Yeah.
CB: Who was the third person with you?
JL: Sorry?
CB: Who, you mentioned two people, who’s the third one?
JL: There was only Pop Green and Silverstone. Three in the room.
CB: And you. Oh, just three in the room, sorry. Yeah, okay.
JL: They were quite small huts. There were only, I think there were only four, only four huts in the officer’s compound, certainly not many. I tell you what we, did happen one day, do you remember that story of the one who got away?
CB: The German.
JL: The German, yeah. Well he turned up, he was in, dressed in ordinary German uniform, he was a major, major, and I remember seeing he was on the doorstep to one of the huts chatting to a man named talking to Squadron Leader Mac Dunnell [?]. Of course he was, actually, the German, he was shot down during the Battle of Britain wasn’t he.
CB: Yes. Yes.
JL: That’s right. And of course Mac Donald [?] was part, flew a Spitfire I think. They were chatting quite friendly, and he was not accompanied by any other German personnel. he just wandered around chatting to people.
CB: Amazing.
JL: He had a sad ending, he was killed in a flying accident. He was testing new fighter apparatus I think, but he had engine trouble or something, he was lost at sea, never found, they never recovered his body, in November 19, oh, 1940 41. That was the one that got away.
CB: Off the Dutch coast.
JL: Yeah. He was there.
CB: Well. he escaped in Canada.
JL: There was obviously, you know, a bond in the, between the two air forces at that time, later on they didn’t, but there was in the early days.
CB: A Chivalry.
JL: Yeah. Chivalry. That’s it, chivalry of the air.
CB: Extraordinary really.
JL: So well that’s my story. Long before, Douglas Bader, who was, he was taken prisoner wasn’t he.
CB: Yes.
JL: When, something, either his plane collided with another one, anyway but he was taken prisoner.
CB: He was shot down.
JL: Whether he was shot down or not.
CB: By one of his own people, he was shot down by one of his own people it turned out.
JL: Ah well that’s. By one of his own people?
CB: Yeah. They met in prison and the chap had to own up.
JL: Oh, I met him personally.
CB: But he didn’t admit.
JL: Because he was also Shell.
CB: Yes, he was.
JL: Well anyway, That was a. When he was in the camp he used to play golf, he would try to. And because of his, he lost his legs you see, I mean his prosthetic legs,
CB: Yes.
JL: I think they replaced them, they threw them out or something like that. He would sometimes fall over but god help you if you went to assist him, you know he would swear at you, he was determined to get on his feet unaided. Anyway, he had a bit of a falling out with the powers that be there. Because he didn’t like the way they were treating the guards and whatnot as if they were friends not enemies. it was decided he would be better off in another camp and the last I saw of him, well not the last, the last in the prisoner of war camp I saw him, he was being escorted out, he turned it into his own advantage inspecting as if these as a company.
CB: Oh you saw hm doing the inspection did you? Of the guard.
JL: He was inspecting the, yeah. That’s typical Bader, isn’t it. Now! I retired, I left the air force in something like well, October 1945 but I remained on as a, I was paid by the air force till I think it was January ’46 and very soon after going to, where did we work to? Very shortly we, I was asked if I wanted to go to Venezuela because Venezuela still had most of its wells, oil wells and I agreed, and I was, I went out to, we didn’t go out on a ship I went out on a tanker SS Luscia, Luscia I think she was. She was imbalast so she rocked about a bit I’ve never been seasick or any other sick in an aeroplane. We finally docked at Aruba, in, which belonged to, was a Dutch possession then, Aruba, in the West Indies and I was only there for a night and then we got a, I was flown to Maiquetia, which was the airport for Caracas. Caracas itself is about five hundred feet above sea level, the capital of Venezuela. I was, from Maiquetia I travelled by a bus on a road which they say was built by convicts in the Gomez, when Gomez was a dictator of Venezuela, you could sometimes look down and see where you’d been ten fifteen minutes before. I reached Caracas, or I might say that they charged me, I had to have what was called a certificate of identity, and I had to pay for it in the local currency. They took a, all I had, was a, I had an English, I had a five pound note I think, they gave a stamp and it was probably worth about one tenth of that in the local currency, the so-and-sos. That’s how it happened. When I got to Caracas, I found a billet in the Hotel Majestic and I knew enough Spanish, I’d, interesting while I was in the prisoner of war camp I had lessons from of all people Tom Kirby Green, why he should be a good Spanish speaker, mind he served with the Republicans, didn’t he, in the war in Spain.
CB: In the Spanish Civil War.
JL: Lord Haw Haw announced it, didn’t he, yeah. So that was that, yes. I had enough Spanish to say I’m in the employ of Shell, they were called the Caribbean Petroleum Company then, they didn’t, Shell, enter into the name although they used the, what it is, the, oh it’s a scallop isn’t it, that’s the Shell sign isn’t it, the scallop, and oh I think it was the afternoon of Christmas Day, a chap named Swinson turned up, he said, ‘Oh Lyon, I’m glad to find you,’ he said, ‘I know you, we were advised you were on your way but then we sort of lost track of you.’ But then of course I served in the, on what they called internal audit, that is not, not, as opposed to the exterior audit, was actually Price Waterhouse in those days. They did the proper auditing of Shell’s possessions there, I went round to these depots making sure their equipment and whatnot was properly registered and that sort of thing. It was quite interesting work. Well, while I was there, who should, that was having travelled down to the fields the main producer in the Maracaibo, while I was there on this what they call internal audit, who should turn up but Douglas Bader. Now he was on a, well they say he was just, reviewing his position, he was visiting, but what he was really was doing he was trying to push the company to try to use British aero, aircraft rather than all American, and I was introduced to him as: ‘oh this is Mr Lyon from our head office in Caracas.’ And he said, ‘oh, hello there.’ I said, ‘but sir, we’ve met before haven’t we. He looked, I said, ‘last time I saw you, you were acting as a kind of inspector of a -.’ ‘Oh my gawd yes!’ And we kept in touch quite a lot afterwards, I’ve known him for quite.
CB: Did you?
JL: Yes. Bader, so.
CB: How did you find him, outside Stalag Luft III?
JL: I got on with him very well. He certainly wasn’t everybody’s cup of tea, but he had a, he was shrewd. One of the airfields in the concession area, was at a place called Mushi de Suleman [?]. It’s at five thousand feet and in the hot season the pilots were having great difficulty in taking off because of the rarefied air. Now in those, this was the days before computers, I didn’t get a, I got a file across my desk one day, and this was, Bader had seen this problem that they had and he had written in the margin, “let them take off with half tanks”, and he knew that in emergency they would still have enough to reach wherever necessary to safety and yet still travel with only half a tank. He did very well as a, in Shell. He finished as the President of Shell Aviation with a private jet to fly. So he did very well there. But he certainly, he had this, being able to see the, you know little bit further through a brick wall than most people. I had great admiration for him. But I agree he wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but I always got on with him quite well. Yeah.
CB: Where did you go from there?
JL: Sorry?
CB: Where did you go from there?
JL: After I returned home by 1950, April 19. By the way, I flew the Atlantic in, at a time when there weren’t many transatlantic flights. I was staying in Montreal at the time, I had some relatives there and I was booked on this, it was little more than a souped up DC4, the aircraft we flew in. We were due to call only at one place: Halifax, but I remember the pilot made a special landing somewhere, he wanted to pick up, I think they were Catholic priests I believe, the look of ‘em, there was snow on the ground, I think we were lucky to take off again, but anyway we did. But flying at that, of course in those days you only flew at probably about twelve thousand feet, something like that, looking on down this unbroken mass of well pine trees I suppose, you wouldn’t have stood a dog’s chance of anything if you’d had to make a forced landing in a plane in there. Anyway we did we, I got home and 1950, in April 1950 and I, [pause] I met my future wife. Now, now I had known her as a schoolgirl because I was friendly with [chuckle] her half uncle, it sounds like carbuncle, doesn’t it [laugh] but he was a half uncle because they’d been, the father grandfather [unclear] had married twice, but that’s all I, we met again and well we decided to get married, Hazel and I. Our, our union, we didn’t do too bad: sixty three years exactly because she died on our wedding anniversary.
CB: Did she really.
JL: In 19, sorry, 2013. So we’re not bad was it.
CB: Fantastic!
JL: So , and then I, well I continued with working. I had the opportunity to leave about the end of. You see they formed what they called Iranian Oil Participants which was agreement hammered out with the Shah as he was then and when they kicked out Masadic [?], he agreed that concessions could be opened by this consortium of oil companies, and there was the BP had a forty per cent interest in it, the major oil, American companies had another forty, Shell had fourteen percent and the Company Francaise de Petroleum the remaining six per cent. That was how Iranian Oil Participants, and I was senior financial, financial assistant in, seconded to Iranian Oil Participants and I held that post for seventeen years. At the end of it I was getting a bit tired of it. I had a man that I’d no respect for: a man named Hoppen. Let’s say he shafted me once, he fed me to the, he tried to feed me to the lions that’s it; fortunately I was set, I had no respect for him after that. He said, ‘I’m not going to make you redundant, Lyon.’ I said, ‘thanks very much, I don’t want to be called redundant, I think I’ve done a pretty good job for seventeen years. Thank you.’ All I asked was that they brought forward the, at Shell you retired at sixty, that was before, and then there was also a reduction made for overseas service which I had, so it would only mean bringing forward my pension date by three or four years, not too much to ask, but that served me well because you see it’s an index linked pension.
CB: Yeah.
JL: Now, my monthly salary is worth, worth much more that I was actually paid when I retired.
CB: Yeah.
JL: So I made the right decision there.
CB: You did, yes.
JL: Staying with, staying with Shell. So I have some things to worry about but money is certainly not one of them.
CB: What made, what brought you down to Bexhill?
JL: Ah! Shortly before I retired, I’d lived in St Leonards. We had a, I had, we had a small bungalow in what they called the Links. It was actually originally it was a golf course, because I, it wasn’t being used as a golf course then but nothing else. I used to walk across this links to West St Leonards where I picked up the train for, used to take me to Cannon Street. But so, that brings it well, I’ve been with them ever since.
CB: But you decided to leave St Leonards and come to Bexhill.
JL: Oh yes, well, I made the right decision there.
CB: What made you do that then?
JL: There wasn’t much there for me in the air force: a failed navigator. I mean. They don’t even have them now anyway do they?
CB: Well, It’s different.
JL: No, no I made the right decision there. I knew I would. No, I couldn’t go wrong.
CB: You mentioned air force again. Going back to your flying times in the Whitley.
JL: Yeah.
CB: What navigation aids did you have in those days? We are talking about 1941.
JL: Well you had a thing called a CFC, whicb you set your, you set your, the course you would want to follow, and then you fed in what the, the wind direction, and you fiddle around with it and that gave you your course to fly. They did have, you could have, some of the Whitleys, not the one I was shot down, didn’t have one, they had an astrodome.
CB: Oh yes.
JL: So if you’d been trained in the use of the [unclear] mill, polar, star charts you could theoretically fix your position by air, star sight, but certainly the one we flew in, the old one they trundled out, that didn’t have one, didn’t have a - there was only one exit there, and that was downwards.
CB: Oh right.
JL: So that was the only navigation instrument we used to rely on, and dead reckoning as they called it.
CB: So in the daylight you could more easily see where you were, but flying at night, what did you do there?
JL: Oh yes it was. I did in fact, have use of, while I was waiting for this, at Cambridge, Downing Cambridge, Downing College Cambridge, I used to read Air Publication 1 2 3 4 and this was the navigational training of a pilot,
CB: Right.
JL: Because we were all supposed to be trained as pilots to start with in those days, they didn’t have different courses then. I was able to use it one day because I know we took off and the mist came down, I was pretty certain we were drifting off course, well it did tell you what to do. You flew halfway to your, half the distance that you’d previously calculated and then [emphasis] you gave the pilot orders to fly twice the distance that you were, you think you’d been going off course, twice that distance and that should give you a course to your original. It really, all you’re doing is flying the two sides of an isosceles triangle, and I tried it and we did, and out of the water, out of the thing, saw this, it was just an island.
CB: You’d got it right.
JL: So it certainly, it worked, I know.
CB: This is doing the maximum drift calculator isn’t it.
JL: Sorry?
CB: This is the maximum drift calculation.
JL: Yes, it’s for, they call it pilot navigation.
CB: Yeah.
JL: Yeah, oh yes. Because he couldn’t take bearings and all that sort of thing could he. As I say, it’s a simple, simple, it’s just geometry really, that’s all you’re doing, flying the two sides of an isosceles triangle. Yeah.
CB: So how many ops did you do before you were shot down?
JL: Only a couple, that’s all.
C: Right.
JL: We had to, they call them nurseries, they were using them to bomb an occupied port like Calais or somewhere like that. How they arranged it so that the, you weren’t dropping bombs on German and French civilians I suppose they had some means of contact in, I didn’t know what it was but that was all, a couple of those and this was just our third trip, that’s all.
CB: How many aircraft were there in the squadron?
JL: That I don’t really know. It was not public information anyway.
CB: And when you went out on a raid, on an operation, did you go with other aircraft or did you go as individuals, as singletons?
JL: Each one took off, you got the, from the Control Tower you get the take off clear, that’s it, one by one.
CB: But you weren’t in any kind of formation or cohesive?
JL: Oh no, it was only Americans that did that, formation flying. Oh no, quite impossible at night.
CB: Yeah. And before you went on the op how did the briefing go?
JL: Well as I say, it was quite clear. The marshalling yards, and the adjoining station: Dusseldorf. That was in the briefing, that was the target.
CB: But they got you all together in a room where everybody was briefed together did they?
JL: That was, yes, well not the second time, we were only given about a couple of hours’ notice to, there was no second briefing, we were just told to fly the original course. Yeah.
CB: Were, when you went off on the ops were all the crew together or were the briefing only for the pilot and navigator?
JL: Well, the pilot and navigator, myself, or bomb aimer I was acting as, we were there and the second pilot, and of course, but the rear gunner was at, well where he should be, the rear gunner. What he, you see he was getting, he was getting fried, there’s no doubt, because the whole aeroplane was on fire and we didn’t know it.
CB: Ah!
JL: So he, what he did, he just rotates his, rotates his, turret, pulls the ripcord, and the airstream takes him out, clear of the, the Whitley was built so that you were clear of the tail, the rear gunner was clear of the tail, twin tail, it just pulls him off and that’s it, that’s what he did, yeah, but as I say he broke his ankle, that’s all.
CB: So all the crew survived.
JL: All the crew survived, yes.
CB: And all of them were captured.
JL: All of them were taken prisoner, yes.
CB: Taken prisoner. What about after the war, first of all how did you get back? Were you flown back or did you come on a ship? Or what happened?
JL: Well at the end of the war, I was here wasn’t I.
CB: No, but you were flown back were you? Or did you come back by ship?
JL: Oh I see what you mean! Well, we by the I think it was the 1st of May 1945, we heard a bombardment and we guessed that was to cover the crossing of the Elbe by the British forces. The next day, the 2nd into the, we were billeted in a farmyard, well we were told that it belonged to a German, well he was in the tobacco business we heard, I don’t know how true that it was, but anyway, the accommodation was fine, we managed to get, it was good weather then, quite warm, no problem there. Into this compound the, came a, there was a British light armoured vehicle. There was a Captain I think, and a corporal. He didn’t say it to me but apparently he said to somebody, I believe there are quite a number of POWs here, and they said yeah, about six hundred if you look around. And that was the end of the war. What we didn’t know was, that as of the 30th of April all German forces in North West Germany surrendered to the British. Well they obviously, they’d rather surrender to the British than the bloody Russians wouldn’t they, that’s what they did. So actually the war ended in that part of the world a week before the main alliance. So, I remember the guards, they neatly piled their arms as you should do and that and they went off to what was called the cage, which was, that was the name the British gave to it, where they, and then they’d be taken ordinary prisoners of war. We’d only been there a short while and a convoy of American Mac trucks turned up and we were loaded on to these and this convoy set off. We got to a place called Rheiner, where we exchanged the American transport for British, well they were only yes, British RSC vehicles and we finally, we crossed the Elbe, I know. They had, well they had one of these revolving things and all the searchlights on, the idea because the war was still on theoretically, as protection as we crossed the Elbe. We, that’s right, we stopped at Luneburg, which was the place a week later the official German surrender took place, and they flew us on, then they drove us on next day to this Rheiner, this airfield at Rheiner. And we waited and we, I was flown home, most of them were, in the, it was a Douglas DC3.
[Other]: Dakota.
JL: They called it a Dakota. And we landed at Dunsfold in Surrey I think it was, where they gave us tea and biscuits you know, the Women’s VS, and we were really then rushed high, as quick as possible up to RAF Cosford which was the gathering centre for POWs, and there we were stripped bare, I don’t think, I never had any, they were thinking of lice. Actually, interesting thing I never saw a louse all the time I was in Germany, let alone getting infected with them, lice so that was. We used to get showers occasionally, but that was, that was certainly not getting rid of lice, it was merely to get a bit of, clean ourselves. We had a quick turn around. I was given fresh clothing, battle dress only with an officer’s stripe on it and I was home on the 9th of May 1945. We were living, my mother was living in Wallington. She had a flat which was a house owned by a relative. Wallington it was, yes.
CB: In Surrey.
[Other]: Surrey.
JL: Yeah, in Surrey, yeah. That was it, that’s my war story.
CB: So how did you actually get to the Elbe? Were you in the Long March?
JL: Oh, I, you look at my book, I never called it a march, it was a, I called it the long walk home.
CB: Yeah.
JL: Yeah well, in those days the incurable optimists thought that when the Russians turn up: oh they’ll be brothers in arms and we’ll celebrate their victory with liberal tots of vodka. [Laugh] We didn’t think that! We refused to countenance the story that Hitler, and he did actually give this order, all, all commissioned personnel, ex-prisoners of war to be shot. But fortunately in those days his writ didn’t extend much beyond his bunker. So we refused to accept that. The one that we thought would happen and in fact it did that we would be put on the road and have to leg it to wherever we were supposed to be going. That is why I used to do at least five circuits a day on foot.
CB: In the camp.
JL: In the camp, yeah, in preparation for this, and of course it paid off. It wasn’t, the Germans never pushed the pace. The only thing is, our first night I couldn’t find any covered accommodation. Everywhere I went I was politely told to shove off [laughter]. No room at the inn. So I crawled into a great pile of hay, or straw I suppose it was really, covered myself entirely and I went to sleep and next morning I got up and I was all right. From then it was really dead easy, because a thaw had set in. These people who had built themselves sleighs – they were useless. Similarly those people that had got trollies, they were useless because they didn’t have any hard wood for a bearing, it went through and that was their trollies and their sleighs were useless. I went, I just plodded on. I had a little suitcase I remember, made of fibre. The first, the second night, after the, when I settled down to the straw or hay, or whatever it was, we were billeted in the stable. I believe it was actually, the stable was owned by General von Arnim. The man who replaced Rommel when he was repatriated on grounds of ill health, wasn’t he. I don’t know, that’s the story, it belonged to General von Arnim. Anyway, I was bad enough to get a dry place to sleep. I admit I was a bit close to the horses, but I don’t think they’re any particular menace. I was awakened by a terrific bang! I thought oh my goodness that’s a shot first of all, isn’t it. I thought no, not a shot. I looked, I was using my little fibre suitcase as a pillow, and there was a bloody great hole in it, it was the hoof of a, it must have been within inches of my head! [Laughter] But from then on it was dead easy because the, we stopped at a place called Spremburg. Now there was a glass factory operating and it was still working. We managed to get a, I did manage to get a bit of a wash down and the girls were decent enough to look the other way. I managed to get myself a bit of a clean up. From there we went on to a place called Spremburg, which was a rail head. Now here our column was split in two, why, I don’t know. One, we were loaded on to, on to, they weren’t cattle trucks, they were the old fashioned you know, these Eschable carourdon [?] variety from the first world war, we were loaded in to one of these. The others they went to a place called Luckenwalde, I think was, actually that was liberated by the, by the Russians, and from all accounts they weren’t too well treated to start with by the Russians until they found, were sure who they were. But we were lucky, we were loaded into this. Well, it was crowded, yes I grant you, but the real reason was that we were in pitch dark, everybody wanted, for some unearthly reason to sit as near the door they could. I don’t know if they think it was suddenly going to open and they were going to be wafted away to safety, but they wouldn’t move. When daylight came we were able to sort ourselves out. Now I grant you the toilet facilities were not all that good, but no worse than a ordinary soldier in the field in action has to cope with, a sort of open latrine, and above all, I’ve virtually I’ve experienced worse crowding in London’s underground. So it wasn’t all that bad. We trundled along, we, I remember we did a very slow stop-start circuit of Berlin, course there was a raid going on at the time. We arrived then at a place called, what was it, oh it was a little village, small settlement, not far from Bremen. We, it was, I remember we stopped outside this camp, and look up at it and miserable rain was coming down, there was this thing over the door, well it didn’t, we used to always used to say it was a “Work Makes You Free”, and we used to say “work yourself to death”, but it looked a pretty dreary and unuttering place and we went in to this. It was called Marlag and Milag Nord and it was designed, by the name you could tell, for Royal Marine and Merchant Navy officers: Marlag and Milag. And there were, we were a little concerned because we thought this camp is empty. Where have all these Marine, Naval and Marine officers gone? And we got a horrible thought they might be in some mass grave or other. However, it wasn’t true, they had been moved, when, where and why I’m not actually sure. But when we got inside, well if we had any clothing, warm clothing we were lucky, or dry clothing we put it on. It was a nothing, not a camp I’d recommend but it was, at least it was dry and there was, we had adequate food. There was a certain thing, belief that we were short of food, well I can assure you we never were, we had more than we could do with because the Red Cross parcels were being delivered by since the rail system was on the blink they were coming in by truck and they were, they were dumping parcels by the side of the road by us. Well I couldn’t carry, well most of us did, took out things like chocolate and tea and coffee and things like that, the rest of it. We offered them to the guards but they wouldn’t, neither would the civilians, I suppose they still might be pounced upon by die-hard SS, SS army, the army SS not the civilian SS. In fact one, one night we were billeted with these SS Waffen, Waffen SS, they, weaponed I mean, armed SS and we did, well always had a low profile but these chaps were very willing to chat to us. They got somehow idea that it wouldn’t be long before we joined forces with them and then finally put the bloody Russians -
CB: Out of Germany.
JL: Where they should be. Well it was, well, actually the second, as I say, if the first leg of the, our all expenses tour of north Germany was bearable, the second was a doddle. It was fine weather. Warm enough to sleep outside, in fact sometimes we walked through orchards white with blossom, not with snow with blossoms and we, there was no attempt to force the pace, but what did happen on the way, we stopped, in all the, four, nearly four years I was a prisoner of war I never suffered not even verbal abuse, let alone physical, never, but this particular, we did have a bit of trouble there, it was more directed at personal about us, in general. In fact the civilian population we got, they tried to you know, reach our ranks, the Germans just turned bayonet and rifle, pointed and don’t you dare come any closer. Well we moved on and then we thought we heard an explosion and we saw smoke arising from this. We thought it was the town that had been attacked, and we, you know as they say well it couldn’t have happened to nicer people. I’m afraid it wasn’t that, it was our column [emphasis] that had been attacked! By a, I think it was a Canadian Squadron Leader flying a Typhoon. He, he must have been blind, because this, it couldn’t possibly been a, it wasn’t a, looked like a German unit of any description but anyway I’m afraid he did and there were quite a few people killed on there. And that to my mind I think was the only, some, I’ve read in terms of hundreds something, hundreds killed on this so called long march, it’s just not true. The only other fatal casualty was a chap named Large I think it was, he had a ruptured appendix but there’s no reason to say he wouldn’t have had it anyway, it wasn’t caused by the conditions and that was that. We reached, we reached the place called Stade, was the southern side of the Elbe, and oh one thing I did see while we were at Marlag and Milag Nord, I saw a V2 fired, not many people have seen that. There was a bit of a rising ground and I happened to be on it and then suddenly I saw this, this thing, this great rocket, with this great burst of flame as it rised slowly and slowly and slowly, and it appeared, of course that was as much an optical illusion, it held itself out and it turned to get its bearing and by that time it couldn’t reach Britain, so probably the target was Antwerp, but that’s I saw a V2 fired and not many people have seen that. Anyway, we got to this Stade place and the Elbe ferry if you please, was still not operating normally, it was, and there was a, there was a boot repairer there, some people’s boots needed a bit of attention, mine were all right, but anyway he did what he could. We crossed the Elbe and we arrived at a place called, oh, just outside Hamburg. You come up a cobbled street, which we had, quite steep and we were then met by what, I, was the most horrible thing I’ve ever come across, a migration of slugs! Can you believe this, they were marching up on a broad front. There was absolutely no way of avoiding them. Blankenese, was the name of this little town, that’s the name of it: Blankenese. We tried to pick our way, very, very carefully and thank god I managed to keep on my feet, otherwise if I’d fallen can you imagine the state I’d been in. Well from then on it was, it was easy going and as I say, we got to this, this open, this tobacco man’s, well he was, farm and from then on it was the journey home. But I’ll never forget, oddly enough we saw a reverse, I mean a thing so beautiful. I’d never seen it before. It was a, I didn’t tell you, hadn’t told you that in September of 1942, I and a number of others were for some reason which the Germans had and they didn’t bother to give us the details, we were transferred to a place called Offlag 21B. Now Offlag meant it was an officer’s camp, that’s all. 21B. And we stayed there through a rather dreary time, the winter, until we moved in April, but I came back and I didn’t go in to the north compound I went back to the east compound for some reason or other. Why I don’t know, and actually I didn’t move into the north compound where the tunnel was being dug until September of 1943. How are we doing?
CB: You’re doing well. One final question. What happened to the guards after you’d walked all this way? Did they just surrender or did they leg it or what did they do?
JL: Oh yes. Well they were only part of this. They’d realised, they heard they were all German forces had surrendered and they were only too pleased, they just neatly piled their arms and that was that. They knew all right. And they went off to go, to be taken in what we called the cages to a British prisoner of war camp. Some of them actually, when I lived in Salcombe in South Devon many years later, there was a chap there used to run a driving tuition, he’d been one of these there and he’d stayed in England.
CB: Funny.
JL: So he didn’t have too bad a time.
CB: Well Jack Lyon, thank you for a very interesting conversation.
JL: My pleasure.
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Interview with Jack Kenneth Lyon
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Chris Brockbank
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IBCC Digital Archive
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2018-02-02
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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02:03:03 audio recording
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eng
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
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Jack Lyon was a navigator/ bomb aimer and a prisoner of war for almost four years. Born in 1918, he was employed with the London Gas Company as a bookkeeper until August 1939 when he transferred to Shell. At the outbreak of the war, Shell closed their London office and Jack enlisted in the RAF on the 5th September. He was attracted to the extra privileges that aircrew received. Initial training commenced in late 1939 and elementary flying training in June 1940. Being unsuccessful with pilot training, Jack completed navigator training at RAF Prestwick, followed by armament training at RAF Manby, and operational training at RAF Kinloss. On completion of training, Jack was awarded his commission and posted to RAF Linton-on-Ouse. Being the only commissioned member of the crew, Jack found the opportunities to socialise restricted. Having only completed a few operations, Jack and his crew had to abandon their stricken aircraft. Separated from his crew, Jack was arrested by a German soldier cycling past who, faced with a long walk, decided the easiest way was for Jack to ride on the crossbar. Stopping at the first house they came to, the soldier arranged for Jack’s wounds to be attended to, and he was given tea and cake. Initially billeted in Stalag Luft 1, before being transferred to Stalag Luft 3 in April 1942, where he remained until early 1945. Douglas Bader was also billeted there, and Jack witnessed the famous incident when Bader inspected the German guards before being transferred. Early in 1945 with the advancing Russian army getting near, Jack participated in what became known as “The Long March”. Following the German surrender, Jack returned home, and following demob, returned to continue his career with Shell.
Contributor
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Ian Whapplington
Anne-Marie Watson
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
Great Britain
Poland
England--Lincolnshire
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Barth
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Düsseldorf
Poland--Żagań
Scotland--Moray
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941-05-01
1941-06-21
1941-06-03
1942-09
1943
1945-05-01
1945-05-09
aircrew
bomb aimer
navigator
prisoner of war
RAF Kinloss
RAF Linton on Ouse
RAF Manby
RAF Prestwick
Red Cross
shot down
Stalag Luft 1
Stalag Luft 3
the long march
V-2
V-weapon
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/887/11125/AHughesJ171102.1.mp3
f3de320ee01bc0b2759aeccd5626621c
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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Hughes, Janet
J Hughes
Description
An account of the resource
Two oral history interviews with Janet Hughes (b. 1958) about her father Reginald Charles Wilson (b. 1923). He served in Bomber Command.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-11-23
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Hughes, J
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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DM: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre, the interviewer is David Meanwell, the interviewee is Janet Hughes. The interview is taking place at Mrs Hughes home in Farnham, Surrey, on the 2nd of November 2017. So, Jan could you say your father's name and then say a bit about his early life and growing up?
JH: Yeah sure. My father- My late father’s name is, was Reginald Charles Wilson. He was born in 1923, on the 20th of- 26th of January, 1923 in, Hackney in East London. He was the third of five children, and when he was about ten the family moved to Ilford, or the outskirts of Ilford in Essex, where he lived until going off to war basically, in, in 1940.
DM: Right, do you know why he joined the RAF as opposed to anything else?
JH: Yes, I, I have a very clear recollection of what he said there. Basically, when war broke out he had only just left his grammar school, and probably I think he left prematurely because of the war, and he did a couple of admin jobs. First with the railways I think and then with Unilever, and he experienced first-hand the seventy-eight consecutive nights of the Blitz, when East London was particularly badly affected and when they missed the docks, you know, the bombs and the incendiary devices would quite often fall on the roads surrounding where my father lived. So it was, it was something that he- It was a daily thing, and one day when he went into Blackfriars to, his job, it was the 30th of December 1940, the night after the notorious second great fire of London, as it has become known, when the city of London was bombed very heavily, and the firefighting operation was limited by the low level of water in the Thames. It’s said that the Luftwaffe had known this and chosen that night to do the bombing because they knew that the low level of the Thames would hamper the attempts to quench the flames, and London- The City of London was extremely badly affected, and there’s an iconic photograph of St Paul‘s standing defiant amidst the surrounding devastation, saying ‘You’re not going to get me’, and when my father referred to this photograph, which he often did, he said that’s- That photograph it captures exactly what he saw, that the surrounding area was still smouldering but St Paul‘s was still rising, you know, like the phoenix out of the ashes, and he said at that moment he, he decided that he had got to do something, that he had got to fight back, and he, you know, like lots of young men at the time had a dream of being a Spitfire pilot, and indulging in dogfights and basically shooting them down before they got as far as London. So that was his plan, and you know, he knew that eventually, when he got to the age of eighteen, he would be called up anyway, and I think he decided that by joining the RAF volunteer reserve he would be more likely to end up doing something that he wanted to do rather than something that he’d been forced to do.
DM: Okay, so, he joined the RAF, the reserve, he got called up, what happened about his training?
JH: Right, well the training was quite long and convoluted. It’s described very well in his own diary, and, and in the book which I co-wrote with him in recent years. The early part of the training was sort of square bashing and general fitness for the armed forces, and he subsequently went to the United States on a troop ship for the early part of his training. So, it says in his notes here that he joined the RAF volunteer reserve in August 1941, by which time he would’ve been eighteen and a half. I’m not quite sure why there was a delay, perhaps you know, took that long to do the paperwork. He joined the aircrew, and they- The first part of the training was in, at St John‘s Wood in North London, and then in Torquay in Devon, and that was the basics of- The bit in Devon he learnt meteorology, air navigation, aircraft recognition, wireless telegraphy, and then the usual square bashing and clay pigeon shooting, and then he was promoted from AC2 to LAC, and this is the critical bit I think, he was posted to Marshalls airfield in Cambridge for a flying test, and this was in a Tiger Moth [chuckles], and after about eight hours he convinced them that he had the necessary skills to join the Arnold training scheme in the USA. So then, he joined the troop ship Montcalm, at Gourock on the Clyde, and this took them to Halifax in Canada. He commented that it was quite funny that he went to Halifax for the first part of his training ‘cause he ended up flying a Halifax, and, the crossing was quite eventful, bad weather because, you know, January seas and the ships weren’t very stabilised in those days, and half a dozen other- They weren’t torpedoed or anything, but half a dozen other ships that were in the same area were sunk, and at that time, about sixty ships a week were being destroyed by the German U-Boats in the North Atlantic. So, when he got to Halifax, they- Which was a sort of mustering area I think, they went to the USA and they travelled in uniform, and this is significant, they were the first aircrew trainees to be travelling in uniform, because America had only just become an ally, following the bombing- The Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbour on the 7th of December 1941, so basically that brought the Americans into the war, and that kind of was a game changer in terms of the way everything was organised. So then, they went to Albany in Georgia, a place called Turner Field, and that was an acclimatisation month. During that month dad celebrated his nineteenth birthday. Turner Field was run on the lines of the American army, so it was an American army air corps training centre, so they wore their [emphasis] uniforms, American air corps clothing, and they were treated like cadets. So that meant drilling and physical training, calisthenics at six o’ clock in the morning, apparently, they were given literature that told them how to behave and how they were expected- You know behaviour and etiquette, how they were expected to conduct themselves, and the bit that I think dad found the most memorable was marching behind a brass band, which was playing American air corps music, this was on the way to all meals and also before retreats, which was the lowering of the American flag in the evening. Now these young men had come from Britain, where rations had been in place for quite a long time, and when- America was the promised land, you know, they were waited on hand and foot by, and these are my father’s own words, ‘coloured waiters’, and that was something again that was quite strange to British people because, this was, this was the south of America, and at that time coloured people were not considered equal to whites and there was a kind of apartheid, like in, later in South Africa, they had to sit at the backs of busses and, in different parts of the cinema and they were generally treated as second class citizens, so this business of having them, you know, at their beck and call was something I think, quite a lot of the British people found quite difficult, because they just weren’t used to- Although, Britain was more racist then than it is now, they, you know, you still treated everybody with, with dignity. So, I think he found that, you know, quite, quite a shock, and also you know, in Britain they had to queue up for their meals, get all their meals on one plate, take your own cutlery in your gas mask case, and wash it up afterwards in a tank of greasy water, so to be waited on hand and foot, you know, and be served amazing food, was, was, was quite nice given what they’d been used to, you know, up to a month beforehand. So, after this month of acclimatisation, he went to Lakeland, Florida. This was a civilian flying school, which presumably had been commandeered because they needed the capacity, and it was for primary flying training, and that, this was a great experience. Dad went solo in a Stearman biplane, and before that the instructor had had to buzz off a herd of cows from the landing field by diving at them, and here dad completed forty hours of solo flying, including acrobatics, stalls, spins, loops and so on, and underneath them were the lakes and orange groves of Florida in beautiful sunshine, so what a change from Britain, and, they had a lot of hospitality with local American families and lots of contact with their daughters, so I think really this, this felt like a very long way from war. There’s some lovely pictures of dad during that period, you know, carefree existence, and then, at the end, the end of the course they had a few days leave and so, you know, not wanting to waste this amazing opportunity, dad and a colleague hitched off to West Palm Beach, and they booked into a hotel but while they were there they were invited to stay with an American lady called Mrs Hubbard, who turned out to be the daughter of Rockefeller, and she had an English woman staying with her who had a son in the RAF, and so they were spoilt by these two ladies who were trying to sort of do for them what they wish they could do for this lady’s son. And they were looked after for the next couple of days as if they were long lost sons, the house had an amazing swimming pool with an Italian style garden and an arcaded drinks bar, and they were, they were - I think they thought they’d died and gone to heaven. He- During this time dad met and was photographed with one of the few surviving Fleet Air Arm pilots, who had- Was one of the people who, the previous year had torpedoed the Bismarck, and enabled the British fleet to sink, sink it, and he was touring America as a hero, and he had also been invited to, to this lady's home, so they, they met him, and somewhere in dad's album there’s a picture of these, him with this chap, and my dad looks very diminutive in that although he was quite a tall man, ‘cause the other guy was much taller. So anyway, after this period they went to another- No, this, this was an American army air corps flying school, so not a civilian one this time, and that was in Georgia, again, for intermediate training, so he’d done the basics, this was the immediate training, and he started a course of flying on a basic trainer which would have been a more sophisticated plane than the Stearman biplane, but this is where dad’s fortunes changed because- And he was quite bitter about this, actually in later life, ‘cause he said after a lon- A number of flying lessons he was unable to convince the instructor that he was safe to go solo, so that was the end of his pilot training, and he, he, he did say that in his opinion had he been trained in an RAF flying school in the States, he might have passed. Anyway, he was disheartened at the time but he tried to make the best of it. One of his friends had been killed in Georgia on a, on a simple training exercise, so you know, it might’ve given him a stay of execution, and he said at least if he eventually died in combat, which he didn’t, it would be for a just cause. So then, by this time we’re in June 1942, so he’s been in the RAF for nearly a year, so he took the train back to Canada and this time it was to the Royal Canadian Air Force camp at Trenton, in Ontario. He did some interviews and took an exam, and was remustered to navigator, and the transfer gave him a chance to see some more of Canada. He visited Lake Ontario, Toronto, and Niagara Falls, so lots of travelling that a man of his age would not of had the opportunity to do had he not joined the RAF and left civilian life behind him. So, there’s - Then in his notes there’s quite a lot of very colourful description of, of the geography of various parts of Canada. So, then he was posted to the Winnipeg air navigation school, by which time it was August ‘42. The school's services were run by civilians but the teaching of the subjects was carried out by the Royal Canadian Air Force. Winnipeg’s in the grain growing area of Mani- Manitoba, which is flat as a pancake, so the relevance of this for flight training is that when you're flying at a few thousand feet you’ve got an unrestricted view as far as the horizon, and you can pick, everything out very easily because there’s no hills, or, or forests or anything to obscure your view, and the towns were marked by grain elevators and water towers that have the town’s name printed on the sides, so you couldn’t get lost. And they were spaced along the railway line so, you know, it’s like having a Google map underneath you. And these, these water towers were visible from any cross-country route so you just couldn’t get lost, because even at night there was no back- blackout in Canada ‘cause they had no need for it. So, they were there for three months, half of the time in classrooms and half on air exercises. There they flew Anson aircrafts, with civilian pilots. These were great big cumbersome things that had to be manually wound up, the wheels had to be wound up on take-off on a winch, and down again on landing. But one thing that marked him, during this period was the crash of a light aircraft only a few yards away, and the raging fire that ensued which made it impossible to rescue the pilot. So, he actually saw somebody fry, even at that stage, and the nights were very cold. They used to practise astro-sextant shots, one of the applications of a navigator, at night-time, but the leisure time was- As in America, eating Christmas-like turkey dinners every Sunday, and going to dances, socialising, probably a bit of womanising as well although he hasn’t been too explicit about that. He got his navigator’s wing on the 20th of November 1942, and at that point he was promoted to the rank of flight sergeant, just a few marks, a few short marks, again something he was a bit bitter about, off getting a commission. Although, that happened later as I will say later on, and then they travelled by train to Monckton in Halifax, stopping on the way in Montreal, and they returned to England on the Queen Elizabeth. Fantastic experience. It had been converted into a troop ship, so they had two meals a day on board, seventeen bunks to a state cabin, they travelled without escort and it took them only four days to cross the North Atlantic which was amazing, given the technology of the time, and they were on home- At home on leave for Christmas, and basically, by this time he had done, he’d been in the RAF for just under eighteen months, and was now back in the UK.
DM: So once your dad got back to Britain what, what happened next with his training?
JH: Right, well this was the beginning of 1943. So dad would’ve been just coming up for twenty that month, and there was- At that point there was a glut of trained aircrew coming back from the North American and Commonwealth training schools, so lots of them were held in holding centres in Harrogate and Bournemouth to await postings, and to fill the time, dad and a few others were transferred to a regiment training course, an RAF regiment training course at Whitley Bay, near Newcastle, and that was the February 1943 when it was pretty damn cold up there. So, it wasn’t until 19- April ‘43, so that’s three months later that they took up flying again. So I suspect they were a bit rusty by this time, and a party of them was posted to the RAF navigation school at Jurby, which is on the Isle of Man, still flying Ansons, and during this time my dad brushed up on his navigation skills because he hadn’t flown for five months, and this was achieved by means of day and night cross-country exercises around the Irish Sea, the East Coast of Northern Ireland, and the West Coast of Britain, and the weather was quite cold. He remembers using the toast rack railway on his days off, which ran from Jurby to Douglas, and he remembers all the hotels along the sea front which were wired off because they accommodated many of the so-called aliens, who’d been interned there for the duration of the war, in case they engaged in espionage I suppose. Anyway, so when this course was finished, he got some more leave, and then he went to the RAF Operational Training Unit at Kinloss, in Scotland, on the Moray Firth. So it’s sort of late spring early summer by this time, and he was now set for crewing up in Bomber Command and getting nearer and nearer to operational flying. This I think was a, was a, was a very, satisfying period. He said he arrived at Kinloss in the first week in June and the weather was fantastic, and stayed like that for the whole six weeks that they were there, (early summer in Scotland is often lovely), and for part of the time, they were housed in a mansion like property, where- Just for sleeping, and they were each given a bike to get to and from the airfield. So, they were cycling through the beautiful countryside with the lovely weather and the birds singing in the hedgerows, and he said the war, the war seemed very far away at that point, they couldn’t actually believe what they were training for because it all seemed so remote from what they were experiencing. Kinloss had Whitley bombers, these had been withdrawn from operational flying in ‘42 and they were known colloquially as flying coffins because they were very sluggish, in responding to the flying controls, that’s a major defect, as they were to discover when flying in formation over Elgin, to celebrate a special occasion. He doesn’t say what it was but I suspect it was someone's twenty-first. So after a few days they were crewed up, now, in his notes he hasn't actually said how this achieved, but somebody else told me that they just put them all together and let them pick their own, their own teams because I think it was thought that if they, effectively chose their own crew members they would, they would, they would gel better, as a crew. They would have more in common, and they would, they would be more likely to work well as a team if they, if they hadn’t been imposed on each other so they were basically told, you know, find you, find your - I don’t whether the pilot went round and said ‘right I need a navigator and a bomb aimer,’ and so on, I’m not quite sure, but this- And I’ve heard this from more than one source, that they, that, that somebody decided, very sensibly actually, that that was a better psychology then just teaming them up arbitrarily. So dad’s crew at this point was Flying Officer Vivian, S. R. Vivian, known as Viv, he was the pilot, my father himself, Flight Sergeant R. C. Wilson, as he was then, navigator, known as Reg, Flight Officer L. A. Underwood, that’s Laurie, whose the bomb aimer, Sergeant Ross who was the wireless operator and air gunner, he had two, two roles, ‘cause different planes had different requirements in terms of crew, some of, some of the roles were- In some other aircraft I think the bomb aimer and the navigator was combined. Anyway, Sergeant Ross was a wireless operator/ air gunner, known as Bill, and Sergeant John Bushell, Johnny, the rear gunner. So, for six weeks, they flew day and night, in this crew, just five people, carrying out exercises such as cross-country and formation flying, air firing, fighter affiliation and bombing practice, and they had to do some ground work. At this point dad was introduced to something called the distant reading compass, this was located near the tail of the aircraft away from magnetic influences, which otherwise would have corrupted it. It was a gyro-controlled compass, it was very stable and it could be adjusted by the navigator for the earth's magnetic variation, to give true north readings, and this thing had electric repeaters for the pilot, the navigator and the bomb aimer, so they could actually access the readings from the front of the plane, although the actual gadget was at the back. He can remember flying at night, trying to practise astronavigation, and this was difficult because they sky was barely dark. You’ve got to remember this was around the time of the summer solstice, mid-summer, in the north of Scotland and at ten thousand feet the sun’s glow was present on the horizon for most of the night so it never got completely dark, but the Grampians and the Highlands below looked gaunt and forbidding in what was basically a kind of twilight, I suppose. So, as was the case with many crews by the end of the training, the crew had become great friends, they’d spent time together at Findhorn Bay, on the Moray Firth, and on some afternoons, in the pub in Forres town on some Saturdays, and he recalled that he- They’d spent one entire weekend confined to the mess. They’d been confined there by the CO because they’d landed in error at RAF Lossiemouth which was an adjacent airfield, instead of Kinloss, and they drank a lot of beer, not surprisingly. They left Kinloss for some leave, but they never saw Viv, the pilot again because he had been borrowed to, to fly with another crew, this happened quite a lot, and he was killed three weeks later, tragically just a few days after he’d got married, while, whilst on leave, and again a lot of people did that, got married perhaps prematurely because they thought they might, you know, might not get another opportunity. So, this was before they even reached RAF Rufforth in north- In Yorkshire, which was the conversion unit for Halifax heavy bombers. So they got to Rufforth in the middle of August, discovered that Viv had been reported missing, on the 10th of August, whilst flying as a second pilot, second dickie pilot, which they had to do to gain operational experience before they could take their own crew out on operation. Anyway, so Viv had disappeared on the 10th of August while flying as a second dickie on a raid to Nuremburg, and dad subsequently found out that his pilots' aircraft had crashed near Ramsen Bolanden in Germany, and six were killed including Viv, and two became POW’s. So, Viv, dad’s pilot actually never got to head up his own crew and that left the rest of them a headless crew. So they then had to wait the appointment of another pilot, and this is when, you know, the party was over at this point, they’d had all these wonderful experiences in Canada and the USA, and Scotland, lots of travelling, lots of leisure time, lots of laughs, but at this point it became- It began to look, look very serious, it became a lottery. There’s no way they could tell from day to day, even in the conversion unit, before operations started whether they would live or die, because during their short stay at Rufforth, sixty air crew were killed due to mechanical failure of aircraft or accidents, and dad recalls an incident of the collision of two aircraft in mid-air, and another aircraft crashing when its propeller fell off into the fuselage, and another one came down at night on a practice bombing raid. So after a few days they got a new pilot, so flylan- Flight Lieutenant P. G. A. Harvey was appointed, and Sergeant A. McCarrol as the mid-upper gunner, they hadn’t had a mid-upper gunner before by the look of it. So, Sergeant McCarrol had been a drummer previously in murricks[?]- morris wennix [?] dance band and was well known on BBC radio in the pre-war period. The flight engineer was Sergeant J. McCardle, and that completed the crew for the Halifax bomber, which normally had seven members unless they had a second dickie pilot on board, in which case there would be eight of them. Now, the new pilot, Flight Lieutenant Harvey was a very experienced pilot, he’d survived two operational tours but these had been in the Middle East in 1941 and on Wellingtons, and they couldn’t really understand why this man would want to take on another tour. But anyway, he did, maybe he was after a, an award of some kind, but anyway he’d volunteered, but, dad points out that flying on operations deep inside Germany in ‘43 was a different dimension, it was a different ball game, and this is because cities in Germany were heavily defended by ack-ack, and night fighters armed with cannon, and equip with radar homing devices were everywhere. So, this was very different to flying in the Middle East in 1941, where a lot of the missions, although in a warzone weren’t actually bombing missions, they might’ve been deliveries and, you know, service flights. Now because Harvey was a seasoned pilot, they decided that they could fast track the process. So the minimum time was taken to crew up, to get familiar with the Halifax and to take on the new disciplines, which they needed in the Halifax, of a flight engineer and a mid-upper gunner, and dad had to learn how to use Gee, that’s spelt G-double-E. This was a radar device, for measuring pulses from two transmitting stations, and these were displayed on a cathode-ray tube which you then plotted on a special gridded map, and this gave pin point accuracy of the ground position, and this was a new gadget as far as dad was concerned. So, they had air exercises for bombing, air firing, fighter affiliation, and the latter exercise, so that’s fighter affiliation, was one to remember. This was the 2nd of September ‘43, they flew at ten thousand feet and a fighter would attack, that’s in inverted commas because it’s a mock up, obviously, training exercise, from behind and the two gunners would then co-operate with the pilot so that he could take evasive action. So, they would depart from the plotted route to dive or, or, or change course suddenly in order to get out of the way. Now in taking evasive action, Flight Lieutenant Harvey, managed to turn the aircraft on its back, and it was seve- several thousand feet later before he succeeded in righting the aircraft. Dad, the navigator had spun round in the nose of the plane, there were broken rivets rattling round everywhere, and the chemical Elsan toilet at the back of the aircraft had emptied its contents all over the rear of the plane. Not pleasant experience, and they were all shaken up by this, especially because, you know, Flight Harvey- Flight Lieutenant Harvey already had nearly four hundred operational flying hours to his credit and they didn’t expect him to lose control, they thought he knew what he was doing. But the good thing that came out of it was that John, the rear gunner, Johnny, Johnny Bushell, he decided from then that he wouldn’t- Then on that he would store his parachute in his gun turret [emphasis], rather than in the fuselage which was required by regulations. So, a maverick, and this action would later save his life, and dad decided as well that he would try and minimise the risk to himself, so he, he kind of devised this routine to cover baling out. So, point one, this is like bullet points, point one, helmet off, and the reason for this was you could break your neck if you had the helmet still attached to the oxygen supply and the intercom, so the first thing he did was take it off. Parachute on, for the obvious reason that it’s not a good idea to jump out without it, and then, this is one special to dad, handle on the left hand-side. Dad was left-handed, and aircraft was sometimes due- killed due to an unopened parachute with the d-ring, the handle, on the ‘wrong’ that’s inverted commas side. So, if you were right-handed, obviously the right side would be the right-hand side, and for dad it was gonna be the left-hand side. So dad had also decided that, as he had a minute or so to spare while over the target, he would fold back his seat, lift up the navigation table clear of the escape hatch and be ready to bale out immediately, if necessary because this was the point at which they were obviously at their most vulnerable over the target, and because the navigator’s job was very cerebral and was, he was constantly occupied throughout the whole flight, unlike some of the other crew members, this was his only opportunity really, to take a break. So he basically got ready to bale out on every single operational flight, just in case, and he said that he believed that these plans, together with the action taken by Johnny the rear gunner, gave them and Laurie, or gave dad and Laurie, the bomb aimer, additional vital seconds when the three of them were to save their lives nearly five months later. So Laurie and dad were saved by dad having folded up the, the table, and Johnny by having his parachute more accessible than it would otherwise have been. So, a week or so after this, this last training flight, they were posted to 102 Squadron in Pocklington to commence their operational service, so quite a long haul from joining at the beginning, quite a long process. So, Pocklington, is twelve miles south-east of York, it has eight-hundred foot hills, three and a half miles north-east of the aircraft- airfield. So while dad was there, two Halifax bombers complete with bomb loads, crashed into the hills after take-off, so the result of that was that they didn’t use that particular runway afterwards, because of the, the, the risk of running into the mountains. Pocklington was a wartime airfield, some of the others had been in use before the war, and the ones that were basically, got ready just for the wartime, only had temporary accommodation so they were all billeted in Nissen huts. These had semi-circular corrugated iron roofs, roofs and walls and concrete ends, not very comfortable, dispersed in fields, near the aircraft- Sorry, in fields near the, near the airfield, and they were pretty dreary, inhospitable places. The heating was only a central coal burning stove, so whenever they weren’t on duty they went for refuge and relaxation in the relative comfort of the sergeant's mess, or the pubs. Or famous places like Betty’s Bar, in York, or the dance halls like The De Grey Rooms in York. Pocklington had three affiliated airfields, Elvington, where there’s now an air museum complete with a, model of a Halifax which has been made from parts of Halifax bombers welded together, because none of the Halifax bombers were saved after the war, unlike the Lancasters, something else he was- Dad was quite miffed about. So anyway, there was Elvington, Full Sutton and Melbourne, and they were all sort of in a group, and they were commanded by Air Commodore Gus Walker, who was the youngest air commodore in the RAF at the time, only thirty-one years old. He’d lost his right arm when a Lancaster had exploded on the ground at Syerston, the airfield which he’d commanded in 1942. So mid-September, Pocklington, 1943. Flight Lieutenant Harvey, was promoted to acting squadron leader in charge of A flights, so this meant that his crew would not fly as frequently on operations as other, other crews. That was a mixed blessing, because it meant a tour of thirty operations would take longer if they were under his command. So, over the next two weeks they completed a number of cross-country exercises, mostly for dad’s benefit to practise his navigation skills with the new equipment. So he learnt how to use Gee at Rufforth, but in the meantime the Germans had learnt how to jam Gee. So as the aircraft approached the coastline of continental Europe, the radar pulses were obliterated. So the navigator then had a race against time to obtain as much data as he could before they crossed the Dutch, or Danish coast, and at Pocklington they had a, what was then, state of the art, new piece of radar equipment called H2S, height to surface. It was located in the aircraft itself and it sent out pulses to the ground, around the aircraft for ranges of fifteen to twenty miles, and the reflections that were received back were shown as bright specks on a cathode-ray tube, and the density of the reflections depended on whether the aircraft was flying over sea, land, hills, rivers, cities or lakes. So from this, a rough typographical map of the ground was, was translated, the quality of the picture varied but it was much better than what they’d had previously, and the map, was displayed on the cathode-ray screen. The best results were produced between land and sea, but if the navigator factored in his, his awareness of the ground position he could recognise coastlines, large rivers, lakes, sizeable towns, and other prominent features, both on the way to and back from the target. So he could use this information to plot the bearing and distance from these landmarks, and he could recalculate wind velocities, required tracks, ground speeds, and the ti- Critically the time that it would take to reach the target. So, with the help of H2S some more experienced navigators would have the ability to blind bomb, which- Blind bombing meant that you could reach your target without the need to use the markers dropped by the Pathfinders, and the Pathfinders incidentally also used the H2S equipment. H2S couldn’t be jammed, but the night fighters could home in on the H2S frequency if it was on continuously, and unfortunately this is something they didn’t know at the time, and some aircraft were shot down because of it and probably that accounts for the, the demise of dad’s aircraft later on. Another new piece of equipment was the air plot indicator, and this was available to the navigator by this time. That linked the gyrocompass and the airspeed indicator, gave a continuous read out of the air position in latitude and longitude, used for navigators, a navigation device but, you couldn’t rely on it entirely. So basically, the navigator had to use a combination of all the things that were available to him, and you know, his common sense and sometimes just basic geometry, when everything else failed. They had a handheld Ican that’s I-C-A-N computer, computer used in the original sense of the word there, something that calculated. It was a manually operating vectoring device, so they used that to plot a course, geometry really, calculate airspeed, make good their desired track and ground speed, and then they added that information into the main chart, and they also had radio bearings that were taken by the wireless operator and astro-sight shots[?], and they were converted into position lines by the use of almanacs, so basically, using the stars. But neither of the, these methods were practical when off- operating over enemy territory, because operational aircraft were growing faster, and the need to take evasion action at any moment because of flak or night fighters would mean that you, you didn’t have time to use these devices. And when no navigational aids were available, for some reason or some technical mishap, and map reading over cloud or at night, especially at high altitude, they’d have to resort to something called dead reckoning, and that required accurate plotting of air position, the use of wind velocities which had been supplied by the MET office officer, at the briefing before they left, and sometimes these were updated on route by radio, or the use of those calculated by the navigator en route. So they need to be modified all the time for changes to the forecast weather, to take account of wind velocity changes and any alterations in altitude, which might be caused for reasons that couldn’t be predicted. So, how did they prepare for a bombing mission? Well, it, it was a lengthy procedure, it occupied a good part of the day prior to the night's operation. So, the first thing that would happen would be mid-morning, ‘ops on’ would be announced, if there was to be a raid that night. So the ground crew would be busy checking each aircraft radar, guns, engines, filling the wing tanks with over two-thousand gallons of fuel. Armourers would load the guns with ammunition, and bring up and mount a mix of high explosive and incendiary bombs ‘cause there were two types in the bay, in the bomb bays for that night's target. So these bombs were stored in a remote part of the airfield for safety obviously, behind blast walls, and they had to be fused for the target and towed along on long low trolleys you see that a lot in the old films, and towed by tractor to the des- The aircraft dispersal points, and although the target wasn’t disclosed at this point, because of the strict security rules, you know, walls have ears and all of that, ground crews would have a good idea from the amount of fuel loaded and the type of bomb load where the target would be. So more fuel meant further east, further north, further away. So about the same time as the ground crew were doing all these things, the aircrew would be briefed, so I will try- I can’t remember where it was, I think it, I think it might have been at, at Elvington we, we went to a re-enactment of one of these briefings and dad said it was very good, so I’ve actually experienced this as well because, you know, you have the sort of flip chart with a map on it and then, you know, they lift up the blanket and you see Berlin and everybody gasps and, you know, Dad said it was, it was just like that. Although it is actually done quite well in some of the films as well. So, there’d be a leader for each discipline, so the pilots would have a speaker, the navigators, the bomb aimers and so on, and the navigators would be the busiest, they’d be issued with flight plans, meteorological information. They’d be the first to know the target, because they’d have to plot the route on their chart and smaller topographical maps, and then they would highlight towns, lakes, rivers so that they, you know, could, could recognise them when they were flying over them, familiarise themselves with the territory. Initial courses and airspeeds would be calculated from the wind velocities supplied, and these would be modified as more information was gained from Gee and H2S during the flight. So, the navigators- It was essential that they kept, were kept to their prescribed altitudes, tracks and timetables. This was to maintain the concentration of the bomber stream, in order to keep to their time slot over the target, which was no more than three minutes long so, it was really important that people, you know, did exactly what, what they’d been told to do and didn’t deviate from it. So, the aircrew would then go to the mess, have their operational meal of eggs and bacon, which was a treat because civilians were lucky to get one egg a month, they’d fill their thermos flask with coffee, draw their flying rations of chocolate and orange juice to sustain them, during the long night, and they’d also have available caffeine tablets to keep them alert. Then they’d get the briefing, so everybody due to be on operational duty that night, about a hundred-and-fifty personnel, were assembled in front of a large war map of Europe showing the route and the target. If it was to be the big city, Berlin, a gasp would go round the hut. This was considered to be the most dangerous target of all. The briefing was carried out by the squadron commander, the intelligence officer, the MET officer, and any other specialist whose views were pertinent to that night's raid, so that could depend on what the target was and what the purpose was. So the briefing would cover the size of the bombing force, the objective, of any diversionary raids taking place, ‘cause sometimes they’d have a decoy to put the Germans off the scent, the weather expected en route, and when returning to base, the forecast wind changes, the extent of cloud cover en route and over the target, and icing risks at various altitudes and obviously that would depend on the time of year as well, how the Pathfinders would be marking the route and the target, and any hot spots, danger spots for flak and night fighters, and then all personnel, especially navigators were asked to synchronise their watches to the second, to GMT. Then they would draw their parachutes and their Mae Wests, their life jackets, they left any personal items in a bag to be picked up if and when they returned, and departed by truck to the dispersal points and there they had time to smoke a cigarette outside, not frowned upon in those days, and then to check their equipment thoroughly before they took off. The air gunners would check their guns over the North Sea, and there’s a, there’s a nice little line drawing somewhere of the, the crew all having a pee against the side of the aircraft which was partly ‘cause it was more difficult to have a pee once you were inside the aircraft, but also, I think it was a kind of macho good luck, you know, boys' game. There’s a great little line drawing of it somewhere, I can’t remember where I saw it. Sometimes they’d get to this point and they’d have to wait for clearance of fog, the MET officer would’ve guaranteed that it would clear otherwise they wouldn’t have gone through the whole process, but sometimes it didn’t, and if it didn’t the whole operation would have to be aborted, and I think that must’ve been one of the most frustration things because they’ve all- The adrenaline’s flowing and then you’ve got to come down and you haven’t actually got anything to show for it. So, assuming it wasn’t aborted, at last it was time to take off, the crews were directed by the airfield controller to the runway. Many of the ground crew would then wave them off into the darkness, I think they felt a sense of ownership of, whatever plane they’d been working on, so they’re very much part of the team although they weren’t in front line. Then for the people in the air commenced the long ordeal, five to eight hours of freezing cold, heavy vibration, incessant roar of the four Rolls Royce Merlin engines in the case of the Halifax, in an unpressurised aircraft until they returned, hopefully unscathed, in the early hours of the following morning. When they got back they were debriefed, they were given hot coffee, a tot of rum by the padre, and again, this, you see this in some of the better films, and the- They had to be debriefed by an intelligence officer, who took notes about the bombing run, any details of flak and night fighters, information that could all be used to improve safety on subsequent flights, and then they had egg, bacon breakfast and trekked back to the huts, crawled into bed and tried to get some sleep and wait for the next one. Okay, so, they- Their first operation was a mine laying trip, called- Also known as gardening and planting vegetables, that’s the kind of code for it. This, that, that, this was supposed to be an easy, an easy option ‘cause it was not as dangerous obviously as bombing raid over a major city. So this was the 2nd of October 1943, and they- When they got about half way across the North Sea, towards Denmark, the flight- The, the pilot, Harvey, asked Laurie, the bomb aimer to take over the controls while he went to the toilet, and Laurie had never, he would’ve had some training to assist the pilot but not in flying the plane, and Laurie had never sat in the pilot seat of a Halifax before, and there he was on his first ever mission at the controls while the pilot went to the toilet. So, as they, as they approached the enemy coast, Laurie, the bomb aimer is at the controls never having- I don’t even know if he could drive a car, and Harvey had this urgent call of nature, and- Anyway, so, you, at this point there were no events, dad said if they’d actually thought about the magnitude of what was going on, you know, they’d of all jumped out, but anyway, when they passed over the cloa-, the coast there was a loud bang, which lifted up the aircraft, and at this point the Gee and the H2S went out of action, so they got to Denmark without these navigational aids, and they opened the bomb doors and they made their, their dropping run at eight thousand feet, tried to release the mines but they wouldn’t drop. So they tried to liberate them manually, but they couldn’t get them out, and Harvey the pilot, at this point decided to return to base with the mines on board, and he tried to close the bomb doors but they wouldn’t shut, so it was obvious that their hydraulic system had been damaged, as well as the radar equipment probably by flak. So they went down to two thousand feet to get under the cloud base, and got caught up in some nasty electric storms. But without technical navigational aids, dad had to pick out land fall as soon as possible, it was down to dead reckoning, and this was his first flight [chuckles], operational flight. So they didn’t need oxygen at this height, so dad decided he’d got to the loo as well. So he went to visit the Elsan at the rear of the aircraft, and he took a torch and he groped his way to the back, and he was just stepping over the main spar when he noticed a gaping hole beneath him, and had he completed the step he would’ve fallen two thousand feet into the North Sea without a parachute. So at this point he decided to wee through the hole, rather than complete the journey to the Elsan, and he returned to the nose to confirm to Harvey that there was no doubt that they had been hit by flak. So he had a drink of coffee to restore his nerves, but the damage was quite considerable. So, when the flaps and the wheels were lowered for landing, the bomb doors, flaps and wheels could not be raised again, which meant that if they were to overshoot the runway on landing, they would crash with two mines still on board. So they knew, you know, that, that, they were in great danger, and so they crossed Flamborough head on the north, North Yorkshire coast, and dad’s dead reckoning brought them back on course and they landed safely. But on landing one of the mines fell out onto the runway, and at the dispersal point the ground staff were amazed that in these circumstances they’d survived without a scratch. They thought the aircraft would be scrapped because the damage was very considerable, there was a lot of shrapnel holes and so on, but it was repaired and it went off to be used in other missions, and eventually was shot down with the loss of all crew, but that’s not dad’s crew, that was, this was another crew. So the upshot of this was that dad- After the war dad read flight- The pilot’s statement on that, this mission and he found it to be totally inaccurate, there’s no mention of the flak damage, or having to bring the mines back, although it is in the Pocklington station records, and dad believed that Harvey wanted to have an unblemished tour of operations on his record, you know, so dad, dad was very much a man of honesty and everything was meticulous and he was- That’s why he made such a good navigator, but he lived his whole life like that and he didn’t like- It disturbed him to think that other people could, could bend the rules for their own purposes which is what this amounted to. Having had a near miss, the mid-upper gunner reported sick before the next operation, never flew again, and sadly was labelled LMF, lack of moral fibre, reduced to AC2 and posted to Elvington for general duties. So, he said that because the losses were so high at the time this was at the peak really of the dangerous period, one crew hardly got to know each other before- One crew hardly ever got to know another crew at the base before one of the two crews went missing, you know, you’d notice, you get back to the base there’d be a number of empty beds and you’d learn that they’d not come back, and you wouldn’t ever necessarily know what had happened to them. Every mission to Germany, especially to Berlin was like going over the top, in the First World War, according to Dad, that risky. A success- A succession of these raids could bring on exhaustion, nerves, to anybody however strong they were mentally, and the threat of being branded LMF was made to avoid the eventuality where aircrew would just refuse collectively to, to fly. He said only 0.4% of all aircrew were branded LMF but it’s surprising actually, and he, he thought it was a huge injustice when you considered there were many civilians of military age in reserved occupations, who’d never have been exposed to such risks. Anyway, after this, first operation, the squadron navigation officer decided to check my dad’s log and chart, and he found both completely accurate, commended dad on the results, which he knew had been made under testing conditions and subsequently informed dad that he was recommending him for a commission, so it looked like he was going to get his commission after the war. So it made up for having missed it before by a few marks. So, the next operation was supposed to be to Frankfurt but the pilot decided to turn back, less than a hundred miles from target. It, it was frustrating for everybody else, being so near the target, because the raid turned out to be the first serious blow to Frankfurt and, later the flight engineer went sick and did not fly again. The next flight was to Hannover, this one preceded without mishap, and then they thought, okay things are looking up, we’ll- Looks like we’re gonna be successful crew, but then they didn’t fly on any more operations in October, remember that the position of Harvey as a, as a, as a- His promoted position meant that they didn’t fly perhaps as frequently as other crews, and they, in fact they never flew again with him, because he, although officially he did remain the A flight commander until the end of November. So dad got his commission, Gus Walker confirmed that dad was being recommended for it and he was interviewed for it, and during that meeting my father learnt that the pilot Harvey was being withdrawn from operational flying because he’d had enough. But he did get his DFC, and that was described as long overdue for his tours in the Middle East, but dad had a different view. So, now they’ve lost their second pilot and they’re a headless crew again, so during that period they all flew as spares. Dad hated this. Flying as a spare meant you replaced a crew member in another crew who as sick or otherwise unable to fly. It was very demoralising because you didn’t have any of the team spirit and trust in each other that you had when you were flying with a regular crew. You were just a floating part, you had little or no faith in the crew that you were joining for that night and they probably didn’t have any faith in you either, ‘cause they didn’t know you, and it was bad for morale of everybody. So, Laurie, the bomb aimer, John the rear gunner, and Dad, the original three, flew as spares for the next five or so operations and the wireless operator had disappeared. So-
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Janet Hughes, One
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David Meanwell
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-11-02
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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Sound
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AHughesJ171102
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01:06:41 audio recording
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eng
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Civilian
Second generation
Description
An account of the resource
Janet Hughes’ father, Reginald Charles Wilson, volunteered for the RAF in August 1941. In January 1942, he was posted to America under the Arnold training scheme and was later remustered to train as a navigator in Canada. After forming a crew at RAF Kinloss in 1943, the pilot was killed in action, so they located another pilot while converting to Halifaxes at RAF Rufforth before joining 102 Squadron. Hughes describes Wilson’s use of Gee and H2S, and how anti-aircraft fire damaged his navigational instruments during his first operation, forcing them to land with mines on board.
Contributor
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Tilly Foster
Carolyn Emery
Spatial Coverage
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Canada
Great Britain
England--Yorkshire
Scotland--Moray Firth
United States
Georgia--Albany
Temporal Coverage
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1940
1941
1942
1943
102 Squadron
aircrew
bale out
bombing
briefing
Gee
H2S
Halifax
lack of moral fibre
mine laying
navigator
Operational Training Unit
RAF Kinloss
RAF Pocklington
RAF Rufforth
sanitation
training
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/711/11142/AJohnsonM160830.2.mp3
df35dcf4afe3dc4c1e866f46c7c804e2
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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Blair, John
John Jericho Blair
J J Blair
Description
An account of the resource
38 items. The collection concerns John Jericho Blair DFC (1919-2004). He was born in Jamaica and served in RAF from 1942-1963. He flew a tour of operations as a navigator with 102 Squadron from RAF Pocklington. The collection includes numerous photographs of him and colleagues, several photographs of Jamaica, a document detailing his life and an interview with his great nephew Mark Johnson.
The collection also contains three interviews with Caribbean veterans including John Blair recorded by Mark Johnson.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Mark Johnson and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-05-09
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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Blair, JJ
Access Rights
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Permission granted for commercial projects
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: Chris Brockbank and today we are in Witchford in Cambridgeshire and the date is the 30th of August 2016. And we’re speaking to Mark Johnson about Flight Lieutenant John Blair DFC and his life and times. Mark, could you just introduce how you fit in to this and the earliest recollections that you have of John Blair.
MJ: So, John Blair was my great uncle. My grandmother’s brother. And he was born in Jamaica. In the parish of St Elizabeth which is a rural parish and in those days extremely rural. I first met him, well I had met him as a child but I have no memory of that. The first, the first recollection was meeting him when I moved to Jamaica with my family. With my parents and my brother. I was aged eleven, and Uncle John was really the sort of senior figure I would say, in the family. He was highly respected by everyone. Former RAF course, a qualified teacher, a lawyer and did a little bit of farming on the side. And I can remember as kids we’d go to his house and they had the sort of what we called the veranda culture. You know, you would arrive at someone’s house and the adults would immediately be presented with a tray of rum and coke. And ice would be clinking away in little glass containers. And we’d run around in the back garden as kids. Play with, with our cousins, his children. And he was always very very kindly. Fairly serious. Very quiet man. Almost Victorian in a way but without the severity and just the sort of impressive figure. I didn’t know anything at the time about his air force service but I did spend a lot of time in the region where he’d grown up because we have other cousins down there. Relatives of his who still farm down there. And so I spent a lot of time in St Elizabeth as a child during the school holidays and got to know the area quite well. So I’ve got a good sense of what it might have been like when he was a child. A lot of the structures there were built almost of wattle and daub back in those days and they had thatched rooves. Very reddish. The soil is very red because of the Illumina content. There’s a lot of, or there has been a lot of bauxite and illumina mining there in the past decades. They grow watermelons, peanuts. A lot of goat farming. Mango trees scattered around. And then fishing is quite important down on the, on the coast. Areas like Treasure Beach. A lot of fish is consumed. Lobster. A lot of bammy which is a bread made from [pause] from a root, of what’s the name of the root again.
Other: Cassava.
MJ: Cassava. Cassava root. Which is poisonous unless properly prepared. Achi. Cashew from trees. And so it’s a really good, good way to grow up. Healthier perhaps then they realised. I think people felt impoverished. And they were impoverished. In 1919 when he was born there was no electricity. No such a thing as an aeroplane flying past. No trains. Very few vehicles. A lorry would have been quite a sight. But a good old fashioned healthy lifestyle with a good diet. And that shows in the people. The people are physically robust. And Uncle John himself with a very successful athlete. As were many of his relatives. So, now he, he didn’t grow up with his natural parents. He was sent to live with my grandfather. And he was raised by my grandfather and grandmother. So he was raised by his aunt. And my grandfather was a headmaster of a rural school at the time. In the parish of St Mary and Uncle John attended that school as a child. And I’ve got a photograph of my grandfather. Another very Victorian gentleman. And another separate image taken at the same time, in the same chair, of my grandmother. And it’s the sort of image you would associate with a Victorian grammar school. Dark suit and tie. Serious face. Not quite holding the bible in their laps but almost. You wouldn’t be surprised if they had been. And Uncle John. I don’t have a photograph of Uncle John in the school but I do have a picture of the school with my grandfather and his class. And most of the children are in short pants, shirts and bare foot which was quite notable. So they’re running around at the ages of eleven or twelve. I think that most of the schools in rural Jamaica in that period were a single room. And you would have all the children sitting in that one room working on their various assignments as handed out by the teacher. Now, Uncle John started school a few years earlier than he was supposed because his older sister was also a head teacher in a small school and she made sure that he was in the class. And then the school inspector used to come by occasionally. He was an Englishman. The Jamaican school system was managed by the Colonial government and was actually a very good system, they were – Jamaica had the highest level of literacy in the Caribbean and it was a higher level of literacy than the UK at that time. I think somewhere around an astounding eighty three percent if my memory serves me correctly. And so English school inspectors would come by and Uncle John would be pushed into a cupboard when the inspector arrived just to make sure he wasn’t discovered because he was only three and a half or four and the age in those days was, I believe it was a bit older. I believe five or six. So, so those are some of the sort of early memories. Things I was told by him or things that I witnessed and I can extrapolate from those experiences and have a sense of what life might have been like when he was growing up. There would have been a certain class division at play. If you were a nurse, a doctor, well you wouldn’t, you were less likely to be a doctor in those days but if you were a nurse, a police officer, a school teacher — an educated member of the middle class, you were quite separate from the mass of people in Jamaica and there would be certain tensions I suspect. They’ve always been there and they probably existed in those days. There may be certain attitudes that your family might have towards working people. And there’d be certain attitudes that working people would have towards you. And I think that’s significant. Becomes more significant later when you look at the selection process for the RAF and who joined the RAF as opposed to those who didn’t. So I’ll mention it now in passing but we’ll come back to that when we get to that stage of the things. But it’s important to recognise that class and race and mixed race family background are factors in the story. So those are some of the earlier pieces of information. John Blair decided to follow in his, the footsteps of many members of his family, if not most members of his family and become a teacher. So he went to Kingston where he attended the teacher’s college at Mico which was a highly regarded regional institution. Produced many many teachers. Many of whom ended up in the UK in fact. A large number of Jamaican educators were recruited to the UK education system. And he was at Mico along with one of his cousins. No. Correction. His brother, Stanley. His brother who won a track medal there and John ran as well and was very successful as an athlete. Later running for the RAF’s track team. And he made friends at the time with Arthur Wint who was a Jamaican Olympic gold medallist in ’36. Yeah. And they joined the RAF at about the same time and maintained that friendship. They trained together in Canada. I’ll come back to that later. So he was very much into athletics and sport and building up a good circle of like-minded friends. He graduated as a teacher and he started teaching in Kingston. I know exactly where he was teaching. It’ll come back to me in a minute. There a small airstrip there today near downtown Kingston.
Other: Greenwich. Greenwich Farm.
MJ: Greenwich farm. There’s an airstrip nearby which I think is actually the same as the name of the school.
Other: Tinson.
MJ: Tinson Pen. He started teaching in Tinson Pen and he was teaching there when [pause] is that incorrect? [pause]
CB: We’ll stop just for a mo.
[recording paused]
CB: Starting again.
MJ: So while he was teaching in Kingston war broke out in Europe. People in Jamaica were very aware of Hitler, Nazi Germany and the politics of Europe. The school curriculum given that we were a British colony at the time focussed very heavily on European history in any case. But the radio would broadcast clips of Hitler’s speeches. Of course the Queen’s annual address, or the King’s address in those days would have been, was widely listened to and still, the Queen’s Speech is still highly listened to today. And I’m assuming there was an annual address in those days but certainly there was a lot of awareness and a very, in some circles a closeness to the British system and the Mother Country as it was known. In other circles, hostility. There was a very active and strong independence movement already entrained. Communism of course was a factor around the world and there were left wing thinkers active in the Caribbean. But there are others who were very pro the colonial system. A lot would probably have depended on the circumstances of individuals and types, types of exposure they’d had. Family. Family attitudes and education. Incidentally, in case I forget to come back to it later many of the people who ended up joining the RAF from the Caribbean subsequently after the war became active in The Independence Movement. And in fact the later Prime Minister of Barbados Errol Barrow was a flight lieutenant in the Royal Air Force. Michael Manley, I believe, was a member of the Royal Air Force. And many others. Dudley Thompson who was a Minister of National Security in the PNP government in the 1970 ‘s was was also a former flyer. And many many others. In fact the former RAF volunteers took up a whole range of positions in society. Not only in politics but in business. Karl Chantrelle who I worked with at the Jamaica Telephone Company, later Cable and Wireless was a president of Cable and Wireless and he had been a decoder. A Morse signals decoder on the ground in in the UK as a member of the RAF as well. So they joined the RAF for reasons we will come on to in a moment. They performed very, very well. RAF reports into the performance of black Caribbean and other Carribean aircrew commend them as being of a high standard. And then they came back home in many cases and used that experience and exposure and perhaps the confidence that they’d developed through having those roles to move into lots of key positions in local society and become the engine, I think, I sense part of the engine of the final steps towards Independence. So coming back to 1939 John Blair was working in the school. Teaching there. And he heard Churchill’s famous speech post-Dunkirk. This would have been 1940 now. We will fight them on the beaches and and the fields and landing grounds and so forth. And I was very moved by that. As were many people. And a lot of the volunteers, I have spoken to other Caribbean volunteers and a lot of them site that as, as a trigger but one of the triggers that caused them to volunteer. So you asked the question earlier why did they volunteer specifically for the RAF? Well not all Caribbean people volunteered for the RAF. There were fifteen thousand who volunteered for the merchant navy who were rarely mentioned. Of whom a stunning five thousand were killed during the war. So we shouldn’t forget them. But those who joined the RAF primarily appear to have been motivated by three, possibly four, different factors. I think there was a genuine concern, a well-founded concern about what would happen in the Caribbean if the Nazis invaded and defeated Great Britain. And the assumption was that given the fact that America wasn’t yet in the war that the Caribbean would become a Nazi colony and that black people in the Caribbean would return to slavery. And you’ve got to remember that when John Blair was born in 1919 he would have co-existed with people who would have been elderly but who would have been born under slavery which ended in Jamaica in 1834 and so he very likely sat in the laps of older people who had actually been slaves. And I knew John Blair for forty years of my life so that the link with slavery is very very immediate and not at all irrational for a Jamaican in 1940 to fear a return to the system that only ended ninety six years earlier. We also, I think there was a lot of sympathy, empathy for, or with the people of Europe who were already under the Nazi heel. The Poles had immediately been subjected to forced deportations, slave labour in Germany. Rumours were already spreading about the massacres that were taking place in Poland and other occupied countries. So the gen, this was not, you know a US invasion of Iraq or any of those things. This was this was a much more serious and significant thing that really did threaten people all around the world. I think we lose sight of that. So it was a world war in the truest sense. Another motivation of course was that these were young educated men who would never have had an opportunity to join any of the British military forces had war not broken out. There was a colour bar in effect for officers. That colour bar was lifted after the Battle of Britain because of these heavy casualties caused during the Battle of Britain but also Bomber Command had had very heavy casualties in its first forays over Europe. And so there was an official lifting of the colour bar which, when in place, had said that only British born men of pure European stock could become officers. It was not lifted at that time in the army or navy. And so the air force which had always drawn in, tended to draw in a sort of better educated, technically savvy adventurous spirit even for British society was just a no-brainer for Caribbean men who had some education and ambition. And, and to add to that the RAF was actively recruiting in the Caribbean. There was a recruitment drive that was launched across the Caribbean and also in West Africa. Was not very successful at all in West Africa. Only about fifty candidates who were successfully processed from West Africa but five hundred aircrew approximately. Four to five hundred and about five thousand ground crew were recruited from the Caribbean alone. Which, given that the population of the Caribbean was only certainly the British speaking Caribbean was only a few million people at the time was actually a very large number. The Caribbean had done other things. There were drives to raise funds to support squadrons. So there was for example a Jamaica squadron which was funded by contributions from the Caribbean nations which flew from Marham. And Uncle John as it happened ended up flying with Ceylon Squadron which was funded from the island of Ceylon which is now Sri Lanka. So there was, there was considerable amount of Commonwealth activity. Of course we know about the South African volunteers, we know about the Australians, the new Zealanders, the Indians who came over in very large numbers. And it was all part of the ethos of one — loyalty to the crown to an extent although many of the volunteers were hostile to the crown as a, in principal. Certainly fear of the consequences of a Nazi victory, sense of adventure and opportunity to further themselves in a way that never would have existed were it not for the outbreak of war. So I think that sort of summarises the main motives as I sense them. So he applied at Park Camp in Kingston. And he was accepted and he was then sent back home. He went home and awaited his movement orders. And he left on the fish truck from St Elizabeth to Kingston once he got those orders. And one of my, my uncles remembered saying goodbye to him as he climbed on to the back of the fish truck which was covered in ice. And he, my uncle could remember there was broken glass on the ground for some reason where the truck had turned and he thought that was where the war was happening. He was only about three or four at the time. And so Uncle John went all the way to Kingston on the back of this lorry which was quite a rough, bouncy ride in those days. Very hot. And then was put on board an American ship in Kingston Harbour which had been, which was enroute from somewhere else in the Caribbean. And one of the anecdotes he recounted was that when he boarded the ship along with I think about a dozen other Jamaican volunteers they were sent below. Down a ladder. They went down a ladder. And they saw hammocks hanging there so they started arranging their gear and grabbing hammocks hooks and a sailor came down. An American sailor said, ‘Not down here you —’ N-word, people. ‘Keep going down.’ And they ended up in the hold. So these were officer volunteers or officer candidates volunteering for air force service. They were put in the hold and they sat on metal floors in the hold as the ship drove, sorry, sailed westwards from Jamaica to Belize. And in Belize they picked up more volunteers. Volunteers from Belize who flew and they were put in the hold as well and then they sailed to the southern US. I think to New Orleans and they disembarked there and they were all put on a train to New York and things began to look up now. They spent some days in New York. They went to the Empire State Building. Took a photograph at the top of the Empire State Building with a candidate from Belize called Leo Baldorames who became a pilot. And from there they proceeded by train to Canada. To Moncton. M O N K T O N which was a large training centre in Canada. And they went through their initial basic training there which was essentially the same as basic training in any military force. Polishing lots of bits and pieces. Learning to march and to drill. Learning how to fire a weapon. It would have probably been the 303 Lee Enfield rifle and some people were filtered out even at that stage. So there were people who didn’t get through. They then went to their initial aircrew training. Well their initial RAF flying. Later training. Which involved selection and segmentation into different sort of competencies. And Uncle John was a, as a school teacher did very well on the maths test and so he was selected to be a navigator. Arthur Wint , his good friend was selected to be a pilot. And that was the, there were black Caribbean fighter pilots. There were, for example, Tucker who flew with the South African ace Sailor Malan. There were many of those. There were bomber pilots flying Lancasters, Halifaxes. And other aircraft and several navigators including one from British Guyana called [pause] it’ll come back to me. Very famous man who ended up on the BBC as the voice of Captain Green in the animated series that used to be on. Anyway, that’ll come back to me. So they were training in Moncton and they were sent off to various locations to do advanced courses after they’d done their basic. All very sophisticated. Then he, they had these regular medicals that they had to undergo. So it wasn’t just one medical. You had a series of medicals and as it happened Arthur Wint and John Blair had been out on the town. The medicals were not announced in advance. You were just told at 8 in the morning, ‘John Blair. Medical.’ And they’d been out in the town until 4am. Struggled in through the fence and that was the day that he was summoned for his medical which he then failed and he was washed out of aircrew. And he talks about everybody moved on. Left him behind. He was left in this huge hangar with about four hundred other people who had been left sitting on bunk beds. Who had all been washed out? Hundreds of men were washed out and being sent back to the UK because they were all UK volunteers who had been sent to Canada for training. And John Blair was now listed to be sent back to the UK although he had never been to the UK in his life and knew nobody there. And he would be sent there not as a aircrew as he’d planned but in some other capacity so he was pretty depressed about that. So he went in search of the medical officer, senior medical officer. Found him. Explained the story admitted to the fact that he’d been out drinking the night before and the medical officer said, ‘Ok. Look at this card. What do you see? Look at these colour dots. What do you see?’ And passed him as fit and he was allowed to re-join the training scheme but at this point he had lost all his West Indian colleagues. They’d all advanced and he hadn’t so he was now thrust into a group of British trainees. And this was really his first experience with British people on the same level because in Jamaica he had always, he had encountered British people but they had always been colonial representatives of some type or part of the managerial class. And so he’d never, you know bunked with and socialised with British people before and he found that interesting. But he got on very well and he never encountered, he said he knew of racism being encountered by people. He personally never encountered it. Although others I interviewed did so there certainly was racism but he was fortunate. And I don’t know what, I think it was just probably lucky. It certainly existed. I think he was lucky. It’s also possible he didn’t want to speak about it. But I sensed that he was, I sensed that if it happened it didn’t stay with him. He hadn’t, he hadn’t kept it. So he had Scotsmen, he had Canadians, he had all sorts of people alongside him now. He went and finished his navigator training. Because then on graduation put on to a ship, a convoy and they sailed in the direction of Iceland, avoiding the U-boats. Far to the north and then down into Liverpool. And from Liverpool he got on a train and sailed or took the train through the heart of industrial Britain which was an eye opener. He had had expectations of a green and pleasant land and the wet grey reality was a shock. But he ended up in Yorkshire which he spoke of in the highest sort of terms. With the highest praise. The Yorkshire people showed no sign of hostility whatsoever. In fact they were amazed that a black man, in fact he’d reunited at this point with Arthur Wint and another couple of trainees who he’d met again. And they’d go into pubs in Yorkshire and they’d be bought rounds immediately and people wanted to know what on earth they thought they were doing coming all that way from sunny, the sunny Caribbean to fight in Europe. And were very impressed that they had done it. So he seemed to feel very much at home there and as we’re hearing a little bit later he ended up marrying an English girl that he met. So they were then moving into the final stage of training which was to familiarise themselves with the terrain around their future bases in Yorkshire. He was going to fly from Pocklington. And also familiarise themselves with the Halifax Mark 3 which they’d never flown on before. And they were then, well at that stage I think they were formed into a crew. And that was, that simply involved sticking a couple of hundred people into, into a large hangar and having them pick each other. The pilot would walk around and just look at people’s faces. And John Blair was standing there knowing nobody. And a Canadian pilot walks up to him and said, ‘Will you fly with me?’ And that was it. He was picked and he was the only Caribbean person in that crew. And this is the distinctive feature of the RAF. Whereas the Americans had the Tuskegee squadrons which were, you know black squadron and they had black units. Sometimes with a white officer. The RAF integrated the crews from day one. There was never any separation of people on race or culture or creed of any form. And I think it’s actually incredible when you, when you think about what the situation had been merely two years before. And the fact that the RAF and its members were able to adapt so quickly to an integrated environment. And it’s something that I think is a lesson for society. Something which we somehow lost in the current era. And there’s a lot to be learned from the way that was done. What a crisis brought on in those days whereas a crisis today seems to drive people in the opposite direction. So he was now a member of a crew. They had finished their orientation and they were off on their first mission bombing Germany and other parts of Europe. He spoke at length to me about the experience of flying operationally over Europe and about the ethical dimension of the bombing campaign and it was clear to me that he had mixed feelings. They made best efforts to hit the targets that were assigned to them. But of course that was challenging. The technology wasn’t what it is today. There was wind to take into account. They were bombing from twenty or even a thousand feet or even higher. There was the effect of fires on the ground. And uplift that would, updrafts that would result from that. So the bombs could fall all over the place. And these were very large bombs in some cases. Two thousand pound cookies or even larger. Some of the biggest bombs ever produced in terms of conventional munitions. And they knew that they were bombing German cities. They were trying to hit city centres generally but they were aware of the fact that the strategy was to destroy the houses of the factory workers and that meant destroying factory workers in the process. And their families. So, so he talked about that. He knew what they’d been doing. I think that the, at the end of the day the feeling was that the war had been started by Germany. If not by the German people certainly by the German government. The German people had voted for that government. People forget that Hitler was an elected politician. He got the highest share of the vote in 1933 at thirty four percent. The German people had never rebelled against that government even when it had invaded all of its neighbours and other countries. And there were very few strategic or operational alternatives left for Britain. Isolated as it was from the continent by The Channel, to strike back. And Britain did its best with the resources that it had to fight a war and bombing was, strategic bombing was one of the only choices. So I think that’s where he left that argument. That was his view there. He was certainly very proud of his service. He flew a full tour over Germany of thirty three missions. They targeted all manner of sites. Not only cities but also submarine pens, they targeted Heligoland. Heligoland, off the coast of Denmark which was a large anti-aircraft bastion. They targeted a few sights in France but primarily it was Western Germany. The Ruhr and areas like Cologne and so forth. There were occasions on which the aircraft was hit. They flew back on two engines on one occasion. On three engines on another. His squadron and he flew operationally by the way from December 1944 until March 1945 on this first tour of thirty three missions. During that period one or two Ceylon squadron suffered fifty percent casualties in terms of aircraft lost. Four of those aircraft went down during John Blair’s first two weeks with the squadron so during his first two weeks of operations a quarter of his squadron went down. Most, most of the crew were killed. The chance of bailing out of a Halifax was twenty percent and the chance of bailing out alive out of a Lancaster was ten percent at that time. Because of the Lancaster had a smaller hatch. Escape hatch. They had to face many challenges. The weather was a huge challenge. Icing. Navigation over Europe in that era. You had as much chance of being killed by a mid-air collision as you were flying in a bomber stream with a thousand aircraft around you in the dark with no lights. And only a few aircraft had any form of radar. So that was, that was in fact it was so deadly that German night fighter pilots would use the trail of burning RAF aircraft on the ground as a marker of where the bomber stream was. He also had to deal with enemy night fighters equipped with upward facing cannon in the nose. They had to deal with the flak. The anti-aircraft fire. Searchlights. So all manner of threats and he was doing that sitting in a, at a desk on the aircraft plotting courses, giving instructions to the pilot about turns coming up and turns to be taken and altitudes to be arrived at while under fire and trying to ignore the noises around him. Aircraft exploding occasionally in the air nearby. The loss of people they’d met on their base. On a nightly basis. And at the end of that tour he landed on from his final mission. He was met by his wing commander on the ground who presented him with, it wouldn’t have been the actual medal I suspect but presented him with notification of the DFC. Distinguished Flying Cross. And he was then successfully accepted into Pathfinder Squadron. So he volunteered along, Arthur Wint also volunteered for Pathfinders and they were both accepted into the Pathfinder force. And they started training with the Pathfinder force and then the war ended. And John Blair opted to remain with the RAF. He transferred to Transport Command and he ended up flying casualties home from, well he didn’t end up there but at that point he was flying casualties home from what was then Malaya. I think this would have been the second crisis. Possibly the first but I suspect it was the second. And he met his future wife who was a senior nurse on the transport aircraft. And as John Blair put it, ‘I was working while she was gallivanting.’ They were flying out to Malaya with no casualties on board. Her work would begin when they flew back. So I should think she was sticking her head in the cockpit and having a chat. And they married and they had two children. John Blair Junior and Sarah. And this was in London. They subsequently moved back to Jamaica after Uncle John left the RAF in 1963. The RAF paid for his legal education so he became a lawyer before leaving and then he practiced law in May Pen in Clarendon. In South Central Jamaica. And there he remained until his death about ten years ago. Fifteen years ago. His children returned to the UK. They both, in fact I should have mentioned this to you before they both live in London.
Other: And Margaret.
MJ: And Margaret. The reason I haven’t mentioned it is that John Blair didn’t speak of his service to anyone. And in fact when I, when I interviewed him I managed to get him on tape because we’ve got the tapes, for about four hours. And the first question I got from family was how on earth did you get him to talk about it. And I think the answer to that is I was in the local defence forces in Jamaica and that gave me, the uniform service gave me that connection with him that nobody else had. And so he felt I would have some inkling in what he was talking about. So, so I’m not sure that his children would know a great deal. They’d obviously know about his personal life after the war but I’m not sure they have much inkling what happened during the war years. So those are my memories sort of verbatim. Or off the top of my head. I don’t know if you have other questions.
CB: We’ll take a pause there.
MJ: Yeah.
[recording paused]
MJ: His Gazette.
CB: So my question from that thank you very much is if we can just fill in the bit. When John came back to the UK he would have to be familiarised in the British weather and operations so where did he go?
MJ: So he, sorry can you pause it?
CB: Yeah.
MJ: Sorry ‘cause —
[recording paused]
CB: Right. We’re just recapping really on his return to the UK.
MJ: So, well this wouldn’t have been his return because he hadn’t been to the UK previously so this is leaving Canada. Coming to the UK. Following his training in Canada. He was initially posted to an Operational Training Unit in Kinloss. RAF Kinloss. Where, if I’m not wrong he would have been crewed up. And six out of the seven crew members met there including the pilot who picked, who picked the crew. And although Uncle John remembered it the other way around — as the bomb aimer joining them later other research suggests it would have been the engineer, the flight engineer that joined them later. After they’d gone through that process there they were flying on the Whitleys. They were transferred to a Heavy Conversion Unit at RAF Riccall. R I C A L L where they converted to the Halifax 3 bomber. And at this point they’d already been assigned to 102 Ceylon Squadron which flew from Pocklington. So once they’d finished their conversion to the Halifax 3 they arrived in Pocklington and as Uncle John put it on arrival there they were told there’s your plane, this is the target tonight. Off you go. And they were in the thick of things. Following the [pause] his tour the entire crew volunteered or requested transfer to the Pathfinders and were accepted. I’m not sure whether the process was they were accepted or whether they were identified and asked. I suspect it’s more like the latter. And they were in the process of training on Lancasters when the war ended. John Blair, the award for his Distinguished Flying Cross was published in the London Gazette of Tuesday 4 December 1945. But he remained in the RAF until 1963 as I mentioned earlier. Initially he, post war he served in capacities with Transport Command which I haven’t asked him any details of. And he then did a period from 1950 at Martlesham Heath where he was involved in experimental high altitude bombing trials or tests. And in November of the same year he was posted to the Colonial Office where he was tasked with looking after the interests of Colonial servicemen in the army and air force. In parallel with his career as I mentioned he studied law. He joined the middle temple, inn of court and was called to the English Bar in April 1954. Then in August 1954 he was posted to Transport Command. May have been re-posted to Transport Command because I’m pretty sure he was in Transport Command immediately after the war. In 1946. And he was involved in transport flights then in 1954 and through to 1958 including flights to Christmas Island during the very controversial nuclear tests and to destinations such as Australia, Japan, Hong Kong, Aden in the Middle East. I think he was stationed briefly in Aden and Malaya where he was involved in casualty evacuation back to the UK. And as I said earlier that’s where he met his wife Margaret. On one of those flights. Then in 1957 the piston engine aircraft was replaced with the de Havilland Comet and in 1959 John was appointed chief navigation officer of 216 Squadron flying Comets until 1961 when he was posted to the Air Training School. He then left the RAF and returned home to Jamaica in 1963. He joined, where he joined the Jamaica Bar Association and he served as Deputy Clerk of Court for the parish of Clarendon. In June 1966 he returned to aviation and this time as the Deputy Director of Civil Aviation of Jamaica and later acted as Director of Civil Aviation from 1975 to 1979 when he retired. He, however continued to serve when needed as Jamaica’s Inspector of Air Accidents while also running a small legal practice in the town of May Pen. Other interesting points are that in 1995 John Blair was invited to represent Jamaica at the fiftieth anniversary celebrations of the end of the war held in London. Along with several former members of Jamaican and other Caribbean aircrew. Including his close friend Johnnie Banks who was a navigator in Mosquito aircraft. They marched from Greenwich to Buckingham palace. And he recalled that people were standing twenty deep and in fact I asked him when speaking, when he spoke about that about some of his thoughts in terms of his motivation and I’d like to quote a paragraph. Literally they were the last words he spoke to me when he said, “While I was fighting I never thought about defending the British empire or anything else along those lines. I just knew deep down inside that we were all in this together and that what was taking place around our world had to be stopped. That was a war that had to be fought. There were no two ways about that. A lot of people have never thought about what would have happened to them in Jamaica if the Germans had won. But we certainly would have returned to slavery. If a youngster today should ever suggest that we had no business going to fight a white man’s war I would just kick him where it hurts the most.” John Blair DFC, died in Jamaica in 2004 aged eighty five after a prolonged illness. His first operational aircraft MA615 Zulu survived the war but was struck off charge on 7th of October 1946 and scrapped.
CB: Thank you very much. That was a really good, thorough background and I know it will be very valuable with the other documentation that we’ve got. Thank you.
[recording paused]
CB: With your background Mark there are a large number of other people that you’ve been involved with and I wonder if you’ve got one or two snippets of that. That could be really interesting.
MJ: Yes. Several. Several snippets. A few of these are people I spoke to while they were still alive. Others are based on research I’ve done but those people pointed me in the direction of. So I’ve read other interviews or transcripts or books by people. I picked out some I think are representative and I want to deal with the issue of racism as well which I think is important. So the first is Johnny Banks who I met at his home in Kingston in 2004. He flew with a Mosquito squadron. I do have the number. I’ll have to look the number up for you in a minute. Out of an airfield near Cambridge. I also have the name of that in my records. I’ll have to dig that up in a moment. The anecdotes that he gave me one of them was the fact that around the first time he walked in to the officer’s mess on arriving at his squadron. And several people at the bar turned their backs on him and one man started to walk out of the mess because this was the first time a coloured officer had every appeared in this particular officer’s mess. And immediately, within seconds the squadron leader jumped up and said, ‘Now, all of you get back to the bar and stop this nonsense. I’ll have none of that in my squadron.’ And so he was he was then bought a beer and then from that point onwards had no further problems. But that was the initial response. He had, he was a navigator in a Mosquito which is a two, there are only two crew in there. So a pilot and navigator. Navigator bomb aimer was his function and he had one experience when the bomb wouldn’t release and the pilot said, ‘Well we’re going to have to ditch. We can’t land with a great big set of bombs underneath.’ In fact I think that a Mosquito carried the same bomb load or more than a Lancaster. If I’m not wrong. It was capable.
CB: It could take four thousand pounds.
MJ: it could. Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
MJ: So he, - they were over the North Sea and he looked at the North Sea and knew there would be no survival. It was winter and he said, ‘Well I’m sorry. I’m not jumping out of this perfectly serviceable aircraft.’ And they descended, descended, and he kept trying to release the bomb and finally when they’d come quite low, still over the sea it actually detached from the aircraft. So they deduced it must have been ice that was the problem and they were able to land safely. So it just shows the sort of knife edge that they were flying on. Then there was Cy Grant whose name I forgot earlier. He was the the volunteer from one of the many volunteers from British Guyana. He was shot down over Holland on his third op in a Lancaster and parachuted to safety which was a rare event in its own right. And landed in a Dutch farm. And he hid in the field all night. He wasn’t injured. And no idea what he was going to do as a black man in Europe. And eventually was spotted by the farmer who was working his fields and the farmer took him to the farmhouse. Fed him. He had a bath. He had some cuts and bruises that the farmer’s wife looked after and then they chatted about things and decided that the safest option for everyone was for the farmer to call the Dutch police. So they called the Dutch policeman came along on his bicycle and stuck Cy Grant on the bar and they cycled back in a very romantic fashion to the police station. And the police then called the German authorities who sent a couple of soldiers over to pick him up. He wasn’t abused but he was stuck in solitary confinement. Then he was one of the first black aircrew ever to be shot down. This was 1943. 25th of June 1943. He was at 103 squadron flying from Elsham Wolds in North Lincolnshire. And they were on a mission when they were shot down. Their target was Gelsenkirchen in Germany. He, so as I said, was stuck in solitary confinement. And he was then photographed by the Germans and the photograph was published in the German newspapers over the caption, “An RAF airman of indeterminate race.” As Grant was in fact mixed race. He was dark but he had some European and Indian blood in him. He was then taken Stalag Luft iii and at every point of course he imagined the next move was going to be his last. He didn’t imagined that the Germans would take care of a black airman. He was taken to Stalag Luft iii and at the entrance to Stalag Luft iii he was met by the commandant whose name I’ve recorded [pause] who was Colonel von Lindeiner. His full name was a little bit. Here it is Colonel Frederick Wilhelm Gustav von Lindeiner Genannt von Wildau. Who was a real old school German officer of the best type. And he met Grant at the entrance to the camp which was quite unusual and he had in tow a couple of his guards and he said, ‘Now, where are you from?’ And Grant said, ‘I’m from British Guyana.’ And he said, ‘Wonderful. I’ve been there. Lovely place.’ ‘Now you and you look after this man.’ And the guards took Grant in. And Grant saw the commandant on many occasions. He was there for two years in Stalag Luft iii. And every time the commandant saw him he saluted him with his riding crop. And he never had any problems with any of the Germans. The only problem he had was with an American airman from Texas who simply couldn’t handle the concept of a coloured officer. It just didn’t fit in his universe and he used to insult him every time he saw him. Call him the N word and so forth. So, so that was that was interesting. Grant stayed in Stalag Luft iii. The time of The Great Escape he obviously didn’t participate but he was there when they were taken on the Long March at the end of the war. Through the snow to move them away from the advancing Red Army. And he spoke of seeing SS men preparing to defend a wood and he was very intimidated as he walked past the SS men. He said they were huge, well fed men dressed in white and very well equipped and he just found that very intimidating. But he was, he was eventually rescued by the Red Army and then they sent him back to the west. Another person who had a similar experience was Johnny Smythe. Johnny Smythe wasn’t a West Indian. He was actually from Sierra Leone. He was the only volunteer out of ninety from Sierra Leone who was successful. The reason why many West Africans failed was that they had, had malaria within the last twelve months. If you’d had malaria in the last twelve months you didn’t qualify for RAF service and by definition most West Africans therefore were ruled out. Johnny Smythe had two interesting stories to tell. The first was when he arrived he trained in the UK and when he arrived at, the name escapes me. It’ll come back to me. At his UK location he was assigned a batman. And the batman he said was everything he’d grown up to expect of a British batman and he instinctively called his batman sir. And the batman turned to him and said, ‘No sir. It is not you who calls me sir but I who calls you sir. Sir.’ And they got on famously after that. And the batman had been the batman to a member of the royal family who had trained at Henlow. Henlow?
Other: Yes.
MJ: RAF Henlow. Trained at Henlow previously. So there was quite a culture shock for Smythe. Smythe was shot down. He ended up at Stalag Luft i and he recalls the Red Army tanks actually breaking through the wire and he said that the tanks had women soldiers on the back. Riding on the back who smelled of violence he said, they just. The violence. They were reeking of violence and he was then in stages transferring. They were treated well by the Soviets by the way and they were transferred to the west and returned to allied forces. Another little anecdote. Errol Barrow who was, who became the Prime Minister of Barbados was serving member of aircrew and his gravestone actually reads, “Flight Lieutenant Errol Barrow. Formerly of the RAF.” And then in small print below that — “And former Prime Minister of Barbados.”
Other: That’s interesting.
MJ: Yeah. There’s a one little further anecdote. The last one which I think is this gives you a little insight into the day to day reality of the attitudes raised and so forth and so forth. So there were at least three Cuban volunteers who flew with the RAF during the conflict. Although I was unable to identify their names but I have found Cuba RAF shoulder flashes online. And there was a Canadian who had contact with the Cubans in Jamaica. A Canadian called Tom Forsyth who was stationed in Jamaica with one of the Canadian regiments during during the colonial period, during the war. And he tells this story. Says they were playing softball against the Canadian troops. Forsyth, I should say was very very in tune with Jamaica and Jamaicans whereas some of his colleagues were not. And so he witnessed this particular incident. So the Cubans were talking exclusively in Spanish. Talking away at a great rate. And one of our men was up to bat and had one strike on him. He turned to the Cuban catcher and said, ‘Why can’t you talk a white man’s language?’ At the same time the pitcher shot a straight fast one across the plate and the catcher remarked in perfect English, ‘That’s two on you brother.’ The more things change the more they stay the same so.
CB: You mentioned earlier Neil Flanagan.
MJ: Yeah.
CB: So what can you say about him.
MJ: I don’t know Neil well. I’ve met Neil at one event in London that I attended. In fact I gave a short presentation there on my uncle. On the topic of my uncle. And so Neil was the, and still is I believe the president of the Ex-Servicemen’s, the West Indian Ex- Servicemen Association. And seemed very supportive and very active. My prime contact there is actually a former colleague of mine in the Jamaica Defence Force called Paul Chambers who is the secretary of the Association so it was he who introduced me to Neil. So I’ve only had the one.
CB: Who was the man who nearly hit Lincoln Cathedral?
MJ: So that was Billy Strachan, Strachan.
Other: Strachan.
MJ: Strachan yeah we say Strachan in Jamaica.
Other: Strachan.
Other 2: Strachan.
MJ: Yeah. Yeah Strachan in England. And he, he was a pilot. He had actually started out as a wireless operator, and he was, was, was able to switch to flight training, and so I think he did, he did several missions as a wireless operator, switched to flight training, became a pilot and then he flew if I’m not wrong it was fifteen missions as a pilot. And it wasn’t Halifaxes or Lancasters. It might have been Stirlings. And he had a very near miss taking off fully laden, heading for Europe and thought he had cleared Lincoln Cathedral and when he asked his flight engineer to confirm that, the flight engineer out pointed that the spire of Lincoln Cathedral was just at that moment passing in the mist about three feet from their wing tip. And that was it for him. He was not shy about admitting that he just couldn’t do any more. I think, I think he’d done a total of about twenty five missions altogether. Fifteen as a pilot. But I stand to be corrected on those numbers. But it was in that sort of region.
CB: Good. Thank you very much.
MJ: You’re welcome.
[recording paused]
MJ: There may be different perspectives.
CB: That’s what I mean.
MJ: Oh yes.
CB: I’ll pass it around.
MJ: Yeah. Ok.
[recording paused]
CB: We’re now on part two where we’re going to talk about the topic of the racial perspective because we have a situation where people from Jamaica clearly looked fundamentally different from people from Europe and not really understand what was the social fabric from which they were coming. So Mark if we start with you your perception therefore you described a bit earlier. What were, what was the structure of society? As the hierarchy.
MJ: So I think it’s very complicated. Because there’s, you could cut it and dice it in different ways. You’ve got, there’s a racially obviously element in that the bulk of the population in Jamaica – eighty, ninety percent are of black African origin. Many of them are what people would describe as pure African people even today. And traditionally of course they arrived as slaves. At the other end of the spectrum — you have those whites who were either landowners or in some position of governance and then there was a tier below them of overseers because many of the landowners didn’t actually want to live in Jamaica. They had property there but they found it too arduous so they appointed largely Scottish and Irish overseers who were of course it was a rough and ready time but more likely to integrate with the local population. With the slave population. And that integration had a sexual dimension which is very rarely discussed. My perception, having done a fair amount of research into the topic is that in fact I have facts to back this up. So I can use as an example my family. So my origins on one side are from the product of a slave owner named James Blair who originated in Ayr in Scotland and who was the fourth son of James Blair of Dunskey who was a distant descendant of James the 1st. He arrived in Jamaica, and in the mid-1820s and he first took up position as a Scotsman as one of his overseers. So he was running a sugar estate belonging to an Englishman. He later acquired his own lands in St Elizabeth. And an estate called Hopeton. Now, James Blair had sixteen children with three slave women but the interesting fact is that the slave women he had children with were not his property. They were the property of the adjacent estate. And the owner of the adjacent estate had a number of children with slaves who were Mr Blair’s property. So what and this is over a period of years and what, by the way those women were all twelve years old at the time they first conceived. So what appears to have been happening was that when a female slave child reached a certain age – twelve, thirteen. The owner of that slave would let his neighbour know that the time was now ripe. And that person would jump into his horse and buggy. Ride over to the adjacent estate, have relations with the slave girl who was somebody else’s property and then that favour would be returned in due course. And from that I surmise, this is all educated guesswork that an important motive was probably not to undermine authority. So you don’t want to have, you know ripped a girl from her parents on your own estate, had children with her at a young age — even by the standards of the day was a young age and then have to deal with, first of all you’ve had relations with this girl who is your slave. Secondly you’ve got the girl’s children running around. And thirdly you’ve got her brothers and sisters and parents on your estate as well. It will just create too complex a situation to manage. So they had this routine in place where they, they made this transaction. And it leads me to wonder whether, to an extent and, given human nature the slave market wasn’t as much a place of assignation as it was a commercial market. That men would go to the slave market with two things in mind. Acquiring property but also acquiring attractive young girls who they could use or have others use and get their own benefit from that in the future. So, so I think this is never it’s not in any of the books that you read at school. Ok. It’s never really spoken off but given what we know of human nature and given what we know of the world today it would astound me to learn that that was not an important motive for slavery. And that leads you to think that a lot of the feeling that remains in society because Jamaica is still a society. Even you know hundreds of years after the abolition of slavery in which slavery is mentioned routinely. In which animosity towards white people on the part of black people is frequently uttered and in which there is a stark divide between the mixed raced primarily middle class part of Jamaica and the primarily black working class. And I think that a lot of that stems from that time when people were seen as being favoured. People were seen as being exploited and an exploitation that goes beyond labour. It’s not about the exploitation of labour. It’s the molestation of an entire people by another people. And even though it’s been erased as a clear memory that feeling remains. So everything about Jamaica that needs to be understood in terms of the war and volunteering and attitudes towards volunteers as many people did not like the volunteers. A lot of black Jamaicans thought they were traitors. A lot of that has its roots in the period of slavery and can’t be understood without that context.
CB: So now fast forward to 1930s and the time when John Blair was at home.
MJ: Yes.
CB: At school. What was the social hierarchy in the schools?
MJ: So in the 1930s not a lot had changed from the 1830s. So, we were still a colonial nation. We still had British masters. A white man and this was, this was true when I was a boy. You know, when I, when I returned to England I was intimidated by the postman [laughs] because he was white and I’d grown up in a country in which if you were white you are superior unless you just happened to be a drunk. With the odd exception but generally speaking white men are superior. And that’s how they’re regarded and that would have been very much the case I suspect in the 1930s, that the white men were the teachers, the lawyers, the doctors, the government ministers or whatever they were called in those days the secretary for this and the secretary for that, and of course representative of the Commonwealth Office or hierarchy. The governor general. The governor. So, so it would have been this and this is one thing that I’m not being negative I’m actually, as I said earlier — this is one thing that amazes me about the transformation that occurred because they weren’t, they weren’t say going through a transformation that would be needed even today for say, you know a black underprivileged boy from London to join the RAF and become an officer. That would be a challenge today. They were going through a much more challenging process than that. Ten times more challenging. As a, and it was also of course a time of course when hierarchy and status were much more important than they are today and face and honour, and these sort of concepts. So you had a very stratified society. It wasn’t just stratified as black and white. There were other dimensions. In addition to having African and mixed race and European people you had Indian and Chinese populations. And in some islands and on the mainland you had native American populations. In Guyana they had what they called the bush Indians who were basically not even included in the census but who formed a large part of the population. So you had divides there. And the Chinese and Indian populations had taken up different positions in society when they arrived. The Chinese had, and both had arrived post slavery and had been brought in by the British because many former slaves, African slaves, refused to work on the British estates any longer. The Indians, to a degree sort of remained in that labour version for a long time. They were still cutting sugar cane a hundred years later. Some of them had gone in to business but in the main these were lower class Indians. Working class Indians who would only cut sugar cane in India and were continuing to cut sugar cane. The Chinese on the other hand didn’t adopt those positions for long at all. They very quickly moved into owning shops.
Other: Shopkeepers.
MJ: Yeah. Primarily and other forms of business. But shop keeping initially and even today anywhere you go in Jamaica you will find Mr Chin running the shop and he’ll have three or four Jamaicans guys working for him. And Mrs Chin will be doing the accounts. And they keep it in the family. Coincidentally I was in Mauritius a couple of weeks and it’s exactly the same arrangement and Mr Chin runs the shop in Mauritius too. And so very similar.
Other: And Mr Chin runs —
CB: And so —
Other: Sorry.
CB: So just moving on we’ve also got here Maurice Johnson who is Mark’s father. So it’s a great pleasure to see you here as well. So from the generation shift.
MJ2: Sure. Sure.
CB: How did you see, what was the structure of society in the 30s.
MJ2: Yes.
CB: And into the 40s?
MJ2: Yes. I was going to say that the Chinese [pause] they came as indentured labour and much more progressive and business oriented. As a result on a public holiday if the Jamaican hadn’t shopped it would be a problem now. If the Chinese man hadn’t opened his grocers shop he’d starve. Just a simple thing like that. Today there’s a big debate going on about reparations for our, should we — David Cameron came down not long ago before he left office and parliament tackled on him on that reparations. Some people have not accepted that there’s a need for that. They want to move on. It’s a big debate. I’m not sure where I stand but what, what, what’s the population is very concerned about this. Who is going, how are you going to get reparations. Who’s going to receive it? How’s it going to be distributed? Who will benefit? You know. But the whole question of colour — it’s the people who came to the RAF for example in the officer strata would have the benefit of being properly educated. Sometimes colour —
Other: Lighter complexion.
MJ2: Lighter complexion, texture of hair, all those little intricacies but so they would naturally be more confident in you know, how they presented themselves. The people who would probably come into that what do you call it the ground crew order wouldn’t have that benefit. I mean that started from the whole slave scenario which Mark outlined about the interfacing with the light complexioned girl. That is still very important there, you know. The texture of your skin.
CB: So the structure of society was partly based on a racial —
MJ2: Yes or a body.
CB: Component. That is to say the more manual workers were the blacker ones.
MJ2: Yeah.
CB: And the middle class were the more —
MJ2: Yes.
Other: Light ones.
MJ2: And if you had a mixture would reflect in the hair.
CB: Right.
MJ2: So hair was, not so much now, it’s dying out but the texture of your hair was more important than your complexion.
CB: Ok. So what are we talking about texture of the hair?
Other: Curliness.
MJ2: Either curly or –
CB: The length of it?
Other2: Yes the —
Other: Straightness of it.
Other2: Straightness of it.
CB: Right. Ok.
MJ2: A mother of an attractive girl would be very reluctant to have, they would call it unruly hair. You know. Or unmanageable hair.
CB: Right.
MJ2: As well as with racial but it was very complicated and islands differ as Mark said. Barbados – straight line between white and black. And black were much more educated than white. In Barbados, Barbados white persons were merchants but not very savvy with Latin. You had people in Barbados speaking Latin.
CB: So you both mentioned —
MJ2: For orderly society.
CB: Yeah.
MJ2: Boring in a way but very orderly.
CB: You both mentioned mixed race so how –
MJ2: Yeah.
CB: So in Barbados for instance how does that get differentiated between black and white?
MJ2: Not much mixture. No.
CB: Ok.
Other2: I mean they get on well together but hardly any, not like Jamaica where you have —
CB: Quite a lot of mixed race.
MJ2: A variety of colour schemes.
CB: Ok. Now we’re also lucky to have Sidney McFarlane here as a trustee of the Lincolnshire Bomber Command Memorial Trust, and born in Jamaica. So Sidney how do you see this point about the education and the splits that we’re talking about. Particularly in the Blair context. So in the 30s and into the 40s how was the education sectored? Were certain types of people in certain types of school or did everybody go to the same school?
SM: Oh it all depends on — family incomes start to play an important part in this because the 1944 Education Act in the UK didn’t extend to the colonies. Where everyone could have a free education from beyond primary school to secondary school. So unless you won a bursary or a scholarship you left school at what we call elementary school or primary school. Some colleges offer half bursary and if your parents could afford it Kingston Technical College which had a night school. You could go there. And in fact I was, part of my education was Kingston Technical School. But society in Jamaica much to what Mark and Maurice had just said it’s split between racial lines. The lighter your complexion the better your chance you have of getting a job or whatever. Your background. Parents. I was fortunate that because of my connection with the church I remember my first job was a result, and this was during the school holidays a letter from my priest to a store and I was employed. Another person of my ilk or complexion without that would not be even looked at because all the people in the store were light skinned and I was dark. So that played a very important part. Certainly pre-independence all the top jobs were always a Jamaican could rise to deputy but he couldn’t go beyond deputy. All the top jobs were by an English colonial civil servant who was in charge. It was something that I, growing up as a lad I always sort of noticed. With aspiration you’re thinking I’m never, I’m never going to be the Chief Education Officer because that post was reserved. And this is why I think a lot of Jamaicans even know we are independent have a certain amount of resentment how things have developed. But certainly the racial element — you mentioned Barbados. Barbados is what we used to call and still call the island of all of us and we have poor whites. But they could have integrated and they haven’t moved on to society. To other colonies it’s reversed where the whites are on top in Barbados. They have the big strongest colony of sort of white people who are just ordinary people. Haven’t sort of made it.
CB: Right. Going back to mark now. How do you see in this case John Blair from the society of Jamaica and how he was in the hierarchy there? Then coming to Britain to join the RAF. What sort of racial or foreign aspect, considerations were there in his reception shall we say?
MJ: So John Blair in Jamaica prior to leaving Jamaica was a solidly middle class educated man. A teacher as I said earlier. And self-confident and highly regarded by the bulk of the population. He then travels to Britain. Certainly the experience on the American ship would have been a wake-up call. And in fact I need to quote Cy Grant who spoke about this particular issue. Cy Grant said that when he arrived in Britain it was the first time he realised that he was black. Because in the West Indies he was regarded as relatively light skinned. And suddenly on arrival in England it was brought home to him that he wasn’t. He was just another black man. And I suspect that John, and John Blair described himself at one point as just a little black boy caught in a certain situation in the barracks. So, so this recognition of one’s own blackness I suspect was an awakening for many. Others arrived and I mean there were some very dark skinned aircrew and ground crew who would have had no doubt that they were black throughout their lives and they would have probably had less of a shock. But then what I, what I imagined from my own experience of life is that all of those men would have actually found themselves bound closer together then they had been previously. Some of the class distinctions between them might have softened a little bit. Certainly for the duration of the war because now they were all part of one minority. However, John Blair is a very and many of the others being an educated man, being a thoughtful man, a very good communicator he was certainly the kind of person who wouldn’t be prevented from engaging with his white peers and colleagues. And, and certainly he adopted many British mannerisms. He became very, very RAF, you know. Talking about kites and prangs and all that sort of things and seems to have integrated. And to a very great extent while remaining Jamaican. He was always Jamaican. He came back to Jamaica in the 60s but, but he seems to have done a good job of integrating and being accepted. So it’s a barrier but it doesn’t necessarily have to be an insurmountable barrier unless you make it one yourself.
Other: That’s right.
CB: One of the interesting points about the heavy bomber crews is how they were the family.
MJ: Yes.
CB: So they did everything together.
MJ: Yeah.
CB: Particularly if they were all NCOs.
MJ: Yeah.
CB: How did John Blair feel about his crew and relationships?
CB: He was very attached to his crew. His pilot was Canadian. Ralph Pearson. John Blair, even fifty years on, one of his first comments was the fact that when the war ended they were broken up so quickly that he was unable to track his pilot down before he returned to Canada. And he actually on an RAF flight ended up in Vancouver where Pearson was from and went to the home address. The family had moved on and he searched for him and couldn’t find him. He was very upset about that even fifty years later. He did tell another anecdote. He was walking down the street one day. A black man in London. And a policeman tapped him on the shoulder and said, ‘Excuse me, sir.’ and he immediately thought he was going to be arrested and then he realised it was one of the rear gunners. The tail gunners.
Other2: [unclear]
CB: From his aircraft.
Other2: Ok.
CB: And they had a reunion in a pub.
Other2: Fantastic.
CB: But his first reaction was fear because he was wearing a police uniform. So he was very attached to the crew and there was no sort of racial element to that. That they were just the crew.
CB: And now going to Maurice. What’s your perception of, as the nephew, what’s you perception of his acceptance of the RAF and by the people in the RAF.
MJ2: Yes. And that would have started me observing him from when I was in my teens.
CB: Right.
MJ2: Come back on leave.
CB: Yeah.
Other: Although he didn’t share much I realised he was a deep person. Very observant. Very intelligent. And when I came to live over here and still here and he was the one who sort of facilitated and my brother who came ahead of me. We really looked up to him. Almost like a bigger brother. He, we had the same approach to leisure time if I can put it like that. We’d meet him in London. He’d show you around, show you the ropes, have a drink. No airs about him. Still didn’t tell us much though. I only learned that because of your research. All those things about him. We knew he’d been through a lot of danger but I really admired him and he was my mother’s youngest brother. And she almost adored him. I, later on in life when he came back to retire, you know. Well came back to do law and then retired I was very upset about his whole health deterioration. You know, became almost a shadow of himself and in fact I think the last time tears came to my eyes when I had to take him in to the nursing home where he had his last days. And that was really you know, yeah. He took it stronger than everybody else but you know that really hit me.
CB: Having returned to Jamaica did he, after many years in the RAF because he joined in ‘42 and left in ’63 – did he feel in some way a fish out of water when he got me back?
MJ2: Not really. He didn’t become secluded because he did interface with some of our ex-RAF personnel although he wasn’t, I got the impression he didn’t like going to — they have a place where they have a club almost. Where is that?
Other2: [unclear] Place.
Other: [unclear] Place.
[unclear] place. The Legion.
Other: Yes.
Other: Fairly close to the camp, right?
CB: British Legion Club.
Other: British Legion. Didn’t get the feeling that he was relaxed there.
Other2: No.
Other: Couldn’t put a finger on it. Possibly. I don’t know if I should say this but some of the other people in there I don’t think they saw active service. They were pretending to.
CB: Yeah.
Other: And I think he he took a dim view of that.
CB: And he’d been decorated as well.
Other: Yes. I don’t think he was being snobbish but —
CB: He felt at a disadvantage.
Other: Yes. He didn’t feel at home there.
CB: Yeah.
Other: That’s the impression I got.
CB: Ok then changing to Stanley. You’ve seen people from joining the RAF in the mid 50s who have had experience of lots of things. How many people did you come across who had served in the RAF who were West Indies born?
SM: A great number actually because most of us emigrated here just after Windrush. Post Windrush. In fact, I came to England with four other youngsters in our sort of late teens, early twenties and they all went in to the air force eventually. Some migrated since. I came at the back end of National Service and was called up for National Service. Most of my mates escaped it but one or two joined voluntarily later on. But moving forward from those days although there are still problems of racism I think because of the air force law, the Air Force Act and Queen’s Regulations it was subdued or oppressed. Or if you handled it rightly people would be taken to task. One of the problems we had with some of our countryman is that West Indians tend to be a little hot headed and don’t suffer fools gladly. They’d have their rights and lose it because they’d try and punch or be aggressive to a senior NCO. Someone with an extra stripe on their hands and you could end up on a charge and I spent a great deal of my time actually doing some mentoring. Some of my fellow West Indians to let them develop a reasonable career. Because they were getting into trouble by just being their gestures or shouting. Could quite easily in those days if somebody has two chevrons on your arms and you haven’t you could be in trouble. Because a corporal could put you on a charge. It could be very dangerous. I think I was very fortunate that my wife then was my girlfriend when I got called up insisted we got married before I went in. And my issue sometimes I was upset but I didn’t take it out aggressively because I was always thinking about what would my wife say if I’m chucked in to the guardroom. So I was always very careful and able to manage it in a way that my career prospered. So I completed thirty years without being charged for any offence. Having gone through the ranks and got commission at a time, which was a bit of luck and management. And having the ability to look at a strategy how to bypass certain people like the sergeant who tried to give me a hard time. Didn’t want to give me a trained trade a wind up about certain administrative procedures. And my wife, then I went home and my wife says to me, I said, ‘I’m not going back.’ I’d paid thirteen, thirteen shillings it was from Bath to, to Shepherds Bush on a long weekend. We used to get what we called a command stand down every month. Where you have Saturday mornings off so you can leave on Friday. And I was put on duty clerk and I was told, just as I was about to leave that I would be on forever more. I noticed up until that time there was a weekly roster. And I thought this can’t be right. So when I got home and explain to my wife. She said, ‘You’ve got to go back.’ I said, ‘Well I’m not going back.’ She said, ‘You’ve got to go back. There must be somebody else you can speak to, you know. Above the sergeant.’ So I got back and on a Monday morning they should say to me this was a wind up. There’s a new roster out. You did it last week. But nobody said anything. So I went off to early lunch as usual still really quite worked up. So after lunchtime because part of your duties as key orderly you do the teas. In those days the youngest or junior man in the post does the tea. You can’t do this today in today’s air force with an airman. There was a flight lieutenant I took his cup of tea in to him and I said, ‘Sir, can I speak to you for a moment, sir? I’ve got a grievance.’ And he said, ‘Sit down McFarland. What’s the problem?’ And I explained to him about this duty clerk thing and he said, ‘Tell Sergeant Wilkins to come in and see me.’ Well the sergeant went in and when he came out I was supposed to be preparing to take what they called a trade test because I was supposed to be on the job training as apart from going on a course. Formal course. And he came back and he opened the bookcase and he showed me all the Air Ministry orders and all the other bits and pieces and he said, ‘What you need to know for your trade test can be found in these books. You’ll be trade tested in a week’s time.’ So he was setting me up for failure wasn’t he?’ There was no time for preparation. Well what he didn’t know that you know I had other strategies. There were other people that had done the courses and I did a lot of research. And in the week’s time I took the test and passed it. And when you passed the trade test you had a choice. Either you go clerk administration or clerk personnel and part of my research when I was preparing for the trade test I had to go to station headquarters where you look after personal records, careers and so on and that part interested me. Dealing with people. So I said, ‘I’ve done equally well in personnel. I’d like to transfer to personnel.’ Because that got me away from the sergeant in to a new environment and that’s how I overcame that. But that was thanks to the wife really. Where a lot of young, a lot of us weren’t married and were single. You could have said the wrong thing to the sergeant you were in the guardroom so you’ve lost your case.
Other: Yeah.
SM: So from the early days I was still unhappy with the air force for a number of reasons as a National Serviceman. But nonetheless you were being given incentive to sign on because it was post-war and they were building up the service again. And so you had financial incentive. So by signing on my marriage allowance went up so my pay went up from two pounds fifty a week to seven pounds fifty a week with marriage allowance and signing on. You get an extra railway warrant for being a regular and an extra week’s leave. So everything was an improvement. Signed on for three years and then things were looking good. First child was on its way. Signed on for five years but still think, insisting that I’m coming out. And then it got a change. I was posted to, for one year, an unaccompanied tour in Bahrain which I tried to get out of and couldn’t. So I went and said look this is like real punishment. I might as well throw in my lot with this organisation. And thereafter I signed on for twelve years and so it went on.
CB: Let me just go back to this comment about this sergeant and what he was doing to you. What was the basis of his wind up? Was this a, was this is a racialist? Is that what you’re saying?
SM: Well he didn’t do the wind up.
CB: Or the others?
SM: This is difficult to tell. The others did it but he was aware of it and he did nothing about it.
CB: Right.
SM: And Mark said earlier about leadership and he didn’t have the its either deliberate and you expect a senior NCO to have better leadership qualities. It was either deliberate because he was a racist or B he shouldn’t have had the rank that he had because he should have said on the Monday morning you’d better tell McFarland that he’s no longer duty clerk. It was a windup. He let it go on.
CB: Yeah. Sure.
SM: He let it carry on you see.
CB: Because some windups are actually nothing to do with one’s origins.
SM: Absolutely. Absolutely.
CB: So I’m just trying to differentiate between one of those practical jokes that goes wrong and the possibility that this was a racially motivated.
SM: The moment I got back on the Monday morning after the long weekend he should have said to the corporal, the lads stood down. They had a new roster already prepared but it just wasn’t up on the poster.
CB: Right.
SM: And he said you’re on this until the next man is posted in.
CB: Right. Going back to Mark now. You’re going back, if we may, to John Blair. As a final point here. To what extent do you think he felt throughout his RAF career that he was differentiated in some way with other people in terms of his rank or his opportunities or whatever? Because he was in till ’63 still as a flight lieutenant.
MJ: Yes. I asked him that question. He was very clear in his response that he never felt that he ever suffered any sort of racism in the RAF. Hence his loyalty to the organisation. And although his rank didn’t change there were other members of black aircrew who achieved quite impressive ranks at the same time. So there certainly wasn’t an institutional bias. I think there was a Coastal Command officer who became a group captain. And there was a prominent gentleman at Marham who became a, he was a squadron leader.
CB: There were several wing commanders.
MJ: Several wing commanders. Ulric, Ulric Cross, Ulric Cross.
Other: Ulric. Became a squadron leader.
MJ: Ulrich became a squadron leader.
Other: DFC and Bar. DFC and Bar.
MJ: Yeah. And the most decorated of the black aircrew.
Other: Yeah. Yeah.
MJ: And so I don’t think they were in any way, you know being favoured.
Other: No.
MJ: You got promoted based on circumstance and performance and other factors. I think being in Transport Command might have limited his prospects to an extent. So no. He was, he was very clear that he had never felt that.
CB: Ok. 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 Mark Johnson
Creator
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Chris Brockbank
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-08-30
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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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AJohnsonM160830
Format
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01:33:57 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Second generation
United States Army Air Force
Description
An account of the resource
Mark Johnson reminisces about John Blair. He discusses family life in rural Jamaica as a mixed-ethnicity person, highly respected by everyone. He was a qualified teacher, a lawyer, and a farmer. Reminisces other Caribbeans who volunteered and served in the Royal Air Force and other armed forces during the war. Mentions Winston Churchill’s and King King George VI’ speeches; stresses the ethical dimension of the bombing campaign and discusses the differences between American and British air forces in dealing with ethnical minorities. Mentions Arthur Wint, Jamaican Olympic gold medallist who joined the Royal Air Force and became a pilot.
Spatial Coverage
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Jamaica
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
102 Squadron
103 Squadron
African heritage
aircrew
bombing
Distinguished Flying Cross
Halifax
Halifax Mk 3
military ethos
Mosquito
Operational Training Unit
Pathfinders
perception of bombing war
pilot
prisoner of war
RAF Elsham Wolds
RAF Kinloss
RAF Pocklington
RAF Riccall
Stalag Luft 1
Stalag Luft 3
training
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/255/3402/PLairdCraig1701.1.jpg
dd35678b5dd714fa6ca7f93d8b04d077
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/255/3402/AFoisterMS171010.1.mp3
42bc4842674a2bca0286d57de31c3599
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Foister, Mary Stanley
Alan Laird Crag and Mary Stanley Foister
Alan Laird Craig
A Laird Craig
Mary Stanley Foister
Mary S Foister
Mary Foister
M S Foister
M Foister
Mary Stanley-Smith
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with Mary Stanley Foister (nee Stanley Smith, formerly Laird Craig )(1921 - 2017, 2028611 Woman's Auxiliary Air Force).
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-10-10
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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LairdCraig
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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HB: This is an interview between Harry Bartlett from the International Bomber Command Centre Digital Archive and Mary Foister. Mary was, formerly, the wife of Wing Commander Alan John Laird Craig, but Mary, in her own right, was an RAF officer. The interview is taking place at [redacted] Hoby, Leicestershire. It’s Tuesday the 10th of October 2017, and the time is 10.05am. Mary, thank you for doing this interview, for agreeing to this interview. Could you just tell me a little about your background before you joined the RAF?
MF: Yes. Well I was born in Buckinghamshire and we moved to Pound Farm in a little village in Buckinghamshire, near Princes Risborough. I was the eldest grandchild on my father’s side so I was very spoilt because of all the uncles and aunts, and the youngest one on my mother’s side so I was spoilt because I was the youngest. So I had a very happy childhood. And then my father came into some property in a place called Walters Ash, a village, Walters Ash and Knaphill, up on the hill, about five miles away from where we were and his home was there, his original home from the farm, and then suddenly, we had a boy next door called Alan Oakcroft, who lived next door to us, was in the Air Force, and he was constantly, stationed at Abingdon, constantly flying over the house and we thought oh he was just being friendly, you know. But eventually he said to my father, ‘Ernest I must come and see you officially, we’re going to take over your’ - daddy had the lease on Bradenham Manor and the land and the farming you see – ‘we are going to take over your Bradenham Manor land for Bomber Command Headquarters.’ This is why he’d been flying over, taking all the things you see, all the photographs.
HB: What year was that, Mary? Can you remember?
MF: That would be about, er, I think about ’36 ’37, yes, about then, and so well, it was absolutely amazing. He’d been chosen to do it because he’s a local boy and they thought he would know the. So they took over Walters Ash Farm, which was my father’s home, and, well it changed the whole village of course, and built Bomber Command Headquarters there. I mean we were very much a farming family, nothing to do with the services at all, but we used to go to the mess and I said to my father ‘I want to join the WAAF’ and he said ‘whatever for, you’ve got your own bedroom, you’ve got your own pony’ [laughter]. I said I want to join the WAAF, so I joined the WAAF. And I was sent to, and he had friends in the Headquarters, he said I don’t want her to go too far away so I was sent to Bicester, which was an Officer’s Training Unit for bombers and I had, well he used to come down and see me every weekend, you know, check up on me. He said ‘you’re not going to stay in are you?’ I said yes, I loved it, ‘cause I loved boarding school and so that was that. And I was at Bicester as a corporal, I got my commission, went to Windermere for the officer training thing and then the only thing I’d done after leaving school was done an admin course in London, shorthand typing, and so I was sent to Newcastle on Tyne for an admin course, and I had about three months there and that was fun because it was near Edinburgh, we used to pop up and you know, then my posting came through. By this time of course I’d got a commission.
HB: What rank were you then Mary? When you got your commission, what rank would you be then?
MF: Oh, Assistant Section Officer, ASO, [laugh] the lowest of the low. So, you see my father obviously wanted me back at Bomber Command under his control, nice control, and I didn’t want to go back to Bomber Command because it was Headquarters and they were all old all me! I was about eighteen at the time you see, so I had this friend there and he said there’s a good posting going at Exning near Newmarket, at a Bomber Group Headquarters.
HB: Exning?
MF: Number 3 Group Headquarters. So I was posted there as ASO, Assistant Section Officer, to Air Vice Marshal Richard Harrison, who had been left at the altar so he didn’t like women, so he wasn’t very receptive. [Laughter]
HB: Oh dear!
MF: But we tamed him [laughter] anyway, yes, we became great friends in the end, so that was, as I say, my first posting and I was his PA for, oh goodness I can’t think, and I avoided Bomber Command like the plague because I didn’t want to go home, you know, but eventually I got posted to up Bomber Command right at the end of the war, as the war ended, to Bomber Harris, a little bit, about six weeks of him, and that was quite enough, and then to, my last posting was Air Vice Marshal, Air Marshal Sir Norman Bottomley, who was an absolute dear, lovely to work for. In the meantime Alan had, he was the youngest Wing Commander in the Royal Air Force at twenty one, he had a spectacular career, very well decorated and he was chosen, his squadron was chosen to go to the Far East and then that war stopped, so what do we do.
HB: The Japanese war.
MF: So he trained Lancasters to do formation flying which had never been done with Lancasters, been done with fighters but never done with bomber aircraft you see, and this impressed Bomber Harris, and Bomber Harris’s PA came from Rio de Janeiro, can’t think of his name now, anyway, and he said ‘I want three white Lancasters to take my PA back to Rio.’ So he had three white Lancasters, and Alan was the chief pilot, back to Rio and they were gone for six weeks. Of course you know they made so much a fuss after the war, and they gave them a wonderful time, so I thought well that’ll be the end of that, I shall never see him again, but I did and came back and Alan was stationed at Gravely in Huntingdonshire then, RAF Gravely, which was Pathfinder Squadron, under Don Bennett, and so I was at, I was on leave, in the south of France with my mother and I said ‘I have to go back on duty’ because I thought I’m going to see that squadron come in. So I came back all the way from France, to Gravely, to see 35 Squadron come in, back from Rio de Janeiro. But Alan never spoke to me, I mean we’d been quite friendly, but I thought well that’s the end of that. A week later he phoned up and said ‘hello, how are you’, and I said ‘I’m all right’ [laugh] and he said ‘well shall we meet in London’. So I said ‘yes, fine, where?’ he said ‘oh meet at the Dorchester’. So we met at the Dorchester and he said ‘oh, I’ve been posted’, I said ‘oh goodness, really, where?’ And he said Buenos Aires. He said will you marry me? I said yes! [Laughter]
HB: As quick as that!
MF: Anyway, because of this trip to Rio, they more or less said to him what would you like to do and he said I’d like to go back to Rio, but he went to Buenos Aires and so in a month, my mother was very sort of formal person, you know in dress and everything, we had to have a white wedding in London and one thing and the other and we were married at St Peter’s, Vere Street, and then the reception at the Dorchester, and well, then within a fortnight we sailed for BA, I got out of the WAAF and.
HB: What year was that, Mary?
MF: ’40 - when did the war end?
HB: ‘45.
MF: ’46. November ’46. I got married on November the 9th ‘46. And we sailed from Tilbury on the Highland Chieftain, had a wonderful three week trip across to BA, and that was that, you know, so then I found I was pregnant with that one – straight away! [Laugh] So Gavin was born out there.
HB: So you had to resign your commission when you got married?
MF: Oh yes. Yes, yes.
HB: Can I just take you back Mary, a little bit, just a little bit, because I was intrigued, you actually started, once you were qualified at Bicester, you went out to Ixney. Ixney? How have I written it down? You qualified at Bicester, but you, for a period of time you ended, you were with Harris.
MF: Oh! At the end, that was when I was commissioned, right at the end you see.
HB: Ah right! So prior to working for Harris, what would your job entail being the PA, before Harris, because you were PA to, um, at 3 Group.
MF: Harris was before BA you see.
HB: Yep. Sorry, PA, you were personal assistant to?
MF: Bomber Harris.
HB: Before Harris.
MF: Um, well to the man at Newmarket, at Exning.
HB: At Exning, Exning, right. It’s all right, I’d just lost, I lost a little bit of the continuity there, I thought we’d.
MF: No, I didn’t want to go back to Bomber Command so that’s when I got posted to Exning, near Newmarket in Suffolk, and I was PA to Air Vice Marshal Harrison.
HB: Yup. Harrison! That’s what caused me the confusion. It’s Harrison and then Harris!
MF: Harris. Ah yes, As I say he was left at the altar so he was anti women!
HB: Yes, but you talked him round. Wonderful. So you went out to BA, as a new bride, you’re then expecting Gavin. How long were you out in Buenos Aires?
MF: How long?
HB: How long were you in Buenos Aires?
MF: I think about two years, yes.
HB: So Gavin was born.
MF: Born out there.
HB: Out there. So what was Alan doing at the time?
MF: Well he was Assistant Air Attaché.
HB: Ah, right.
MF: To a man called Beisegel. B E I S E G E L. So they, we had Paraguay, Uruguay and the Argentine. We never got into Paraguay ‘cause they were always having a war [laugh], we got into Uruguay a lot, which was nice, and Buenos Aires of course which was enormous, so we went right down the south and travelled all over the Argentine.
HB: Right. So you were down in South America for two years.
MF: Two years, yes.
HB: What happened then? How did you?
MF: Then we came back, then we came back to earth a bit because they’d caught up with, Alan had been, way, way back, back in Coastal Command, earlier on in his career and they wanted a Chief Flying Instructor at Kinloss, in Scotland, so we went from Buenos Aries to Kinloss.
HB: Hmm. So that would be 1948, ’49 [phone tone] I’ll just have to pause the interview a minute. I’m just going to resume the interview that we temporarily paused. So, you’ve arrived at RAF Kinloss, what was Alan doing there? What was his job there?
MF: He was Chief Flying Instructor.
HB: Right. And what kind of aircraft, what kind of aircraft would he be flying there?
MF: Good heavens, I ought to know. I can’t remember at the moment.
HB: Shackletons perhaps?
MF: No, I don’t think so. Huh.
HB: It doesn’t matter, it’s not a major. So you were in quarters, living in.
MF: Well no, there weren’t any quarters; we lived in these little cottages. This one used to slide along on his bottom because he couldn’t, on lino you know, they were very barely furnished and suddenly one day he stood up and walked and I rang Alan and said: ‘Gavin’s walking!’ [Laugh]
HB: Lovely! That was in Findhorn village, in the village.
MF: Yes.
HB: So how long were you at Kinloss?
MF: [Sigh] Well, I, my daughter was born when I was up there, but I went south to my mother to have my daughter. I was away for a month because she said you can’t have that baby up here, so I went south and had my daughter. We were there about two and a half years, I think. Such a long time ago now, to remember all these things.
HB: Well you’re doing very well [much laughter]. I have to say, extremely well! So what was, when you first came back, from Buenos Aires, what was the biggest change you noticed in this country, having been living abroad for two years? You would have come back in 1948.
MF: Hmm. Well, I don’t know, you see my mother and sister came out to Buenos Aires for three months with us, to stay out there, and then they came home well, I don’t, well what biggest change, I don’t know. Can’t really think of anything.
HB: You found everything fairly settled.
MF: Well, much the same really. I mean obviously, I mean there was still food rationing when we came back. Course, when we went to Scotland that didn’t apply, I mean there was no rationing up there.
HB: Oh! No!
MF: No. Well not literally no, ‘cause you could get anything you wanted.
HB: Yeah. So, in Buenos Aires you lived, where did you live in Buenos Aires?
MF: We lived in a flat in the town to begin with, and then we moved out because we had Gavin, when we said we need a garden, and we moved out to a little house in San Isidro, up the river, and we had a Chinese cook who lived in a little hut at the bottom of the garden, Chinese cook called Georgie, and he was marvellous, and he, you know, Gavin was in his pram and he was in the sun, he would go out and move Gavin out of the sun.
HB: Lovely, oh that’s delightful. So you left the sunshine of Buenos Aires and you moved to Kinloss.
MF: Kinloss! That side of Scotland was, is very good, I mean it’s better than the west side, as you know. Oh yes, it was very good.
HB: And that’s your family’s developing now, your daughter, you came south and you had your daughter.
MF: Had her in the Radcliffe, came back and went back to Kinloss and that was that. And then we got posted back to Bomber Command, er no, got posted back to Air Ministry, but my mother said ‘you can’t live in one of those awful little quarters’, [chuckle] ‘you must have your own house’, so we bought a house in the village of Walters Ash, where Bomber Command is, and we had our own house there, and Alan used to go to Air Ministry every day and then he met our MP, called John Hall, and Alan said ‘well I’m a bit fed up of this’, because he was a Wing Commander at twenty one as I said, at thirty two he’d reverted to a Squadron Leader because well, you know, that was the thing, so he said bit tired to John Hall and John Hall said ‘come and see my Chairman’, he didn’t know him. He was a man called Sir Lindsay Finn and we didn’t know what on earth he did, apart from sit in Parliament. It turned out he was Chairman of Gossard Corsets! [Laugh]
HB: Oh right, right.
MF: So when Alan came home I said ‘well, what does he do apart from siting in Parliament?’ he said ‘he’s chairmen of Gossard Corsets!’ I said ‘well you can’t do that!’ But you see, by this time I’d got three children, I’d got my daughter and another son, Adrian, and we were in our house in this village, in Bomber Command village, and well, he was very tempted to come out because as I say, and my parents, of course, didn’t want us to move away again, so they were very influential. It was awful that we came out of the Air Force, I was so sad, it was wrong really, ‘cause Alan would have I think gone a long way. Anyway, we came out and, but they then, they had, Gossard, had this factory up here in Syston and they sent him up here!
HB: Oh right!
HF: So he was up here for three months and I was alone in Bucks and said oh goodness so they said well you’d better buy yourself a house, to Alan, and move your family up there. This was in 1954 I think ’55 I think, and so then we bought Gadsby Hall, and, they bought it for us, and we had, we lived there. The house had had twenty seven bedrooms, but they knocked the top off and the sides off and made it into a reasonable house, but it had seven acres of garden, which it still has. So anyway we did that and he was, my father was ill and in hospital and I was down south visiting him and I thought Alan had gone to France. By this time he, as I say, joined this, when I say they made the corsets, they made the machinery up here, this was the, so he was due to go to France on the Friday morning, on the Monday morning, I thought well I’ll go and see my father because he’s in hospital in High Wycombe and so I went off after Alan went but Alan didn’t feel well so he didn’t go. And the next thing was, on Tuesday, I got a message, we had a houseboy living in the house at Gadsby, called John Griss and he rang me up and said ‘oh the Wing Commander’s not too well, I thought you should know’ I said, ‘he went to France!’ He said ‘no he didn’t go because he didn’t feel well.’ So he said the doctor, our doctor lived in Gadsby village, so he sent him straight to, which hospital in Leicester?
[Other]: Royal Infirmary.
MF: Did he go to the Royal Infirmary?
[Other]: Glenfield? No.
HB: Not then, Glenfield not. Be the Leicester General?
MF: No, it was a nursing home.
[Other]: No, it wasn’t a nursing home, it was a full blown hospital.
MF: Oh was it, it was, yes. [Pause] Anyway, but Gavin and I got into a car straight away, rushed up here and this boy in the house said ‘he’s been taken to the hospital in Leicester’, and we walked in and Dr Ward, who lived in Gadsby was our doctor, was struggling, said ‘I’m afraid he’s dead’, so, like that. [Paper shuffling]
HB: What year was that?
[Other]: 1971.
HB: ’71 Oh dear. Oh right, I think, I thought I’d read somewhere that he’d been taken ill, and he was being treated for the illness and had the heart attack. Yes.
MF: Yes he was. Yes. As I say, he should have gone to France, but he didn’t go. But he didn’t let me know that he wasn’t going to France, so course I thought he’d gone, there you are.
HB: Can I just take you right back, very simple question: can you remember what your service number was?
MF: Ha! Something 0 double 1. Can’t remember. 20286 double 1. 20286 double 1. Maybe.
HB: 202 86
MF: Double 1. Maybe.
HB: Double 1.
[Other]: Sorry Harry. Can I just interrupt, just one second?
HB: Can I just pause the tape. Restart this, it’s 10.38, we’re just restarting the interview. Mary’s son Gavin has just had to leave, so we’ll just carry on. Right, so we’ve got to Alan actually dying in 1971. Can I just again, just go back a little bit, very, very disreputable question to ask a lady, but can you tell me what your date of birth is?
MF: 25 11 21.
HB: That’s lovely, thank you. What was your original maiden name?
MF: Stanley-Smith
HB: Stanley-Smith hyphenated. And has the Stanley got an e in it?
MF: Yes.
HB: Stanley-Smith. That’s lovely. [Cough] ‘Scuse me. Yes, just going back now, just try and pick up on one or two things we may have skated over a little bit. You said you went to boarding school. Where did you go to boarding school?
MF: Cliftonville, in Kent.
HB: Cliftonville, right. And you finished boarding school in time to join the RAF.
MF: Yes. I became head girl at boarding school. [Chuckle]
HB: Ooh!
MF: And well then, as I say, left. I did a little job in London for a bit, for a month or two, then I joined the WAAF.
HB: Yes. And as you say, you did your training in Windermere.
MF: Yes.
HB: How, what was your training like? Was it austere or was it very relaxed?
MF: No, quite happy, quite easy going year, yes.
HB: But you had to learn to look after your uniform.
MF: That sort of thing, yes. Yes, we marched about, as I say so long ago now, I can’t remember.
HB: And then you became a personal assistant to Sir Norman Bottomley.
MF: Ah, not, no, to Air Vice Marshal Harrison to begin with.
HB: Ah. Sorry, Harrison was the one that was left at the altar.
MF: Yes, yes.
HB: So you went to Air Vice Marshal Harrison and then a short time.
MF: At Exning, yes.
HB: At Exning. And then a short time with Harris. Where were you based with Harris?
MF: Bomber Command, Headquarters.
HB: At?
MF: Well, Walters Ash.
HB: High Wycombe, Walters Ash.
MF: Back in my home village you see.
HB: Yeah. And then you went to Sir Norman Bottomley.
MF: Yep. He took over from Harris, so I, and he was lovely to work for, and they had a house, the official house there was called Springfields, up at Prestwood, a mile or two away and we used to go up there. If there was nothing to do he’d say ‘oh let’s go and have a game of tennis’, he was lovely.
HB: Oh, right.
MF: But then you probably had to work till midnight if something happened, but you didn’t mind.
HB: And did you, when you worked for Harrison and Harris and Bottomley, did you notice, or did you, were you conscious of the pressure they were under?
MF: Well not really, no, I think you just accepted it, you know.
HB: Because I mean at that stage of the war, in ’43 ’44 things were very pressured.
MF: Yes, yes. Well I mean, that was when I was at Newmarket you see, at Exning, during the war, yes, I suppose you did, but I mean he, Harrison, the man at Newmarket, the Air Vice Marshal, was, as I say, very difficult to get on with to begin with as he didn’t like women because he’d been left at the altar, but he, I mean we tamed him, he became quite human, but he wasn’t easy. I mean if we went to a party, we had Corporal Wynn, the driver, and a Humber car, and we’d go out to this party, you know, and he didn’t drink, he’d have that much beer and then he’d come up to me and say ‘well I’m going home now, if you can get a lift you can stay.’ [Laugh] He was terribly non-party so that was when I invariably got a lift with Alan you see, went home with Alan because he was then stationed at 3 Group where I was, having a rest from operations and so he used to take me home, so that’s how we met really.
HB: Ah, right. That falls into line now. [Cough] When you worked for Sir Norman Bottomley, you got a Mentioned in Despatches.
MF: Yes.
HB: What was that for? Being very good?
MF: [Laughter] Well, I must have been quite good I suppose at something!
HB: Can you remember what year that would be?
MF: 40, what 50? When did I work for him, 50?
HB: Well you finished with the RAF when you were married, which was er, 1946.
MF: Yes well that was when I got my MiD, when I left him, you know.
HB: Right, so that’s. Right. And do you know if that was published in the Gazette, the London Gazette?
MF: Well I suppose it was. Yes they would be.
HB: Oh, right, so, social life, in the RAF, you’ve joined the RAF, you’ve done your training, what was your social life like?
MF: Oh marvellous! [Laughter]
HB: It was, it was good was it?
MF: Absolutely! Yes, I mean even uncommissioned we had great fun, good parties and things and I’m a party girl, you know, like people. Oh, we had great time and then when I was commissioned we had marvellous parties at Newmarket and Exning. [Chuckle]
HB: Oh right. Were the parties in private houses and places or did you have them on station?
MF: Oh, on the station mainly. Yes, yes.
HB: Did you go to any of the parties out at say somewhere like Lakenheath, or?
MF: Oh yes, oh we went everywhere, yes, all round because 3 Group covered Lakenheath and all those things in Suffolk you see, stations in Suffolk so we never stopped. But as I say my boss then, Harrison, didn’t like parties, so that’s why I had such a good time. [Laugh]
HB: So you were left to your own devices. Oh, that’s wonderful, that’s wonderful. So you met Alan when you were at 3 Group.
MF: Yes, ‘cause he came in for a rest from his operations.
HB: He would have been, ‘cause he was in four squadrons as far as I can find out. He was in 7 Squadron, 35 Squadron, 156 and 161.
MF: 161. All Pathfinders.
HB: Yeah. And he, at the time you [emphasis] met him, in 3 Group, what rank was he then?
MF: He was Squadron Leader.
HB: He was Squadron Leader. Right. So, there’s this dashing Squadron Leader, having a rest from operations.
MF: Operations, in Newmarket, Exning. Yes.
HB: And he swept off your feet!
MF: Yes, sort of. [Laughter]
HB: Or you were just great friends and gradually got swept off your feet. So just going on with the theme of Alan, Alan had joined the RAF quite early.
MF: Yes, he joined at sixteen, said he was seventeen.
HB: Did he? Right.
MF: But he was very tall, so he looked seventeen you know, so he got away with it.
HB: Initially where did he start his training, can you remember?
MF: Of course I didn’t know him in those days. He lived in Gloucestershire. I can’t remember.
HB: ‘Cause he would have joined as, what, something like a Leading Aircraftsman I would think. If he was going to.
MF: Yes.
HB: And can you remember where he did his flying training?
MF: Where he started? No I can’t.
HB: So actually, thinking back, if he joined in, when he was sixteen.
MF: He said he was seventeen.
HB: That would be, that would be just about 1939?
MF: Yes.
HB: Right at the beginning of the war.
MF: Yes, right at the beginning.
HB: Yeah. So it’s possible he learnt his flying in this country.
MF: Oh yes, oh definitely.
HB: Before they started sending them to South Africa and Canada.
MF: Oh yes.
HB: So he did his pilot training and went to squadron. He flew an awful lot of operations, didn’t he.
MF: Oh yes, yes. Whole lot. I couldn’t, I should have looked out the books for you.
HB: Oh no, no. It’s what you [emphasis] can remember of it because obviously that’s a little bit closer. If think if memory serves, he certainly flew seventy or more operations.
MF: Oh yes.
HB: And eventually became a Master Bomber?
MF: Yes, he was a Master Bomber.
HB: With Pathfinders, so, while he was doing that, you’ve had the party time and you’ve now moved on, so you’re serving at the level of Sir Norman Bottomley, and you’re seeing the strategy and everything, but you must also have seen the returns coming in of the losses.
MF: Oh yes.
HB: And Alan was still flying then, obviously. So how did, did you just accept that, or did it concern you?
MF: Well you did it was going on all the time, wasn’t it, I mean you know, it was all part of the war so you just accepted it. You were sad for twenty four hours when somebody you knew lost their life, but that was it. I mean there we are.
HB: Sad time. Lot of good people went.
MF: Mm hm.
HB: Yeah. The, so as you’ve come, as Alan was coming towards the end of the war, before you went, before you were married, did you sit down and talk about what you thought you might do after the war or was it just accepted?
MF: Oh, I mean we didn’t think we’d ever come out of the Air Force, I didn’t. I didn’t want to. But he thought it was better for him, I mean the money was better and we had three children to educate, so that was one reason, you know, when he came out, but it was the worst thing we ever did because I think he would have made a very good high rank officer. I didn’t want to come out, but there we are, what do you do.
HB: Am I right, were there rules about whether or not you could stay if you were married to a serving RAF officer?
MF: You could stay.
HB: Could you stay if you were married?
MF: Oh yes. Well.
HB: If you, sorry, a woman officer, could a woman officer stay in the RAF if she married another RAF officer?
MF: Oh no! Well I don’t think so. I suppose so, I don’t know. I mean I got out, I gave up because of having children.
HB: Yeah, I see what you mean, right, so Alan’s flown all these tours, you’ve eventually come back to Bomber Command, what was Alan doing in Bomber Command before you went to Buenos Aires, can you remember?
MF: Goodness, I ought to. What was he doing? I can’t remember now. No.
HB: I mean obviously he was working on things at a higher level.
MF: Yes, yes. That’s right.
HB: To become an Assistant ADC, sorry, Air Attaché, is quite, obviously quite demanding. So, I think what we’ll do is, I’ll terminate the interview now because I think there’s so much of Alan’s memorabilia that we need to look in to, we need to research properly, it’s unfair to ask you all the questions without the documents in front of you, so I think what we’ll do is, we’ll terminate the interview now, and I thank you on behalf of the Digital Archive for what you’ve told us.
MF: It’s silly, the things I’ve forgotten, but you do after all these years, you know.
HB: Absolutely. It’s been a pleasure, it’s er, I haven’t got a clock, I’ll have to just have a quick check, it’s quarter to eleven, sorry, I do have it wrong.
MF: Five to eleven.
HB: It’s five to eleven, and we’re just going to just stop the interview there and I’ve photographs to take, so thank you very much, I’ll just stop that. Supplementary to the interview, it’s 11.38, we’ve been chatting and Mary has just been telling me about an incident which I think is relevant. So just tell me what happened when you came back from France to see Alan.
MF: Well I saw them land in, from Brazil, and then a week later he rang me up and said would you like to come on this flypast?
HB: And the date of the flypast? 6th. 6th of June?
MF: 6th of June, yes.
HB: 6th of June 1946.
MF: And I said yes please, so I flew with Michael Beetham who was on Alan’s right, Alan was the commander and so I flew with him and it was absolutely marvellous, and then went back to Gravely where they were stationed, had a marvellous lunch and very late because I mean they were so good to the Air Force, you know, didn’t mind, and that was when he said, somebody said ‘Mary, what are you going to do when you leave the WAAF’, and I said ‘I don’t know’, and before I could say anything he said ‘she’s going to marry me.’ Just like that! [Laughter]
HB: Right! So the flypast was over London.
MF: Over London, yes.
HB: Over Buckingham Palace.
MF: Yes, over Buckingham Palace.
HB: [Cough] And it was a flight of Lancasters.
MF: Whoops. Come and see.
HB: Steady, steady!
MF: Whoops. I’ve got this.
HB: Got it. Just going to pause the interview. We just paused the interview there.
MF: Can I offer you anything drink? Would you like a sherry or something, dear?
HB: No I’m fine thank you, I’m fine. We’ve just paused the interview to pop out into the hall and take some photographs of the various pictures that Mary has of her late husband Alan’s career, the most important being the 8th of June Flypast in the white Lancasters, with Mary sat in the right hand plane with, what was his name? Bentham?
MF: It was amazing!
HB: You obviously thoroughly enjoyed that.
MF: Oh absolutely! I mean I was young enough then to enjoy all these things and I sat on this little bit, you know, about that big, all the way over London!
HB: About the size of a footstool. Oh dear. Could you actually see out of the aircraft?
MF: Oh yes, a bit. Yes.
HB: Exciting!
MF: It was exciting. I was the only girl on the, in all this. Amazing.
HB: Wow, wow! So how, I notice in Alan’s medals he has the DSO. What did he get the DSO for?
MF: Oh goodness, [sigh] I can’t remember, some bombing, you know, thing. I don’t know.
HB: Oh right, ‘cause I know he got a DFC early on for bringing a very badly damaged aircraft back.
MF: Yes. DSO, DFC, AFC. Well the AFC was in peacetime I think, wasn’t it.
HB: Yeah. The Air Force Cross. Yes, but they aren’t, they’re not a common medal. He must have done something Mary!
MF: You what?
HB: He must have done something to earn it! [Laughter] I notice in the photograph of the medals there’s one there that has the look of an Argentinian medal, was that a gratitude medal from Argentina, for his service there? Buenos Aires.
MF: Oh yes. Yes, that’s right.
HB: That’s great.
MF: Yes, we, it’s rather nice, wasn’t it.
HB: Yes it is, very nice medal that one. So in, having gone through all of that time, he’s flown all the aircraft he flew during the Second World War and he’s ended up, he ended up flying Canberras. And where were they stationed?
MF: At Kinloss.
HB: At Kinloss. The photo reconnaissance and surveillance aircraft.
MF: Yes.
HB: So did he ever comment on the change from, the change in technology and aircraft.
MF: Not really, no. We had one tragedy there. There was a dining in night and a message came through that the ‘Truculent’ had gone down in the Thames and Kinloss had the only lifting gear, so Alan asked for a volunteer crew to, would they pick up this lifting gear, take it down to the Thames to get the ‘Truculent’ out.
HB: This was the submarine.
MF: Yes. And he got a volunteer crew. They went and crashed into an aircraft, into a mountain about five miles from Kinloss, just on take off: they were all killed. It was the most dreadful [emphasis] night, awful thing. And of course, well the ‘Truculent’, everybody drowned in the ‘Truculent’. So dreadful night. Always remember that.
HB: That must have affected Alan, quite.
MF: Oh yes, I mean, well it’s so depressing. I had all, we didn’t have any quarters at Kinloss, but we had a very nice flat in a big house in Forres and I had the wives in for supper because it was a dining in night, you know, and next thing was we knew, all the husbands coming up, well Alan and lots of his members, coming up the stairs, to tell these wives that their husbands had been killed.
HB: Oh no!
MF: Awful. Dreadful night, you know. Never forget it.
HB: That was.
MF: Yes. Think, as I say, he asked for a volunteer crew and, well there we are, they all crashed into this. So that was a very sad night at Kinloss.
HB: Yes, yes, it’s, it’s the sort of incident that hits you very personally, it’s so involved.
MF: Oh yes, hm. Yes, I mean we all knew, well we all knew each other so well; I’m very gregarious and so was Alan, we all got on with everybody, you know.
HB: Yes, difficult time.
MF: Yes, very difficult.
HB: Difficult to remember as well, it’s an emotional thing to remember, it’s yes, difficult to talk about, yes. So we’ll come to the end of our supplementary interview, [laughing] that’s very, very kind of you Mary, thank you for letting me record that.
MF: Oh not a bit, I hope you’ll come back!
Dublin Core
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Identifier
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AFoisterMS171010, PLairdCraig1701
Title
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Interview with Mary Stanley Foister
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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00:49:11 audio recording
Creator
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Harry Bartlett
Date
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2017-10-10
Description
An account of the resource
Mary Stanley Foister grew up in Buckinghamshire, where her father's farm was taken over as Bomber Command Headquarters. She served in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force after she left school. Following training, she had a number of administrative posts as PA to high ranking RAF officers. Mary married Alan Craig, a Pathfinder pilot, and had three children. She was posted to several different locations during her service and in her married life before they settled down in Leicestershire. Mary tells of her various experiences during her life associated with the RAF, including flying on the Victory Flypast in London.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Argentina
Brazil
France
Great Britain
Argentina--Buenos Aires
England--Buckinghamshire
England--Cambridgeshire
England--London
Brazil--Rio de Janeiro
Scotland--Moray
Temporal Coverage
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1946
1948
Contributor
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Anne-Marie Watson
Carolyn Emery
35 Squadron
ground personnel
Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984)
Lancaster
Pathfinders
RAF Graveley
RAF High Wycombe
RAF Kinloss
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/228/3373/AChattertonM160331.1.mp3
27703bd93c161251ba90d18d3a7a735b
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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Chatterton, John
John Chatterton
J Chatterton
Description
An account of the resource
Seven items. The collection concerns Flight Lieutenant John Chatterton Distinguished Flying Cross (1031972, 159568 Royal Air Force). Included are his logbooks, a letter of condolence and letter to be passed to parents of a deceased crew member, mounted copy of entries to the logbook of Pilot Officer A Baker, 44 Squadron Operations Order book, and an oral history interview with Mike Chatterton (b. 1953) about his father, John Chatterton, and piloting the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight's Lancaster. <br /><br />The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by M J Chatterton and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.<br /><br />
<p>This collection also contains items concerning Peter Lees. Additional information on Peter Lees is available via the <a href="https://losses.internationalbcc.co.uk/loss/113761/">IBCC Losses Database</a>.</p>
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-03-14
2016-03-31
Identifier
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Chatterton, J
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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MC: Carry on with my RAF career a bit at a time?
DE: Ah yes.
MC: Alright.
DE: OK. So, I’ll just check it’s recording, yes. This is an interview for the International Bomber Command Project, my name is Dan Ellin, I’m interviewing Mike Chatterton, it is the 31st March 2016 and we’re at Riseholme, also present in the room is Shelley the dog. So, Mike could you start please by telling me a little bit about your early life and how you grew up?
MC: Yeah OK. Well I grew up in a farming environment always and farming was always destined to be my future career I guess but I was always aware that father had been a Bomber Command pilot in the war and that was always a side-line of interest. I think I used to consider farming to be quite hard work and long hours and dirty and grubby and it didn’t seem to appeal to me that much so I used to not be devoted to that line of thought. Anyway, I suppose Airfix models are the main thing that started me off in aviation. Initially watching Father make them for me, and then after a little while getting involved and adding a few bits on myself and of course the good old Airfix models of fifty years ago was where they gave you all the precise names of the various bits so you learnt an awful lot about the aircraft at the same time as opposed to nowadays where it’s just lots of diagrams and arrows. But I think that was where my interest in aviation sort of came to fruition in all the models I used to make, and there were a lot of them, all over the house, and also I recall as I say initially getting Father to make them and he’d slowly let me do some of the easy bits and after a while he’d supervise me whilst I did the slightly more awkward bits, and after a while I slowly got to realise that actually I could do it better than Father could. I then got impatient with him trying to do it and just wanted to do it myself. That’s another, I suppose, idea of growing up, but didn’t actually hear a great deal about Father’s war time environment. I think for me, and I tell people that the highlight of the year for me wasn’t necessarily Christmas or my birthday, but the highlight for me was the Finningley airshow, and if you’d like to say religiously, I suppose you could say that, and as long as the, it wasn’t coinciding or contradicting with the harvest time, which was even more important to father, the Finningley airshow was one of the main events of our annual calendar. Along with my uncle, Uncle Will, Father’s brother, we’d go along in some battered old pick-up or something, join the queues, get to the air show and then follow the routine of going round the ground statics before the actual flying displays started, and then we were stuck in one place and watching the aircraft fly past, and of course in those days it was some wonderful old vintage aeroplanes, Shackleton’s and Varsity’s and some of the early jets and things like that. But for us the highlight was always the Lancaster, if there was a Lancaster airworthy at the time, if it was going to take part then that would be the main event. And of course, I’d then start asking Father a few memories about what he recalled, and used to get some of the fun, get none of the personal details at all, just some of the technical details, some of the fun activities he got up to I suppose, but none of the personal details at all. And so that was life as a kid, I think he then encouraged me to join the Air Training Corps which was a thing I’d never actually thought of much before. I used to love the airshows and I used to get very jealous of all the RAF people wandering around in their uniforms thinking I wish I could do that, but never actually thought about the idea of joining the air force, I thought there’s no way I’m ever going to get in the air force, and the way my academics were going I was sort of working towards being a draughtsman or something like that. I used to have a sort of natural tendency towards the drawing side of it but not the academics. And so I think a friend of mine said ‘How about joining the Air Training Corps?’ when we were about, quite late on about fifteen years old, and I said ‘Yeah, OK’ and we went along to the local squadron and joined, quite late on, because of, we were a bit older than normal joining age then things like gliding courses became available because you have to be a certain age for this. I think I went away on a gliding course and got my wings at Hemswell flying gliders. Where I then heard some more stories from Father about when he’d flown aircraft, Lancaster’s, at Hemswell and then whilst I was in the Air Cadets say things went on, because I’d got gliding wings I made a corporal, because I was made a corporal I got to be an instructor and because I was an instructor I got to be put forward for a flying scholarship etc., etc. It just sort of went on and on, and in the background there with Father always working away at the farm, helping with Father, I was aware that he was a member of various squadron associations because he was with 44 Squadron Association, so I used to be aware that every so often he’d go off and do that, but work I think, farming for him took all his time up and there was very little to do with aviation really apart from, as I say, the annual air show and occasional Airfix model, and I suppose then the Air Cadets were the turning point for me because obviously the idea is to get you air minded and the staff were very good and they used to encourage me to think about an idea of an RAF career which I say I’d never considered before, they were good for my confidence by the fact that I managed to achieve various different stages through the Cadets, I suppose that helped my confidence as well and so they persuaded me to actually give it a try and try and join the RAF as a pilot, which was a bit of a shock, but I went along I think in my sixth form and applied, went down to the selection centre at Biggin Hill and went through all the various processes which were pretty scary because you were having to sort of take part in discussions and then lead physical activities and then have little problem solving things and got called into the interview room at the end and they said ‘Not quite up to the standard we need but we like your enthusiasm so think about applying again in a couple of years time’. So that took me through school, and the air force had always said we prefer people with degrees, this is back in the ‘70’s, so I thought right I’ll get a degree and then I’ll apply again.
DE: Um.
MC: Well I’ll start a degree, and with Father’s background and my life on farming we decided to go for agriculture engineering and because of Father’s background as farming and also in the academics, because we’ll talk about Father later I guess, but he’d gone from the war back up to university and then gone straight, having finished his university course, to be a lecturer so he was involved in all the academics of that. So, he still knew a few people in the academics world of agriculture and so that helped I think to get me into the university course. Got some, scraped some A levels, I remember hearing that my A level results had come through whilst I was actually loading bales on a trailer, so combining the two together, the farming and the future air force. So, got to university and then applied, fairly quickly, because the university had university air squadrons and that was one of the requirements about where I was applying to go to, that they had a university air squadron which taught you to fly, although with no commitment at the time, and moved on. I think applied as soon as I could, got in there, so got a start being taught to fly the Chipmunk aircraft which again brought a few stories back from Father because it was one of the last aircraft he had flown after the war, and I suppose I didn’t get to hear much more from father about his flying time at that stage, it wasn’t really I suppose until quite a few years later on where having gone through my training, I got onto multi-engine aircraft and eventually got onto the Lancaster, and what I say to people is that I didn’t hear so many stories from Father about his activities but I heard having met a lot of the old veterans, a lot of the guys who knew Father, who would tell me some of the stories of what Father got up to, which he would never actually necessarily mention himself because they probably bent the rules rather a lot, and because of this, because of the contacts I made then I managed to find out and do some more digging. We’d always been encouraging Father to write his biography because we used to have all the little snippets but no sort of general put together information and so whilst I was at flying with the BBMF, flying the Lancaster and meeting so many people that knew Father from those days, I think Father was turning not towards retirement because you never actually retire as a farmer but he was in a mode where he was trying to do a little bit less and so he got more involved with the squadron associations, I think he became the secretary of 44 Sqn Association, so he was involved a lot more, spent a lot more time with that so again I got to hear more about what he was doing and what he had done in the war until, I say I was on BBMF, and then for us father and son idea I suppose the first time we actually flew together was in a Lancaster, so for me that was very, very special, taking him flying, I was only a co-pilot at the time so I didn’t have much say in what was going on but we got him on board anyway and flew around for a little while with him down behind me in the sort of wireless ops/navigator seat and then as my time on BBMF progressed I got to be captain then with the extra responsibility you get a bit of extra pulling power as well so not long after I got made captain of the Lancaster I managed to get Father back in the aircraft again and this time managed to get him in the right hand seat and me in the left hand seat so the Chatterton crew were airborne again. And what was very nice about that is, not only did I manage to get Father airborne but managed to get also three of his war time crew with us as well in the Lanc at the same time. That was the bomb aimer, the rear gunner and the flight engineer, so we all flew in the Lanc together. And I think Father used to really enjoy the fact that I was flying the Lanc, he spent far more time involved with the associations as I say and following what I was doing and every time I came back at the weekend I had to give him a full report of all the flights I’d had that week, at that time and he used to absorb it all and whenever I was flying around Lincolnshire, which was obviously quite a lot of the time as we were based at Coningsby, but if ever I was in the right direction I would always come back via Father’s farm and give him a bit of a flypast, so as I say he wasn’t used to seeing me much above four hundred feet or so doing that sort of thing. I think that sort of covers basically the connection between me and Father.
DE: Um. How does it make you feel flying with your Father and members of his crew?
MC: Um, when I was flying as captain you, lot of people ask me what it was like, what you’re thinking about when you’re flying the Lanc and I think my rather bland answer is that when you’re flying an aircraft like that you’re concentrating, or any aircraft to be honest, you’re concentrating on getting that job done, you’ve always got a job to be at a certain place, at a certain time with your mind set up to go and do a display or whatever so often at the actual time you’re not thinking too much about the importance of it, it’s only afterwards when you’ve landed and it’s all been successful, you can then allow your mind to wander back over what you’ve just achieved, on those occasions with Father, when I was flying with Father, it was just fantastic, absolutely marvellous, very, very, proud to watch them all. I know when, the first time I took them flying I was slightly wary of the rear gunner because he’d been the old man on the crew when the guys flew together, so I knew he was not very able but he, when we met them at BBMF, he had his, the rear gunner had his, I think grandson and grand-daughter with him, he walked with sticks and looking, you know, not very capable of clambering in the Lanc and so I was a bit concerned about how on earth am I going to say that having got this far it was going to be too dangerous to take him on board because he was going to be a sort of liability to himself and the rest of the crew? And I was thinking about this and they went out to have a look at the aeroplane first and he hobbled over towards the rear steps. He then dismissed his grandchildren, dismissed his sticks and ran up the stairs and in the turret before we knew it. So, there were no complaints, no problems there my fears had gone away then. Somehow, and it often happened with the veterans when we took them on board, I suppose that was one of the highlights of their lives, and so the youth just returned, and as I say even though they approached the aeroplane on sticks and walking frames somehow that just got thrown aside and they remembered lives when they were in their late teens and things like that. And whether the body itself may not have been willing but the spirit certainly was and we often used to see that, and the same as at East Kirkby it was getting the old boys on board and it was fantastic how they were so nimble again. The other thing, digressing there again, is when you got groups of these old boys together, in their eighties as they were, some nineties, is how they used to speak to each other. And again, they’d go back all those years, the sense of humour would be quite sharp, quite cutting but always well natured and you could see what a band of brothers they were I suppose.
DE: Did they include you in that as a pilot of the Lancaster or?
MC: I think we were embarrassed as the crew because if we used to go to these gatherings where they came to the aircraft at Coningsby or whether we landed the aircraft and had the old boys come round us we used to be embarrassed by the sort of celebrity status we had you know, and they were all asking for our autographs and asking what it was like to fly the Lanc, because there were quite a few of them in those days and it just seemed all wrong to me, really embarrassing you know that they were treating us like heroes and celebrities and yet they were the ones who obviously flew these aircraft for real as I say. Nowadays I think the veterans are treated with more due respect and things like that but twenty years ago when I was flying there was quite a lot of them around and they weren’t necessarily treated in the same way. But as I say that was what I used to recall is the embarrassment of them treating us like celebrities, but it was great meeting them as I say they used to fly these aircraft for real.
DE: Um, I think we’ll come back to that in a bit, could you tell me a little bit more about your career in the RAF?
MC: OK yeah. So, RAF wise, didn’t get in the first attempt at school, got in the second attempt with at university, so in my one of three years my university course was agricultural engineering, as I say it came from the RAF background, came from the farming background, the RAF just wanted a degree, they didn’t care what subject you had they just wanted a degree. So, we thought with my life at that point then agricultural engineering would be the best chance of getting through so we did. So, university where we got to learn the Chipmunk, and we flew that and I think I must have got about seventy hours or so, it was sort of every weekend, occasionally during the week, but mostly weekends so my university life was either working academics during the week and unlike a lot of people who sort of let their hair down at weekends, because I had hair in those days, we used to just go off to the RAF camp and fly. They’d have the RAF social life but generally not sort of the mad student social life. So, from university then the destiny was to go to Cranwell where we were trained to be officers, I think about sixteen week officer training, initial officer training course, usual sort of running around, carrying pine poles, leadership exercises and air warfare studies and general service background stuff, oh a lot of marching of course. I think my uniform fitted me better than average so I was made parade commander for Cranwell so again huge, huge pride in being the parade commander in front of the RAF College at Cranwell but as I say at the same time very, very busy concentrating on what you were doing and then again when it all finished and hopefully went successfully, huge sigh of relief and just realised what you’d just done, what you’d just achieved, anyway. Having finished officer training then went off to do pilot training, going to back step a little bit now because I finished university at the end of the academic year, sort of July time and then my entry at Cranwell wasn’t until, I think, quite late in the following year. So, I had about nine months, I had nine months holding before I started at Cranwell and that nine months was great fun because I just went and held on various different RAF stations. I went out to RAF Germany for a while and held at Gutersloh and were flying, associated with the Pembroke squadron there. The Pembroke’s used to fly all over Germany a sort of communications aircraft and then at the back of the hangar was a Pembroke with curtains over the windows, never used to move, I never used to see it move, anyway occasionally it wasn’t there, and then it was there, we never used to see it going in and out and that was the one that used to go off to Berlin and recce the corridors and things like that, but whenever I used to ask about it people just denied it was there so I found it very strange, rather than telling me what the truth they just denied its existence altogether. Anyway, that was one posting and that was very interesting going to Berlin for the first time and being given a guided tour of all the various parts of Berlin that had been affected by the Cold War and my Father’s war, imaging Father up there in the air above. Another holding post I think was at Farnborough where I was used as a guinea pig basically. So, Farnborough is the Institute of Aviation Medicine and so some days we’d be boiled in hot water and see what reaction we had, sometimes we’d be frozen, sometimes we’d be squashed, sometimes we’d be stretched. Spatially our average human bodies were trying out different, to see what the reactions were as far as various protective clothing and escape equipment and things like that were, so that was painful but interesting. Yes, so go back now, went and joined Cranwell, did pilot training that was on the Jet Provost and I found most of the way through training it was quite hard work for me. I never, ever sort of aced anything, I was always very middle of the road on all the things but we were quite aware that each flight it was quite high pressured because if you sort of failed one particular exercise then you’d be given another chance but after that they’d be looking at you quite closely so there was always quite a lot of pressure I remember about that and I always used to have in the back of my mind what would I do if I didn’t get through pilot training? And along the way we’d lose colleagues through getting washed out so you were always very much aware that the fact that it was possible that you wouldn’t be fulfilling your career or aim of flying. But I got through Cranwell alright and then we were going to go to the next stage which was the work up for what is called group one, phase one, which is basically you were working up to go onto the world of fast jets because at that stage of the air force, of the RAF, and this is talking mid-seventies there were no more people going to the multi-engine world they didn’t require any pilots, it was all cut backs and so there wasn’t any requirement for multi-engine pilots anymore and so the only option was either fast jet which I didn’t have much faith in me surviving the course or helicopters. So I opted to go helicopters, so I went up towards helicopters, and initially it was on very old helicopters like Whirlwinds which were quite nice and straightforward to fly and then progressed onto things like the Puma which was quite a difficult aeroplane to fly, very unstable, I never got on particularly well with that and after a while progressed through to the conversion unit but never feeling particularly comfortable with it and eventually had a mutual agreement that I wasn’t going to progress any further on the helicopter world and fortunately, for me, the multi-engine world had started up again at that point so there were positions available. So I remember going for an interview with the station commander at Odiham where I had been doing my helicopter training and saying that I’d like to go on to be a multi-engine pilot and he said ‘Well what are you going to do if you don’t get to be a multi-engine pilot?’ and I said ‘I’ll try to be an airline pilot then, I’m going to fly’ he said ‘Well I’ll cautiously recommend you for multi-engine on the grounds that I don’t think much of your loyalty, because you’d rather go and join the airlines rather than stay in the air force as an engineer or something.’ So, I thought, weird, anyway, for me that was perfect because that was what I’d always wanted to do multi-engine. So, I went and did multi-engine training on the Jet Stream it was in those days at Leeming and this was quite fun now because it was an aeroplane where you were doing , wasn’t doing wacky aerobatic stuff, you were doing procedural flying which was flying on instruments, going places so you were working out how to get from A to B and stuff which seemed far more applicable to my sort of way of life and abilities. And so it came towards the end of the Jet Stream course and they said ‘Right you can put down what you want to go onto next’ and in those days the options were Vulcans, Victors, Hercules, VC10’s, flight check Andover’s and Shackleton’s, and nobody wanted to go Shackleton’s because you were going back in time about two decades but I knew of course, dear old Dad and his Lancaster, my best chance of getting anything like a Lancaster was to go and fly a Shackleton which is the grand-daughter of the Lancaster.
DE: Sure.
MC: So I thought well I’ll go and volunteer for that ‘cause it would give me a chance to know what Father’s flying was like. So, I volunteered for Shackleton, they said ‘Are you sure?’ Not many people did that so I got my choice and went to Lossiemouth to convert to the Shackleton which was, it was quite a step back in time, because the Jet Stream I had been flying was the most newest aircraft in the Royal Air Force inventory, and the Shackleton was the longest, oldest one I think. It was a step back in time as far as the technology of the aeroplane and the procedures and things but an interesting job. We used to have an airborne early warning radar under the nose of the Shackleton so we’d go off north and try and chase, well not chase, but go and spot the Russian aircraft coming down from the north, most of the Russian aircraft went a lot faster than we did so we had to get sent out in good time in order to try and spot them before they cleared off and went back again. But interesting job, flew out as a co-pilot for about two years and then they said ‘Right time to move on‘ so we’re going to replace the AW the airborne early warning Shackleton with an airborne early warning Nimrod, we’re going to get a Nimrod, we’re going to put a radar on the front of it and another one on the back of it, it’s going to be very high tech and it’s going to do the same sort of job as a Shackleton but much better. So, go and get some Nimrod time first and you’ll be able to come back onto the AW Nimrod. So I went off into the maritime world, so I was only just moving down the road to Kinloss and did a conversion unit at St Mawgan onto the Nimrod and those six months at St Mawgan were basically, as I recall, forty knot fogs, because that was what the weather was like down in that part of the world over winter, often foggy and the fog moved very rapidly which was unusual so quite a lot of frustrations with the weather but got through the Nimrod conversion and then got posted back up to Kinloss as expected ‘cause I had a house up in that part of the world and then went onto the Nimrod, arrived in quite an exciting time ‘cause I arrived at Kinloss in 1982 which was the Falklands War time. So, Nimrods were heavily involved in that and what was supposed to be a about two-month conversion onto a slightly better version of the Nimrod, a mark two Nimrod, which had more modern equipment was a bit more capable, instead of it being two months it was two weeks. So, we very rapidly rushed through this course and then went straight onto a squadron where the squadron were preparing to get sent down to Ascension Island where they were going to provide cover for all the aircraft carrying on all the way down to the Falklands themselves. So all these new equipment they brought in was quite interesting they, for the Nimrod which as I say had just been basically a converted Comet with regular engines and a bomb bay, all of a sudden because they realised the capacity or the capability of this aircraft could have, we were given air-to-air refuelling so we could extend the range of the aircraft hugely, we were given the ability to drop one thousand pounds bombs from a Nimrod which was fairly unusual, and the idea of that was we were to tax some hopefully defenceless shipping, some Argentinian shipping, wouldn’t send us against anything to shoot back I don’t think but the idea was that we would be able to do that, so we hadn’t actually had a go at bombing and when we saw the bombs in the hangar beforehand I’m sure they had 1945 written on them, so I think there were some of Father’s leftovers that were still kept airworthy, or whatever the word is condition. So, I was very proud of the fact that I went and dropped one single thousand-pound bomb and then a stick of three, I thought wow this is certainly following in Father’s footsteps, that was up at the ranges at the north of Scotland, and I think I actually hit the target as well which is quite nice, ‘cause the co-pilot had to actually release the bomb whilst the pilot was busy flying. And also we got air-to-air anti-aircraft missiles so we actually had anti-aircraft missiles fitted under the wings of the Nimrod which was pretty wacky and because it was war time ish so all these things just got put in and put on without too much paperwork and bureaucracy. The idea of that again was that we were going to try and shoot down the Argentinians 707’s ‘cause there’s no chance of us ever going against a fighter or anything like that but all these modern toys and clever bits were put on and then I was really miffed because our crew had a date to go down to Ascension Island and start flying that area between the Falklands and Ascension Island and then we had a crew farewell party, so we all got together to have a party to say ‘We’re going to be off now for a few months’ and I was really miffed because the bliming Argentinians went and surrendered that weekend. So, we never got to go, it was really frustrating, we’d done all the training, all the work-up for it and then a huge let down. I think, people said ‘Were you not worried about the fact that you could have been shot down or hurt or damaged?’ and it’s interesting reflecting on that because having done so much training we all wanted to get on with the job. There was one guy, I think he was a bit older, who sort of thought I’m not sure about this it could be a bit dangerous, but generally we all wanted to go down there so it was all a bit embarrassing when we didn’t go, quite miffed. So anyway carrying on with the Nimrod world, and I think by this stage the Nimrod AW had been attempted and they’d realised that it wasn’t going to work, they had too many problems with the technical side of getting the radar at the front to talk to the radar at the back, and so it was shelved and so basically I was on Nimrods I was going to stay on Nimrods, so I carried on and at Kinloss the idea was that you’d do a ground tour so you’d maybe be in a simulator as an instructor checking the guys going through and then you’d go on a flying tour and having done it for a while you’d go onto another ground tour so I was in ops doing plans, planning future flying, and that’s the way it used to work generally you’d alternate between the two between a flying tour and a ground tour and then I think around about ’89 ish I got a ‘phone call, I used to talk to the posting man every so often, he would sort of discuss what we wanted to do and what he wanted us to do and the posting man said ‘Would you like to go and fly the Lancaster?’ Stunned silence, ‘What?’ he said ‘The pilot of the Lancaster at the moment is finding the extra workload a bit much for him and he wants to get another pilot.’ So absolutely astounded said ‘Oh yes please, rather!’ So got all set up for leaving Kinloss and going down to join BBMF and whilst all this was happening the paperwork was all going through I discovered slowly but surely that actually you can’t get a posting to BBMF, ‘cause all the jobs on BBMF are done by people who have a job in the local area who then volunteer to go on BBMF, so I found myself going down towards a ground job at Coningsby I was going to work in ops at Coningsby, and then I’d have to apply to join BBMF so I felt a bit miffed at that I’d been sort of tricked into it almost to go down to do this ground job without the certainty of BBMF but I knew Paul Day who was on BBMF who used to come shooting on the farm with father and so got down to Coningsby, got established in my ground job in ops and went and kept on battering on the door of BBMF until they let me in. So the situation was it didn’t quite turn out as expected, they had the captain and then they had two co-pilots flying the Lanc and they’d never been the idea that there was going to be another captain flying the Lanc just the one and that was OC BBMF so the chap in charge was the one who flew the Lancaster and he was the only full time member of the aircrew on BBMF, all the other aircrew members were, had jobs elsewhere so the fighter pilots would be instructors flying the Tornado, the navigators on the Lancaster would be probably in a ground job either at Finningley where they were training navigators or at Coningsby itself, the flight engineers would all come from Finningley where they would be training other flight engineers and I was there in ops so I got to fly as co-pilot although it was a pretty big secondary duty as we called it and it would be every weekend and it would be during the week as well. So, we then had the sort of battle between my primary job which was in ops and the fairly high profile requirement to be on BBMF and I had a squadron leader boss in ops but his boss was OC Ops and OC Ops was also in charge of BBMF so if it ever came to a battle between my normal day job and BBMF then BBMF used to win fortunately which I was very pleased about and my ops squadron leader was a bit miffed. So, onto BBMF. So that was in ’89 I joined BBMF and of course that was the 50th anniversary of the start of the second world war so my time on BBMF was highlighted by all these anniversaries of events of the fiftieth anniversary various events throughout the second world war. Initially, as I say, as co-pilot on the Lanc, so simply flying the Lanc was brilliant, absolutely fantastic then as time went by the army decided they wanted to fly, or jump out of a Dakota. The army wanted to jump out of a Dakota to celebrate D Day plus fifty and Arnhem plus fifty and all those sorts of things so they’d heard about this Dakota which could be made airworthy or brought back to be being airworthy, the powers that be in the RAF said ‘There’s no way the army are going to fly that, we’ll let the RAF fly and if it’s going to be flown by the RAF it will have to go to BBMF’. So the Dakota arrived on BBMF, they didn’t give us anymore ground crew to cater with the extra aircraft type so the support aircraft we’d had before that a Devon, which is a lovely little aeroplane a two engine forties type design aeroplane a transport design aircraft, it only carried about seven or eight people, but ours was a VIP fit so it was a very comfortable aeroplane to fly around, so the Devon which the multi-engine pilots used to fly was taken out of service because there weren’t enough ground crew to look after all these aircraft and the Dakota came in. And the boss, so we had to have a captain for the Dakota and so the boss of the flight who had been the Lanc co-pilot decided he was going to fly the Dakota as captain therefore we needed another Lancaster captain, wee hee, there I was volunteering. So ’92 I got to fly as captain, then initially just as sort of transit and doing odd fly pasts and then fairly quickly I got display authorisation. To display an aircraft you’ve got to go through an extra sort of set of hoops, it’s got to be approved at a fairly high level, so we had to work up to that and then get approved to do that, it’s a thing that happens at the beginning of every year, so there I was fully fledged Lancaster captain display pilot and that’s when I started, managed to get Father flying and taking Father off to various events. So, I could talk about BBMF for hours and hours and hours but basically say all the fiftieth anniversaries you get to do things with that aircraft that you wouldn’t be allowed to do with another aircraft so if I fly down the Mall at five hundred feet, dropping poppies on the Queen’s head everyone cheers, if I’d have done that in a Nimrod I’d have been out of the air force very quickly. So, it’s not only a wonderful aeroplane to fly it’s the stuff we were allowed to do and also the way you got treated you were a celebrity as far as the airshow fans were concerned, equivalent to popstars and royalty and all that sort of stuff so you got treated really, really well. Life was quite good in those days, the air force had a bit of money I suppose so whenever we used to go away at weekends we were normally staying in hotels and on allowances and things like that which was all quite generous, it’s all slowly cut back over the years but even so it was very good at the time. And then initially I was sent to BBMF for two years, or to Coningsby for two years, to fly. After two years it was review time I was having a great time I could see that the captaincy was going to come up after two years, I was captain of the Devon, so I said to them ‘Can I possibly, you know, stay another year?’ so they said ‘Oh OK, it’s not doing your career any good to stay on a ground tour’ I said ‘I don’t care about that I want to carry on flying’. So did that and I think that might have happened about another year later on so reviewed again and stayed on BBMF again and interestingly I got to captain then and that was a point actually as well where as far as my RAF overall career came to a decision point whether I wanted to leave at that point or stay on, that’s one of the option points, most of my old Nimrod and Shackleton colleagues were all leaving to go off to the airlines so that was the obvious option for me but decided well here I am, I’ve got you know, the likelihood of flying the Lancaster for a few more years as opposed to going off and being air airline pilot, so there was never any battle, never any decision for me I was going to stay where I was so I lost that opportunity to go out there really but with no regrets at all. So, carried on flying the Lanc, so after a couple of years say they asked me and I said ‘I’ll stay on’ after a couple of more years I think I probably said the same thing again and interestingly then after about four or five years they said ‘Would you mind staying on because we can’t find anyone to replace you?’ so they actually started asking me to stay on flying BBMF so that was even nicer. Because I think the reason was that the job of a BBMF pilot then you had your own normal Monday to Friday, eight to five routine, and then BBMF in theory was in the bits that were left. So normally on a Friday from say March through to October time November, yeah October, you’d either get airborne on a Friday afternoon, go away or get airborne early Saturday morning and you’d be away all weekend and then landing back on the Sunday evening, possibly Monday, so with all that the family didn’t get to see a great deal of you, and I’d got young daughters growing up and they weren’t seeing very much of me either so it was an interesting contrast from being away at the weekend where you were a celebrity and treated with all this pomp and circumstance and then you’d get back you’d land the Lancaster, maybe the kids would be there to meet you, the wife would sort of hand over a child, say ‘Right, these are yours, the grass needs cutting and the decorating needs doing’ it was down to earth, literally as well as physically so it was an interesting comparison. But it was a lot of time away so I think that was why they had a job finding people, people of the right sort of background ‘cause there were no Shackleton’s flying anymore so they hadn’t got people of a Shackleton background, Hastings was the other aircraft type they used to like people with background of and there were none of them around so they were a bit short of supply for Lancaster crew pilots and so they couldn’t actually find anybody for a year or so they couldn’t find anybody to come and replace us and so they eventually found one guy who came along quite happily, another Shackleton experience, and he was also senior to me as well so I could see my nose being a little bit out of joint now, he was senior he was qualified as an instructor so he was going to have a higher training position but then curiously he was crook almost for about two years with various family problems and injuries and things like that so it actually meant that rather than getting pushed to one side I actually got all the Lancaster flying, so for two years it was my Lancaster which used to annoy Paul Day no end. So, all the high profile and low profile stuff I got to do. I think the Lanc used to fly about ninety-four hours a year and I used to get about ninety of those ninety four hours so life was very good. But then the chap came back in fully trained up senior to me, so the writing was sort of on the wall for me. You can either stay on for a little bit longer as a junior or time to move and I reckoned after nine years I maintain that I’d achieved everything I’d wanted to do in a Lancaster, legally and illegally, one way or another so it was probably time to move on and the air force by now was sort of saying ‘Time to get back to a proper job’. So in ’97 sadly I left BBMF and I expected to go back to Kinloss to the maritime world up there to fly the Nimrods again with all the associated problems of being so far away and having a fairly detailed time that they told you when you were going to have your leave and not have your leave and fortunately I think in rather a strange way that happens with the air force there’d been an accident with a Bulldog, where a chap had been killed, so they needed to replace him and the chap who replaced him had to have a Nimrod background so he was taken from 51 Squadron, who were flying Nimrod’s at Waddington, so a slot appeared on 51 Squadron at Waddington and with me at Coningsby obviously it was ideal. I knew a few people on the squadron, they said ‘It was a pretty good way of life, what they do’ so managed to get a posting to Waddington. So, in ’98 I had to go on a quick refresher back at Kinloss on the Nimrod and then to Waddington, and the aircraft there was a Nimrod again but an electronic reconnaissance version, so a very different aircraft to the one at Kinloss, not maritime at all. Basically aircraft used to go up high level and listen to all the electronic transmissions, whether they be verbal or whether they be radars and things like that radio emissions, and again interestingly from a sort of medals point of view I think I think about that, I used to go along to all the Remembrance Day services and having been in the air force all those years had a very bare chest compared to all the old boys who had lots of jangling medals, and because of the role of the reconnaissance Nimrod we were over the Balkans, we were over later on we were over Iraq and Afghanistan and so I seemed to collect medals almost once every six months or so, so I thought ‘Hurrah’ now I’ve got all my medals I can go to these Remembrance Day parades and bravely wear my medals proudly, and then you think about it and actually most of my medals were awarded for being in the right place at the right time and with the aircraft we flew if ever there was any hint of danger we’d run away very quickly, so most of the people we used to fly against there wasn’t much of a threat to us but if ever there was a significant threat then having a high profile aircraft like ours we were just told to run in the opposite direction.
DE: Um.
MC: So I used to think then, well these guys got their medals for getting airborne knowing they were going to fly against fighters and flak and all the problems of darkness, and a lot of them wouldn’t even get any medals for doing that, whereas I was getting airborne and you know my medals were for drinking excess red wine and pizza’s in Italy and things like that so it used to sort of bring it home the value of them all but anyway Father liked to see all these medals. Obviously, Father was quite disappointed I think when I left BBMF but there was nothing we could do about that because he’d been very much involved in watching me go along and towards the end he was involved in lots of press interviews and things like that and so went to the reconnaissance Nimrod and then did that job, very enjoyable job, again flying lots of interesting places we went to, the flying itself wasn’t that exciting because we were just sort of flying around in big orbits at thirty thousand feet but the job we were doing was pretty interesting, and then we heard that the Nimrod was going to be taken out of service, and I think just before that in fact, again a lot of the multi-engine guys were going off to the airlines and they were concerned they were going to run out of Nimrod pilots so I was approaching my fifty five year point which is where you normally leave, and wondering what to do at fifty five because it was quite a strange age to start a new career, hoping maybe you know the airlines again because I thought maybe I’d get an airline job at fifty five but wasn’t sure and then the air force surprised me by, I was called into the boss’s office and said ‘Would you like a five year extension beyond fifty five?’ I thought what another five years of living in Portakabins overseas in the desert, not sure about that. But when I actually sat down and worked out all the financial side of it as opposed to the unknown of going off to the airlines it seemed like an easy decision so decided to stay on up to the age of sixty in the RAF flying the Nimrod, and then not long after I’d made that decision we then heard that the Nimrod was going to be taken out of service. So we were all very concerned about that ‘cause we thought we were doing a pretty good job with the Nimrod and it was being very much appreciated around Libya and Afghanistan by the army guys on the ground who we were helping but I think when Libya kicked off all of a sudden we got an extension of about three or four months with the aircraft otherwise we were all expecting to go off to other jobs, and on the Nimrod squadron, 51 Squadron if you had more than five years to go in the RAF then they were going to retrain you onto the American equivalent which we were going to get ourselves eventually but if you had less than five years they went off any other sort of job and because I didn’t have long left, I only had about two and a half years left in the RAF, they decided that they weren’t going to give me a flying job it would be a ground job, so I ended up working behind a desk as flight safety at Waddington which I can’t say I enjoyed at all with all the frustrations of a ground job. And then the age of sixty arrived and I left the air force and have had a wonderful time in retirement ever since.
DE: Ah ha.
MC: Now, I’ve not given up flying totally, I now I’ve joined the AEF, Air Experience Flight at Cranwell, so I fly cadets every weekend or whenever I want to basically. We fly cadets in a little single-engine training aeroplane so that’s great fun. I also fly, got a PPL, so I just fly friends around in a little four seater and the best thing for me just recently is I’ve taken, starting flying a Tiger Moth, which is an old pre-second world war training bi-plane and I do my presentation about my time in the air force I like to finish it off by showing pictures of the Tiger Moth because my Father, the first aircraft he flew in the RAF was a Tiger Moth and he went on eventually to Lancaster’s and then he ended up flying Chipmunks with the university air squadron at Nottingham and when I first joined the RAF, the first RAF aircraft I flew was a Chipmunk, then went onto Lancaster’s and ended with a Tiger Moth. So, the whole sort of circles gone all around together, that’s me.
DE: And you also do taxy runs in ‘Just Jane’?
MC: Yeah, so when I was flying on BBMF Lanc I’d always known about the Panton brothers at East Kirkby, Panton’s and the Chatterton’s, so my father and the Panton’s had known each other for quite a few generations. My father had been born on the site of where East Kirkby airfield was later made so he also had a sort of family connection with the area but the Panton’s and Chatterton’s have known each other for years so long before I got involved with the Lanc the families had known each other and we’d known that the Panton family, Fred and Harold Panton they’d had an older brother called Christopher and he had been a flight engineer on Halifax and he was lost on the Nuremberg raid which was one of the worst of the war and that had always been a very sore point to the family, the Panton family yet Father Panton found that his best way of dealing with this was to sort of black it out, blank it out. So, he’d never allowed, the boys were never allowed to go across to Germany to look at the grave, never allowed to not quite talk about him but never allowed to get involved or anything with what actually happened to him. So, it wasn’t until the father died that Fred and Harold could then do some exploration and find out a bit more about their brother and what had happened to him. They went over to Germany, Durnbach cemetery, where they found his grave and they sort of wanted to do something back home rather than sort of just a gravestone. They wanted to something rather more vibrant and so they started a museum at East Kirkby just basically in his memory and they wanted to get hold of an aeroplane. They couldn’t get hold of any Halifax’s ‘cause they weren’t any Halifaxes around and so they’d heard about a Lancaster for sale up at Blackpool so they acquired the Lanc, well they didn’t acquire it initially, when they were first interested in ’72 it had been bought by somebody else and it went to the main gate at Scampton this aircraft, NX611, and it had spent quite a few years there and whilst it was there the owner who’d bought it decided he didn’t want it anymore so put it up for sale again. So in ’83 the Panton’s successfully bought the Lancaster but had nowhere to put it so left it at the main gate at Scampton, but slowly but surely got their plans together and on part of the old airfield at East Kirkby which they’d acquired for chicken farming, they acquired the area around the control tower, they had half a hangar built on one of the old hard standings where the hangars had been, they had half a hangar built just big enough for a Lancaster and in ’88 the Lanc was dismantled at Scampton again, because it had been dismantled at Blackpool and moved to Scampton, then it was dismantled again moved by road with the help of the RAF to East Kirkby and reassembled. So, it arrived there and was reassembled in ’88 and looked magnificent and of course we all went along there and admired it tremendously and they had quite a few events there, reunions and things and it all looked very good. We could see that Fred and Harold were not satisfied with this and I think when I was on BBMF at the time they’d said ‘Do you think, do you know of anybody who could you know have a look at the engines, see if there was any chance of getting one of the engines running?’ There were a couple of guys, or one guy in particular who had been an engine man on BBMF who I knew called Ian Hickling and he had left the RAF at his due point and had gone off to do various jobs involved with aviation companies but I knew he wasn’t particularly happy with it so I said to Ian ‘You ought to speak to the Pantons ‘cause they’re interested in getting one of these engines running. He said ‘Yeah, yeah I will do, I will do, yeah’ and whenever the Panton’s spoke about it I said ‘There’s a chap called Ian Hickling, he’s very interested in getting involved, you ought to give him a call’, they said ‘Oh yeah, we will do, we will do’. Used to get really frustrated, for goodness sake, so eventually I got them speaking to each other, so Ian was taken on and within about seven months of starting on the Lanc he actually got one of the engines running so ’94 they got the first engine running at East Kirkby and before long they thought about starting another engine and then they approached me, I’d never been very far away, I was still flying the Lanc at Coningsby and said ‘Would you consider coming and taxying the aeroplane for us?’ So yes, certainly very happy to. It was all very tentative to start with but they made sure the hyd, the pneumatic brakes were working, the basic flying controls were working, the hydraulics were working and then in ’95 we struck the inboard engines up and released the brakes the aircraft just moved forward a little bit, the user brake stopped it again, so for the first time in many years anyway a Lanc was operating at East Kirkby again. Having got the first two engines going it wasn’t long before they got the third engine and then the fourth engine going and then they started offering taxy rides to people.
DE: Ah ha.
MC: So they started charging people for a ride around the airfield, or a little bit of the airfield. Things then moved on, sort of developed all the time. They then started doing night runs which I thought were the best of all because it’s atmospheric to have a night Lancaster night bomber operating in the night in the dark on a Lancaster airfield. Very, very, very, very moving I think that was and quite difficult as well, it used to give me, it was alright to taxy the Lanc in the daylight, but we operated in a fairly confined area but then when we first started doing the night runs it was also in a confined area, and it was, I was amazed how difficult it was because you’d lost sort of sight of the ground, all you had were peripheral views of lights and people with marshalling wands and things like that and again it gave me great respect and admiration for the people that had done this throughout the war in all weathers, very impressive from that point of view. Took people, so we took people for rides in it, I think the next sort of stage of development there was the BBC approached the museum with a view to doing a drama documentary. It was going to be a story about a wartime crew, present day, this was in 2000 but with flashbacks. They wanted to do some Lancaster filming, they couldn’t use the one at Coningsby because the RAF aren’t particularly enamoured with film companies and things like that and they won’t spend any excess time with film companies, so the film company came to East Kirkby instead and said ‘Is there any chance we could get the tail airborne?’ which is quite a major ask [acknowledging laug]) so the engineers again went down the back and tightened up a few of the bolts and put a few extra cables and fasteners in, and we took it out to an extension area. East Kirkby had been a standard three runway airfield, with a six thousand and two four thousand foot runways but after the war the Americans had moved into the airfield and extended one of the four thousand foot runways, east/west runway by an extra four thousand feet and so you had this eight-thousand-foot runway that they’d used. The old airfield had been reduced back to taxy ways and agriculture but that four thousand foot extension the Americans built was still there. And so, it was quite an adventure getting the Lanc from the hangar onto this four thousand foot extension. It involved some ingenuity in putting metal temporary runway covers down into the grass, it was an area where there just wasn’t enough space between some chicken hutches to actually get the wing span through so someone came up with a very clever idea I thought, they actually put a pile of sand by one of the chicken hutches so that as the Lanc was moved the wheel went over the sand, the wing went up over the chicken hutch and down on the far side. Very, very clever. Got it out there, got it onto this extension and very cautious to start with, so without any film cameras around, we just ran the aircraft down the runway, checked the brakes out ‘cause we’d never done more than walking speed before, so went a bit faster, checked the brakes out and next time went faster, checked the brakes out again, we found some fluids coming out of various places, I think it was just corroded water, and things like that, but we assured everything was alright, the brakes seemed to work, they seemed to work evenly so we got quite brave, said ‘Right we’ll go for it’ so this time at the end of the runway, put the power on, this time I put the stick forward and the tail came up quite beautifully within just a few yards of gathering low speed we roared off down the runway. The battle then of course was to keep the speed on enough to be able to keep the tail up but not go so fast that there was any chance of getting airborne, that was the last thing we wanted. We played about with the power and found that out, did it a second time and then a third time I think and then happy that we could do it the film cameras arrived a few, about a week later on the base, with all the paraphernalia that a film crew involves, the thing I remember the most is the catering wagon which was a converted double decker bus, it served wonderful food, anyway. We did all the film work and again got the tail airborne, sometimes with actors on board, sometimes with actors on the outside and it all worked really well, and so a great success. The BBC had kept the public at a sort of distance really, they didn’t want too much publicity about all this, I suppose it made a bigger impact in the film or TV programme when it came out and so having known this had all gone on there was quite a lot of clamouring from the public saying ‘Can we you know do it as a regular event? Can you get the tail up again?’ Well by this time they’d lost access to that runway extension and anyway it was a long way from the museum, so the thought was to acquire a bit of grass not very far from the museum area and get it well flattened down and rolled a few times and then look at the possibility of actually getting the tail airborne on that. And so, we did, we tried it a few times, it was much shorter distance so the tail only went up for a few seconds and then down again but there are some very nice pictures around of the Lanc on the grass with the tail airborne as we roared off across the grass. I think the family sort of thought about the risks involved and decided not to do that as a regular basis, ‘ cause if they’d have been a problem then it could have ruined the whole of the Lanc. So, we didn’t do that very, we didn’t do that many times, a few times and it was very spectacular. And then so the Lanc just went back to the regular routine now of providing passenger runs and they do it on a very regular basis, I think two days a week and bank holidays as well, and they take about ten people on board for not a small fee but I know it’s very, very popular and they’re booked up for about a year in advance so it’s a very popular pastime. If you think about it it’s the only way, only place in the world you can get a ride in a real live Lancaster on a real live Lancaster airfield, it’s the only place in the world you can do that so it’s very special, so no shortage of people queueing up to do it. Whenever I talk about the Lanc people always ask me ‘Well will it fly, is it ever going to fly again?’ So I knew that the public, the family, the Panton family have declared in the press that they do intend to get the aircraft airworthy again, it’s all very exciting. You don’t see a lot of evidence of it at the museum but in the background there’s quite a lot of work going on. They’ve got um, they’ve paid for, acquired airworthy engines, a lot of the work they’re doing now is up to an airworthy standard so any bits they change [unclear] airworthy but still a long way to go. Obviously, they’ve got to have money, it’s going to cost a lot of money, it’s going to be a technical problem although I’m sure it is feasible and the other thing is it’s a decision they have to make. If that aircraft becomes airworthy then the museum loses their centrepiece for a lot of the time when the aircraft’s away earning its living, it’s not going to cost money just to get it airworthy, it’s going to cost money to keep it airworthy so the aircraft will be away displaying and things so a lot of the time it won’t be at the actual museum itself. There’s always a risk of course of losing the aircraft as well so that’s another thing to consider, so there’s sort of three decisions; one is the finance if they can do that, one is the technical side of it and they reckon they can overcome that, so the big one is the decision, do we really want to do this? You know and I think to my mind while we can get actually get people in the aircraft doing these taxy runs, they probably wouldn’t be able to do that when it’s airworthy, to my mind whilst the one at Coningsby is flying and that obviously must come to an end at some point, when the great British tax payer decides it’s not going to pay for it anymore or whatever then that might be a cue for the East Kirkby Lanc to get airborne, don’t know, we’ll see.
DE: Do you think, do you think that they should then?
MC: I’m in two minds. I think I would love that idea of flying that aeroplane although it might be beyond my age scale now, and it would be great to see it flying, but it is very nice for people to be able to clamber over it now and actually get first-hand experience of what it was like to be in a Lanc so I like the idea of keeping it on the ground for now yeah.
DE: Ok, when we were talking earlier you spoke about flying on three. Could you tell me a bit about that?
MC: Yeah, OK. Often see pictures of, looking out over the wing of a Lancaster with the propellers feathered or one or two propellers feathered. One of my Father’s stories which I’ll recount is, as an instructor ‘cause he did his ops survived his tour of ops with 44 he went to be an instructor with 5LFS, 5 Lanc Finishing School at Syston where it was then. He spent quite a lot of time there about a year I think, and he says that’s when he really got to know the Lanc and love it even more so than the operations he was doing so he actually got to be an instructor officer there and he was very keen to pass on that confidence in the Lanc to other people so when he was doing the conversion with them, he didn’t have many flights only about seven or eight flights to convert people on the Lanc, but on one of the early ones he would get airborne, a nice good height, and he would show how capable the aeroplane is. So, he would shut one of the engines down and show the crew you just need a bit of extra power on the others, you can trim the aircraft out and it will fly quite happily on three, as we know people carried on with bombing missions on three engines all the way there and all the way back. He’d then shut the other engine down on the same side, so you’d have two engines on one side, two on the other, so that gives you quite a lot of yaw so you’d have quite a lot of trim on you’d probably have a bit of boot of rudder as well to keep the aircraft straight, but the aircraft would maintain height, you’d get rid of the bomb load if that was the case but the aircraft could still maintain height on two engines. Interesting to land but it could be done, he’d then shut another engine down and so you now had one engine running and where he was, at fairly high level at fairly light weight, then he’d sort of say ‘Yep the aircraft will still just about maintain a slow rate descent so you could probably get the aircraft back’ and then he used to surprise them, he tells me he’d surprise them, by shutting that engine down as well. So, it would be very quiet, have no engines running at all and the aircraft would glide and he’d show mid glide at a fairly good rate. And then he’d just think of the consequences he’d just punch the feathering button to restart the engine and they’d start up straight away and you’d put the power on and the aircraft would climb away. So that was always in my mind, not that I was ever going to do that in my case, but it was always a thought about four engines and there was a healthy rivalry on BBMF between fighter pilots and bomber pilots, a good little bit of rivalry, and we always used to maintain that we had nice, four nice reliable engines and they only had one so whenever we went over any water or built up areas then they would be quite nervous, you could see them trying to get higher and higher to give them a chance to either find a suitable field or parachute out, whereas we had a good solid four Merlin engines. But of course when you’ve got four engines you’ve got more chance of possibly having problems with them and my, when I first started flying on BBMF the chap who was in the charge at the time, the captain, was quite a nervous individual and he didn’t really like practising problems, practising emergencies on the grounds that if they had more problems with aircraft like Canberras, they had more problems practising emergencies than they actually had dealing with emergencies, so we never used to do any emergency training with him. Then he was replaced by a chap called Andy Tomlin who had come from a training background so he was far more used to the risks of training and practising and so he regularly used to teach us the co-pilot, me and the other co-pilot, he’d show us and we’d practise engine failures, shutting an engine down and then dealing with the remaining three engines and then bring the aircraft back into land and the various yaw problems associated with it. Then it turned out that on my very first flight as a captain, we went off down to Boston to do a quick fly past and come back and we had a problem with one of the superchargers to I actually had to shut the engine down so my very first trip as captain I came back on three engines. And then you look out over the engine, over the wing, and you see that stationary propeller and think that’s not right at all but again you concentrate on what you’re doing, so you concentrate on getting it done properly and then when you land you think whew, a sigh of relief. Curiously the next time it happened to me was when I took my Father flying with his crew. Managed to get him airborne and some of his wartime crew and again we got airborne we went off down south and came back again, and I thought a special treat then we’ll do a touch and go, so we landed the aircraft, put the power back on and take off again. And this was with Father’s rear gunner in the rear turret, a dour Scotsman, we’d landed and put the power on to go off again and he couldn’t understand this. A perfectly good landing, Father’s landings weren’t that good all the time, so perfectly good landing so why have we gone off again? I explained we were just going to do it for practice and then just, he said ‘There’s a great pillar of smoke coming out of number four engine’ and the crew looked at the engine and it was, there was no fire but it was just smoke, I think one of the cogs had broken up inside which was pushing out oil. So again, we went through our rehearsed drill, shut the engine down and feathered it so we’d got a stationary propeller which looks very odd and Father who’d now been moved back to sort of the operators’ area, he just couldn’t help himself but came out with a few sort of comments, because when you take the power back, you’ve got the aircraft trimmed down with power on three but not on one so when you bring the power back it has the effect of sort of turning the aircraft the other way. So, Father from down in the depths was saying ‘Don’t, you know remember about the trip you’re on power off’ ‘Yes thanks Dad, thank you very much’. You could see his years of training as an instructor and also the fact that he was my Dad he wanted to sort of help out as much as he could. So, I think I wasn’t too curt with him but I think I said ‘Yeah thanks Dad OK, let me get on with it’. We landed safely and took the aircraft back in again. So, the crew photographs we had afterwards were with one engine feathered, that was quite interesting.
DE: How did that make you feel having that experience with your Father?
MC: Delightful. Very, very proud after all those years where we’d been to the airshows together, seen the Lancaster flying and paid due reverence to it and all that sort of thing to actually go flying in the Lanc with him well there’s nothing better really, with all the various things I did in the Lancaster, legal and illegal, most definitely the best was to take Father flying in it as well.
DE: What illegal things did you do?
MC: [Laughs] Could talk about it now I suppose. It was just [high jinks?] generally. Whenever I used to, if there were any events on at East Kirkby on a Sunday afternoon wherever I was coming from I used to sort of manage to get the aircraft over East Kirkby somehow. And in the Monday morning I’d normally be summoned to OC Ops office to explain why I’d been wasting Lancaster hours. And then various heights, there was one time, I’d always wanted to fly down the Derwent Dam because everyone knows about the Dambusters and all that stuff and they’d flown in their rehearsals, the Dambusters themselves when they were rehearsing had flown over the Derwent Dam, and when they’d done the film they’d spent a lot of time flying over the Derwent Dam so it was always something I wanted to do. I was co-pilot for the fiftieth anniversary which was very highly publicised and lots of press but wasn’t allowed to touch the controls because again the guy was a bit nervous about the height we were going to go down to. He kept far too high as far as I was concerned, so when I got my captaincy it was something I always wanted to do is fly over the Derwent, always, always, always. But every time I’d asked because everything a Lanc does is approved at fairly high level and every time I asked they’d said ‘No, no it’s too high profile to do that sort of thing’. Eventually it was a rather sad occasion that one of the ground crew who been a great friend and a great help of mine had left BBMF and then died very suddenly of a heart attack not long afterwards and his family had always been associated with the Derbyshire area and they had permission to put a little plaque on the Derwent Dam just in memory of Terry Shaw. So, the family had got in touch with me and said you know ‘Is there any chance of giving us a flypast?’ I thought this sounds good, so approached the powers that be and put it in all the right phrases and good public relations and stuff like that and I think the response I got was ‘OK but one pass and no publicity’ and so that one pass actually because of where we were we got there a little bit on the early side and we weren’t too sure if the family were there going to be all ready for us so I went round twice anyway so that was slightly illegal, and the height we came down to was definitely illegal. [Laughs]
DE: Wonderful, OK thank you. Again, before we started the interview you told me a little bit about Peter Lees and a little bit about your Father’s book, do you?
MC: Yeah, when Father’s crew were assembled in the usual ramshackle way of who knew who and what friends got on with who they ended up with seven bods obviously and the bomb aimer had, called Pete Lees, the bomber aimer had come from an RAF background where the rest of the guys had just sort of come in for the war, Pete Lees had been in a little bit longer and so he had a bit more experience and therefore was a little bit I think miffed with the casual attitude of these brand new shiny sergeants who only, hadn’t got anytime time in so to speak. But he was a very conscientious bomb aimer and at times when they were over the target and he wasn’t actually happy with the set-up he told the crew to go around again which they weren’t obviously too happy about the idea of in the middle of a target, but he had the, he was a perfectionist, he wanted to get the job done properly if you were going to go all that way. And one night quite early on in Father’s tour after he’d been on ops for about a month they were selected to be a standby crew, and a standby crew on a squadron on 44 as all the other stations they were the crew that would provide any spare bods if somebody was needed for another crew. So if any one member of a crew that was going to fly that night went sick then a standby crew would provide the spare, unless I think if it was a pilot. If it was a pilot that went sick then the whole crew were replaced. But on this occasion, I think it was 23rd November ‘44, chap called Buckle was captain and his bomb aimer called Mantle-Scott was sick and I’m not too sure why but I do think that it must have been very late notice because I believe that Mantle-Scott’s equipment was all on the aeroplane at that point because it was subsequently lost and he had to claim for it, so it must have been quite a last-minute call he went sick. So, my Father’s bomb aimer Pete Lees was called and he had to go in his place with Buckle and as often happens on these occasions the crew didn’t come back. It was a trip to Berlin I think as well, crew didn’t come back and so quite a blow for Father and the crew having just sort of started off on ops for that to happen and there are some quite poignant little ideas that Father wrote to the parents of Pete Lees to explain, well you couldn’t explain, but to just give their sympathies and hold out hope and it’s interesting that in Father’s letter he says you know ‘From the number of people shot down there’s quite a large percentage alive as prisoners of war’ which I think is twisting the truth a little bit unless that is what Father genuinely believed but he was trying to keep the spirits up. And so, for a little while they flew with odd other bomber aimers, whoever was spare at the time, and eventually the sick bomb aimer joined Father’s crew and they were delighted with him he was very much more of sort of in their ilk and fitted in with the crew very well so they were very pleased with him, Mantle-Scott. So, they all finished the tour and they all went off and went off to be training instructors and things like that later on. But much, many years later, when I was involved with East Kirkby I had a call I think initially it was from the relations of the family of Pete Lees who were, were getting in touch and met up with them, met them at East Kirkby and they brought the memorabilia they had of Pete and it was in a brown suitcase, an old brown suitcase, and it turned out that this was the old brown suitcase that my Father had posted and gone through all Pete’s stuff when he was lost, had actually posted it back down to his parents along with the letter that he written to him and they’d bought all this stuff back to show me. So, the brown case, the letter that Father had written, I’d never seen before but had heard of and various other memorabilia that Pete had had. And we took the families, took the family, and showed them round the Lancaster at East Kirkby and then we showed them the spot at Dunholme Lodge where we think Pete would probably have flown from, where the last time he’d been on the ground so to speak alive so obviously it was very important for the family and quite moving for them and not long after that I had another ‘phone call again from East Kirkby by another person who had approached the museum trying to get hold of me and it was a lady called Jen Scott, Jennifer Scott. Jen Scott was the grand-daughter of Mantle-Scott the bomb aimer who’d joined Father’s crew and it turns out she was at Newcastle University doing a history degree and she’d decided to do her dissertation on Bomber Command and I think the media, how the media reported Bomber Command, and she just wondered if I could help her a bit with some of the research she needed to do. So of course, we got her down to East Kirkby, took some photographs in the nose of the Lanc where her grandfather had been and took them to also look round the Lancaster at Coningsby and also out to Dunholme Lodge again to the spot there. So this is quite moving for us and the family of course and I just kept remembering the fact that if her grandfather hadn’t gone ill that night then she probably wouldn’t exist ‘cause he’d probably have gone down with the Buckle crew, so quite poignant and she was very grateful for all the help she got and we kept in touch and she knew about the family of the bomb aimer that had been lost and on one occasion she went to visit Berlin for something else and was going to go and visit the grave of the chap who was lost and contacted, through me contacted the family and we came up with a nice little plaque which they produced and she went and laid it at Peter’s grave. I thought this was very, very poignant that the grand-daughter of the chap who survived, because he had a cold that night, went and put a little plaque by the grave of the chap who hadn’t survived. All down to a cold.
DE: Are you still OK?
MC: Yeah, [laughs].
DE: Can you, can you tell me a bit about your Father’s book? You said earlier that he wouldn’t talk about it, how did he come to write it all down?
MC: Yeah, so Father didn’t speak much about the horrors of the war he used to talk about the flying and he’d talk about his love of the Lancaster and that sort of thing and obviously, there was a lot of other parts of his life, when he’d been a student beforehand and growing up as a kid and then after the war when he went off to be initially a lecturer and then a farm manager. Lots of little stories he’d tell us, he was great at telling stories but he was no, and they used to get bigger each time of course like the length of the fish, but they got bigger and better each time. And I knew that with my memory and the family’s memories etc., etc we’d lose all these unless we wrote them down so we used to say to him ‘Will you write them down?’ He said ‘Yes I will when I retire I’ll write these little stories down’ and we knew that was never going to happen ‘cause you never retire as a farmer. And it sort of came by chance that often you used to get sort of fan mail and things like that into BBMF and one letter was written by a chap called Richard Underwood who worked for the Council down in Bourne, I think he was a planning officer or something, and he was going to write a little article about Father and I for the Parish magazine or the Council magazine I think it was. I think he was going to plan about two sides of A4 in this and so he asked if it was OK, he asked our permission to do that. And as always with these things we used to pass them onto Father and he’d replied ‘Yes sure that’s fine’ so Richard wrote down a couple of notes, or a couple of pages of notes that he’d gained from Internet and magazines and things and gave them to Father and Father had changed a few bits, corrected a few bits, added a few little notes and added a couple of interesting stories and sent it back to Richard said ‘There you go ’and Richard was so impressed by this, said ‘Oh that’s really good, if I incorporate those can you have look at that again and if you’ve got any other little stories ‘ and he used to go to and fro for about two or three years getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger until he got the whole story covered and there was a lot of discussion about the name of the book but eventually they decided to call it ‘ Ploughshare and Shining Sword’ based on Harris’ opinion that the Lancaster was his shining sword, and that ploughshares were converted into Lancaster’s and after the war converted back to ploughshares I suppose. Anyway so the book was slowly, and it was a slow process getting it together, and then I think they had quite a while trying to find someone to publish it as well, and eventually it went through all the publishing and corrections, etc., etc. and illustrations and things and then came the day of the, we knew the date of the publication was getting close, but father was getting iller and iller with various heart disease and things like that and it turned out that father had actually seen everything of the book but had actually passed, had died six days before it was actually published so never got to saw the final finished version but as far as I was concerned I think they had about a thousand copies made and the proceeds went off to the Linc’s and Lancashire Association, but as far as I was concerned I just wanted one copy with all those stories recorded forever which is what I’ve now got so very happy with it.
DE: Smashing. How, it’s another big question, but how do you, what are your thoughts on the way Bomber Command has been remembered?
MC: Yeah, I guess I have been in an environment of Bomber Command for quite a few years now and obviously everyone in the environment I’ve been has been very pro Bomber Command and everyone I’ve met has been very pro and you do realise obviously there’s the other side of the story as well and every so often I just sort of quietly reflect on the fact that the Lancaster was designed to destroy and wonder why it’s got such a wonderful following everywhere, because wherever I go everyone raves about how wonderful the Lancaster is and sometimes depending on the environment you sort of say ‘Well the aircraft was designed as a machine of destruction’ and then see what sort of a reaction you get but most people say ‘Yeah but it was necessary at the time’ that sort of thing so I suppose you’re testing the water a little bit. I follow the general line that the guys at the time were all doing their job and I know sort of from personal experience if you’re trying to put together an operation where you’re trying to have one particular aim of getting an aircraft whether its bombing or whatever over a particular place at a particular time there’s so many different factors involved that there’s nearly always something that goes wrong. So, you have to sort of try and allow for all these things that are going to go wrong and achieve what you can at the end of it, occasionally everything goes wrong like the Nuremburg? raid and very little is achieved and they lose a huge amount of aeroplanes and then on the other occasions very few things go wrong and the target gets devastated like Dresden. And so that’s my sort of form of explanation as to why things like Dresden happened. It wasn’t that they, it was just [unclear] made a special effort to kill as many people as possible, just that all these factors were involved every night and occasionally it all came together and occasionally it didn’t. But for the crews themselves I think because of all the armchair experts after the war and the fact that they never got a sort of campaign medal and things like that, an awful lot of people did just withdraw into themselves and didn’t keep quiet about the war but I think they were reluctant to talk about what they did. So probably again with my Father he’d tell me about the Lancaster but didn’t tell me much about the actual raids or the things he saw and went on. So yeah you feel a bit mad really that they were cheated out of it in a way, everyone else got the recognition for it and yet what they did they should have been recognised for it as well. So, I suppose I, fairly standard sort of line that you maintain and yes there’s recognition nowadays but it’s just annoying it’s too late for so many people.
DE: Do you think that lack of recognition is somehow led into the way the squadron associations were created in their little individual memorials on stations and things?
MC: Yeah, I guess that’s a good point, and I think the associations seemed to sort of blossom, I guess it tied in with most peoples’ retirement so when they were busy working they didn’t really have time for things like that and when they’d stopped working they had a bit more time for reflection and thinking about it. They’d think about the characters they’d worked with and the friendships they’d made and sort of try and re-live some of that and when they did get back together again they’d talk about what they’d done and they’d find that this feeling of reluctance to talk about what they’d done in the war was a mutual thing and sort of because they were in the environment they were in they could talk about it, they could talk about the bad times as well as good times. And therefore I think the associations were a good thing because it got all these individuals who had their own private thoughts together to realise they shouldn’t be ashamed of what they did, it was, they were doing their job etc. and stuff like that. So, I think the associations are a good. Sadly now we’re at the point where most of the old boys, the veterans, are either not with us any more or at a point where they can’t sort of get together so the associations are slowly dwindling away.
DE: Do you feel that your job flying the Lanc gives you any special insight too?
MC: I think it gives you responsibilities almost in a way. I think flying the Lanc and taxying the Lanc at East Kirkby is sort of representing all the guys that flew the aircraft as I say for real so I think it’s important that we do tell the story of them and keep the memories alive and I’ve got a little presentation that I give called ‘The Tale of Two Lancs’ it’s normally to sort of Womens’ Institute and groups like that in the back of the village hall, and I finish that presentation having spoken of all my Lancaster experiences and the fantastic opportunities I’ve had by just putting up the badge of the Lancaster and the badge of BBMF, the Lancaster is to remember the many and then the BBMF is lest we forget and I think that is an idea that when I do my talk I just want to bring back and bring and highlight the memory of all these guys who were lost or carried on and sort of died naturally but with the, that sort of sometimes that idea haunting them all the time behind, but just like to make sure that the memory of what they did stays alive.
DE: Smashing. I think I’ve gone through all the questions I’d jotted down. Is there anything else that you can think of that you’d like to?
MC: Just talk a little bit about the Lanc at Waddington.
DE: Ah ha. Sure.
MC: When I was at Waddington flying my Nimrods I was surprised to find one time that I was asked to go and taxy a group at East Kirkby that were all from Waddington which is where I was based and I was quite surprised, why am I, do not know about this group? And it turned out that this was a project, force development project, force development was an idea the air force developed about ten, fifteen years ago, they realised that some of the young airmen in the RAF actually had no idea about the history of the air force or what the air force had achieved. So, there was a certain amount of resources and energy put into educating the young folks about the history of the RAF, and also encouraging them to develop their own personal abilities as well. So, a project started up at Waddington which was to research an aircraft that had crashed in Scotland and I got involved with this. This group that I had offered to do a taxy ride for were the group that were involved in this project, and it turned out that a Lancaster Mark I which had the registration PD259, which had got airborne from Waddington on 31st August ’44 on a training flight and the crew on board were Australians ‘cause it was 463 Squadron and they were an Australian squadron although they had a Scottish engineer flight engineer. And we’d heard that the aircraft had crashed up in the highlands of Scotland not very far from Aviemore and nobody really knew why, but I was surprised that I didn’t know anything about this because I thought I knew quite a lot about Lancs and the ones that were left, but I didn’t know anything about this one at all. So, did some investigating and joined this little group at Waddington and in 2008 there was an expedition organised to go and visit the crash site, and I wasn’t too sure about it because it involved four hours of walking from the nearest bit of road on the A9 up to the crash site, and the nearest town I think is Kingussie and the crash site as I say was up in the peat bog highlands and was about a four hour walk from the nearest bit of civilisation. So was very much looking forward to it, got out there, had seen some photographs of what was out there, got out there and was amazed to find the state of the bits that were there, the wreckage still perfectly good markings, you could see the squadron letters on the side of it J, O, G, you could see bits of the roundels and lots of the markings on the aircraft that had been sat out there in this environment of plus 20 in the summer to sort of minus 30 in the winter of snow and ice and hail and survived over sixty cycles of this was still in such good condition, amazing. So obviously very fascinated and also very daunting to wander round the crash site of where these seven young men had been killed thinking that’s the spot where these guys were killed, and that was just sort of a visit to the site initially. Got back absolutely full of enthusiasm thought it would be really nice to get some of those bits back to Waddington. The land owner had been a very good chap, he’d been very protective of the site because it wasn’t a burial site because the guys had all been returned to, or been recovered, bodies had been recovered and buried in Cambridge War Graves Cemetery, apart from the engineer who was buried in Scotland. But he was very protective of the site, didn’t want sort of pilferers and people pinching stuff ‘cause it was quite significant to him but he when we explained what we were trying to do he was very pro very much onside and with a bit of wrangling managed to get hold of a helicopter on a training flight in the local area and with a specialist team that were involved in under-slung loads you have to be quite careful about what you put under a helicopter of course, all these experts came along, all of this came together and I was very impressed about how it came together and we actually managed to recover some of the parts of the aircraft in the under-slung load down to by the main road, by the A9, and then back to, ferried back to Waddington. We did two events like that one in 2009 and one in 2010. So, we’d now got some very significant parts of this aircraft recovered back at Waddington and with the help of the Lanc at Coningsby some engineers have made an internal frame just the same size as the inside of a Lancaster so we’ve actually managed to attach some of these sections that we’ve recovered onto this frame sort of almost like a reconstruction of a Lancaster although we haven’t actually got enough room to make a full-size Lancaster. So, it’s quite significant now and it achieved the aim of the people at Waddington who can now actually put the hands on something that if they’re ground crew their forebears did, were involved in seventy years ago. So, it’s quite tangible to see something of a real live Lancaster and we were very impressed, this aircraft was only three weeks old when it crashed, so I call it a brand new Lancaster which amuses people when you see the state of it now. It was a brand new Lancaster, three weeks old, it had still achieved seven, carried out seven operations in that time, six or seven operations and one of the pilots who’d done three of those operations, a chap called Bill Purdy had heard about our project even though he was in Australia and he’d come over to see his old Lancaster and gave us some wonderful tales about the stories of how it had been involved in his general life as well and so we thought as a nice idea we’d present him with part of the Lancaster to take home. So, we found one of the exhaust stubs, there were quite a few of those scattered over the hillside, we found an exhaust stub, rather bent, but we gave it to him to take back. On the grounds that we thought it might look rather suspicious going through the scanner at the airport security we gave him a sort of signed certificate to confirm it was his property and that we’d presented it to him and the significance of it. So, he went back very happy with that. Didn’t expect to see him again but he’s a very adventurous chap and he’s been back to the UK several times since then and come to visit and see the progress in our project. But because when you take bits off a crash site you have to have a licence to take bits off it when you, the licence has to be in somebody’s name so it’s in my name, and so when I recover bits I have to send a full report of all the bits I’ve taken off the crash site and then the MOD come back with a letter, a standard format letter, saying the RAF and the MOD have no longer any interest in these parts, they now belong to you. So, all these Lancaster bits belong to me so I’ve got my own bits of a Lancaster which I’m very proud of, and the visitors centre is open to members of the public by prior arrangement.
DE: Smashing. Well thank you very much again.
MC: Good stuff.
DE: Unless you can think of something else you want to add that will.
MC: I’ll check my notes, things I thought about. Covered it all really. Pete Lees, PD259, my Father’s stories and the two Lancs presentation I do, yeah, brilliant. Yep, so do you, would you want copies of Father’s stories?
DE: I’d love to yes.
MC: Yeah, electronically on there if you wish.
DE: Oh brilliant, that’s fantastic I’ll get those sorted.
MC: Yeah.
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AChattertonM160331
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Interview with Mike Chatterton
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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Sound
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eng
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01:24:28 audio recording
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Pending review
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Dan Ellin
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2016-03-31
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Civilian
Description
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Mike Chatterton grew up on a farm. His father, John Chatterton was a Lancaster pilot during the war, before returning to university and becoming a lecturer, then later becoming a farmer. Mike joined the Royal Air Force from university in the 1970’s and flew Jet Provost, helicopters, Shackletons and Nimrods. On posting to RAF Coningsby he joined the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight where he progressed to Captain the Lancaster. He was able to fly his father and some of his crew. Mike also carried out taxy runs on ‘Just Jane’ at East Kirkby and assisted in the recovery of parts of Lancaster PD259 from a crash site in Scotland to RAF Waddington.
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Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
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Dawn Studd
44 Squadron
aircrew
bombing of Nuremberg (30 / 31 March 1944)
final resting place
Halifax
killed in action
Lancaster
memorial
perception of bombing war
pilot
RAF Coningsby
RAF Cranwell
RAF East Kirkby
RAF Hemswell
RAF Kinloss
RAF Lossiemouth
RAF Waddington
rivalry
Shackleton
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2256/40605/PFeltonM2201.1.jpg
897c45b883850d8a0b5e5c3ae1fba82a
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2256/40605/AFeltonM221114.2.mp3
0914d71570380c64e084251661234a6e
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Felton, Monty
M Felton
Description
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An oral history interview with Flight Lieutenant Monty Felton DFC. He flew operations as a navigator with 10 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
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2022-11-14
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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.
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Felton, M
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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NM: So, today is the 14th of November. I’m with Monty Felton, DFC in his home in North London. My name is Nigel Moore and I’m going to ask Monty about his service with Bomber Command. So, Monty can you start at the beginning and can you start to tell me when and where you were born and about your childhood and growing up?
MF: I was born on the 6th of November 1923. In fact, it was my ninety ninth birthday on Sunday before last. When I was, I was born in Middlesex Hospital. Not Central Middlesex but Middlesex Hospital which was off Oxford Street in London and as I understand it Winston Churchill was born in the same place. Not that that makes me any more famous but there we are. When I was a young baby we moved to Thornton Heath which is a suburb of Croydon and we lived over the tailor’s shop which my dad had opened. We lived in very modest accommodation. It was an old property. We didn’t have a bathroom and to go to the lavatory one had to go around the back. So as you can see my background was not exactly very exotic. Nevertheless, we coped. I can’t ever remember being short of a meal and I was well looked after. We lived there, I went to school just up the road and then I got a scholarship to Selhurst Grammar School which was in West Croydon. Not too far. When I was at school at Selhurst Grammar this was a fee paying school but they took in scholarship boys and I was one of them. If we go through now to the beginning of the war Selhurst Grammar were evacuated to I suppose what was thought to be a safer area but in fact it was Brighton and Hove which I would have thought was even more vulnerable. We went there in the very first day or two of the war and I went to I think it was Brighton and Hove Grammar School. We shared. They went in the morning, we went in the afternoon or vice versa and I took my what was then matriculation exams which is really the equivalent of today’s GCSE. And having taken the exams I got home and I suppose I must have got home around about March April 1940. I then got a job with a firm of chartered accountants in Doctor’s Commons which was a small turning near the Bank of England and was occupied very largely by firms of solicitors and accountants. Doctor’s Commons doesn’t exist anymore but it does get mentioned two or three times by Dickens in “David Copperfield” and in “Pickwick Papers”. I’m a very keen reader of classics. Particularly Charles Dickens. Where are we now? I got this job at accountants and after being there for a very short time I became articled. That means that you had to serve five years articles because there was no other way that you yourself could sit the exams and become a chartered accountant. The procedure in those days was the firm to whom you were articled charged a premium which was normally about two hundred and fifty guineas. Lord knows what’s the equivalent of that today but it’s a large sum of money. My dad didn’t have two hundred and fifty guineas and as I’ve said before I doubt if he had two hundred and fifty buttons. But the arrangement was made that I would pay off this money over the very small salary that I would earn over the five year period. In fact, it didn’t really happen because after about eighteen months I then joined the RAF and my articles ran on and indeed expired before I left the RAF. So we got a bit of a [laughs] a bit of a bargain in that respect. It’s strange because if somebody starts to work for a firm of chartered accountants today they get a decent salary and they receive tuition. When I joined this firm I remember the man I was articled to was named Horace Brett and he never spent one moment teaching me anything. In the firm there was a chap working there who was two or three years older than me and he was flying about in the room and he was going to become an RAF ace and was very sure of himself. He went off to have an interview. I think in those days the interviews were in I think it was Bush House in Aldwych. He had this interview full of confidence and they turned him down. So either he suggested or I got the bright idea that I’d go for an interview entirely confident that if they’d turned him down they certainly wouldn’t accept me but for some peculiar reason they did. So I continued working for a while and then I was sent off for my medical. I think I went to Catterick and it was a very detailed medical and I again I thought well I’ve never been anywhere, I’ve lived a very protected life and I thought they won’t accept me. I’m not the right material. I’m not a big strong fella. But they did accept me. So after the medical I was then called up and I went for the first two weeks of my RAF career if I can call it such. I went to Lord’s Cricket Ground to be kitted up and then I stayed in a block of flats in Prince Albert Road called Viceroy Court which was a rather swish block of flats but not when we of the RAF went there because they stripped out everything of any value including the carpets. The whole lot. And we slept in not double bunks but three in a bunk. We stayed there for a couple of weeks. We had some corporal chap busying us about but we did learn cleanliness. Not personal cleanliness but cleanliness of keeping the room. If he found a speck of dust we were in trouble. We had our night vision test in the next door block of flats called Bentinck Court, I imagine they both blocks are still there and I think there were sixteen images flashed on to a screen. We sat in a dark room and you had to identify them. They were things like a Maltese Cross, a silhouette of an aeroplane, that sort of thing. I think the pass mark was twelve. I scored eight and I think they, they decided I’d have to sit the exam again which I did and the second time I scored seven but it made not the slightest difference. Everything proceeded as if I was an ex, absolute expert. From the flats in Prince Albert Road let me think. I was then sent to ITW, Initial Training Wing in Torquay and we stayed in the Grand Hotel which was near the station but again it was a posh hotel but was stripped out of anything that mattered. And I think we were in ITW for about three or four months. I can’t remember. And the purpose of ITW was number one to teach us the principles of navigation and secondly to get us really fit. All the time I’m believing that I will never get anywhere near an aeroplane. I won’t go into the detail of navigation because people will already know but in essence if you’re flying an aeroplane the wind direction and the speed of the wind carries the aeroplane in the same way as a tide carries a boat and therefore the navigator has to work out what the pilot should be flying. What track he should be flying so that taking in to account the wind he got correctly from A to B. So we used to sit at ITW in what was really a school room and learn on pencil and paper the calculations and the principles of navigation. We also were made fit. We marched at a very much quicker pace than normal. We went for runs and after a run we ended up in the sea and we were really put through it. So that by the time we completed ITW we were in really good shape and as I’ve mentioned so often from that moment onwards we didn’t have any need to have physical exercise and by the time we got to a bomber squadron our condition was probably infinitely worse than before we ever started. I suppose this is typical of the RAF. When I finished at ITW I was then posted to a airfield at Bishops Court, Northern Ireland which was, I don’t know, eight or ten miles or so from Belfast. It was strange because most chaps, pilots and navigators were sent for training either to Canada or to what was then southern Rhodesia. For some reason or another they sent me and I’m not sure, it might have been one other chap they sent me to Northern Ireland. The result of which of course I finished my training appreciably quicker than those who had gone abroad. At Bishops Court we flew Ansons. Comparatively small two engined aircraft. I’d never flown in an aeroplane before. On my first flight I sat in my navigator’s position and was promptly sick which wasn’t exactly very distinguishing. We flew about a hundred hours or so, part day and part night in Northern Ireland. And I don’t know if it’s really of any interest but on our day off we used to go into Belfast and we used to feed ourselves at a store there which was called I think Robinson Cleaver but I’m not certain. What I do know is we used to go there for lunch and have turkey with all the trimmings and then we went back at the end of the day for supper and had chicken and chips. Northern Ireland went all well at Bishops Court and at the end of the course I passed and became a navigator and instead of being an AC2, Aircraftsman Second Class which was known as the lowest form of animal life I then became a sergeant. Every, not just me, everybody who passed became a sergeant. Interestingly enough when I’d finished they marked my logbook, ‘A well above navigator.’ And in retrospect because navigators were much fewer than pilots everybody who entered the RAF wanted to be a pilot. Many navigators were blokes that didn’t pass as pilots but that didn’t happen to me. So I was a well above average navigator which in retrospect I rather suspect that many others were also well above average navigators. But I was then sergeant. Can I break for a moment?
NM: Of course you may.
MF: I’ll get myself a drink of water.
NM: Of course. No problem at all. You’re doing really well.
[recording paused]
MF: Right. Right. I left Bishops Court and I was posted to an airfield in, at Kinloss in Scotland and there we continued our training on Whitleys which were again old two engine aircraft. They were known as flying coffins because that was the something resembling the shape of the fuselage. We flew again day and night. It was a little more dicey because Scotland’s got a lot of mountains. So hopefully we got through alright. One of the experiences I had at Kinloss is we went in to, I say we, individually went into a room which was a simulation of flying a trip. You sat at a desk. You had all the navigation equipment. You were given a target. There was a noise as if the engines of an aeroplane were working and it was hard work because the only difference from normal is the clock went at twice the speed. So you had to do your best to get cracking. That takes into account Kinloss. From Kinloss I was posted I think to Rufforth in Yorkshire where we were introduced for the first time ever to the Halifax four engined bomber. As I’ve said so often we of the Halifax people have always been a bit cross that the Lancaster is the beginning and the end of everything. The Lancaster. The Halifax was the poor relation. Exactly the same as in Fighter Command. You ask fifty people what aircraft flew in Fighter Command forty nine would say the Spitfire. With a bit of luck one might say the Hurricane and the Hurricane did exactly the same job. At Rufforth we started flying with the Halifax and one of the things that happened was our pilot and the crew went on circuits and bumps. What that was is you flew in, you took off, flew in a wide circle around the airfield, came in to land, bumped the wheels on the runway and then took off again and did this circle trip perhaps three or four times. I, of course, you didn’t need a navigator just to circle the airfield, albeit a wide circle and I never believed in flying if I didn’t need to so I used to stop at home. Stop in the airfield and if it was night I would go to bed. After training at Rufford, Rufforth I think the airfield was called we were then posted to Melbourne which was Number 10. Number 10 Squadron. Melbourne being a little village about eight or ten miles from York. The first thing that happened is you had to build a crew. This meant that for the first time ever because so far I’d only mixed with navigators, for the first time we were in rooms where we met pilots and engineers and wireless operators and bomb aimers. The whole thing. And the plan was that you would see people that you thought that you might like and somebody might like you and you’d get together and before you’ve finished you’ve got a crew. I remember I saw a young chap who was a pilot and I thought well he looks reasonably decent. I said, ‘Have you got a navigator?’ He said, ‘No.’ ‘Right.’ We were together. I think it might have been the next day but I’m not sure whether it was any longer I was called into perhaps the adjutants office or somebody’s office and told that I was flying in the crew of George Dark who was the pilot. I didn’t have any choice. What happened was they built a, in all modestly say a rather special crew. George Dark was a man of about thirty three. A very experienced aviator. Had never been on ops but had been a, had been an instructor and he knew how to fly. My mid-upper gunner and my wireless operator were both starting their second tour. My bomb aimer was a highly educated man from I believe Czechoslovakia. A bit older than me. Perhaps four or five years older. Spoke the most beautiful elegant English. A bit snooty because we were all a bit below his level. My rear gunner trained in Canada and he really became top of his class because he was given a commission straightaway as soon as he’d finished training. He, his name was Eric Barnard. He was my best friend and we remained friends until he died which was perhaps five or six years ago. In fact, he was, when he was I think eighty eight and a half he remarried having been on his own for many years. He remarried and at eighty I was his best man. I don’t suppose that happens all that often. Where are we now? We started off at Melbourne and our first outing was what was called a bullseye and that was a flight as if we were going on a raid. We entered into Germany but then we turned back and came home. The idea being that we would be ahead of the main stream and it was thought we might mislead the Germans as to where the target really was. The main problem a navigator had was the direction of the wind and the speed of the wind because if there was no wind there would be no need for a navigator because you would just, the pilot would just fly where he had to go and that would be the end of it. The, the briefing we had before an operation included the Met, the Met people and they would give us a forecast of what the windspeed and direction would be at varying, varying heights up to the time of the target. So if you were flying to Hanover you would be told what the windspeed and direction was going up to say twenty thousand feet. Now, invariably our first turning point from York was Reading and we flew at say two thousand feet to Reading. It didn’t often happen but very occasionally the forecast wind for Melbourne to Reading wasn’t right so we’d then would wonder what it was going to be like at thirty thousand feet but we struggled. We got there, thank the lord and moreso we got back. With George we did a total of twenty one trips. Everything went pretty well. The only trouble was that after several trips George began to get trouble with his throat and a result of that is sometimes when we ought to have been on a raid we weren’t because he wasn’t fit and it got to the stage sometimes that if we weren’t on a raid other crews would all say, ‘Well, George Dark’s crew are not on. It must be an easy target tonight.’ Eventually after we did twenty one trips George couldn’t continue. So I had to find another pilot. Strangely enough I was on leave and I travelled back on the train from Euston to York and I met a bloke whose name, whose surname was Wood and he was a pilot and wanted a navigator. Thank you very much. I thought that the next day when we got to Melbourne we would have a trip or two for the next two or three days to get used to each other. It didn’t happen like that. The next night we were on ops. With George although the discipline in the air was very strict obviously we still spoke to each other in a friendly way. For example, if I saw the pilot was off course by five degrees I’d say, ‘George, you’re off course. Get back on.’ And if I wanted although it was unusual to speak to my friend Eric who was in the rear bubble, in the rear turret I’d say, ‘Eric, how are you doing?’ ‘Fine.’ With Flight Lieutenant Wood he was a very serious man and believed in following the rules exactly. The result of that was that when I flew with Flight Lieutenant Wood if I wanted him I’d say, ‘Pilot to navigator.’ I beg your pardon. I would say, ‘Navigator to pilot.’ And if he wanted me he would say, ‘Pilot to navigator.’ It was very formal. I keep referring him, referring to him as Flight Lieutenant Wood because although I flew with him on eleven operations I never knew his first name. Very odd. Very odd. Anyway, we finished our tour of thirty two trips and as I’ve said so often by the grace of God I did the tour and never got so much as a scratch.
NM: I think that’s a very compelling story but can I take you back a little bit?
MF: Please.
NM: You obviously became a navigator very very early in your RAF career. How come you got identified as a navigator quite so early as the ITW?
MF: Yeah.
NM: Were you, did you volunteer to be a navigator and say that’s what you wanted or were you selected as a navigator? How, how did you get to be navigator?
MF: Well, it’s only that when I was accepted as a member, as a prospective member of aircrew I chose to be a navigator simply because I thought I’d never be a pilot. I mean I couldn’t drive a car, I only used a bicycle and I was very good at maths at school. So I thought a navigator would be the right position for me although in truth you didn’t need any maths at all to be a navigator because it was all calculation and when you were actually flying a bomber you had navigation aids. You had, the most useful tool was called Gee which was a cathode, a cathode ray tube. A round tube where you would get two signals and if you plotted the signals on your map where the signals crossed was where you were. The only trouble was that the Germans used to send up what was called Grass which was like blades of grass covering the lines on the cathode ray tubes so eventually the Grass was such that you couldn’t pick up the signal and then we got the system where we changed the cathode ray tube, the cathode ray tube into another one and it was sort of all cat and mouse but as I said we got there and we got back.
NM: So what was the dates of your tour? When did you start your first operation through to your thirty second.
MF: Now, this is difficult because I’m not, I’m very good at remembering but I’m not all that terribly good on dates. Let me think [pause] I think I finished the tour shortly after D-Day.
NM: So the summer of ’44.
MF: Yes. Maybe a bit later than that. Because of George’s throat trouble we were on the squadron a lot longer than most crews because most crews who were successful in completing the tour took perhaps four or five months at the most and I think we were on the squadron for probably seven months at least.
NM: Ok. So you started late ’43 then. Your, your tour.
MF: Something like that. As I say it’s difficult to remember dates. I’m good at events but not on dates.
NM: So thirty two operations. You must, were any of those stand out operations? What were your targets and what were the, any particular incidents —
MF: Yes.
NM: You can remember?
MF: Yeah. One of the areas that we went to a few times was the Ruhr. The Ruhr was the heavy industrial area of Germany and there were lots of raids on the Ruhr. I think I went twice to Essen and once to Duisburg and once to Bochum and I also went once to Dortmund. And as I’ve mentioned previously my son who is a very keen Tottenham Hotspur supporter his team some several months ago played the Dortmund team in Germany and he went with a group of people and I think stayed a night or two. Now, I remember saying to him, ‘If you get chatting with any of the locals don’t tell them your dad visited here many many years ago.’ Apart from the Ruhr incidentally going off at a tangent there was a chap, I hope Neil it wasn’t you, I don’t think it would have been. There was a chap appeared on the tv programme “Mastermind” and his specialist subject on which he was answering, answering questions was Bomber Command and he was very very knowledgeable and the questions that he was asked I didn’t know the answers to. But there was one question that he was asked that he didn’t know the answer and I did and that is, ‘What was the name given to the Ruhr area where many raids took place.’ The answer is it was known as Happy Valley. He didn’t know this. Another incident of some concern is that at one time we went on a afternoon raid. We didn’t do many, many daylights but we went on an afternoon raid to somewhere or other, I can’t remember where and when we turned to come home we were told that our airfield at Melbourne was fog bound and we were diverted to an American airfield in Knettishall which was in Suffolk. They flew flying fortresses and they’d never had an RAF bomber there before and they were really very generous to us. They made a fuss of us. I smoked in those days and I had an American navigator attached himself to me and I said, ‘Could you get me a pack of twenty fags?’ Off he went to the PX and came back with a carton of two hundred. Life was very different there. We stayed I think for two nights. The reason was that the Halifax had Bristol Hercules engines and one of our engines engines sounded a bit dodgy so we had to wait for an engineer to come and put it right. For breakfast for example we would have scrambled eggs. Real eggs not the powdered stuff of those days. Scrambled eggs. As much as you liked. Maple syrup. It was all very very nice. In the evening they had a dance there. They had, I think they were called, “String of Pearls Orchestra,” who played all the Glenn Miller stuff and they imported a coach load of young ladies up from London for dancing partners for the American aircrew. But it was very proper because the girls were very clearly escorted and looked after. That was Knettishall. The next real adventure was that we took off one night, again I can’t remember the target I’ve got an idea it might have been Hamburg although we did go to Hamburg on some other occasion. We took off one night and immediately lost an engine. Now, normally if you lost an engine halfway on to, on to the target you’d continue on the basis of press on regardless but you wouldn’t set off on a raid with only three engines. The drill was that you then had to fly out to into the North Sea I think for about seventeen miles and drop your load in to the sea because you couldn’t come back and land with a bomb load. So we did this. We flew out, did our bomb drop, turned around and immediately lost a second engine both engines being on the same side. On the starboard side. Now this was where George distinguished himself because he could fly [emphasis] and I think we started back and I think we began to lose a bit of height but he kept, he kept us going. Now, I then planned a course to take us to Carnaby. Carnaby was an emergency airfield in York, in Yorkshire. There were three. Three emergency airfields. One was Manston and strangely enough this is, Manston is where all the boat people crossing the Channel these days are being put in the first instance. One was in Manston, one was in Woodbridge in Suffolk and one was Carnaby in York. The, these airfields didn’t have bombers. They, I don’t think they had aeroplanes at all but what they did have was very long and very wide runways so that if an aircraft was in trouble it would have a much better chance of landing because the pilot had the space. So I plotted a course. A course to Carnaby and when we were getting near Carnaby and I’ve said before I’m not making this up believe me when we got near to Carnaby George said, ‘I think we’ll go on to Melbourne because I’ve got a dental appointment tomorrow.’ So I then replotted a course from Carnaby to Melbourne. When we got there they could see that we were flying on two engines. We got down. The station ambulance and the station fire engine met us but thank the lord they weren’t needed. I think really that takes me to the end of the first stage of all I want to tell you but you may want to raise something.
NM: Yeah. Did you go further afield than the Ruhr? Did you go to places like Peenemunde or Berlin? Nuremberg.
MF: No. I never went to Berlin, I never went to Nuremberg and I didn’t go to Dresden.
NM: No. You finished before. Long before Dresden hadn’t you? That’s right. So does any one of your operations apart from this one where you came back on two engines does any one of your operations stand out with anti-aircraft fire or fighters or —
MF: Well, I know on one operation the rear gunner saw a night fighter and we did a corkscrew which was a bit horrendous and I think he claimed to have shot down the night fighter but it was never verified. That was a bit shall I say, I can say adventurous at ninety nine years old. It wasn’t adventurous at the time. Anything special? Well, I’ve told you about our supposed landing at Carnaby. I’ve told you about our trip to the flying fortress airfield. No. I don’t think anything very special.
NM: Okay. Can you talk me through a day when operations were on? From the time you got up.
MF: Yes.
NM: Through to the —
MF: Now that I can do. On the squadron you’d wake up about eight o’clock or whatever and go and have some breakfast. And if there was going to be ops that night you knew the first call would come at about ten, 10.30 which is when the crew list went up. So if you were on ops that night you knew about half past ten. So there was then an anxious period until about 1 o’clock when you were waiting to hear what the target was. 1 o’clock you would have some lunch and then you would have your first briefing when they advised you of the target. When they advised you of the height you would fly whether you were flying on the first, second or third wave. And one of the points when you went to a target is you never flew straight there. You flew in doglegs. All designed to confuse the enemy. Also in that connection one of the things that bombers did was to throw out packets of strips of metal like aluminium. Aluminium strips which was called Window and that was indeed, on the Halifax that was the job of the navigator because the navigator was in the nose of the aeroplane. Not right in the nose because the bomb aimer was in the nose. The navigator was sat behind the bomb aimer and there were two little steps up to the main body of the aircraft. On one of the steps there was a flap and if you folded back the flap it was open and that’s where you deposited the packages of Window. That was the navigator’s job. Where was I?
NM: Describing your briefing.
MF: Oh yes. Thank you. You see. I don’t remember as well as I should. Yes. So, you’d have your briefing and then you’d go off and have a meal. The meal was always egg, sausage, bacon, chips. A nice meal. Then you would go back for a further briefing when the Met officer would tell you all about what the windspeed and direction would be. And I think one or two other officers spoke to you, gave you information and then you got dressed. Now, most of the crew, I think all of the crew except me dressed in Bomber Command clothing. That was a very thick fur lined jacket, fur lined boots and so on. The nose of the Halifax was quite warm for some reason. I never put a jacket on. I never put boots on. I was comfortable. The only thing I did have is as I suppose all navigators I used to have some silk gloves because you needed to use your hands in maps, drawing diagrams on maps and so on and if you didn’t have gloves your hands would freeze up. For example, if you were flying and wanted to have a pee there was an Elsan at the end of the aircraft but if you went back to the Elsan and came back again you would need to take a oxygen bottle because once you got to over fifteen thousand feet you needed to have oxygen. If you took the oxygen bottle in your hand by the time you got back the bottle was frozen to your hand and that could have been awful. Oxygen was absolutely necessary because after fifteen thousand feet if you didn’t have oxygen you would eventually die. So yes, you had your briefing and conversely when you’d finished your raid and landed you then had a debriefing. You went into a room. Each crew sat, sat a different table and you were, every member of the crew was asked questions relative to the job they did. So I was asked, ‘What was the wind like?’ ‘What was the target like?’ ‘Did you get to the target?’ All of that sort of stuff. I often remember saying that at one debriefing there was a rather elderly chap sitting next to me who I didn’t take any notice of because you know, you’re tired. You want to get home. You want to get back, have a meal and get to bed. He was saying, asking me all sorts of little questions and I was getting more and more irritable and I eventually remember much to my shame saying to him, ‘Well, if you’re so interested why don’t go on the dot dot dot trip.’ He didn’t say a word but somebody nudged me and they told me that he was a high ranking officer with gold on around his cap who was making a survey or making enquiries and he was very nice. He knew I was tired and he didn’t report me. He didn’t say a single word. And after the debrief, well when you got to the debriefing on the table was cigarettes, tea and rum and then you left the debriefing and went back and had the same meal as you’d had before the trip and then you wanted to get to bed.
NM: Yes, I can imagine. I can imagine. What about off duty? What was the off duty like?
MF: Sorry?
NM: What was the off-duty life like at the station when you weren’t flying operations?
MF: Yes. That’s a very interesting question. Off duty people were very laid back. I mean for example halfway through my tour I met somebody when I was walking about. I was a sergeant. Somebody said to me, ‘You’re now an officer. Go and get yourself measured for an officer’s uniform.’ Just like that. No, whys and wherefors. So I became a pilot officer. Now, it was all very relaxed so that if anybody was to salute you on the squadron you’d have a heart attack because that didn’t happen. So I became an officer. The only difference was I lived in the, I dined in the officer’s mess instead of in the sergeant’s mess. I don’t doubt that the food was exactly the same. As I think several of the crew were given commissions at the same time. The only difference was we were allocated a batwoman, a WAAF batwoman and all she did for us was to make our beds in the morning. But as I’ve said previously my mid-upper gunner was a Welshman. A very well-built robust man, a good looking man and he spoke with, he spoke with a Welsh lilt and Rose, the batwoman I think did rather more than make his bed but there we are.
NM: So did you socialise with the rest of the crew? Did you go to pubs? Dances?
MF: Well no. I socialised with Eric. We used to go, you’ve prompted my memory, we used to go when we were on a night off into York. We’d go on the local bus. The first thing we would normally do is go to have a drink. I wasn’t a drinker. I mean one pint of beer was every bit as much as I could manage but we’d go for a drink at what was called Betty’s Bar. Bettys Bar was crowded with RAF, with bomber people having a drink and in the basement of Betty’s Bar was a very big mirror where aircrew used to scratch their names. Betty’s Bar, after the war became Betty’s Tea Rooms and it became very very fashionable with visitors to York. Particularly Americans. It was an expensive afternoon to have a tea there and people lined up to get in. But the mirror I believe was still there although it was badly cracked and I think there were one or two other branches of Betty’s Tea Rooms. When we were in York there was a building not far from the abbey called the De Grey rooms and on the first floor of De Grey rooms there used to be a little dance. Two or three musicians and local ladies and there was dancing there. I never got very successful because I wasn’t a big handsome fella but nevertheless that was the De Grey rooms. Now, Eric and I, I’m rather going off at a tangent if you don’t mind. Eric and I used to go back to York after we’d both been demobbed. Some years after. We used to go back every year to visit Melbourne and we used to go on to the airfield and there was a caretaker’s building at the entrance and we used to ask him if we could drive on because the main runway was still in being. It was, Melbourne was an experimental farm or something of that sort but we used to drive to the end of the runway and I had a fairly powerful car and we used to drive down, get up to a hundred miles an hour as if we were going to take off. Yes. We used to go, oh when we used to go back to visit York we’d go to Betty’s. We’d go to the, Hole in the Wall which was a well-known pub not far from the De Grey rooms and we’d go to the De Grey rooms which on the second, on the first floor instead of being a dance place was a second hand books, book dealers and we went fairly regularly. I mention incidentally my mid-upper gunner the handsome Welshman after some years he lived a very spectacular life. He ended up as a painter in Paris and he also was in South Africa and he’d been married I think about three times but he got ill and he was ended up in an RAF Benevolent Fund sponsored place in, now what was the name of the place? I can’t remember at the moment. It got quite famous this place of some years ago. It was given, it was given some honour. I can’t remember. But he was in a home there and we used to visit him. Eric and I used to visit him once a year and I used to smuggle a bottle of Scotch in for him. But then in due time he died. He became wheelchair bound and eventually he joined the aircraft in the sky.
NM: So, how did you cope with the strains of operations?
MF: That’s again an interesting question. Basically, you coped because you hadn’t got the nerve to pack up. Now, what happened was as a navigator I had a window which I, a little small window. I don’t know why it was there but it was there and I had to draw a curtain across because you needed an Anglepoise lamp to work and that would show a light. Every trip I made I never ever drew the curtain to see what was happening down below. I never saw the fires. I never saw anything. I thought I’m better off putting my nose down and doing my map work and thank you very much. But to answer your question very seldom a chap found he couldn’t go on and he went what was called LMF. That’s lack of moral fibre. If he went out LMF the authorities treated him very badly. He was stripped of his rank and he became a nonentity. Unlike the Americans who apparently if one of their chaps went LMF they sent him back to the States for psychological treatment and then got him back to the UK for flying again. I didn’t feel better or worse for the whole tour. I gave a little chat to the school of my granddaughter when they were seven year old boys and girls. I only chatted for ten minutes just to give them the flavour and of course I was very careful as to what I said. One little girl said at the end, ‘Were you frightened on your first trip?’ And I said to her, ‘No, my dear. I wasn’t frightened on my first trip. I was frightened on every trip.’ And it’s absolutely true but I didn’t feel any worse or any better. The only time I felt better was when I landed on the last trip.
NM: And you knew it was the last trip. Yeah. So you were awarded the DFC at the end of your tour. Was the, was it a cumulative award or was it for any particular incident?
MF: I think the only reason I got the DFC and two or three others of the crew did as well was simply because we were made a special crew as I mentioned at the, earlier in this discussion. As I said the pilot was a very experienced man. We had two chaps doing their second tour. We did our tour. We got there every time. We got back every time. We did what we were designed to do and I didn’t do anything what one would call particularly brave or heroic or heroic. I just did my job.
NM: So what happened when your tour finished?
MF: Well, we now enter a new area. Let me have a drink of water and I’ll go on.
NM: Of course. Take a break.
MF: How far do you want me to go?
NM: As far as you want.
MF: When my tour finished the RAF really didn’t know what to do with ex-aircrew blokes who’d done their tours. They had to do something with them but excuse me [coughs]
NM: Are you alright to carry on?
MF: Yeah.
NM: Are you sure?
MF: They had to do something but we had no skill other than flying bombers. They sent me to an RAF base in Hereford. I think it would be a good idea if you don’t mind shall we stop and I’ll make a cup of coffee?
NM: Yes. That’s absolutely fine. Absolutely. Are you alright to carry on?
MF: Sorry?
NM: Are you alright to carry on.
MF: Yeah. I will be.
NM: Okay. Alright.
MF: Will you have coffee?
NM: Yes, please if there’s one going. Thank you very much.
MF: Yeah.
NM: Its much appreciated.
MF: I get a bit shaky. My hands are inclined to shake.
NM: You’re doing brilliantly.
MF: Help yourself.
NM: I’ll just grab one of those. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. You’re doing brilliantly to be independent at ninety nine.
MF: Well, [pause] life can be a bit difficult these days because my wife has dementia and she’s not very good. She’s very cheerful at times but we have really bad times too.
NM: Yes.
MF: And I spend, we have a carer comes in for an hour every morning but I don’t know how long we’re going to be able to continue.
NM: I understand. My mother in law’s has got dementia.
MF: Really?
NM: So I know. I know what you’re going through. Yeah.
MF: I say to my kids you know all the problems that we have now will be solved is if I pop off and my wife can go into a nice, a very nice care home. But I don’t plan on popping off any sooner than I need.
NM: Very glad to hear it.
MF: Help yourself please.
NM: I’m fine. I’m fine. Thank you.
[recording paused]
NM: Okay. Yes. So, yes, you were sent to Hereford.
MF: Yes. Hereford was not an airfield. There were no aircraft there but it was an RAF base where they trained accountants. That is accountants to work within the RAF. We went there and I met up there with a, I don’t know a couple of dozen also ex-bomber people and the idea was that they were going to train us all as accountants. What happened is that young men who entered the Air Force direct to be an accountant they were given a commission to pilot officers, went to Hereford for their training. When they got there they were all sprogs. All new. They used to on their first day on the parade ground they got together, fall in, left turn, quick march and that sort of thing. They tried to do the same thing with us ex-bomber people but we didn’t do that sort of thing. I mean we used to turn up if we were sent to parade at 9 o’clock we’d turn up more or less, more or less within time. Some of us had caps on. Some didn’t. Some had ties. Most of us were smoking. I was a heavy smoker. But we came to terms eventually but none of us were interested in this accounting lark so we did our course, six weeks, eight weeks whatever, sat the exams and everyone failed. And as I’ve said one bloke only just failed and that was me. So they offered for me to do another three weeks when I would pass but I declined this offer. So as a punishment they sent me with all the AC2s, AC1s working there, all the chaps that were in trouble they sent me with this lot to pick potatoes. I think this was about September. Well, we went to a farm and the drill was you worked in pairs each holding one corner of a sack and the tractor went and threw up the potatoes and we picked them. I was there for I think four days. I had a marvellous time. The weather was beautiful. We used, you can imagine we didn’t exactly exert ourselves but we used to pick some potatoes and have a rest. Pick a few more. Then the farmer owner used to provide us with hot sweet tea, cheddar cheese, as much as you wanted and crispy bread and we really enjoyed ourselves. After four days they called me off this because they could see we were getting nowhere. So they then sent me to an airfield at Halfpenny Green which is near Wolverhampton. When I got to Halfpenny Green there were I think Ansons there and what happened at Halfpenny Green was that navigators who had trained in Canada and had come back to the UK had to have a course, a sort of acclimatisation or whatever you’d call it. So you used, they used to do sort of cross country journeys, I suppose an hour and a half or thereabouts and they made me do the same. And I was very experienced but nevertheless they all, these blokes all took off on their Ansons and I had too as well. Fortunately, the pilots there were also ex-aircrew chaps so I never took this very seriously. I would say, ‘Look just fly over here and fly over there and then fly back and thank you very much.’ So, we were there for about, oh I don’t know a few to a couple of months. Strangely enough one of the navigators who’d come back from Canada who I became friendly with was a bloke called David Hawkins. After the war I qualified as a chartered accountant which I’ll come to later if if you want me to go that far. He also qualified a year after me. I entered the profession. He went in to industry and he ended up as a main board director at Nat West Bank. But we were very matey and he made big bucks but it made no difference. We were good friends. Unfortunately, towards the end he also became a subject of dementia. What used to happen we used to meet two, every couple of months with our wives for a meal and he would say to me, ‘Monty, you play golf don’t you?’ I’d say, ‘No, Dave.’ I was the only person in the world that called him Dave. I’d say, ‘No, Dave. I play tennis.’ During the course of the dinner he would ask me this at least eight times and it was a shame but you know. That’s the way the cookie crumbles.
NM: Indeed. That’s right.
MF: I don’t know what’s led me on to talking about, anyway, we went to Halfpenny Green and I finished a course there and once the course had finished again they didn’t know what to do with me. So they sent me to an airfield in, near Doncaster where there were Oxfords, twin engined Oxfords at Doncaster as I say. And this place was where pilots coming back to the UK from abroad, from probably the Middle East or somewhere like that had to have an acclimatisation. So I saw nobody took any real notice of me because as you will have been told time and again provided you had some papers in your hand and walked about looking busy nobody interfered with you. I appointed myself navigation officer of this arrangement for new pilots. They used to do a fortnight, two weeks training flying these Oxford aircraft around about and I used to set as self-appointed navigation officer I used to set the trip for them and when they went off I used to sit in my office and do whatever I wanted and they all came back. After quite a while the powers that be had said, ‘You’ve got to fly once a week.’ Because these blokes used to fly most days. Most days for a fortnight. So I was required to fly once a week which I didn’t really like very much and when the list came in of the next intake I used to have a look at all the blokes and pick the pilots that I thought was most reliable and I used to do a little trip and that was that. So in due course I finished at Doncaster. We’re now getting to about let me think [pause] we’re getting now to about the end of 1945. Perhaps a bit earlier. Perhaps a bit sooner. Perhaps about September ’45. Something like that. Anyway, I finished at Doncaster and they then sent me on indefinite leave which was fine. I was engaged to my late wife then. Her parents had a big flat in Chiswick. Unfortunately, my mother had died in nineteen, I can remember, in December 1941. I was in the RAF of course and after the war my father packed up and went to live with one of my sisters in Southend. Westcliffe. So I stayed with my girlfriend’s parents and they were very nice to me and I was on indefinite leave which went on for a few months. I then, I think it must have been about December, December ’45. Thereabouts. I was on indefinite leave. I then married my late wife in July ’46. She was, I was twenty, not quite twenty three. My grandchildren are amazed because nobody gets married at that sort of age anymore. My late wife was two days short of twenty one and in those days under twenty one you had to get permission from the bride’s father and I was very very fond of my late wife’s father and I used to tell him I didn’t, ‘I got permission from you. I got permission from you. It was a big mistake.’ But we had fun. Anyway, after a few months, about June ’46 I was summoned to RAF Uxbridge and I was given a job which I didn’t really have a clue about dealing with the paperwork of chaps who were being repatriated to their home, home countries Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and so on. Chaps who had finished their periods and were ready to be demobbed. And what I had to do was to look at their papers and I had a couple of rubber stamps which I had to stamp and I really didn’t have much idea what I was doing and I wasn’t very interested either and I banged the rubber stamps all over the place. Off they went. Everybody was very happy. One thing I must tell you when I was at Uxbridge this would have been about September 1946 they had a dining in night. You may know about dining in nights but it’s an evening when all of us, when I married I got a sleeping out pass. All officers had to stay in for dinner that night. Best blues on, all properly turned out and you all sat down and you had a meal and they had port and you passed the port. Took it from the right hand and passed it to the right hand of the chap sitting on your left. All very formal. When I was there they they said to me I don’t know who, the commanding officers or whatever, I shall be Mr Vice. Which meant that either during the meal or before the meal, I can’t remember the chairman appointed for the night would say, ‘Mr Vice. The King.’ Was it the King in ’46? Yes, it was. ‘Mr Vice, the King.’ And my job was to stand up and say, ‘Gentlemen, the King.’ All stood up and had a drink. I think the reason I had this very auspicious appointment was because I was ex-aircrew and they didn’t have these sort of people at Uxbridge. Anyway, got to December I was demobbed. Blow me I was demobbing all these people at Uxbridge and they sent me up to Padgate to get demobbed which I did. Now, that’s the end of RAF. Whether you want me to continue into my private life thereafter I don’t know.
NM: I would very much like you to please.
MF: Sorry?
NM: I would very much like you to continue.
MF: Oh well, right.
NM: Life after the RAF.
MF: Sorry?
NM: Life after the RAF.
MF: Very good. Up to when?
NM: This morning if you want.
MF: What? [laughs]
NM: Up to this morning if you want.
MF: Oh, deary me. Right. In January ’47 I wasn’t qualified of course although my articles had expired. I got a job with a firm of chartered accountants in Oxford Street, Levy Hyams and Co who you won’t need too much imagination well to come to the conclusion they were a Jewish firm and we’re Jewish as you will have gathered. I worked for them but I had to think in terms of becoming chartered myself and I’d previously before I entered the RAF did a correspondence course. But I couldn’t attune myself to the idea of doing a correspondence course while I, while things had changed so much so after I’d been working at this firm for, I don’t know six months I enrolled at the City of London College which was in Moorgate. And I worked very hard in that period because I worked from nine to five in the office and then I used to grab a sandwich and a coffee, go to the City of London College and sit for lectures between about six and 9 o’clock and this happened Monday to Friday. So I did this and then in November ’48 I sat my exams and became a chartered accountant. Of course, by November ’48 I was married to the lady I mentioned to you earlier and my first son was born, I think in the August of 1948. So I continued working once I’d qualified for the firm in Oxford Street and they then put me into a separate office so I didn’t go out doing any auditing any more but I dealt with tax matters and correspondence and so on. After, I don’t know eighteen months or whatever I thought I’m not doing this. I’m going to set up on my own. So I packed up. When I gave my notice in they said, ‘Oh well, we had intended to ask you to join the firm as a partner.’ But it was too late then. So I started on my own. I was living in Fulham at the time. When I got married we got the top part of a house in Fulham which I rented and I lived there until 1951 and for my sins I became a fan of Fulham Football Club and I still am. God help me. So I set up on my own and we, I bought a three bedroomed semi-detached house in Fulham in 1951 because I lived in the flat. Not in Fulham. I’m misleading you. I bought a three bedroomed semi-detached house in Greenford in 1951 having lived in Fulham for five years from ’46 to ’51 and I set up on my own account. All I had was a card table, a typewriter and I was sort of in business and I had one client. So I had to make a living. So I then started lecturing. Lecturing would-be bank people in bookkeeping and so on. I used to go there a couple of nights a week and earn a few bob. I also got to working a job for a correspondence course marking papers of other people’s that were studying and also I got two jobs doing part time stuff for two other firms of accountants. Strangely enough one of the firms I worked for they had a client of big coffee importers and exporters and I did their audit and when the chap I worked for either died or retired they asked me to take the account over as my own client. And that continued all the way through my career. I also worked for a, I think an unqualified chap who had an office in Kilburn and he had a client who was a solicitor and in due course again the solicitor instructed me and eventually there was a firm of solicitors of, I think four partners and various clerks and I had them as clients until I retired. After a while the solicitors had offices in Half Moon Street on the third floor of a quite old building but it was a prestigious address. Half Moon Street, London W1. Turning off Piccadilly. So I got two rooms on the fourth floor. There was no lift and the lavatory was two and a half floors down and mainly I used to visit clients because I couldn’t expect clients to come up this old building for four floors. But anyway, I progressed and I made a living. I then got I was in Half Moon Street for quite a few years and at one time I got my first car and Dave Hawkins who I mentioned earlier in this discussion came with me and picked up this car. It was a Standard Eight from showrooms in Berkeley Square. I was frightened to drive home and he drove the car home to Greenford for me. Subsequently you could drive to the West End. You could park in Piccadilly. You could park in Half Moon Street but it became less and less available. Eventually I used to drive up and park in Hyde Park because you could park in the perimeter there. But after a while I would find I’d park the car in the morning I couldn’t remember where it was in the evening. But we got by. So I then got offices in Wembley Park. It used to be the Prudential and it was basically a shop with one office behind. I worked there and then I got one partner and we extended out the back. And then I got two more junior partners and we extended. We extended again at the back and I continued to work there until I retired in December 19 [pause] wait a moment in December 2090. That’s right. Thirty two years ago.
[redacted]
I then retired in December 2090 and have done nothing meaningful since apart from amusing myself in my office.
NM: And playing tennis I gather. You mentioned that earlier didn’t you? So how have you occupied yourself during your retirement?
MF: Sorry?
NM: How do you have any hobbies you carried on during your —
MF: Yes, I —
NM: Retirement?
MF: Yes. I can’t remember [pause] twenty five years ago before I retired I started to play tennis and I got very committed to tennis because I found it enormously enjoyable. I was pretty, I’d never played before so I had to learn and I was never what you’d call a good tennis player but I played in clubs and I could hold my own. And I played two or three times a week regularly and I got immense pleasure. I played to win but I’d have a lot of fun and I joined different clubs because one club packed up and another one moved. All sorts of problems. Tennis players generally find over the years they’re moving from one club to another but I played and I had great enjoyment for tennis and I made lots of friends. I stopped playing tennis because I wasn’t in good form and I packed up about [pause] let me think. I went into hospital 2013. About 2010. No, that doesn’t. Yes. About twenty no not twenty I’m losing [pause] about twenty one. I retired at 2190. No. I’m getting a bit confused. I retired in 2090.
NM: 1990.
MF: That’s thirty two years ago.
NM: Yeah. Yeah.
MF: I played tennis. Once I’d started and I stopped playing tennis in twenty two.
NM: 2002.
MF: About twenty two o eight.
NM: Okay. Yeah.
MF: The reason being that I wasn’t in the best of condition and in 2013 I went into a hospital. I went into a hospital and I had some surgery which I got over well but, and I was still very active but I’d packed up tennis. And then about a year after that I had a pacemaker fitted because while I was in hospital as a result of the operation I had a mild heart attack which kept me in hospital much longer than we’d budgeted for and I had a pacemaker fitted when I was ninety. And now in two and a half weeks’ time I’ve got to go into hospital. I think just for the day to have the battery replaced. Like you replaced your battery which I’m not looking forward to but I hope it will be pretty simple.
NM: I’m sure it will be.
MF: And I’m told that there are not a lot of chaps who have a pacemaker fitted at age ninety who go back for a refit.
NM: Good to hear. Good to hear.
MF: And that I think my friend more or less brings you up to date.
NM: I think it does. I think that’s excellent. Just one more question going back to your time in Bomber Command what do you when you look back and reflect on your time in Bomber Command what are your main thoughts?
MF: Well, I can answer that. I never have had a moment’s regret at dropping bombs on Germany. I’m conscious of the bombing that the Germans carried out in the UK especially in London, in Coventry, in Liverpool, in Plymouth. Incessant bombing in London in particular with a lot of, lots of death. I’m very conscious of six million Jews dying in the Holocaust. I’ve spoken often about Dresden. I didn’t bomb Dresden and there was big talk of two hundred thousand people being killed there because the place ended up in a fire storm. It wasn’t but I think it’s conceded there was a heavy death roll of about twenty five thousand. I’ve got no conscience about it at all [pause] And I still haven’t today. I took the view my job was to get the aircraft to the target, to drop the bombs and to get home.
NM: And how do you feel about the way that Bomber Command itself has been perceived since the war?
MF: That again is a very pointed question. When the war finished, no. Let me go back. When it was agreed there would be a raid on Dresden and after the raid lots of people complained. Canon Collins I think the man’s name was. Made a big big fuss. The raid was perfectly justified. The Russians wanted it. Churchill agreed to it. It was a big railway place where armaments were moved and that was the justification of the raid. Afterwards, Churchill washed his hands of Dresden. He didn’t want to know. When Churchill made his victory speech after the war in Germany finished he mentioned all of the branches of the three Services, he never mentioned Bomber Command. When campaign medals were handed out Bomber Command didn’t get one. There was a big campaign, I think in the Daily Express which is not a paper I read trying to encourage the powers that be to award a campaign medal to Bomber Command. It never worked. Ultimately and this is only a handful of years ago Bomber Command were awarded a clasp to their victory medal at exactly the same time as the seamen who were doing the north, the North Sea around, around to the north of Russia to deliver them armaments they were awarded a campaign medal. Not Bomber Command. Lots of people have had plenty to say about Bomber Command but I don’t stand for any of it. When Bomber Harris’ statue was erected in the Strand there was a service for Bomber Command people in the Bomber Command church which was St Clement Danes and the late Queen Mother who was Bomber Command patron attended. I went with my friend Eric. I always tell everybody I was probably the only Jewish chap there and I was sitting behind a pillar and I couldn’t see anything. But it was a good service. We then walked across and there was going to be a reception in the hall of the Law Courts which is more or less where the statue was. Some, I don’t use too many profane words but some group threw red paint on to Harris’ statue. But nevertheless we went into the Law Courts, we had a drink or two and it was very nice. And the one regret and I have this regret to this day when I went in [pause] what’s his name? You see you get as old as me you can’t remember. What was his name? He was married to Sue Ryder.
NM: Leonard Cheshire.
MF: Sorry?
NM: Leonard Cheshire.
MF: Thank you. Thank you very much. I went in and Leonard Cheshire who was ill at that time and he was in a sort of almost bed wheelchair and he was close, as close to me as you are and I very much regret perhaps I was diverted I didn’t have the opportunity to go up to him and pay him my respects. And I’m still sorry about it. But anyway, there we are.
NM: So have you been to see in your old stomping ground at Piccadilly the Bomber Command Memorial on Piccadilly.
MF: Yes. Yes, I have been there. The one in Green Park.
NM: Correct.
MF: And it’s very impressive.
NM: Yeah.
MF: It’s very impressive.
NM: Were you involved at all when it was opened?
MF: No. I haven’t been involved in any particular capacity. Only as an old sod of the, of the Command but nothing else.
NM: Okay. Well, I think that’s an excellent place to finish so —
MF: Oh, well that’s very good.
NM: Monty, can I thank you very much for your time and your memories and your service of course.
MF: Well —
NM: Its much appreciated.
MF: It’s been, it’s been very interesting for me. I never thought I’d keep going this long but as you will have gathered from all of this and gathered from the, my talk at Bentley Priory I, I’m not frightened to talk.
NM: With such clarity as well. Excellent.
MF: Funnily enough, Nigel. I’ll say one more thing.
NM: Of course.
MF: And then I’ll shut up. I was telling somebody only a few days ago, somebody who had been to Bentley Priory I’m able if I’m given notice because Bentley Priory I just didn’t just talk off the cuff I’d spent quite a time preparing things. But then I didn’t need any notice because I knew what I was going to say. I could stand up and talk to two hundred people without batting an eyelid. Conversely, I used to be invited because of clients I used to be invited to functions. Sometimes functions when they had a, perhaps a little cabaret or whatever. A little show. In those days, I don’t think it happens these days masonic dinners. They might have a comedian and they might have four young lady dancers and very often these dancers used to come down, pick on a man take them up to the stage and the man would put a funny hat on or something and dance or whatever. A girl would come up to me, I would be if necessary very rude because I would die rather than go up on to a stage and dance in front of people and yet I can go up and talk. It’s odd isn’t it?
NM: Well, we’re all different aren’t we and that’s —
MF: Yeah.
NM: That’s you.
MF: Well, there you are.
NM: Very good. Excellent. Well, thank you very much again for your time.
MF: No. Not at all. I hope I’ve done you justice.
NM: Well I think you’ve done yourself justice brilliantly.
MF: Lovely.
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 Monty Felton
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Nigel Moore
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2022-11-14
Type
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Sound
Format
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01:51:16 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
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AFeltonM221114, PFeltonM2201
Description
An account of the resource
Monty grew up in Croydon and became an articled accountant in London before joining the RAF. Training at the Initial Training Wing in Torquay was followed by RAF Bishops Court in Northern Ireland and RAF Kinloss, which had a flight simulation room. He was then posted to RAF Rufforth in Yorkshire where he was introduced to the Halifax four-engined bomber, before going to 10 Squadron at RAF Melbourne. Monty describes his relatively experienced crew, including George Dark as pilot and Eric Barnard as rear gunner, who remained a close friend. He flew 21 trips with George and a further 11 operations with Flight Lieutenant Wood. The first outing was a ‘bullseye’, a flight where they entered Germany and then turned back to mislead the enemy. Briefings would include meteorological forecasts of wind and speed direction at varying heights up to the time of the target. He discusses how navigation was carried out and the use of navigation aids, such as Gee. Monty went on several operations to the Ruhr. He recounts how their aircraft had to divert to an American airbase at Knettishall in Suffolk, which flew B-17s. In another, they lost two engines yet successfully flew back to RAF Melbourne. Monty runs through a typical operations’ day, including the briefings and debriefings. He depicts how they would fly doglegs to confuse the enemy and the navigators would throw out packets of aluminium strips, code named Window. He goes on to describe his off-duty life, including trips to York and ‘Betty’s Bar’ (precursor of Bettys Tearooms) which had a mirror inscribed by aircrew in the basement. There were dances in the De Grey Rooms. Monty was a recipient of the Distinguished Flying Cross, which he believes was just because they were an experienced crew. Monty contrasts the American and RAF treatment of Lack of Moral Fibre. After his tour, Monty was sent to a number of RAF stations before being demobbed in 1946. He qualified as a chartered accountant, setting up his own accountancy practice. Monty finishes by discussing his attitude to the war and Bomber Command, and disappointment over the lack of recognition given to it.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
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
Contributor
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Sally Coulter
Julie Williams
Carolyn Emery
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1945
1946
10 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
B-17
bombing
briefing
coping mechanism
crewing up
debriefing
Distinguished Flying Cross
entertainment
Gee
Halifax
Initial Training Wing
lack of moral fibre
military living conditions
military service conditions
navigator
Oxford
perception of bombing war
RAF Bishops Court
RAF Carnaby
RAF Halfpenny Green
RAF Kinloss
RAF Melbourne
RAF Rufforth
RAF Torquay
RAF Uxbridge
training
Whitley
Window
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/860/11102/AHarrisNG160128.2.mp3
617dde8eedd97b1d29cf4bc164b586a4
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Harris, Neil
Neil Gibson Harris
N G Harris
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Flight Lieutenant Neil Harris (b. 1920, 56027 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a navigator with 578 Squadron.
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
2016-01-28
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
Harris, NG
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
BW: Alright. This is Brian Wright, I am interviewing Flight Lieutenant Brian Wright DFC of Bomber Command on Thursday, the 28th of January 2016 at his home in Lidham and the time is twenty past three in the afternoon. Just to start us with a formal question, if you wouldn’t mind so, could you just confirm your full name, rank on leaving and your service number please?
NH: Neil Gibson Harris, 56027, Flight Lieutenant.
BW: Ok. And I believe you are born in November 1920 in Bournemouth.
NH: 27/11/1920, yes.
BW: What was your family like, you lived with your parents, of course, did you have any brothers or sisters?
NH: Yes, I had two brothers and one sister we, fairly wide range, my eldest brother was nine years older than me and my sister was six years younger than me. So, was a spread of fifteen years between us, we are a working-class family, thank you, but very close.
BW: And what was the area like where you were growing up, was it [unclear]?
NH: Very pleasant indeed, oh, suburban, but very pleasant. Although basically a lower middle-class type area.
BW: And you were at school in Bournemouth during that time?
NH: Yes.
BW: I understand that you left school at fourteen.
NH: Fourteen, school called East Howe.
BW: East Howe.
NH: Yes.
BW: And did you have any qualifications?
NH: No, there weren’t, there were no qualifications available in those days. Not at fourteen, no, just, you just left school at fourteen and started working. And I went to work in the East Dorset brickworks as an office boy but by the end of nine months, I was rang into [unclear] office and my salary went, my wages went from seven and six to fifteen schillings, the works manager didn’t, gave me all his work to do [laughs]
BW: Just [unclear] you with it.
NH: So, I went from there to Bowmakers, which is a banking facilities company in Bournemouth, where I upgraded my position quite a bit, I was a proper clerk, a junior clerk.
BW: And from there I understand you went into the civil service.
NH: No, not the civil service, no, I went straight into the Air Force from there.
BW: Oh, I see, so you were [unclear]
NH: As an apprentice, as an apprentice. No, I’ve never been in the civil service, No, I went, that was, I was fifteen when I went to Bowmakers and I was nearly seventeen when I joined the RAF as an apprentice at Halton.
BW: Ok, and this would be 1937, so that would be
NH: That would be 1930, no, earlier, yes, ’37, that’s right, yes, ’37, September ’37.
BW: And what attracted you to join the RAF, what was your interest in that?
NH: Well, there were half a dozen or so, junior clerks, they all had had benefit of grammar school type of education, which is different to the one that I had and I, three or four of them were interested in the RAF, two of them, like myself, became apprentices, and one of them became an acting private officer
BW: I see.
NH: And a man named Haynes, he was a Battle of Britain pilot eventually, he was killed eventually too, got a DFC, shot down five, after that I don’t know anything about him but he didn’t survive the war, that’s all I know.
BW: A shame. And so, what prompted you to join the RAF, did you sense that the war was coming or did you [unclear]?
NH: Well, I think It’s the effect of three or four of us talking about the RAF and doing quite a nice job, had a pleasant working situation at Bowmakers but we wanted more excitement, I think. And of course I wanted more education, I, leaving school at fourteen I still felt I’d liked to have gone to a public school, there’s no chance of me doing that but RAF Halton provided a fairly good substitute, we had school and workshops and plenty of sport, which is what I wanted.
BW: And was there a good social life as well?
NH: Oh, no, social life, no, you weren’t allowed out [laughs], no, there’s three years hard regime but you had plenty of sports, but never saw a girl [laughs], no, we were all frustrated [unclear] [laughs]
BW: And so you
NH: It was a good training, excellent, marvellous training of course.
BW: And so, your trade in the engineering branch was what?
NH: I was a fitter 2A, a fitter to airframe.
BW: Ok.
NH: I managed to get in because the expansion scheme had started and the entries became much larger so I [unclear] an examination of three set papers, quite large, got a couple of them here somewhere, and I’m quite impressed by the standards that they required. So I did a lot of private study, my second brother was a very clever man, young man, he helped me a lot, he was an, he was a really highly, he became a highly qualified engineer and he helped me a lot, I managed to scrape in and but by that time, entries were getting to something like nine hundred or a thousand, so two entries a year, and of course the expansion scheme has started because of the threat of Hitler and there were, so, we were, before that time it was, you were called fitter twos and you did both engines and airframes, they split us up, the aircrafts were becoming more complicated and so you either became airframe, a fitter airframe or a fitter engine and then you did your three year, it’s a three year training, you did your three year training either as a fitter to airframe or a fitter to engine, and then the scheme was that after you’d been out on a normal squadron, and had practical experienced, you went back and did another year and that would be a conversion, if you did airframes before then you did a year on engines or vice versa so then you became a fitter one, so that’s basically how the training worked.
BW: And so, you get a good grounding not just in the structure of the aircraft but also the powerplants as well.
NH: You would, by that time but of course the war intervened from my entry and we stayed as fitter 2A’s of course but I got off and I took the easier route and managed to get onto aircrew. And but they wouldn’t let me, as soon as I finished my training, I volunteered for aircrew, but they wouldn’t release me until enough people, the war started by then but they wouldn’t release me to go onto aircrew duties until they had enough people in from, to be converted to trades, you know, as engineering trades and I could leave, so it took me nearly eighteen months from the time of being selected to being called up.
BW: So they needed enough people to be in the pool to replace you
NH: That’s right, that’s
BW: Because they could allow the engineers to move on.
NH: Yes
BW: [unclear]
NH: That’s right, yes.
BW: And what attracted you think to aircrew, was is, there simply more money, cause there was flying pay [unclear] or was it [unclear]?
NH: I wanted the glamour.
BW: Alright.
NH: A little bit it was there but I [laughs], I wanted to be a fighter pilot.
BW: I see.
NH: Yeah.
BW: And did that involve more tests and [unclear]?
NH: Not until you got onto, when I was eventually called up of course then by that time of course there the whole process was so huge that there are bottlenecks and so every stage it took time because you had to wait until you could move on to the next stage, the, either, whether held up training or something of that sort so, we start off at the ITW, which in my case was, well, first of all it started off in London, at the air crew receiving centre and we were all there, we live, we ate at the zoo, I remember,
BW: At London Zoo.
NH: At London Zoo, and lived in flats, in luxury flats in North West London and marched to the zoo for our meals.
BW: Right.
NH: But that, again, took a long time before we moved on and the next stage was to go on to the Initial Training Wing, where you did an eight week course and learned navigation and various other skills but there was a bottleneck there, I remember I went down to Brighton for a, just to occupy time, and eventually, although I’d been called up in November, November ’41, that’s right, and I was at Wick at the time when, as a fitter, on the, we were protecting the convoys coming into Liverpool but we’d been stationed at Stornoway on the Outer Hebrides,
BW: That’s where Wick is, is that right?
NH: Pardon?
BW: That’s where Wick is.
NH: No, Wick, no, Wick is on the north east coast.
BW: Ok.
NH: And now we moved over there with Hudsons, we had started with Ansons and changed over to Hudsons, when we moved up to Stornoway and then from Stornoway, we moved over to Wick. But whilst we were at Wick, I was called up for aircrew duties and that was in November ’41, I happened to be on leave at the time in Bournemouth so I got recalled from Bournemouth to Wick, which was to go back to London [laughs] to start my aircrew duties and as I say, then, we had, we hung around in Regent’s Park waiting for the next stage, well the first stage of training and that didn’t happen, this was in November ’41 and we didn’t get to Stratford until about the end of January, February ’42 and then we had this eight week course at Stratford learning navigation, doing drill, all RT and all the rest of it.
BW: So you travelled in a very short time to the length and breadth of the country cause you’ve gone from a short period of time in Brighton right up to the north of Scotland to work on aircraft protecting the convoys and then, across the other side of Scotland, then back down again, and called for [unclear] training
NH: Well, just go back a little bit, when I left, when I graduated from Halton, well, I graduated as a, what’s the right word, as an aircraftsman first class, normally I’d have an entry at, say, of a hundred, well take a hundred, apprentices leaving but ten would pass out as leading aircraftsmen, ten or fifteen would pass out as leading aircraftsmen, aircraftsmen first class, about sixty or so would pass out as aircraftsmen first class and the remainder would pass out as AC2 but the rate of pay was quite significant, a leading aircraftsman would get forty two schillings a week, which was a big rise from five and six pence,
BW: Yeah, absolutely.
NH: Yeah. So, I passed out an AC1 which is 31, 31 of 31 and six pence a week, which is quite good, I, [laughs].
BW: And was that more than you were earning in the bank previously?
NH: Oh, yes, oh yes, in the bank I was getting seventeen and six, I think it was, might have gonna up, to nearly a pound, but no, seventeen to six a week, yes,
BW: So you almost doubled
NH: No, I, and of course, as an apprentice, I’m only getting three schillings a week, for the first two weeks and then five and six pence for the last week, that’s the third week. And then when I passed out as an AC1, I would have jumped up to thirty-one and six pence a week, which is magnificent,
BW: I believe at some point during your early training, you caught pneumonia and had to be sort of
NH: Oh that was before, that was at the end of my training,
BW: Oh, I see.
NH: Yes, this was, the war had started October, November, I caught pneumonia almost [unclear] they had to, they called my mother to come up because they thought I wouldn’t live but M & B was the new drug which they’d produced and that saved my life I think because but always touch and go anyway, when I recovered and I came out, my entry had, the whole thing was telescoped, you see, did a three year course, when the war started, all sports afternoons were stopped, we worked longer hours, and the whole thing was telescoped from the three years to a much shorter one but so we were on that at the time that I went into hospital with pneumonia and when I came out, my entry had finished and they’d gone, so I was left on my own, they gave me some Christmas leave and when I came back, I just studied on my own for a few weeks and passed out on my own as an AC1. I probably had passed out as an AC2 [laughs]. So, I’ve been lucky that way.
BW: So, there was no parade for you then, unfortunately, they just allowed you
NH: No, I just, no.
BW: So you graduated [unclear]
NH: I went down to Thorney Island under 48 Squadron, which is at Coastal Command, we had Ansons then, as I said, and then we, as an AC1. Is it all getting a bit garbled for you?
BW: No, no, that’s perfectly fine. So, during your time at Thorney Island then, which is near Chichester,
NH: Yeah.
BW: You were still as a tradesman, you were an aircraftman
NH: That’s right
BW: First class
NH: Yeah.
BW: What was it like there, what sort of air, you said Ansons then, have other aircraft there too? [unclear] and Blenheims, would you work on them at all or?
NH: No, only Ansons.
BW: Ah, ok.
NH: Yeah. And of course we were there to protect the shipping coming up to Southampton and to the docks along the south coast but then, when the invasion of the low countries came, it was too dangerous and the shipping was moved up to Liverpool, Liverpool and Glasgow and so we followed the shipping up to Liverpool and we were stationed at Hooton Park.
BW: I see. So around the time of the Battle of Britain and when the invasion was looking imminent during the summer of 1940,
NH: Yeah.
BW: You and your squadron, 48 Squadron, actually moved up to Liverpool.
NH: To Liverpool and we were there for about a year I think before we moved up to, because then there were all bombed badly and the submarine menace became bigger and we moved, and so the shipping was moved further up into Glasgow and so we moved up to Stornoway,
BW: I see.
NH: And then to Wick. Don’t quite know why we did that, we were on Hudsons by that time.
BW: How did you find them to work on?
NH: Well of course [unclear] much, they’d hydraulics of course which you know, on the Anson it was a wind up undercarriage, took a hundred and twenty turns to get the wheels up, well of course there was much more hydraulics on the Hudsons, very modern by comparison with the Anson.
BW: And so, you mentioned earlier about having completed your trade training, you were called up for aircrew which is in November ‘41 thereabouts, did you apply to be a pilot or did you?
NH: Yes, I wanted to be a pilot, yeah, I wanted to be a glamourous pilot and go out with girls [laughs]
BW: [laughs] And what happened to enable the change [unclear]?
NH: Well you see that, everything, as I said, was taking so long with bottlenecks everywhere, they decided to change from being a two pilot crew to one pilot and introduced bomb aimers and bomb aimers very often failed pilots, [unclear] capable of getting an aircraft back perhaps in an emergency as the pilot was no longer capable, that was the, so, the some man crew then became a pilot, navigator, bomb aimer, wireless operator, engineer and two gunners, that’s a Halifax or Lancaster.
BW: Ok.
NH: And so then of course they had a business of what they called grading and so all of us who wanted to be pilots, we had to go to a grading school and fly Tiger Moths and be graded and although we went solo, I did a very poor final test so they graded me down, I’m afraid I messed it up, I made a mess of the spin, that sort of thing but so that was very disappointing but so they transferred me to being a navigator.
BW: I see.
NH: And others who were the same, were either navigators or bomb aimers did navigator or bomb aimer training.
BW: Ok. And so, until this stage you’ve been training on Tiger Moths
NH: Tiger Moths
BW: As a pilot
NH: Yeah
BW: But I believe you were sent abroad to Canada so you
NH: Well then, then of course I went to, yes, that’s right, I went to Rivers, near Winnipeg, went over on the Queen Elisabeth, just newly constructed, that was in, that was in September ’42, yes, September ’42, oh, because of the bottleneck we gone down to Eastbourne for further navigation, for navigation training, so we did a further navigation course down there, that was after we’d failed, we failed to become pilots and went down and became navigators, this is the start of our navigation course at Eastbourne, so did a few weeks there and then we moved across, up to, somewhere near Manchester, where we stayed there before we were shipped up to Glasgow to get onto the Queen Elisabeth.
BW: And what was it like going across to Canada?
NH: Oh, quite good, I mean, we were only a few thousand aircrew going across to, a mixture of pilots and navigators, most of the pilots went down south to Texas or somewhere like that and we went to a place called Mana, called Rivers in Manitoba, in the middle of Canada, about a hundred and twenty miles from Winnipeg and so we were only going out, we were only about two or three thousand I think aircrew under training or going for training. Coming back, I, and I came back on the same boat, we landed in New York, then went to up to Moncton in Canada on the East Coast and then across to, had two or three weeks there, it’s all bottlenecks all the time before we were posted to Rivers at Manitoba, that took a three day rail journey from
BW: Wow.
NH: And we got there about the middle of September.
BW: So just in time before the winter set in.
NH: Just setting in, yes, a week or two later they froze, they sprayed a compound of water and that was the ice rink for the rest of the winter, yeah.
BW: So, did you get much flying in during that time?
NH: Oh yes, yes, yes, in Ansons again, bitterly cold because we had to do astro training was the big feature and we had to open the hatch and these pilots of course shuddered at the cold air coming in but we had to take our, take these, you know, all these [unclear] and stuff, fortunately in Canada, you know, you get these wonderful clear nights, and the stars and everything so visible, it was a, for doing astro navigation, it was ideal.
BW: So you had to
NH: But it was still to bloody cold.
BW: So you actually had to open the hatch mid flying in order to take reading the stars.
NH: Yeah, and take the reading, well, the stars you wanted, yeah. But navigation was simple in Canada because the nights were clear and the days were, cold and brisk, you know, you could see for miles, you could, you get airborne at Rivers, hundred and twenty miles from Winnipeg, and of course you could see Winnipeg because it is, all the lights were still on in Canada
BW: No blackout.
NH: No. And there’s only a few towns there anyway and you knew exactly which town, by the size, so navigation was simple.
BW: What was life like there in general, did you manage to travel out or did you meet any Canadians, at least some aircrew were stationed off base or b&bs and things but presumably you [unclear]
NH: Oh no, we lived, oh no, we were right in the prairies, we just the camp,
BW: So just yourselves and
NH: Place called Brandon, was about twenty five miles away, [unclear] I never went there, once or twice, we did get down to Londa, to Minneapolis [unclear] at Christmas there over the Christmas period but we managed to work our way down there for a, for the Christmas break
BW: And did you stay
NH: Rather special
BW: And did you stay over in hotels and things and [unclear]
NH: No, we stayed with, while went to the US the United States organisation, you know, like the Red cross naffy or whatever but being American at that time was very well appointed, we had written to them before saying we are coming, and they phoned us out, we stayed with a professor, while he was away, on national service, he was a Lieutenant colonel American Air Force but he was a professor at Minneapolis University and we stayed with him, with his wife, five of us.
BW: And was that your crew that you went with then?
NH: No, not, we weren’t crewed up then, we were just five navigators under training.
BW: Ok. And from there you, I believe, you passed out as sergeant observer navigator
NH: Sergeant observer navigator, yes,
BW: You graduated while you were in Canada.
NH: That’s right, yes, came back to Moncton to wait for our journey home, which again was on the Queen Elisabeth from New York. And then back in Glasgow, by avoiding the U-boats, but because we were so fast, they couldn’t, they couldn’t get any nearer but both the Queen Mary and the Queen Elisabeth both scootered across the Atlantic, coming back it was very different than coming out, we brought all the American troops, about fifteen thousand American troops on board.
BW: So this is pretty much at the height of the Atlantic war, then, isn’t it? When the [unclear]
NH: Yes, this is, this would be March ’43 now and we are just beginning to get over the U-boat, we are just beginning to get control of the U-boat menace, it was in ’42 the U-boat menace was at its highest, and it was a serious problem, well still was but we, yeah, we are getting on top of it by the time I came back in ’43.
BW: And so from there you went to
NH: We went to Harrogate, we were all, Harrogate was the assembly point and we were all assembled, officers went into the Majestic and sergeants went into the Grand Hotel in Harrogate, do you know them?
BW: Yes, I’ve been
NH: And the Majestic
BW: I’ve been to one, yes.
NH: Yeah. So
BW: Very nice [unclear] hotels
NH: We didn’t mind that at all, this was March, we had a couple of weeks leave in Bournemouth and back and then we were kept hanging around again, waiting to go on to our onto the OTU, which is the next step in our training, operational training unit, and that took some time, I remember, in order to occupy us they sent us up to Perth, to a flying training school that flew Tiger Moths around the, the name of the river near Perth, do you know it? Tay, is it, Tay?
BW: Tay.
NH: Lovely, anyway, lovely week, I think it was only a week or ten days, just a way of keeping us amused, before we, eventually we did get to the operational training which was at Kinloss, in northern Scotland.
BW: And was that number 19 OTU, [unclear]
NH: I don’t remember the number, [unclear] on my log book. But it’s, yes, operational at Kinloss and we were on Whitleys, so we are on a different aeroplane now. And this will be, by the time we did that, it’s August, August ’43, so it’s already taken me from November ’41 and now we are in, at August ’43,I got my navigator’s brevy but I still haven’t got, I’m still not operationally trained, that we did on a Whitley.
BW: Right. So it’s taken you, as you say, approximately two years, they needed two years
NH: yeah.
BW: To get to that operational training unit.
NH: Yeah. That’s right, yeah. And that finished for about the end of October, beginning of November ’43,
BW: Ok.
NH: So I think it be the end of October, we were posted, we were crewed up there, that was the big feature and I, you all join up together, you look around and you see who you’d like to fly with. I joined up with a chap named, sergeant, he was a sergeant, Sergeant Wilkinson, we liked the look of one another I suppose, so he and I joined and that was the usual pattern, you and the pilot joined up and you skited around and gathered in the rest of the crew which at this stage we would be five, wireless operator, gunner and a gunner.
BW: And this I believe commonly took place in just a big hangar, they amalgamated all together
NH: No, that’s right, yes
BW: And they just left them
NH: Left us to sort ourselves out, yes, a funny system.
BW: And so, you crew up with Sergeant Wilkinson,
NH: Sergeant Wilkinson, yeah.
BW: And do you recall the names of the other crew members?
NH: No, I can’t. No, I’m afraid I can’t. Oh, George Dugray, yeah, a French Canadian, oh, that was later, no, he’s the bomb aimer, oh yes, he was there too. Did George Dugray? Anyway, he joined us on the next one, the heavy conversion unit, when we got on to the Halifaxes.
BW: So
NH: He was a French-Canadian bomb aimer
BW: So if you were five crewmen initially, what were going to be flying at that point when you initially met Wilkinson and Dugray?
NH: Well, we only knew that we would probably Halifaxes or Lancasters were most likely.
BW: I see.
NH: Well the possibility of a Mosquitoes if we were lucky.
BW: So, where were you when you were looking for your crew and when you were getting yourselves together, was this at Burne or was this elsewhere?
NH: Oh no, this was at the operational training unit at Kinloss
BW: Kinloss.
NH: At Kinloss,
BW: I see.
NH: Yes, that’s when you came together
BW: I see.
NH: And up to that time we’d all been navigators but as you know you are split up and you find your crew, so with them we flew as a crew then, pilot, navigator, did we have a bomb aimer? I suppose we did have Dugray as bomb aimer, wireless operator, not an engineer, gunner. That’s right, yes, that’ll be it. That’s the five, isn’t it? One gunner, engineer, no, one gunner, bomb aimer, navigator, pilot. And wireless operator. So then, then you had to do, you went through the whole, all the daylight flying, night flying and of course very different flying conditions in Kinloss in Scotland, the blackout and very few aids and it was a very difficult and hazardous training period and a lot collided into the mountains through inexperience cause that’s what we were, totally inexperienced and there was a lot of fatalities there. So, it wasn’t an easy time.
BW: What sort of aids were you working with as a navigator then at this point?
NH: I’d be twenty-one, twenty one.
BW: What sort of navigational aids or equipment were you using at this time?
NH: Oh, hardly any
BW: So was
NH: Radio, we could get the old radio bearing, navigation and that’s it
BW: Was it all dead reckoning
NH: Otherwise dead reckoning, yeah, and that was one of the troubles as where people, they got lost and they sended through cloud and hit the high ground.
BW: And roughly how long were you on the OTU?
NH: That’s about six to eight weeks, we went the end of August, it’ll be eight weeks and we finished round about the end of October, beginning of November.
BW: So, this is October, November ’43.
NH: That’s right, yeah, yeah. And then of course we still hadn’t finished, then we got to go to the heavy conversion unit, flying the sort of aeroplanes we were going to fly on operations, which in our case was the Halifax and that was when we were posted to Rufforth to a heavy conversion unit at Rufforth which is about four miles out of York.
BW: And you were onto Halifaxes at that point.
NH: Yeah.
BW: Did you acquire any more crew members at all [unclear]?
NH: Oh yes, that’s where the engineer came, and the second gunner, that’s it. Yes, that’s right, Dugray, he did join us up at [unclear] and so were five when we went down to Rufforth and then we were joined by the other, by the mid upper gunner and by the flight engineer.
BW: Do you happen to recall their names at all or?
NH: No. I can’t.
BW: That’s alright.
NH: I can’t. Hardly anyone finished, I was the only one that finished the op, a full round of ops, they all disappeared one way or another. Well, you see, Wilkinson who I became, who became a good friend, splendid, a good looking chap too, and he became, he was going to go to university, he, when we finished our training at Rufforth, preparing to go to a squadron, we had finally finished our training and now we are fully qualified but it was quite usual for pilots to go on an experience exercise and he was sent on to do a run on on an operation on Berlin and that was the end of him and so we didn’t have a pilot and that kept us waiting again.
BW: And do you recall who eventually came
NH: Yes, I’ve got his name, what’s his name? Oh Gosh, my memory’s gone, I’m afraid,
BW: That’s alright.
NH: It’s in the logbook, he was a flying officer, so now as a sergeant I was being teamed up with a flying officer, who’d been posted from Hemswell. Well, Hemswell was a station, was a Bomber Command station in 4 Group and it achieved a terrible reputation for not pressing on to the target and Harris, the Bomber Command chief came up, called them all sorts of names, and closed the station down, Hemswell, everybody was posted, and I got one of those.
BW: I see.
NH: And so we did our, we did [unclear] game, so we had to train together again on the Halifax from Rufforth and that took us until well after Christmas, during which time I met my wife, who, the girl that became my wife.
BW: And how did you meet her?
NH: Oh, I met her at a dance, and she’d gone with, oh, she had arranged to meet a girlfriend at the Grey Rooms in York, I don’t know if you know it.
BW: No, I don’t.
NH: Oh, it was a lovely place, oh, we all got there, all the, York was full of aircrew, Australians, New Zealanders, Canadians particularly and Brits and a few Americans and of course there wasn’t much in York then, everything was closed down but there was a lovely dance place, the Dugrey Rooms, and that’s where we all went, to meet girls and that’s where I met my wife.
US: Sorry, after Williams your pilot, you then had Houston.
NH: Williams, Williams, that’s right. Flying officer Williams, he was the one who was, came to Rufforth from Hemswell we, I having lost Wilkinson and what you say the name was?
US: Williams.
NH: Williams. Oh, he had, I eventually found out he was called Turnback Williams, we are not going to the target? I’ll on that, busy
BW: Part of the reason Harris talk to these guys.
NH: Yeah. Yeah, that’s right so I did all my, I completed all my training with, as a, with him, with Williams, and from there at the end from February 44, now is it? End of 44, yes, Paul Williams of course, when he was sent out on his second Dickey for experience, that was at the height of the Berlin raids, and the losses were huge, we’d been, we’d been on those of course, if he’d come back from his, from his trip of experience
BW: Second Dickey means like a second pilot
NH: Second pilot experience, yes, yeah, so he didn’t come back and I wrote to his father and I got a nice, I might have it somewhere a nice letter from his father who is a stockbroker in London and anyway so I saw that with Williams then we completed another bit of training before we went off to the squadron which I say was about the end of February ’44.
BW: And this was the newly formed 578 Squadron.
NH: And that was the newly formed, yes, they were only formed about three months before
BW: And they were specifically
NH: From Snaith.
BW: And they were specifically flying Halifaxes Mark III as they were one of the first
NH: I was jolly lucky to get on one of those cause it was just as good as the Lancaster, radial engines Bristol and they could get up to the required height and carry a similar amount of bombs, splendid.
BW: So, your first sortie with 578 would be in February as you say,
NH: In March
BW: In March
NH: Then in February, then again the training was so much, I mean they wouldn’t escort, again got ourselves familiarised with the Mark Iii and done a couple of training runs before we were then considered to be operational and that took place in March and it was during that time the Nuremberg raid and of the pilots at Burton on the squadron, he got a posthumous VC.
BW: Did you know him?
NH: No, I didn’t know him, no, no, I’d only been on the squadron a week or so but I didn’t know him, I know, no, I didn’t know him, I didn’t really know him, I didn’t know anybody really, we kept to ourselves a
BW: You tend to associate with your crew if anything
NH: Just with the crew, didn’t mix much with anybody else, you stuck pretty close into the crew and as I had a girlfriend now in York I scuttled off there [laughs].
BW: So, it was looking pretty serious with your girlfriend
NH: Already started to look serious, yes, yeah, we got engaged in April, after I’d done about five operations. I took her down to Bournemouth to meet my family.
BW: Right. And so, what were the accommodation facilities like at Burne, this is where your 578 Squadron
NH: They weren’t bad, it was a brand-new place, you know, all Hudson.
BW: Were you billeted with the crew?
NH: Oh yes, yes, I, we were in huts of course but as sergeants we had little privileges, the sergeant’s mess and that sort of thing, reasonably comfortable of course, we were well-fed as aircrew, the local people, we always had eggs before we went and that sort of thing, things which people couldn’t get on the ration we had plenty of, plenty of chips too cause at the age of twenty one, twenty two I [unclear] of chips [laughs]
BW: [unclear]
NH: [unclear]
BW: And were you the only crew in the billet sometimes or there were two crews in there or?
NH: I think we were the only one, as far as I can remember we were the only one.
BW: And at this time there was a CO in charge
NH: Yes.
BW: Wing Commander Wilkey Wilkinson, do you recall him?
NH: Oh, I do very well, yes, he’s one chap I do remember, and I’ve never been a hero worshiper but I would think I would put him into that category. Marvellous chap, good looking, tall, great sense of humour, great, young, handsome, had every quality, but you knew that if Wilkinson was flying it was gonna be a bad one, he’d only, he wouldn’t take the easy ones, he’d always took the bad ones, great leader, he was on his second tour, too, very nice chap too because then of course I, to going on a bit further, I was with Williams, I did two operations with Williams, I didn’t remember what it was I didn’t like but I didn’t like it, I went to see Williams in great trepidation but I didn’t know what Williams I never spoke to Wing Commanders, they were far too elevated, but I went to see him and so I did my night flying with Williams so I said, we must have talked a bit, I can’t remember, so he said right leave with me, I’ll fix you up with somebody else and I went then to, I was teamed up then with Houston, Jock Houston, and we stayed together all the time, finished together, got commissioned together, got a DFC together.
BW: And so, you when you went from your crew flying with Williams at this point
NH: Yes
BH: To make the change to another crew
NH: Yes, the others all, I [unclear], yes, yeah.
BW: [unclear]
NH: [unclear]
BW: [unclear]
NH: Well, Williams did finish his tour, yes, but I don’t know who he flew, he finished the tour.
BW: The other members of your crew didn’t pick up your sense of
NH: No,
BW: [unclear]
NH: Not as far as I know. No, no.
BW: And you mentioned about Wilkinson, there’s a description here which seems to chime with what you commented about it and it’s only a short description if I can read it to you, it says, he was described by those who knew him as a tall, loose end fellow, the first impression that a stranger might have of him was that he was rather irresponsible, care-free, vague individual, but on closer acquaintance he would seem that he had one of the kindest, gentlest and most sympathetic
NH: Oh, I think that was pretty accurate
BW: Could possess
NH: Yes
BW: He had the knack of inspiring confidence in his crew, when flying I can’t remember anything disturbing him, he was huge with his men
NH: No, no. There’s my little story in that book he’s flying a strange aircraft, an unusual aircraft and he’s got an army man, and army major alongside him but oh, they couldn’t get the flaps down and the army major says to Wilkinson, can you fly this without flaps? He said, well, you are just about to find out [laughs].
BW: And it says of him because he was awarded a DSO he said, he inspired powers of leadership, great skill and determination, qualities which have earned him much success, his devoted squadron commander, his great drive and tactical abilities used in large measure to the high standard of operation to assume the squadron
NH: Yeah, he did, yeah, briefing were always made a pleasure by him being here, he made them quite different, we quite looked forward to his briefing
BW: And when you, you mentioned about him when he going out on a bad raid, were you aware that if he briefed it, it was gonna be a bad one or was it the case [unclear] the raids?
NH: No, not particularly, no, but you knew that if he was on it, it wouldn’t be an easy one.
BW: But he, he always gave the briefing whatever the raid was.
NH: Oh yes, oh yes.
BW: There was only a few at the time
NH: That’s right, yeah, yeah. Yes, I remember his briefing, that is one thing I do remember quite well. Always something to look forward to. I remember a young WAAF officer looking at him I think, Gosh, I’d like a young woman to look at me like that [laughs].
BW: So, by now you are on the early part of your tour and initially it looks like you got operations mainly over Germany, are there any other particular raids through March that you recall?
NH: No, they were all a great big jumble mainly, I, oh, there is one when we lost a lot of aeroplanes.
BW: That night be Nuremberg presumably.
NH: No, not Nuremberg, I didn’t do Nuremberg, there is some, somewhere like, oh, retro memory for names, the size of the Ruhr, a fairly long trip and I remember coming out, they’d briefed us to come down from the target area right down to five thousand feet, it seemed odd tactic, I remember going up with another navigator to Nuremberg, I don’t like this and he said, I wish we weren’t doing this one and he didn’t come back. We lost six that night. So, I don’t know what that tactic was all about.
BW: So, at this time, when you
NH: Oh, I’m trying to remember the name, that, Karlsruhe,
BW: Karlsruhe. And so at this when you were doing operations, you’ve gone from the billet to the ops room to be briefed, you’ve had your briefing, just talk me through then what you would do from there in terms of boarding the aircraft, the checks you would do, what sort of things would be going on then.
NH: Well, we had our own, quite a lot of instruments, we had Gee for example, the bomb aimer would have his stuff but I would have all my charts, gee charts, ordinary plotting charts, what were they called? [unclear] and then the Gee charts, all rather luminous, astro navigation, [unclear] anyway, waste of time most of the time but always had to do it, sextant, all the stuff had to be checked and so, you know, that took up quite a long time, you did that some with the pilot, checking the routes and marking off certain points on it.
BW: And H2S was coming in at this time.
NH: Oh, we didn’t have H2S.
BW: That wasn’t on your aircraft.
NH: We didn’t have it, no,
BW: And was the Gee equipment located right where you position were?
NH: Right in front like that
BW: Ok.
NH: Had a table, table, yeah.
BW: In some aircraft [unclear] different.
NH: And that, that was an incredibly, wonderful instrument I had, of course the Germans were jamming it as much as they could and you’d lose it, you’d, what it did help you to do was to get an accurate wind, cause that’s so incredibly important, if you got an accurate wind then doing jet reconning isn’t going to be too bad and you could get Gee fixes right up to inside the Dutch coast so it gave you a whole string of fixes and a whole comprehension of the wind you know was established by the time you got there. And then, the same thing coming back, you, I’d have, I’d be searching madly to get the signals eventually appearing and it’s marvellous when the, when they just started to appear on your radar screen, and you’d, and you’d get a proper fix, because when you tried astro navigation or even wireless, there were so many errors involved.
BW: Was your pilot good in terms of sticking to the course? Was he [unclear] following your instructions?
NH: Oh yes, of course, oh yes, oh yes, very good, you know, if I take an astro shot, they had to keep very steady because you have a steady platform to get, I don’t know if you know about sextant?
BW: Yes.
NH: You know, yes, getting the star dive into the bubble and holding it there, if the plane lurches up you’ve lost the, it, you’ve gotta get it back again,
BW: And so, you found that you worked quite well presumably [unclear]
NH: Oh, very well, with Houston, terrible memory for names, I even forget my own sometimes
BW: What was it like actually in the environment of a Halifax then, was it pretty roomy, has a reputation of being a fairly roomy aircraft.
NH: Not bad, not bad really
BW: [unclear]
NH: No, no, not when you compare it [unclear] like the Whitley
BW: And I believe the heating, say for example in a Lancaster kept the wireless operator and the navigator pretty warm
NH: yes
BW: Is it similar in a Halifax or not?
NH: Ah, yeah, pretty I was never cold, I never remember being cold,
BW: How did it feel in your flying kit? Was it [unclear]
NH: I didn’t wear much, had a Mae West on, and a parachute harness of course and that was, oh, and an aircrew sweater, and that was about it, don’t [unclear], I think flying boots, yes, yeah, flying boots, cause you could if you were, if you bailed out and you landed, you could cut the top off and they looked like ordinary shoes, ordinary boots
BW: And so you were pretty comfortable in the interior of the Halifax.
NH: Oh, pretty, reasonably comfortable.
BW:
NH: Yes, yes, I had a good desk and all the instruments that I needed. Wind thing, what you call, wind setting, forgot what they called, wind, don’t they use that much, you had to be [unclear] sort of view the sea at eighteen thousand feet, you can’t do that
BW: Did you find that you had to use oxygen much if you were above [unclear] feet or?
NH: Oh yes, about ten thousand feet, most certainly.
BW: Were most of your ops above that [unclear]?
NH: Oh yes, as soon as you get to, well pretty well from five thousand feet or even before, I can’t remember exactly but you certainly wouldn’t want to be [unclear] oxygen above ten thousand feet
BW: You noted as well one particular date you were in the air on the night of D-Day.
NH: Yes, yes.
BW: Do you recall the briefing for D-Day primarily?
NH: No
BW: Were you aware that is was gonna be the start of the invasion?
NH: Well, we were all suspicious but nobody knew anything definite but of course so much everybody knew that D-Day was gonna come soon but that anything definite not until we, well, we were, the target was an easy one on the Northern Coast of France, just inside, gun batteries of some sort, and we bombed that but as we are coming back, and as we are coming back near [unclear], both the gunners shouted out, all the shipping that they could see and so all this shipping was just on the invasion, that was June the 6th.
BW: What sort of time would that be, was it early morning?
NH: About three or four o’clock in the morning. It be in the logbook there. Be about that time.
BW: The gun battery that you mentioned, was it Mont Fleury,
NH: Right.
BW: And that was covering Gold Beach, which was one of the British invasion beaches.
NH: Yeah, yeah. Cause we did two or three, Montgomery, that was later on, after the armies had got established but got held up by the Germans and Montgomery requested Bomber Command to drop their bombs on the German, where the Germans were and we did that, we got a letter of thanks from him because that’s form where the armies could move on.
BW: Were you made aware of the results of the bombing on that particular D-Day mission?
NH: Not really, no, not until we got this letter from Montgomery thanking us for, yeah, I can’t think that we got any particular, no. Of course, we were taking photographs all the time, and we were given some sort of marking for the accuracy and the standard and that was posted up on the boards.
BW: Did it feel like a competition, where you
NH: A little bit like that, oh yes, a little bit like that. Bomb aimers, you know, we, in that book [unclear] claims that we were used for these targets because we had a bomb aiming accuracy record.
BW: Quite [unclear]
NH: No, but, I think that, what is, my God, the insignia of the squadron has got
US: An arrow
NH: A arrow, isn’t it? A bomb aiming accuracy or something is called.
US: Just called accuracy.
NH: Accuracy, yes, yes. So we had this supposedly reputation. I don’t know [laughs].
BW: Well, the gun position that was there at Gold Beach was actually a target given to the Green Howards, the army regiment that was to assault that.
NH: Oh, was that? Oh, was it?
BW: And that particular action was where sergeant major Stanley Hollis got the VC, [unclear] boxes near that battery. So coincidentally the raid that you were on happened to be the target which sergeant major Hollis was the only VC on D-Day.
NH: That’s interesting too. Yeah, yeah.
BW: There was only one [unclear] I can see on that raid and that was a Halifax flown by squadron leader Watson
NH: OH yes.
BW: Who was shot down
NH: yes.
BW: [unclear]
NH: I think I’ve seen the name but I don’t know him. No, no.
BW: So, at this time during April, May, June, most of your targets are in France
NH: Yes
BW: With the idea of supporting D-Day [unclear]
NH: Yeah, D-Day the invasion, yes, yes,
BW: And that continues
NH: [unclear] targets of course, by comparison with the Ruhr and Berlin
BW: And by easy that I assume that they were lighter, more lightly defended, is that right?
NH: Not so much that they’re but quicklier have a long, the big thing somewhere like Nuremberg or Berlin, even if you got to, you had a long trail back to UK and the German fighters knew that and would wait for the trail of bombers coming out of the target and shooting them out then but so and they had a long time to do it whereas going to somewhere Paris or somewhere like that, they didn’t have that length of time to do it.
BW: did you encounter many fighters that you [unclear]?
NH: No, I can’t remember, well, I think the most famous of course was the concentration, I did a daylight on the Ruhr in September and then you saw the concentration, what a concentration of bombers looked like cause we flew at night and we didn’t see how it really looked. But on this occasion we flew daylight to the Ruhr in September and I flew with a strange crew, which is slightly unsettling, their navigator had gone sick or something, and but then you saw aircraft colliding and of course you saw all the bombs dropping from other aircraft dropping so, you know, getting so close to releasing their bombs on you and the gunners would be shouting out, you know, he’s right over, he’s right over us now, and quite often it did happen that bombs from one aircraft hit another one, underneath.
BW: Did it happen on that occasion when you were?
NH: No, no, I never saw it actually happen,
BW: Just [unclear].
NH: No, I did, I did see aircraft, the other thing was collisions, when you got several hundred aircraft, well, at nighttime you don’t know what has happened, whether there’s a collision or whether they’re being shot by ack-ack, but at daylight you could see and I did see a collision, two aircraft hitting one another,
BW: And what, how could you describe what [unclear]?
NH: No, I can’t, we turned away and it was gone but didn’t see anybody come out.
BW: And so during [unclear]
NH: No explosion, that’s all.
BW: And so, during the raid on Stuttgart, during the daylight, could you see, did you get a chance to see clearly the formation? The bomber formation?
NH: Oh, not really, no, you know, of course you know that they are at night because you get into their slipstream, so you know and that’s what you want, of course you want to be close, you don’t want to be isolated that’s when they can pick you off, the whole object of flying in a gaggle or stream was to protect one another with your, what’s the stuff? Window and, you know, confuse the enemy defenses radar so you were conscious at nighttime, but you didn’t see the full horror of it.
BW: And what was your impression during the daylight raid?
NH: Well, I thought, how the hell can you get through that lot? Approaching the Ruhr, this is a lovely September afternoon and you could see the smoke hovering over the Ruhr from such a long way away, I got a feeling we could see it almost from the Dutch coast, and then you think, then of course within the smoke, which is just the puffs of smoke from the ack-ack, you could see the brusts of the showers, well, there’s no penetration, you cannot penetrate that lost, but looks, it probably looks worst than it really is.
BW: In each case your pilot kept on, there was no consideration of turning back [unclear] target?
NH: Oh no, no, but no, no, we were, I think we were pretty that way, we did what we had to do, and although it is nerve-racking when the bomb aimer is insistent on, you know, my God, why doesn’t he press the bloody button? It was he said, bomb’s gone, yeah, that we could turn away.
BW: Were there any occasions where you had to make a second run over the target or not?
NH: Not exactly the, I ‘m not quite sure but I do know that we’ve been approaching the target and we’ve been told to hold off, the Pathfinder, the master bomber is directing us from underneath, usually in something like a Mosquito and he is calling us by our codename whatever, main force, main force, whatever the code, and he said and he’d be telling us, the bomb, overshoot the red TI’s or bomb the green markers or in one case he couldn’t tell because of the smoke and he couldn’t get accurate and he told the whole force to orbit, that was a nasty experience too,
BW: And the whole force at this stage [unclear]
NH: Would have to turn and wait and come in again until he could give the instructions on which markers to attack, they were of course people like, who has got the VC?
BW: Cheshire?
NH: Cheshire, yeah. Incredible people they were. They would stay, I mean, they would stay on the target for the whole time, going round and round, giving the directions to the main force, and asking for new TI’s or something like that if he wanted it.
BW: So, moving on from the D-Day operations, the squadron was then tasked with hitting the V-Weapon sites
NH: Yes, we, those were fairly easy targets, just inside the Dutch and French coast, yeah. We [unclear] several of those, three or four of those.
BW: Do you recall much about what was explained to you about the targets, we know now that they were being [unclear], did you know that?
NH: I don’t think so, I can’t remember, no, I just know that they were, well eventually of course when the flying bombs came up cause they came up, they came off fairly earlier, in was about August wasn’t it? July, August? Well, after, well then we knew them, that sort, they were that sort of targets, not until they, they’d actually arrived.
BW: So, from there through July and August, I think in total you flew thirty-nine operations, right?
NH: Thirty-nine altogether, yes. And of course the normal operation, prior to that., had ben thirty but because we were getting these easy French targets, they made us do thirty nine. And I, when they did say you’re finished, I was quite surprised, I’d thought they’d keep me I wasn’t all that bothered, I was getting used to it and it think sorry there won’t be an end you just carry on to the end and I accepted that I think.
BW: So you would have gone on for the duration of the war.
NH: Yes, I was slightly surprised when they said, you can stop and get.
BW: And what happened at that point, how was it explained to you your tour would end? What happened [unclear]?
NH: No explanation, I was just told that I would be posted on a certain day to in this case to Marston Moor as an instructor. But of course before that I’d been commissioned, Jock Houston and myself both got commissioned and we both got and then shortly after that we both got DFCs. Oh, we got that after I left the squadron, we got them afterwards, we were commissioned before we left the squadron, about a month or so before and then we got the DFC about a month or so after we left the squadron.
BW: And did you go to the palace to receive the DCF [unclear]?
NH: No, it came in the post, it came in the post with a letter from King George, signed by King George and that was stolen, we had a burglary and some bastard stole it, including the letter which was in some respect more important than the DFC. I got the DFC changed
BW: And that was soon after, that was soon after you’d been awarded it, it happened or was it
NH: No, no, it happened, oh, about twenty years ago.
BW: So still, right, still, as recently as that.
NH: Yeah, but we were in Muscat in Oman and this burglary happened whilst we were away.
BW: But you managed to get a replacement for
NH: I got a replacement, yes, they charged me a hundred pounds for it but it’s not quite the same cause I haven’t got the letter from King George.
BW: A shame. And so how was your relationship at this point with your girlfriend, cause you’ve been on pos, a pretty intense period through [unclear].
NH: Oh, well, every, you see, I suppose, in some respects I missed out a bit, I was very friendly with Jock but the other I, I went and had a beer occasionally with them but I was so eager, I was so wrapped up with Dorothy that every opportunity, I just speared off into York and I didn’t spend much time on the squadron but I, I used to take my inflight rations, because we got chocolate and chewing gum and other things and I couldn’t eat them, I was too frightened to eat them, and so I’d take them into York ands give them to her, I ran up to her office, which is on the fourth story of the LNER headquarters building in York and bang on her door and give her my inflight rations, sweets and chocolate mostly cause these things were rationed at that time.
BW: And that must have made your visits special for her.
NH: Yeah [laughs].
BW: [unclear]
NH: Yeah. Well if I wasn’t flying that night, I’d rush into York and rush up and tell her I’d be there and wait for, meet her after she left work.
BW: At what stage during the day would you find out whether or not you were on ops or not?
NH: Well, usually in the morning, you round about, just round about midday as I remember you’d know whether you’d go and operate that night or not. I do remember one occasion when we, we thought we were going to operate and that was when the flight engineer we’d, it was in June cause its, the nights were brighter, I think we were due for a take-off about ten o’clock and it was getting dusk and as usual everything goes very quiet, you wait for the start-up pistol and all engines would then start revving up, start the engines up and revving up, make a crescendo of noise of course when you’ve got sixteen or eighteen four-engines, all going and on this occasion there is always a little pause, you see you check your aircraft, you check everything and then you sort of hang around for a few minutes, I was there waiting for the [unclear] pistol, signal to get in and start up and on this occasion the flight engineer, we’d done about fourteen trips, he said, I’m not going tonight, and he wouldn’t, he said he wasn’t going, so of course the tower had to be informed that we weren’t, we had a crew deficiency and everybody came out then, the CO and the flight engineer leader and the medical officer and they took him to the rear engine to talk to him and took him off and we thought, well, by this time all the other aircraft had started up and are travelling round the peri-track looking at us curiously wondering what, why we hadn’t started up and we are waving them to say, well, clear off, we’re not going but then the engineer nearly came rushing out saying I’m [unclear] [laughs] so we had a start-up and all we did like that.
BW: So you then got, were you having to get back in the aircraft at this point?
NH: Oh, of course, yes. And off we had to go but then we were Tail End Charlies and that’s another thing you don’t like you don’t wanna be amongst the gaggle.
BW: And so you, how did you feel being at the back of the bomber stream then?
NH: Well, I suppose we must have made it up, you know, put a bit [laughs] more throttle on and we, I think we reached them in the end because what you do, you assemble at same point or something like that, that’s the usual thing, the squadrons all take off from the various aerodromes, say in Yorkshire and Spurn Point was a favorite assembly point and you’d set off from there, which there is no formation, you just keep in the stream, and so of course by the time the assembly had taken place and they had set off, we were catching up.
BW: How did you feel during the flight having had [unclear]?
NH: I didn’t like it, I didn’t like it [laughs] I [unclear] much more nervous, well, I’ve always felt nervous but felt a lot more nervous that night and that’s a clear memory of one flight I do have, yeah.
BW: You mention that just feeling nervous and feeling that you could have your inflight rations when you were airborne, you managed to overcome that, did you [unclear].
NH: [unclear] do it, no, chewing gum, I had the chewing gum but didn’t need anything else, coffee, I’d have, I’d drink the coffee and eat and the chewing gum but I was too frightened to eat anything else [laughs]. I waited for my eggs and bacon, egg and chips like got back.
BW: Did you recall the rest of the crew felt in a similar way?
NH: I think they felt similar, fairly similar, yeah, I think so, I think we all felt pretty much the same.
BW: Did you ever talk about it?
NH: No, no, that’s a strange thing, it’s only in the last few years that I’ve ever talked about it, Dorothy never wanted me to hear me talk about it and I never did, I never thought about it and it’s only sort of more or less than she died that I’ve given it any thought.
BW: And at the time did you talk to your crew mates or did they tell you how it felt on the operations night?
NH: No, never talked about it, never, never, no, it’s a, I look back a lot of it and I think, this is a bit strange really cause I think about it a lot now and talk about it quite a bit but for thirty or forty years never thought about it, hardly, hardly, [unclear].
BW: And how does it feel now, reflecting back on that time?
NH: Well, it’s a different time, you know, it’s something which I didn’t, something which is very different to anything, but you know it’s an experience which you’d never imagined that you’d go through really.
BW: And you mentioned now at this stage of your career that you’d come off operations, you were then posted to Marston Moor as instructor.
NH: That’s right, yes, for six months, six months tour and then we got married in June and when I came back from my honeymoon, I was told I was posted back onto operations to go with Tiger Force against Japan.
BW: And is this June ’45?
NH: This is June ’45, the war, the European war had ended and that ended in May, was it May? Yeah, is it.
BW: That’s right.
NH: Yeah and I’ve finished my six months rest and so I was posted back onto a second tour which happened to be with, what I called the force?
BW: Tiger Force.
NH: Sorry?
US: Tiger.
NH: Tiger Force, with Tiger Force. Yes, [unclear] to, and we were going to do something similar to what we did against Germany. That was, but that was on Lincolns, was it Lancasters or Lincolns? Wasn’t Halifaxes? Either Lancasters or Lincolns, I got the feeling it was Lincolns. Cause then after the war I flew in, I was on 50 Squadron which was at Waddington.
BW: At Waddington.
NH: Yeah, that was after the war, that was in 1950, talking about 1947, ’48, no, ’48.
BW: So you were earmarked to go with Tiger Force out to the Far East
NH: Yeah. We did
BW: Did that happen?
NH: yeah. No, no, we did our training and we didn’t have to do much, it was, you know, becoming acquainted, with a slightly new aircraft and we were all experienced people, all done our tour of ops, all being instructors so we are a very experienced crew we did, we just did a little bit of familiarization and we are ready to go and then they dropped the atom bomb so we didn’t go and we all got split up then.
BW: So you were all prepared to go and then you continued your post first to a training as a crew
NH: Yes
BW: Together and I guess you were all I guess earmarked at the same to go to the Far East but
NH: Yeah
BW: But you said it didn’t happen
NH: No, and we would have gone of course if they hadn’t dropped the atom bombs.
BW: And so, just talk us through your subsequent career which I believe involved transport command, fighter command
NH: Well of course [unclear] lot of funny little jobs like on a recruiting center and I was eventually had a sort of a career posting as an instructor at the RAF [unclear] at Cosford which was, if I’d played my cards right, would have done me some good, but I didn’t, I volunteered for flying, I have tried to go back on flying and they posted me back on transport command, but then Dorothy was expecting her babies and after a while I asked much to their irritation I think and it never did me any good, they posted me back to Bomber Command.
BW: And where did you get posted to?
NH: To, well, first of all I did a conversion, I became a navigator, bomb aimer, I did a bomb aiming course at Lindholme, near Doncaster and then from there I was posted to 50 Squadron at Waddington and that was when Dorothy had her babies, twins, and we all moved into quarters at Waddington and I became adjutant to 50 Squadron and my Co’s a man named Peach and that was a most enjoyable experience, I really enjoyed that time, we flew Lincolns.
BW: I was going to ask actually because at this time Jet aircraft are becoming more widely [unclear].
NH: [unclear] was just coming into service, yes, in Bomber Command.
BW: Did you get a chance to fly in it?
NH: No, I didn’t. No, no.
BW: And so what happened after that, were you involved at all in the Berlin airlift for example or not?
NH: No, because, as I say, I would have been if I stayed on transport command, that’s where I didn’t do myself any good by asking for this, but I didn’t know that Berlin airlift, I would have I wish I could have done that now but I got this request answered and was posted to 50 to Bomber Command but I made a mistake though.
BW: And at what stage did you become flight controller?
NH: Well, this is a, from Waddington I was posted to Scampton as an instructor, again I wish I’d protested and I and stayed on longer but I, we were posted to Scampton, as an instructor and then I hadn’t been offered a permanent commission but they did offer me a restricted permanent commission but it had to be either in the air traffic control branch or the fighter control branch, so I chose the fighter control branch, I wish I, somehow I wish I could afford that more and stay, and let me stay on aircrew and I think I’d have prospered more so then I, I did the course on fighter control and yeah that’s and from there I was posted to Patrington, how do we call those units? Fighter control unit.
BW: And this was at Patrington?
NH: Patrington, yeah.
BW: Patrington.
NH: In East Yorkshire.
BW: Ok.
NH: And then I went from, from there I became training officer and that was a nice post I became training officer to the Hull fighter control unit, [unclear] unit, based at Sutton, that was most enjoyable.
BW: What did you like about it?
NH: Well, I was my own boss, I was both adjutant for a long while, was adjutant and training officer, I had the use of the staff car, say I was my own boss, we had a nice house in Withernsea, no, not in Withernsea, in
US: Wasn’t Cottingham?
NH: Cottingham. In Cottingham, yeah. Nice house in Cottingham, we had some pleasant friends in the village and that was a most enjoyable time, I was very, I became very popular with the people, with the auxiliary people who were of course all civilians but I enjoyed their company I got on well with them so that was quite a nice [unclear], from there so I did a full tour there and then we were posted to Germany doing, well doing an operational job, you know, fighter control unit first of all at [unclear] and then at [unclear].
BW: And that I suppose saw you through to, through the Sixties and
NH: Yeah, and right up until
BW: The Seventies
NH: Yes, I did a year in Borneo on my own and joined the confrontation, nobody knows about that, do they? When we fought the Indonesians I’d, of course that was a year what they called an unaccompanied tour, we were based on a little island called Labuan on the north coast of Borneo, which is enjoyable up to a point but I didn’t like being separated all that time from the family.
BW: What sort of things were you doing out there?
NH: Oh well, the Indonesians were trying to control the whole of Borneo and they were claiming it but we said no, the northern part, including, what’s the oil rich place? Begins with a b. Brunei. Kuching and, that’s Kalimantan and then, we said, no, that all belongs to Malaysia, Malaysian federation which at that time includes Singapore but the Indonesians wanted the whole of Borneo as part of the Indonesia so we said, no, you can’t have it, this is all, so we had a four year war, we didn’t call it a war, we called it a confrontation.
BW: Is this the Malaysian insurgency?
NH: Yeah. Yeah, well, it is an insurgency, but of course Singapore was part of it and Malaysia so we eventually Indonesia gave up and accepted the status quo as we said it should be and we had Javelins at that time so we were controlling Javelins along the border, which was way undefined, you couldn’t and of course we had Gurkas out there and Indonesians were scared stiff of them and it was good jungle warfare, very good for anybody who wanted an army career it was ideal training, not too many casualties, a couple of hundred or so were killed, but we had, but we have radar jamming, Lincolns, not Lincolns, Hastings, we had Hastings out there doing our radar jamming and we controlled the Javelins, we had our Javelins which would come onto the island and jet airborne wherever we saw anything that might be a useful target. So I commanded that little unit, I had about sixty or seventy men and all radar equipment, that sort of little encampment of my own, was quite nice and six officers, and seventy men and we had a marvelous time, laughed like anything, all the time, oh yeah, drank a lot, we drank the hell of a lot. Dorothy never stopped saying how shocked she was [laughs] [unclear].
BW: And so after late Fifties through the Sixties
NH: Yes, that’s the Mid Sixties, the confrontation finished in ’66, well, that’s when I came back, I came back in June ’66, and the confrontation stopped just after that and then I came back to, oh, Scotland again, to, up to Buchan, is it Buchan?
US: Peterhead, yeah.
NH: Peterhead, yeah. Peter, yeah, Peterhead, Buchan. Onto a, well, there we are looking at, we are looking after, looking at Russian aircraft, that was the interesting part there was watching for the Bisons and what not coming out of the Russian bases up at, you know, beyond.
BW: Beyond Murmansk and.
NH: Beyond Murmansk, yeah. They’d come out into the Atlantic, they’d be picked up by the Norwegian radar and we would [unclear] them then to come down between the Iceland gap and the
BW: Faroe islands.
NH: Faroe islands, Shetlands, my memory is terrible, anyway we were waiting for them to come through, past the Iceland gap and they’d go out into the Atlantic while we had a flight of, what were they in those days, not the Javelins, what was after the Javelins? Hunters, Hunters? What were the ones before the Lightning? No, it was the Lightnings, the Lightnings, of course it was. Yeah, the Lightnings, we had Lightnings up at Kinloss, or Lossiemouth? Lossiemouth, they were up there on the and the Americans had Phantoms in Iceland so we would scramble when we, as soon as we saw these coming, being handed over, they were handed over to us by the Norwegians, we probably couldn’t see them then but then when we knew they were there and eventually they would appear on our radar and certain time after that we would scramble the fighters from Lossiemouth and the Phantoms from Reykjavik and at first the Lightnings didn’t have the range to get to them and very frustratingly they would turn back because of lack of fuel, the Phantoms would come on and make the interception and then come onto Scotland and land, but then when the Lightning Mark VI came in, we could make the interception properly and return. But that was quite interesting for a while because we also had radar up on top of the Faroes, right on top, no, not the Faroes, the Shetlands, right up on the top island, Saxa Vord, that’s, there’s a radar station up there, so there, that was a bit of an interest and then I was finally posted back to Germany and that, did my final tour in Germany on a NATO, on a NATO post. We had a German commandant then, Brigadier, German, he was, by that time the Germans had bene reconstituted but we had control of the fighter element, the Germans weren’t allowed to control, we were [unclear] of course for, to intercept the Russians in case there was any sort of attack but we had, but they had to have RAF controllers out there, the Germans, under all their constitutional rules weren’t allowed to do this so although they provided all the manning for it, we did the actual operating of the stand-by fighters, what did we have then? Lightnings, did we? Lightnings, yes, Lightnings, and they were at places like Laarbruch, Bruggen and somewhere else, there were three, Gutersloh, yes, we had the triangle of those three and then of course Monchengladbach.
BW: And so
NH: So I finished my tour there and made a lot of good friends, [unclear] we were Germans, Dutch, British and that very pleasant finished my career really, made some good friends who stayed friends right up till now, those who survived, even the Germans, the German commandant of the German regiment, he became, I still talk to him every week on the telephone [laughs]
BW: And so
NH: Oberst Wolfgang Ostermar
BW: Wolfgang Ostermar
NH: Wolfgang, yeah, we went on holidays together, became very close, you know.
BW: And is he a similar age to you?
NH: A year younger.
BW: So he’d been around the year, presumably in opposing forces when you [unclear]
NH: He was, he was, and he was taken prisoner by the Americans.
BW: Really? Did
NH: But he’s an Anglophile, speaks excellent English, same as his wife does. Did his training, of course he became a fighter controller but trained by us in Britain.
BW: Do you recall briefly what his wartime service was? Was he a pilot or a gunner or [unclear]?
NH: No, he was ground staff.
BW: Right. So there was no chance of him being
NH: When we’d been on holiday together, people made romantic conclusions, you know, a German and a British exile, sorry, good friends,
BW: But it wasn’t
NH: Not like that, no.
BW: And so you left the RAF and NATO
NH: Yeah.
BW: What was your civilian career, what did you, did you [unclear]?
NH: I enjoyed the last couple of years, I did a correspondence course which is organized by the service, my [unclear], what did I do?
US: Agency and business studies.
NH: Agency and business studies, that’s right, yes, and it was such an easy posting in Germany I was able to do this with a lot of enjoyment and I thought, well, I can go in human relations or something like that, I’m made for that and it meant a two week course in a [unclear] to start with, then about eighteen months correspondence, finishing up the six weeks again at Chelsea and we happened to be in the Chelsea barracks near the Chelsea officer’s mess but we were told, the Chelsea officer’s, the guards officers not the, not any ordinary mess it’s the guards officer’s mess and we were told very strictly we were not, we may be officers but we were not entitled to go into the guards officer’s mess [laughs].
BW: You mentioned before we started the interview you were security on the ton air project
NH: Well I, having got the H&C, I wrote lots and lots of letters people offering my services and I got reasonable replies from quite a number and I was offered several jobs, I eventually left the air force in November 1970 and I came up here, [unclear] they seemed puzzled as I, I wanted to come up here, why do you want to come up here then? [laughs] because I suppose hopefully you are going to offer me a job. So, they did in fact, I became assistant to the chief designer, they offered me two jobs actually, they offered me a job on Tornado cockpit which was still on the drawing board, I could have either be that job or be assistant to the chief designer, so I said, I’m not qualified to cock pit design work, so I think I better take the other one so I did that, which was quite a nice job, I learned a tremendous amount cause I worked in the main drawing office with him and got to know all the chaps and what they were doing and of course I say the Tornado was still on the drawing board it goes now in production but that was still very much a live product. And so I got to learn in eighteen months so I did that [unclear], I learned a lot and then the chap who is the chief security officer was an ex wing commander and I had, and he still, I want, I want to retire very soon, do you want to take my job over? So, that’s promotion anyway, so I did, I took, George Kennedy, wing commander George, he’d been an ex apprentice like me, but much earlier, and when he, well, I went and joined him as his assistant, first of all about eighteen months, two years, and then took over completely when he retired and that really was a splendid job because the Tornado was still not flying but it was full of classified information and working with the Germans and the Italians, our own Ministry of Defenses and who of course were very hard on us if we gave any information away it was all very and of course the Cold War was on, you know, and Munich we had plenty of Cold War suspects and [unclear] around Munich, eager to get hold of the information about the Tornado.
BW: And so, you were very limited about what you could and couldn’t say at the time.
NH: Oh yes, very much, yes, but it’s very, eventually I did get hold of because these technical people and engineers [unclear], the last thing they wanted to know was about is security, they want to show off their knowledge and they want to write papers and get their names noticed and things like that their ego, you know publicity, whereas we of course, the security side, wanted to restrict it, well, not because we ourselves wanted it, the Ministry of Defense, they provided the contracts and if we broke the rules, they would start threatening that there would be a loss of contract work. So that’s I, I managed to, because I had experience in aircraft all, you know, I think I was able to work all the people like flight test engineers, the flight crews, the [unclear] like Paul Millet, who is the chief test pilot at the time but he took over from, oh, famous wartime pilot, forgot the, I’ll get it in a minute, anyway I had a good time because I got on well with these people.
BW: And so, looking back at your career and the association you have with Bomber Command, how does it feel now looking back?
NH: Well, occupies my thoughts continuously cause I’m on my own now, I’ve been on my own for nearly elven years, it occupies a tremendous amount of time, I can’t read but I do have listening books which I enjoy and music but otherwise I, I have to use my own thoughts to pass the time and I do it a lot.
BW: And have you been able to keep in touch with progress in terms of the memorials to Bomber Command, how do you feel about the tributes and memorials that have been paid these days?
NH: Well, I love it and Dorothy and I went once to St Paul’s, that would be about, oh, about the year 2000, and I can’t even remember what it was for, is for, I know the chap who was the, oh gracious me, trying to remember, he was head of the air force, and he was also president of Bomber Command.
BW: The name that speaks to my mind are Paul Enteder.
NH: No, long after him, no, long after them.
BW: I see.
NH: He’s about my age.
BW: I see.
NH: Oh Gosh, anyway, we did go to this ceremony at St Paul’s cathedral, it be about three or four years before she died so, be about 2000 or something like that, we had a Lancaster flying over York, we all came out of the service and assembled on the steps, but what was the question?
BW: Have you been to Hyde Park memorial [unclear]?
NH: No, I’d like to, near the Green Park one, you mean?
BW:
NH: No, I haven’t, but I know of it and I and Tony Iveson , who was, this is how I did have a connection with, because he was in 4 Group the time as I was, and he led all the staff to make the memorial, he was on, I heard him on Desert island Discs, he’s dead now, but I couldn’t see it if I went I couldn’t see it.
BW: yeah.
NH: I used to, well, I am a member of the IMF club still but I haven’t’ ben there for three or four years.
BW: How do you, what are your thoughts about the memorial center that’s been set up in Lincoln, the International Bomber Command Center?
NH: I don’t know anything about it.
BW: They have now unveiled the memorial spire and the walls which have the names of all the fifty five thousand and something aircrew who were lost during the war and they are now building, or going to start building the Chadwick Center which will house documents, artifacts, there will be audio recordings as well such as this one, the digital
NH:
BW: That will be in the memorial center in Lincoln
NH: Is that a new purpose build
BW: It’s just outside, it’s on one of the hills outside of Lincoln.
NH: Oh! When is it going to be opened?
BW: The center should be opened later this year
NH: There will be a lot of publicity attached to that one. Pretty sure I can’t see much.
BW: I just wondered whether you’d be informed of it and today
NH: I haven’t been informed of it, I’d like to know about it but I can’t do, I can’t see it, so , you know, provided, I hope I shall hear about it.
BW: Well, I can post the details out to you and the information
NH: Right, yes,
BW: You know
NH: I’d like that. Because if I can’t read, Anthony can read it out to me.
BW: Yeah. So
NH: But I’m restricted in movement and everything else now, I don’t really want to go anywhere.
BW: I see. The, there aren’t any other questions that I have for you, are there any other particular recollections that may have come to mind you wish to talk about or else, anything else I may have missed?
NH: I’m sure there will be when you’re gone [laughs], I can’t, I think, oh, I’ve surprised myself [unclear]
BW: Well, it’s been very interesting to talk to you, you’ve given an awful lot of information
NH: Is it?
BW: [unclear] very happy with that.
NH: [unclear], I seen, I’m very happy with that. That’ll give me a better pleasure anyway.
BW: Thank you very much for your time.
NH: Ok.
BW: [unclear] 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 Neil Harris
Creator
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Brian Wright
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-01-28
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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
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
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AHarrisNG160128
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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01:53:47 audio recording
Language
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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
Royal Air Force. Transport Command
Description
An account of the resource
Neil Harris wanted to join the RAF because he was looking for an exciting life experience and an opportunity for further education. He started as a flight mechanic before training as a pilot. Remembers being trained in different locations across the country, from Brighton to Kinloss, in Scotland. Mentions a particular night, when they took off late and had to catch up with the bomber stream. Flew with 48 and 578 Squadron. Shares his memories of D-Day, when he was targeting a gun battery in Northern France. Remembers his life after the war, when he was sent to Indonesia in the 60s during the Borneo confrontation.
Contributor
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Peter Schulze
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Canada
Germany
Great Britain
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Nuremberg
Scotland--Wick
France
France--Ver-Sur-Mer
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944-06-05
1944-06-06
50 Squadron
578 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
bombing
bombing of the Normandy coastal batteries (5/6 June 1944)
crewing up
Distinguished Flying Cross
fitter airframe
Gee
ground crew
ground personnel
Halifax
Halifax Mk 3
Hudson
Lincoln
love and romance
Master Bomber
navigator
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operational Training Unit
pilot
promotion
RAF Burn
RAF Halton
RAF Kinloss
RAF Marston Moor
RAF Rufforth
RAF Waddington
Tiger force
training
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dbe8fd14d0cec7f62ab5484ff8161149
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1038/11410/AMorrisPG171010.2.mp3
2abe2291828666848d77cd6c852668b9
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Title
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Morris, Peter
P G Morris
Description
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An oral history interview with Peter Morris (b.1925, 1813258 Royal Air Force). He flew operations with 90, 42 and 120 Squadrons.
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IBCC Digital Archive
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2017-10-10
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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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Morris, PG
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RP: This interview is being conducted on behalf of the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Rod Pickles. The interviewee is Peter Morris. The interview is taking place at Mr Morris’ home in Collompton, Devon on the 10th of October 2017. Francis Platt is also present. Good morning, Peter. Could you start by telling us when and where you were born and what led you to joining the RAF, please?
PM: Well, I was born in East Ham in East London in the June of 1925. I lived in London throughout the Blitz and I suppose was full of bravado when the ATC started in 1941. I joined. And I decided to train as air crew. And after a couple of years in the Air Training Corps at seventeen I joined the Royal Air Force and I was accepted to train as either a pilot bomb aimer or navigator. I was called up just two weeks before my eighteenth birthday and I went initially on an education course because I left school at fourteen and I was keen to get my education better. And after that I went through the normal basic training for the RAF which was just the normal square bashing and so on. And I spent twelve hours flying on Tiger Moths to see whether I’d got the application to be a pilot. But I wasn’t too keen. And then after a lot more [pause] I then did more aptitude tests in London and it was decided that I should train as a navigator. And then I was sent to Heaton Park in Manchester which was a holding unit for air crew and I was there for nearly six months waiting for a navigation course. At the time they told us that the losses in Bomber Command were less than they were expecting. Well, as one in two got killed I wondered just how many they were expecting.
RP: Well, yes.
PM: And whilst I was there they called for volunteers to go to Hornchurch, just outside London to help repair houses damaged by the V-1 Doodlebugs and I went down there. Spent about a month repairing houses just killing time. And then we were called back to Heaton Park and then they decided they would send us, a group of us went to RAF Waterbeach to work on the bomb dump. The armourers just couldn’t cope at the time as there were twenty aircraft on the station and there were some that were doing two raids a day. And when you had to prepare all the bombs for it. So, we arrived at Waterbeach and the next day we were sent to the bomb dump and there we were shown the bombs that we had to prepare. There were four thousand pound bombs which needed a nose ring fitted because they had pressure fuses in them to help build the pressure up in the noses and the tail fin had to be fitted. And also the lugs which held the bomb on to the aircraft had to be screwed on. Then we had the thousand pounders and there you had to fit the tail units and also you had to fit, fit the fuses in the nose. The only thing we weren’t allowed to do, we weren’t allowed to put the detonators in because the detonators were very very touchy and they could go off with the warmth of your hand and so the armourers would fit the detonators. They would screw in the pistols so that was all ready. Another job we weren’t allowed to do were the long delay fuses because they had, not like the Germans, apparently they had a clockwork system. Our long defused, long delay fuses had acid and various forms of plastic rings and as the acid burned through the rings and then it let the firing pin go forward and set the bomb off. But they had an anti-handling device. You only had to turn it half a turn and it would release the trigger and the bomb went off. So we weren’t allowed to do that. The armourers had to do that. And of course the armourers put them on the aircraft. It was quite a job to think that everyone had to be hand winched up in to the aircraft. And we were there for about a month. The first day I was there we got there about 9 o’clock in the morning and I, still there 9 o’clock the following morning. We had spent all night. They brought food out to us at the bomb dump and we were just getting these bombs ready for them to get on the aircraft. And I remember sitting on a thousand pounder and I fell asleep sitting on it until someone woke me up. And then another job we had doing were packing incendiary bombs. As incendiary bombs they came originally a hundred and fifty in a canister and then they extended the canister so they could get another fifty in each side. So there were three sets of bombs in them and we had to fit another hundred and fifty incendiary bombs in these canisters. And these were small bombs. They were hexagonal shape and there was a small fire, a small pin which you had to fit so that it was kept shut by the can, by the hexagonal shape. And I remember one of the chaps, he happened to accidentally drop one and it went off. We were doing this in a hangar and he had the presence of mind to throw it out the door of the hangar. And the next thing we knew the fire brigade had arrived. They’d seen all the smoke going up —
RP: Yeah.
PM: From this incendiary bomb. But they were very touchy. We were, as I say we were there for about a month doing this and then they, we were called back to Heaton Park because they said that I’d got a navigation course and I was fortunate in many ways because the course was on the Isle of Man. At Jurby. And so I went across to the Isle of Man and qualified as a navigator there and finally qualified in May 1945 just as the VE Day had been declared. And then I went on to train on Wellingtons in preparation to go out to the Far East. And again they dropped the bomb and that stopped that. And from the Wellingtons we went on to Lancasters and I finally went, finished up on a squadron in Bomber Command. Number 90 Squadron at RAF Tuddenham in February 1946.
RP: So most of your war then was dealing with waiting for a course and then —
PM: Yes. Yes. I was, I was a good six months waiting for a navigation course.
RP: And then its VE Day and you don’t see any action.
PM: VE day. They didn’t know what to do with us when we finally qualified and we were sent home on indefinite leave and I had about six weeks at home. And then I got a telegram telling me to report to Number 26 Operational Training Unit at RAF Wing near Leighton Buzzard. And then that was on Wellingtons. And from there, as I say, through to Lancasters.
RP: So when, when you sort of realised that, you know, after the VJ day.
PM: Yeah.
RP: Were you, were you feeling relieved or disappointed? Can you remember?
PM: A bit of both. You obviously at that time you didn’t really know what it was like to go on ops and you always thought that’s what you joined for but at the same time you were relieved that you hadn’t have to go.
RP: Yeah. But did you, when you were at Waterbeach did you meet any of the air crew? Did you get to know any?
PM: No.
RP: You weren’t —
PM: No.
RP: In touch with any of them.
PM: No. No. I think they deliberately kept us out of the way of air crew because they knew what was happening and we didn’t.
RP: So, so only a month. You didn’t feel inclined to become an armourer then.
PM: Oh, no. No.
RP: Seen what they were doing.
PM: No. I wanted to be a navigator.
RP: So you qualified as a navigator. It’s now 1946.
PM: Yeah.
RP: So what happens then?
PM: Then in 1946 they brought out a scheme where you could sign on for three years in the RAF and four years Reserve and they’d give you a hundred pounds for doing it which was a lot of money in those days. And I decided I would sign on and so I signed on for the three years and four Reserve and I remained on the squadron. And then there was trouble out in Yugoslavia and we were sent as an advance party out to Malta to be prepared for going bombing Yugoslavia as they’d attacked one of our ships and also attacked an aircraft I believe. And we spent ten days there and then the whole thing fizzled out and we flew back home again. Then the squadron moved to RAF Wyton which was a permanent station whereas Tuddenham was a wartime base and we re-equipped with Lincoln aircraft. And whilst on Lincolns we had the job of testing the new auto pilot. And one of the jobs that we had was to test it to see how it went and operated under bumpy conditions and low level. At that time everybody’s gradually getting demobbed and there were only two navigators on the squadron at one time, myself and the nav leader. And so anything that happened one of us had to go along. And the navi didn’t want to go on this particular trip so I went along and they said, well we went to the Met Office and, ‘Where can we find bumpy conditions at low level?’ They said, ’How about the Nile Valley?’ And sort of tongue in cheek we said, ‘Great. We’ll apply for it,’ and they accepted. And so we then, we flew out to the Canal Zone in the Middle East and to start with we used the autopilot as the bomb aimer had a control in the bomb aimer’s position for doing bombing runs. We did some bombing runs in the desert there. And then we flew low level along the Nile up to Khartoum. So around about fifty to a hundred feet mostly, up along the Nile with the autopilot in all the way. And then from Khartoum we flew to Nairobi and again at low level. Not quite so low because it was mainly jungle we were flying over. Whilst at Nairobi it was Battle of Britain Day and they asked us if we would do an air display for them which we were quite happy to do. We did that and then again flew back the way we came out and back to RAF Wyton. I remained on the squadron then until, it must have been about the end of 1948. ’47. And one of the other navigators on the squadron had been posted to RAF Coningsby as an instructor on Mosquitoes. And they wanted another instructor there because I had done an instructor’s course when I signed on. They wanted people to be instructors and he volunteered me against my will to go on to Coningsby to fly on Mosquitoes. And I turned up at Coningsby and our job there was to train the navigators in using GH which was a blind bombing radar device. Of course, we couldn’t show them in the aircraft because it only, only held two people. So we had an Anson Mark 19 fitted out with all the gear on it and we trained them on that. But I wasn’t too happy flying in Mosquitoes. You didn’t have a navigation table. You had a piece of board on your knees. Your chart was pinned on it with drawing pins and all your instruments were on pieces of string all around because if you dropped it you’d never find it again. I preferred the heavies. And the nav leader there said, ‘Well, you’re not happy on these are you?’ I said, ‘No. I’d rather go back to heavies.’ They then posted me to RAF Lindholme to do a course to go back on to them again. And when they found out I was a qualified instructor they were one short and they said, ‘Will you remain as an instructor on navigation?’ Which I was quite happy to do. And so there I was training people to use H2S which was a radar which showed a picture of the ground underneath you. It was very primitive compared with what there is now but we were doing that. And [pause] and I remained there until nearly 1950. And towards the end of that time the wing commander flying called me in and said was I interested in taking a commission? And I said, well yes I was. I’d got nothing to lost. And I filled all my papers in and waited and waited. Nothing happened. The wing commander called me into his office. He said, ‘Very sorry. Your application’s been lost.’
RP: Dear me.
PM: ‘Will you fill them in again?’ Which I did. I filled them in and waited, and waited and waited. Nothing happened. And again he said, ‘We’re awfully sorry,’ he said, ‘But they’ve been lost again.’ So I filled in a third lot and again I waited and waited. I was getting a bit upset now because to start with I had now finished my three years and I was on no contract whatsoever with the Air Force to remain in.
RP: And what rank were you at this time?
PM: At that time we were, our ranks had changed. We had air crew ranks.
RP: Yeah.
PM: And we were called navigator 2 which was the equivalent of a sergeant.
RP: Oh right. So here you are. It’s your third application. Does it go through?
PM: It was the third application. And at the same time I’d applied to sign on to do twenty two years in the RAF.
RP: Right.
PM: And again, I went and he said, ‘It’s been lost again.’ Well, I was getting a bit cross now and I said, ‘Sir, you can stick your commission. I will sign on ‘til I, to do twenty two.’ And he more or less agreed with it. We left it at that. And I then applied to do an advanced navigation course and I was accepted. And I went to RAF Shawbury and did the advanced navigation course. It was the most concentrated course I’ve ever done in my life, I think. In six weeks we went from basic algebra to spherical trigonometry and your head was absolutely buzzing. You had to learn about every piece of equipment you had in the aircraft. Not how to use it but how it was made and how it operated. And that took us about three months and then I was posted to RAF Swinderby as an instructor at an Advanced Flying Unit and then back on to Wellingtons again. And while I was in Lincoln I met my old nav leader who was at Scampton and he said, ‘They found your applications. They were all in the station commander’s office when it was the station commander’s home amongst newspapers when he was posted. And they found they were all there.’ Which made me a bit upset.
RP: Yeah. So they couldn’t, couldn’t initiate it from there then?
PM: No. No. So, I remained at Swinderby for, was it two, two years because that was the average time you stayed at any unit. And from there I was posted on to a ground course. Ground crew out in Germany to be at a fighter plotting unit. And when I got there the first thing they said to me, you know, ‘Well, have you trained on this?’ I said, ‘I haven’t.’ They said, ‘Well, you’re no good to us.’ So they sent me to RAF Oldenburg where they had a small mobile radar unit with a mobile plotting table and quite honestly it was a doddle because as a navigator you knew all the maps and so on. It was just a case of sitting at a table watching airmen pushing little arrows around. Much as you see on the Battle of Britain things. And I did that for two and a half years. And at the end of that I was posted back to England and I had to go to Air Ministry for them to decide where I wanted to go from there. By now I’d gone up a rank. I was now a flight sergeant as they’d brought back the old ranks again. And initially I said, ‘Well, can I go on helicopters?’ as my friend had gone on helicopters. They said, ‘Oh no. Not with your experience. How about Coastal Command?’ So, that will do me. And so I was posted then to RAF St Mawgan to train in Coastal Command and I did my basic training there and then was posted to Kinloss up in Scotland to train on the Shackleton Mark 1. And from there I was, when I finished the course I was posted to RAF St Eval where we had Shackleton Mark 2s. So I arrived on 42 Squadron in September of 1946. I went in to the orderly room to book in and the first thing they said to me, ‘Can you go overseas at a moment’s notice? Otherwise,’ he said, ‘We’ll send you to another squadron.’
RP: You said 46.
PM: Fifty.
RP: ’56. Yeah.
PM: ’56.
RP: I think Shackletons weren’t around then.
PM: No. They Weren’t. No. 1956.
RP: ‘56 yeah.
PM: And so, apparently the squadron had just been made the colonial policing squadron and this involved us going out to Aden for short terms. Well, my wife was heavily pregnant at the time but I didn’t tell them and I said, ‘No, it’s alright. I can go.’ And we then had to train from using the low level bombsight which the Shackleton was fitted with to using a high level bombsight which was the Bomber Command bombsight. And we spent several months dropping bombs on a practice range. And then the squadron was moving out there at four aircraft at a time. Four would go out to Aden and then as they were relieved by the other four that were back in St Eval. And it was in July of 1956, ’57 now that our crew was posted, was sent out to Aden. And we were not allowed to fly across the Arab countries because they refused us permission because they said we were going on a warlike mission against other Arab nations. And so we had to stow the guns inside the aircraft because we had two cannon in the nose of the Shackleton and we flew out first to Cyprus. From Cyprus we flew along the borders between Turkey and Syria, down through Iraq, down to Bahrain and from Bahrain we flew down across the desert over Muscat Omans area. Right down until we reached Aden. And [pause] and when we arrived in Aden the temperature was terribly hot. Forty degree plus. At times it was fifty degrees there. First several flights that we did were getting used to the area. We flew with one of the crews from one of the other aircraft because the maps were so poor there. There wasn’t any satellite navigation then and so you more or less had to make the maps up as you flew. And so we got to know the area we flew over. It was mainly along the Yemen border with Aden. And the idea was to, to look out for people that were coming across the borders and causing trouble. This was a sort of a pastime for them. They would come across the border, fire a few rounds off and go back home again. And we did this. I suppose [pause] living up in that area was an RAF intelligence officer. In fact, he lived just like an Arab. Dressed like an Arab. He even looked like an Arab. And he would, we would contact him and he would give us directions to fly to check on at certain areas. A couple of times we had to do some bombing runs. We had fourteen one thousand pound bombs and we had to drop these in areas where the RAF Venoms, they couldn’t reach because they would normally go with rockets. But the mountain, it was so mountainous there because most of it was six thousand feet. And down in the valleys the Venoms couldn’t get in so we would go and drop bombs where these intruders had gone in. A couple of occasions where they’d misbehaved they would go and warn them and drop leaflets and say at such and such a day at such and such a time we’re going to come and bomb your fields. And so they kept clear and then we’d go and we’d drop a stick of bombs across their fields to make them, to bring them back into line again. Then one Saturday morning we were called in and they said, ‘Right. You’ve got to go Bahrain immediately. Don’t know what for but get your kit and off you go.’ And so we got our kit and we flew up to Bahrain. Sunday morning they said, ‘Right, you’re going to fly over Muscat Oman. And you’re to go with a Pembroke pilot from here that will show you around the area.’ So we took off and we flew over to, near a place called Nizwa which was a large sort of town almost and in the centre of it was a very large circular fort. And there’d been an uprising. The Sultan’s brother had rebelled against him and we had an agreement with the Sultan that if he was in danger then the RAF or the British forces would go and, go and help him. So that’s what we were there for. The pilot of the Pembroke was showing us around and he took us up one valley. He said, ‘Well, you can turn around when you get to end and come back again.’ Well, you could in a Pembroke. But in a Shackleton no way. And when we got to the end there was this great cliff in front of us and with full power on we just managed to scrape over the top of it. So we decided we wouldn’t go up that valley again. And then our role then was to fly out every day and we were given certain villages to fly over. Some were friendly. Some weren’t. And we had to observe what they were doing. And this went on for about seven or eight days and in that time nothing seemed to be happening very much but we’d been building up. The army had flown in. The paratroopers had arrived at Bahrain and they were going to be flown out to an airfield which was on an oil well out in Muscat and they would march across the desert to attack from that side. And we were dropping leaflets all the time. We had different colour leaflets. I think it was white ones to drop to friendly areas and pink ones to drop to enemy areas. More or less telling them you know one was saying the Sultan was a good man. The other one was saying you’ve got to stop what you’re doing and come and join the Sultan. All that sort of thing. Anyway, on one of the trips we carried a group captain who was the senior air staff officer for Middle East Command. He wanted to see what was going on and again we had the leaflets to drop. And on one particular village, a place called Firq, which was just south of Nizwa it was a very small fort there and they said, ‘Right, you’ve got to drop these leaflets. They’ve got to go in the fort but they mustn’t go outside it.’ Well it’s not very easy when you’re dropping leaflets like that and so we decided we’d go in at about five hundred feet and drop these leaflets. And we were in the middle of dropping them and we felt like a ripple go through the aircraft. We realised we’d been hit by small arms fire. We were very lucky really because in the nose of the aircraft there were three of us. There was the bomb aimer, that was the other navigator in the nose, there was one of the sergeant signallers who was putting the leaflets down the flare chute and the group captain and a bullet came up. It hit the switch right underneath them, split it in half. Missed them all. One half went in and hit the co-pilot’s intercom box so it knocked it out completely. He didn’t know what was going on. And the other half later we dug out of a tin of sweets in the emergency rations. In the tail there was a tail lookout and the chap laid in the tail look out had a bullet go in by his shoulder and go out above his head. And we decided it was time to clear the area. And I remember our captain, he called up the two Venoms that were attacking another village up the road and said, ‘Watch this place. They’re sharpshooters.’ And one of them said, ‘Oh, I’ll save a rocket for them on the way back.’ And this group captain was on immediately, ‘No. No. No. No. They’ve got to be told first.’ As we were dropping leaflets telling them that they would be attacked the following day. And when we landed back at Bahrain we found there were other holes in the wings where again we were so lucky. Your wings are full of petrol and full of wires and it missed everything. Gone right through the wings in out through the top and nothing was damaged at all. And I remember they, they repaired the holes. They hadn’t have anything to repair them with so they used aluminium beer cans and riveted them over the holes. They were, the following day we took off again and we were told there we’d got to be there before eight in the morning and again go in low level, dropping leaflets telling them they would be attacked within half an hour. They weren’t too pleased about that. Anyway, we got there and we thought that we’d wake them up so we flew across firing our twenty mil cannon to make them keep their heads down. Then came back, dropped our leaflets and came home. We had to allow for the loss of ammunition and so we said we’d done some air sea firing on the way home to account for the ammunition and got admonished for wasting ammunition in that way. Anyway, the, the army did attack that day and the Venoms went in first with the rockets and attacked the fort and then the paratroopers moved in and they gradually drove them up. At Nizwa they’d got a tanker, a lorry which was the, been going from one of the oil wells. They had captured the crew of the tanker and had got them in this large fort and they had said if we attacked the fort they would hang them over the balconies. And we could actually see them there over because it was a big circular fort and we could see the chaps there so obviously we didn’t attack it. Eventually they did get in and they drove the rebels up in to Jabal Akhdar which was an eight thousand foot high mountain nearby and it finished up with the SAS going up the mountain and sorting them out. And that was the end of the sorties there. Before it actually finished the CinC Bomber Comm, the CinC Middle East Command ordered that we be sent back to Bahrain. He said, ‘Go back there and cool off.’ But if you can imagine cooling off in Bahrain. Anyway, we decided, well we didn’t decide we were sent back to Bahrain to have a so-called rest. And the next day we were told we’d got to go on a bombing raid and two aircraft were involved. One of the flight commander’s and our aircraft. And we loaded up with fourteen one thousand pound bombs and as the flight commander was taking off white smoke started pouring out of all four engines and he just managed to pull it to a halt at the end of the runway, and they cancelled the bombing raid. And they found that in the heat in Aden we used a thing called water metholated, water meth which gave increased power to the engines and this was injected in to the engines. And in the heat it had distilled out and it just put straight water into the engines and so it didn’t do them any good. And the following day we again, having found this out they changed all the water meth and we’d loaded. Loaded up again with the bombs and took off and we did the raid up in the hills. And a couple of days later we were sent back to Bahrain to assist because now they were carrying out bombing raids using, using small anti-personnel bombs. These were nasty little things. They went off above the ground. They had got loads of sprung steel in them and you got this spring steel going around which did a lot of damage to whoever they were dropped on. We didn’t like them particularly because they had a pressure fuse in them and occasionally, there was one occasion in fact where the bombs started going off and they set the bombs going off behind them and they almost went back up to the aircraft again. So we weren’t too happy about using them. I think they’ve now been banned from use because they’re considered not the right thing to use [pause] Then the length of time of time we stayed in Bahrain or in Aden depended on the number of hours the aircraft had flown. We were supposed to be up there for three months but we’d done so much flying over Bahrain from Bahrain that we had reached our target in about six weeks. And so again we had to fly home and [pause] and two aircraft were coming back to the UK. One was a flight commander and he took off just about twenty minutes in front of us and this time we were allowed to fly over the Arab countries because we weren’t going on a warlike mission. And so we flew down the Red Sea across the border of Abyssinia and then right across the Libyan desert, the Sahara Desert to a place called Castel Benito, which was an ex-Italian airfield. It took us about twelve hours I suppose to fly across there and we landed there and there was no sign of the flight commander who had gone in front of us. And about an hour later I bumped into the navigator from that aircraft. I said, ‘What happened to you?’ Oh, the flight commander was there as well. He said, ‘How did you get here before of us?’ And jokingly I said, ‘Stayed on track all the way, sir.’ Which didn’t go down too well because his navigator apparently, just after take-off, the flight commander came back to see, look at the charts, dropped a cup of water over his chart completely soaking it. And he’d picked it up and screwed it up and throwed it away when he realised he hadn’t have another chart. There wasn’t another one for that area. So he’d had to get it out, unscrew it, stretch it out and of course now it was all out of shape and apparently they got quite lost going across the desert and they landed about an hour after us.
RP: Not the right thing to say then. Yeah. He was still speaking to you afterwards.
PM: Oh yes. He did after. He was normally quite a decent chap but he blew his top a bit. Anyway, the following day we took off and came back to UK. While we were in Aden we were being relieved by 35 Squadron which had been based in Malta and that was going to go to Aden permanently and remain there. And so that was the end of the squadron’s flying out in Aden. We then returned to our normal Coastal Command duties. One of them of course was air sea rescue and quite often we got a call out to go after, to go over the Atlantic Ocean to assist [pause] Constellation aircraft. They had a habit of losing engines coming across the Atlantic and we would fly out at a thousand feet and they would be up at twenty thousand feet and we would call them up and they would say, you know, ‘Assist us,’ and so we would turn around and fly back again, and usually they had landed at Heathrow before we got back to St Eval because they were going a lot faster than us on three engines than we were doing on four. The end of my tour there the squadron commander called me in. He said, ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’m afraid that NCO navigators aren’t going to be employed on RAF operational squadrons anymore. So,’ he said, ‘Your time in Coastal is finished now.’ And he said, ‘What I have got here is, I’ve got a piece of paper that’s just come to me that says that they want volunteers to go and serve on Thor missiles as this is going to be the new Bomber Command. I suggest, I suggest you do that. At least you’re guaranteed a job then.’ So I thought about that. So I applied for this and I had to go to Air Ministry to be interviewed and the interviewer was a wing commander who I’d known as a flight lieutenant on 90 Squadron. So that was the end of the interview really. We just chatted and I was accepted and we then sailed across to, well we were busy. We were going to New York but we went on a Canadian Pacific ship. We went across to Montreal and our first stop was Quebec and then we sailed up the St Lawrence to Montreal. Beautiful river. Lovely day. And it was marvellous sailing along there. It’s a huge river because if you imagine there you’ve got these large ocean going liners and two of them could pass quite easily along the river. From there we got the train to New York where we were given a couple of days off and we managed to go up the Empire State Building while I was there. And then we got an aircraft to take us to Tucson in Arizona and it was a DC4. And it was supposed to land at Tucson Municipal Airport. Well. the pilot thinking as we were all RAF and we were all going to go eventually to [pause] we were going to be stationed at Davis-Monthan, which was a SAC base in Arizona. And so for some reason the pilot decided to land at Davis-Monthan. Well, SAC bases are very very security tight and an aircraft suddenly coming in which they’re not expecting they don’t go much on and they sent us over to the far side of the airfield. We were ringed with machine guns and first of all they wouldn’t let us out of the aeroplane. Well, it’s very hot in Tucson at the end of August, the beginning of September. And eventually they let us out but they surrounded us with the guards with machine guns. And eventually they sorted it out. Apparently, they’d been waiting for us at the municipal airport with a group of local dignitaries to greet us there.
RP: Right.
PM: And when they managed to sort it out it was only a case of driving through the gate because we were billeted just outside the main airfield in Davis-Monthan. We spent a month there learning about the missile. It was so new then they hadn’t actually fired one successfully. The instructor we had was on the previous course and that’s his knowledge was what he’d been told on the previous course there. But we, see we spent a month there and then we got sent on a Constellation to fly out to Los Angeles. And from there we went to [pause] from there we went to Vandenberg which was the main missile base in the States at that time and we carried on with the course there. We actually saw the missile for the first time but again they hadn’t fired one successfully. We saw various films of them taking off and then crash landing and exploding and so on but not one that actually worked. And when we’d finished the course there it was now December and they decided they would fly us back to New York and normally what happened you caught one of the Queens and they flew you, brought you back to UK. And when we got to New York it was freezing cold. When we’d left California we were in shorts. Eighty degrees. There was snow on the ground in New York and the temperature was minus goodness knows what. And it was like walking into a brick wall as you walked out of the aircraft with the change in the temperature. Anyway, they, they said, ‘Well, at the moment we can’t find any way to get you home so we’ll leave you in New York.’ We were abandoned there for ten days which was great. We were given ten dollars a day expenses to live in New York and we were billeted initially in the Governor Clinton Hotel. But they were expensive in there. They charged you four dollars a night just for the bed and then you had to pay for your breakfast and everything on top of that. And we found that the YM, you could do it for a dollar a night and so a number of us moved into the YM and stayed there. Of those who stayed at the Governor Clinton would tell us if anything had happened and they wanted us for going home. The beauty, while we were there is that we had American ID cards and so we could go into their [pause] they had a very good United Services Organisation there and you could go in there, show them your ID card and you’d get free tickets to any theatre in Broadway, any cinema in Broadway and through the day you could go on various tours. And I managed to go through the United Nations building on one tour. Another one they took us up inside the Statue of Liberty where you could climb right up to the top and the band around the Statue of Liberty’s head they are actually windows that you can look out. We were there for, as I say about ten days and then they managed to get Douglas DC6 to fly us home to the UK on Christmas Eve. And so we flew home. I managed to get a taxi home from London Airport as it was then. And so that was the end of my tour there. And from there I was posted to RAF Hemswell in Lincolnshire. That was the main base for the missiles. But there were a number of squadrons and each squadron was based at a different base. These were mainly the old wartime bases and I was sent to number 106 Squadron which was stationed at Bardney. Which again was a wartime airfield. But we still hadn’t got the missiles then. In fact, they were still building the site. The missile goes into a covered shelter and they hadn’t even got the shelters there. They were still putting in the rails for them to work on and it must have been six months or more before it was completed. And then the missiles started to arrive. They were flown over from the States in the large American aircraft. Then sent through the streets to the various sites. And when we’ve actually got them then we had to start the proper shift system because they had to be manned twenty four hours a day as the oil in the guidance system was so touchy that if the temperature changed the oil would solidify and would ruin the gyros which cost thousands of pounds to replace. And so we had to be there all the time with them. This meant manning twenty four hours a day as I say. And then we were put on a shift system where we’d do four days mornings, four days afternoons, four days nights. Four days off. This went on for ever and ever and ever. It was the most boring job in the world because you couldn’t do anything with a missile other than just watch it. Anyway, after a few months they asked me if I’d like to go to Hemswell, the main base to work in the main office there. The training office. And I said, ‘Yeah. I’m quite happy to do that,’ because it was nearer to where I was living. I was living on a caravan at the site at the time because we couldn’t get married quarters there. And so I went there and the role there was to doing, checking on the missiles because every now and again one of them would be selected and the crew would do a practice firing. This involved pumping liquid oxygen into the tank on the missile itself. It carried eighty six thousand gallons of liquid oxygen. And then it also had an eighty err seventy five gallons of fuel. And this was pumped in to a tanker because they didn’t want to get the two together to risk any chance that they might fire. The igniters were taken out so they couldn’t possibly fire. And we’d go through a practice countdown and our role was to go out and just check to see that they’d pressed the right switches and so on. This was much better. It was a more interesting job than I was doing before. Shortly after that I was promoted to master navigator which was warrant officer rank. And I did, I carried on doing that for two or three months. And then I applied to sign on ‘til I was fifty five. And again the letter that came back from Air Ministry did I want to take a commission? So I spoke to my wife and we thought about it and I said, ‘Well, what can I lose?’ I get a higher pension as a commissioned officer than I would as a warrant officer. But I get more respect as a warrant officer than I get as a commissioned. So we decided I’d try and go for the commission. And I went, I had to go to see the AOC, the air officer commanding the area to be interviewed by him. And the day before a corporal in our orderly room had gone up to see him so I said, ‘What did he ask you then?’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘He wanted to know, because we’d been to America he wanted to know the American system of parliament. Or the equivalent of our parliament. He also, apparently he’d been the air officer in Pakistan and so he asked him about Pakistan. And so he said he also wanted to know who the various Commonwealth prime ministers were. So that night I did a quick check up on all those. I went and sat down in his office and he said, ‘Oh, yes,’ he said. Tell me, what’s the system in the States for their parliament sort of system.’ And I was able to explain it to him, you know. He said, ‘What’s the set up in Pakistan now?’ I said, ‘I think there’s been a coup recently and the army had taken over.’ ‘Who’s the prime minister of Canada? Who’s the prime minster of — ’ He said, ‘You seem to be very well read.’ He said, ‘That’s ok.’ That was the end of the interview. And then I went to Jurby again on the Isle of Man for three months to train as an officer. And at the end of that I qualified as a flying officer rather than a pilot officer the way most of them did because if you were a warrant officer you went up a rank. And the beauty of it was that you had to be paid more than a warrant officer got. And a warrant officer got more than a normal flying officer got. So I was on a higher rate of pay and the commission I had was called a branch commission which was especially for NCO aircrew and it, after three years you were automatically promoted to flight lieutenant. So at the end of the course I was then posted back to Coastal Command and I went up to Kinloss and there we now had Mark 3 Shackletons. And I had to do the course again. And the thing that did annoy me was that they insisted that I did a basic navigation training course again. And so I waited at Kinloss for a while. I was attached to 120 Squadron until I’d done this navigation course. They were doing several trips there and on one of them going to Gibraltar for the weekend. I said, ‘Well, can I come along with you?’ And they said, ‘Yeah, great,’ you know,’ you can. You’re welcome.’ And I said to one of the navigators, ‘Can I have a go on the table? Give me a chance to get my hand back in.’ He said, ‘Yeah, sure.’ And when I went to go the captain of the aircraft said, ‘Definitely not.’ He said, ‘You’ve haven’t done your refresher course yet.’ He said, ‘You can’t, obviously you can’t go on.’ So I thought fair enough. I went down the back of the aircraft. Got my head down. This was a night flight out there. And after about an hour someone woke me up and they said, ‘Would you come forward?’ So I said, ‘Yeah.’ And when I got forward both the navigators were sick. Would I take over? Which pleased me no end. And we’d only now were just sort of going down the Irish Sea. And so I managed to take over and sort of, sort out where I thought we were. And then that engine packed in and so we diverted into RAF St Mawgan. And while we were on the ground there the other two other navigators recovered themselves and so they took over and they flew it down to Gibraltar so I was a passenger then there and back. But it did amuse me a little bit. And anyway, I did the navigation course at Topcliffe and then back to Kinloss. Did the basic Coastal Command course all over again and then back on to 120 Squadron and there I became, we had first and second navigators. The senior navigator was the first navigator and the junior one was second navigator. I became the second navigator on a crew. The first navigator, he had already done a tour in Gibraltar and he, we were back on, under our normal coastal work which was surveillance of, the Russian fleet was always floating around somewhere in the North Atlantic and we kept surveillance on them. Russian submarines were continually turning up close to our shores and we would do surveillance on them. And also they had fishing boats which were absolutely covered with aerials. We called them ELINTS — Electronic Intelligence vessels and we would have to go out and try and locate them and when you’ve got somewhere three or four hundred Russian fishing vessels and the Russians they used the same type of fishing vessels for everything and so they were all exactly the same. But one of them would have all these aerials on them. You would have to find that one in amongst all this lot. And once you’d located it of course then you could keep track of it and see what it was doing. Once they were located they realised they’d been caught and they would sort of clear off. On one of the occasions we used to fly out quite often to Iceland and we’d do a patrol going up to Iceland. Then from Iceland we would patrol across to Bodo in Norway and have a couple of days on the ground in Norway and then another patrol back to Kinloss again. And on this occasion we were flying up to Iceland and we came across a Russian submarine support vessel which we reported back and when we landed in Iceland there was a great fuss on there because they hadn’t, didn’t realise it was in the area. Normally the Americans had sort of passed on the information but they didn’t even know it was there and our AOC in Scotland ordered us to take off as soon as we could to relocate it. Well, the following day there was a seventy five knot gale blowing at Iceland. The station commander had closed the station. He said it wasn’t safe to take off because it wasn’t down the runway. And our AOC ordered him to open the station up, to open up the disused runway which luckily was straight into wind and we were to take off. And so we did this and we couldn’t locate the aircraft err the ship on the way back. We went back to Kinloss. The following day we had another panic on. A Russian submarine had been located in the training grounds just off Northern Ireland where the navy did all their training with us and often they would join in the exercises. Anyway, they located this submarine right in the middle of it and four of us were ordered off that night to try and locate it and try to force it out of the area. And we’d been airborne about twenty minutes and the aircraft behind us we had a call, a mayday call, he’d got an engine fire and he was returning to Kinloss and the engine, they couldn’t put the fire out and it spread along the wing and set the second engine on fire. And he was, managed to get across over Inverness and he crashed it on Culloden Moor. In fact he crashed he said by the light from the flames from the engines he could see where he was going. And all the crew luckily got out. Now, that aircraft was the one that we’d flown in on the day before. It had only done twenty minutes flying from when we took off from Iceland. If it had happened the day before we wouldn’t have had a hope in hell because of the winds blowing like that. As I say there wouldn’t have been a hope in hell of us getting back anywhere. Anyway, we, one of our aircraft did locate the submarine and it was forced to the surface and it was escorted out of the area. We then had what was considered a jolly. We were going down to South Africa, to Cape Town and we were going to join because the South Africans also had Mark 3 Shackletons and we were going to do exercises with them. The British Navy was down there with their Navy and the American Navy and the American Naval aircraft were there as well. And we flew, this time we flew down to El Adem in North Africa, in Libya. From there we flew across the desert at night to Nairobi. From Nairobi we flew down to Salisbury or Harare as it’s called now. From Harare we flew to Ysterplaat which is the airfield just outside Cape Town where we were going to be based. And we did one exercise with the Navy and then we were going to do another one that night and our CO took one look at the weather, he said, ‘No. We’re not going. It’s a waste of time because the sea state would be so great that you wouldn’t be able to do anything anyway.’ And he decided to cancel the exercise but the South Africans, with their Mark 3s they decided no. They were going to go ahead and do it. Anyway, the next morning we’d had a tremendous gale in the night. In fact, it was hurricane that had gone through and we were immediately, we were called in immediately after breakfast and were told that the aircraft that had taken off was missing. They reckoned that the winds at six odd thousand feet were a hundred and fifty knots and they hadn’t heard from take-off. Anyway, we were the first aircraft to go and we were ordered to go and fly the route that he was supposed to have taken. And we flew out over the, the sea. I was getting winds of seventy five and eighty knots as we sort of went out. The sea was absolutely mountainous. There wasn’t a hope in hell of anybody surviving if it had gone down there sand we flew out and were airborne for about thirteen hours and found absolutely nothing and so we came back. And the following day they said there was a slight chance he might have gone down in the bay outside Cape Town. And two of our, two aircraft were ordered out to go and do a close search of the bay. Whilst there in fact we noticed what we thought might be some wreckage and the thing was if you saw anything like that you’d immediately divert the nearest merchant ship to go and pick it up. And we came across a large Japanese bulk carrier and we did the normal fly across the bows and put the engines up and down to attract his attention. He didn’t take the blindest bit of notice so we came back again and we fired green verey cartridges across the bow. No notice. We came back again with red cartridges this time. Took no notice whatsoever so it obviously wasn’t, I suppose there probably wasn’t anybody on the bridge. And when we landed back apparently he had been called in to Cape Town and they were heavily fined for not following the rules of the sea. Anyway, our CO as we were more conversant with air sea rescue we were given the sort of the control of what was going on and he got the tapes from the tower and listened to them and very very faint, “Mayday. Mayday,” shortly after take-off and they decided they would use a helicopter and go and look in the mountains just off Cape Town. And as they flew over the mountain they could see, they found the aircraft at the bottom of one of the valleys upside down. And the sonar buoys that we carried were bright dayglo orange and it was upside down. The bomb doors had burst open and so they could see these sonar buoys there so they knew immediately what it was. And of course all the crew had been killed. And they must have got into huge turbulence and it flipped the aircraft upside down and that was the end of that. Anyway, the South Africans decided to call the exercise off. And so we stayed there for a little bit longer. They managed to fly us down to Durban for the weekend. We went down there on one of the South African Dakotas. And then we flew home again.
RP: So what year was that?
PM: That was in 1963. Then we went back to our normal sort of surveillance work we were doing and I applied to do the weapons instructor’s course that was actually at Kinloss. And before I could go on that they sent me to RAF Uxbridge which is the RAF School of Education to do an instructor’s course. And I went there and I managed to qualify with an A2 instructor’s category and I went back to Kinloss, did the course as a weapons instructor and back on the squadron where I was made squadron weapons officer. I was then promoted flight lieutenant. And I then got a message through saying I was going to be posted to Malta. Shortly after that I got another message saying I was going to the Maritime Operational Training Unit as a weapon’s instructor. Apparently they had, when I completed the course they had called for me to join them. And so I went to the weapons course at St Mawgan, St Eval, no. Sorry, at Kinloss. And whilst on, on the Operational Training Unit they decided to move the two squadrons that were at St Mawgan up to Kinloss and the Training Unit down to St Mawgan. And so the whole lot had to be moved down to St Mawgan. And before we moved I was called in, they said, ‘Well, would you take over as chief weapons instructor when we move to St Mawgan?’ So I said, ‘Yeah, I don’t mind.’ So I took over and I went down to St Mawgan and we had to set the whole thing up again. All the training classrooms and so on. And I remained there until 1967 when I was posted to Singapore. Now, my wife said she didn’t want to go to Singapore because we’d recently bought a bungalow, the children were both settled in school for the first time because they’d been moved from school to school. So she decided she would remain at home and I didn’t fancy spending two and a half years on my own in Singapore. So they had a scheme whereby if you volunteered to go do, on an unaccompanied tour anywhere in the world it lasted for a year. So I volunteered for that. And they said right, they’d got a post at as ops officer in Labuan in Borneo. So I said that would do fine. And I got all my kit together and just about to go and the signal came through Labuan closed six months ago. And they didn’t know about it apparently. And so they stopped that one. So they said, ‘Well, how about Bahrain?’ So I said, ‘Yes. That would do me.’ Go to Bahrain. And that time they brought out a redundancy scheme for the Air Force had got what they thought were too many older officers. They wanted to get rid of them to make room for the younger ones coming up and so they brought this scheme in which really it was too good to turn down. I think I was, I was given a five thousand pound to leave plus full pension. So I decided I’ll leave. So I volunteered to go out on that and was accepted to leave and I spent another six months or so floating around at St Mawgan doing all sorts of odd jobs. One of them while I was there we wanted, they wanted an aircraft to go out to locate Sir Francis Chichester on his return from his round the world sailing. Because then there was no sat navs and so they had no contact with him. They knew roughly where he was. An aircraft from 42 Squadron was there and an aircraft from the MOTU. We took off to search for him and we were fortunate that we found him and we were able to direct the other aircraft to us because we had reporters on board and the reporters were not allowed to take any photographs until both aircraft were there so neither got the advantage over the other. But it gave me the advantage. I was able to take some photographs before they got the chance for them to do it. Anyway, as we say we located him but he was most upset at being located. Normally, you know, if you found people they would give you a wave when you flew past. But he just didn’t stand up. He didn’t wave. We dropped a message to him in a container welcoming him back and thanking, you know and saying what a good job he’d done. He watched it go past his boat. He didn’t even bother to pick it up. So I think he was most upset. He wanted to sneak in I think without having being seen. And so that was the end of that one and I think one of the last flights I did was on the Torrey Canyon. We were checking the oil that was coming out of that when it crashed at just off the Scilly Isles. And I didn’t know what to do when I came out of the Air Force. I did a computer course at Camborne in Cornwall and it was to train to programme computers but then I realised that there were only two computers in the whole of Cornwall at that time. One, the one we were using was at County Hall and the other was at John Keay House in the China clay industry. So the chances of getting a job there were nil and I didn’t want to leave Cornwall. Cornwall. And so one of the other chaps who was leaving with me, he said he’d applied to train as a teacher at St Luke’s in Exeter. He said, ‘Why don’t you come and, you know try that?’ So, I said, ‘Well, I left school at fourteen. They won’t want to know me there.’ Anyway, he said, ‘Well try it.’ And I went and the principal there was an ex-wing commander navigator.
RP: So you were made. So, I think we finished your RAF career so we might need to bring it to an end there. But did you, just to round it off did you finish your sort of working career as a teacher then?
PM: As a —?
RP: As a teacher.
PM: Yes.
RP: You stayed then.
PM: Well, I’m saying I taught for ten years.
RP: Yeah.
PM: And then I decided I’d had enough again at fifty five they said you could retire. So I took early retirement from that.
RP: Very nice.
PM: And bought a small holding.
RP: Well, that’s, I mean that’s a fascinating, a fascinating career and I say thank you very much for that. I’m just amazed they were still training you as VE day approached but I suppose you were lucky in a way that you didn’t have to go on ops and you could —
PM: No
RP: You looked forward to a full career in the RAF.
PM: Yeah. It was, because you don’t know how you would react to going on ops. The chap that you should have interviewed, that is a chap called Ted Frost. A friend of mine. He did fifty seven ops. DFC. And I said to him, ‘Have they been in touch with you?’ ‘No he said. They haven’t asked me about it.
RP: Oh, well I’ll take the details if you like.
PM: So I can give you Ted’s telephone number.
RP: Absolutely. No. That’s the sort of people I, I would just like to, we’ll just finish this and I’ll say thank you very much, Peter. It’s been fascinating.
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 Peter Morris
Creator
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Rod Pickles
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
2017-10-10
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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AMorrisPG171010, PMorrisPG1701
Conforms To
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Pending review
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Format
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01:07:03 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Air Force. Coastal Command
Description
An account of the resource
Peter Morris lived through the East End blitz. He joined the ATC as soon as it was established and applied to join the RAF as aircrew. He was accepted for training as a navigator. While waiting for a course he was part of a group that was sent to repair bomb damage from the V-1 attacks and was then sent to support the armourers at RAF Waterbeach by working on the bomb dump. Peter finished his training just as VE day was celebrated and then was sent to prepare for the Far East just before VJ Day. Peter became an instructor and was also posted on to Coastal Command where he took part in air sea rescue operations.
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
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Bahrain
Great Britain
England--Cambridgeshire
United States
California
California--Vandenberg Air Force Base
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1945
1946
106 Squadron
120 Squadron
42 Squadron
90 Squadron
air sea rescue
aircrew
bombing
bombing up
ground personnel
incendiary device
Lancaster
Lincoln
navigator
RAF Heaton Park
RAF Kinloss
RAF St Eval
RAF St Mawgan
RAF Tuddenham
RAF Waterbeach
RAF Wyton
Shackleton
Tiger force
training
V-1
V-weapon
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/862/11105/PHayI1801.2.jpg
3e0a0951de9b336bdf3118e20f445e96
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/862/11105/AHayR180426.1.mp3
8fd7d34fa9cb0b6e6ba3c4730b730217
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
Hay, Ian
I Hay
Description
An account of the resource
67 items. An oral history interview with Rhona Hay (b.1942) photographs and postcards from her father. Her brother and father served in the RAF. Her brother, <span>Ian de Sailly Errol Hay was killed 24 September 1940.</span> <br /><br />The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Rhona Hay and catalogued by Barry Hunter.<br /><br /><span data-contrast="none" xml:lang="EN-GB" lang="EN-GB" class="TextRun SCXW232469343 BCX0"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW232469343 BCX0">Additional information on Ian Hay</span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW232469343 BCX0"> is available via the</span></span><span class="EOP SCXW232469343 BCX0" data-ccp-props="{"201341983":0,"335559739":200,"335559740":276}"> <a href="https://losses.internationalbcc.co.uk/loss/110277/">IBCC Losses Database.</a></span>
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
2017-05-10
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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Hay, I
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
JS: Ok. And I’ll just add, this interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Jim Sheach. The interviewee is Mrs Rhona Hay. The interview is taking place at Mrs Hay’s home in Muir of Ord. Muir of Ord, Scotland on the 26th of April 2018. Rhona, can you tell me a little about your family before the war or as the war started? Where did you live? Who else was in your family?
RH: Well, the family originally came from Inverness. By the time I’ve got any memories at all this was, well, 1943/44 in Cookham which is not so far from Maidenhead, Eton, Marlow, High Wycombe, further —
JS: That’s fine.
RH: London.
JS: Who was in your family?
RH: By the time I have any memory, well, my father was posted somewhere in Britain so it was just my mother and I, and for a short time I had a nanny but I think that was somebody possibly who needed a home. Or if it was a larger house with only two people let’s push in a few evacuees. Though there were evacuees in Cookham I can just remember them but by that time they were wanting back to London anyway. So, I can just remember her. I don’t think she lasted very long, and I can remember my father getting rid of her. I think she was an old lady who was getting very difficult. I don’t really think she was much help as I said. There was more than one adult in the house.
JS: What did your father do?
RH: He was in the RAF. Air Force. Royal Air Force. And —
JS: What —
RH: I’ve got his record if you want to have a look to put it in a specific area. I think by that time I know he was posted at Harwell at one point. Also, Benson. He was definitely at Benson in 1939. He was then posted out to France. When they had to move they had several hours to get the squadron out. He got them out because he remembered the old cavalry tracks in the Amiens Abbeville area. He, there is a long letter to my sister, now deceased. He then was in Bordeaux and got out through Marseilles in, I think a coaling ship. Out via Gib. Right out in to the sea and came up between the, between Ireland and then the beginning of July I think it was. So for all that time. And my brother was in the Air Force. He was killed. He was in 19 OTU. They’d just been made operational because an invasion was expected from Norway and it was the first fatal air crash out of Kinloss. It was a Whitley. It had engine trouble which wasn’t much good and it flew into Ben Aigan. They were all killed instantly I believe.
JS: What year was that?
RH: 1940. 24th of September 1940. About 15.45 hours.
JS: You, you mentioned that you were, you remember that you were staying in in Cookham just outside London.
RH: Yes.
JS: So what, how did [pause] do you remember anything about how the war affected you when you were staying there?
RH: Well, I can just remember a dogfight. It was fascinating watching these aeroplanes going around and around and around. It was the, I’m pretty certain it was a Spitfire. What they were fighting I haven’t a clue. It was fascinating watching the way they twisted and turned. You knew it was a fight but you didn’t understand the significance, and I think that’s probably very much the case for many people of my generation. Especially if mother was alone with her children. You knew what was happening. They kept you informed. You didn’t understand the full significance obviously, and I can just remember my mother being, ‘Oh, those poor men.’ And then said they’d landed in Normandy. I knew some men had landed in Normandy. They were fighting. I didn’t know where Normandy was. Not then. And you certainly didn’t for one moment comprehend the full horror of anything like that. But things weren’t hidden from children. You knew people were bombed. You knew somebody else’s father had been killed in the war or he was a prisoner of war. It was just part of life. And in Cookham there was a bakers, definitely. There was a fruit shop which was very near. There was an International where you walked down and got your small piece of cheese. Your sugar was put in a blue bag. All the floors were wooden. Everything was brown, I think inside. And I said there was, the cheese ration was two ounces a week. My father came home on leave and the cheese went down in his mouth in about one mouth full, and my mother came in and was just looking at me. She had the sort of look that said, ‘Don’t you dare say anything.’ [laughs] I didn’t. So for any other shopping, oh there was, and you could get ice cream once a week. No cones. Only vanilla. Very small bit between two wafers and it came in at a certain time and if you didn’t get there in time to be in the queue no ice cream and not a hope of another ice cream. That must have been in summer. And that’s where you got your sweetie ration too but I don’t have much ration. I know you got a sweetie ration but then I was probably only given one sweet or something. That sweetie shop was opposite the police station. And also down there you used to take the batteries of the radio, of the wireless and the batteries had to be recharged or the wireless wouldn’t work, and reception got quieter and quieter and you knew that’s when the batteries had to go and be recharged and I think they were quite heavy.
JS: They would probably, they would probably be acid batteries rather than —
RH: Something. Yes.
JS: Yeah.
RH: And the wireless was on the table and I could sit neatly under the table and listen to the wireless, and of course we always had the news. And strangely, yes I remember people like John Snagge or was it Dimbleby, but the other voice I remember clearly was Alvar Liddell. Again, didn’t really mean too much at the time but when I heard his voice later. Yes. That’s who it was.
JS: It’s just very of the era.
RH: Yes. One warm room and the blackout curtains were always down. Before you put the lights on blackout curtains went down. Or very thick curtains. You didn’t show any light, and the torches used to have a sort of blurred light so you could just about see if you had to use a torch. It was a very good torch actually.
JS: Being where you were did you see any bombing at all? Or any effects of bombing?
RH: Definitely. There was a Doodlebug. We were waiting to get the bus to go shopping in Maidenhead. As I said that’s where the butcher was and the fish shop and all the other shops you needed. And we weren’t first in the queue that day. The house was fairly near the bus stop which was just after or just before the level crossing in Cookham and there was a beautiful silver aeroplane just gliding down. Silver aeroplane. No propeller. I turned to my mother, more or less to say, ‘Look at the pretty aeroplane,’ and it wasn’t there. I don’t clearly remember an explosion but everybody disappeared. I couldn’t think why they were running away to get shelter when they’d already, the bomb had already gone off. And it wasn’t until years later I realised they’d actually gone back to see if their house had been hit. Anyway, the bus came. We got on. There was no one else there, and we went off to Maidenhead. And the fact that there was no one else there in some ways was very good because the buses could be so crowded. They were quite small. Very small by comparison with today’s buses. Children were always on their mother’s knees as soon as the bus started to fill up and if there were two pre-school children, the woman sitting next to you would have a child on her knee. Then there would be the queue. The passengers standing. And it could be so crowded on the bus that the bus conductor would be standing on the bottom step of the bus hanging on for dear life and only just on the bus. And when we got to Maidenhead I think sort of just slowly disentangled and disgorged ourselves. It was about three miles. It was much more fun to go in to Maidenhead by train but more expensive I think. And they had a porteress. No porters. She was a porteress and I thought that was a wonderful job. And then of course there were, that you could definitely remember hearing the alarms go off. And the all clear. But I’d always been told, ‘Well, God won’t let us die.’ What else do you tell a child? But on one occasion it had been a bit noisy outside and there had been some crashing as well. Hearing aeroplanes overhead was nothing unusual and my mother came in, picked me up, opened the blackout curtains which were always down and very effective and the whole sky was alight. Right across over towards Maidenhead. Found out afterwards that an incendiary had hit a jam factory. Well, hitting a jam factory it wouldn’t need an incendiary but the whole sky was alight and all she did was to pick me up. ‘Well, if we’re going to die we’ll die together,’ and we both went into the same bed, and I think that’s the only time I ever shared a bed until I got married. But you just didn’t. You had your own bed and you went to bed.
JS: So you, you mentioned that you heard the sirens and the all clear.
RH: Yes.
JS: So did you have a shelter to go into?
RH: No.
JS: Or was it just —
RH: We had the —
JS: Was it not deemed to be [pause] so where did you go?
RH: Well, it was 1944, I suppose. I think there was a mini Blitz or something from February to about June. So they weren’t too likely. But in fact we didn’t on that occasion. We just went to bed. The house had a basement so I suppose we could have always have gone into the basement and in fact quite a lot of time was spent in the basement because there was a boiler there and you could cook. Boil something on the boiler as well. The boiler was a fire which gave the heating, but also on top you could boil your kettle or saucepan or anything and it was a fairly large room with a wooden table in the middle and a wardrobe. A cupboard at one end and a sideboard at the other. All in basic pine, unstained. Really interior stuff. Downstairs there was also a coal hold and a larder. At a push although I think you only got one bag of coal a week but when you could get more much later you still had to count the coal bags that were ordered and make sure that the right number of coal bags was delivered, because if he didn’t and he kept one back he could still sell that on the black market. And quite what health and safety would say having the coal hold next to the larder we don’t know but it was a really cold larder. You didn’t need a fridge. But [pause] also waking up once and there was a roar. It must have been after the bad raid. It might have been the raid on Reading because Maidenhead isn’t that far and with the turning circle etcetera of the bombers at that time. Hearing the roar of aeroplanes overhead I’d heard it so many times so why on that occasion I said, ‘They’re coming to bomb us.’ ‘No. That’s our aeroplanes going to bomb Germany.’ ‘Oh, well. That’s alright then.’ Back to sleep.
JS: So the sound of aircraft was just a regular occurrence.
RH: It was a regular occurrence. It doesn’t bother me. Come to think of it even the Typhoons or the Tornadoes when they used to go over. Oh, yes. Where’s the other one? I suppose you’ll be over soon. Never bothers me.
JS: So at that point you weren’t at school. So you were at home all the time?
RH: Yes, but my mother must have taught me a certain amount. I think she did her housework when I was asleep because, and again as the evidence in Lincoln. I was beginning to write and read by the time I was three because my father as a fluent French speaker was posted to the south of France responsible as a liaison within the region Bordeaux/Marseilles and I’ve got postcards which had been sent to Lincoln which my father wrote to me. To me. Printed. And also, “I see you’re starting to write now. Good show. Daddy couldn’t go along, wanted to go along this road but he couldn’t because the Germans had bombed the bridge.” Just the sort of thing you wrote to a child. As I say I don’t think things were hidden particularly. And I also remember that whether it was, it must I think have been after possibly the invasion of Italy and the fall of Mussolini there was an Italian POW. And that was definitely summer time because he’d been working on the fields, and he used to stop to have his piece at lunchtime, probably when we were going for a walk and we always chatted and he had a little girl my age. She was probably my age when he left and that’s how he remembered her. And for years, he gave me a little basket that he’d made with willow I think it was that he used to take his piece in to take to put by while he was working. Come back and have his piece. And I had that basket until the woodworm demolished it in the 1990s. It was a good long time. Oh yes, and we had a Christmas tree of course. But the decorations were lots of cotton wool. That was snow. And what must have been the things that were dropped to confuse the radar. The long thin —
JS: Oh, Window.
RH: The long thin silver strips, and they hung on the tree and that was the icicles. And of course the winter of ’45 was a very cold one anyway. You broke the top off the milk bottles before you could [pause] The ice I mean.
JS: Yeah.
RH: The top. The blue tits had probably broken the top of the bottles to get to it first. Because the milk came in bottles and they were left on the doorstep.
[pause]
JS: So when did, when did your father come home?
RH: That would have been ’46. Pity about that. It was very much better when it was my mother and I [laughs] Then she had to share her time. And anyway, little girls, I think he’d have rather had, since my brother had been killed he would far rather had a boy. So I was brought up something as a tomboy until I reached fourteen, fifteen when he suddenly decided that as a female I’d better run around after him. Females ran around after the pater familias. Which didn’t work. Not amenable to discipline. I think I always wanted to see the reason for doing things rather than just accepting it.
JS: That’s a good thing.
RH: Well, much later it meant I wasn’t very good at science because I didn’t like being told that’s the, that’s the scientific rule, it can’t be broken because nobody told me why. Why put things into equations if you’re going to have to get them out again. It didn’t make sense. But that was much later. But I was what, four when I started school anyway. Small private school. Only about ten or twenty children. Untrained teacher and absolutely brilliant at it.
JS: So was, what year would that be?
RH: About –
JS: When you started school.
RH: ’46 I think. It was definitely before I was five. We used to go mornings only. Same as really nursery school now. The state school anyway was opposite and it was desperately overcrowded and I think, again certainly for part of the war there were all the evacuee children as well. So I believe. But it was very crowded. And we had some grass we could play on and they only had a hard concrete.
JS: A hard concrete square.
RH: Yes. Exactly. But again when we were very, it must have been about the time I started of course the war was just over. We played killing Germans and we were stopped immediately. She was straight out when she realised we were going around like that that. ‘The war is over. There is to be no more killing of any one.’ And I never knew ‘til much, much later that her only son had been killed in the war but she wasn’t certainly not going to have any more hatred or prejudice or anything. That was over.
JS: So in the village there were evacuees but just didn’t stay with you. Is that right?
RH: Yes. They were just down the road. I think there had been evacuees but not when I was there definitely. I believe their language could be very colourful.
JS: Well, it’s part of that thing that we spoke about earlier, I suppose. That the war just mixed everyone up.
RH: It mixed everyone up. Yes. I did play with them occasionally but as I understand, I think she wasn’t, she was a bit hesitant because of the sort of colourful language. I certainly preferred those children to another girl that was down that road. I rather liked them. They were great fun.
JS: Was that as opposed to someone else who lived in the village before?
RH: She was of that village, yes. But of course the evacuee children anyway were older than I was but, yes I did play as I said occasionally and they just took me on, you know. Just another child. I don’t think we thought about anything like that. But —
[pause]
JS: That’s been really good. Thank you very much. No. That’s been great. Let’s pause this.
[recording paused]
RH: There was a couple of other things that might be relevant.
JS: Yeah.
RH: That on one occasion, it might have been to either just at the end of the war. We went north to meet my father who must have been, we went out and met him at York. Very crowded journey again. Very limited memories. I think that’s when I saw some of the bomb damage in Reading. Definitely I remember seeing bomb damage. And we got to York, my father met me, us. It could be that when we stayed at a nearby RAF station and I was left in the Nissen hut over, well I think they went for a meal presumably in the mess and I was spoiled rotten by the WAAFs. It was great fun. So I must have been fairly confident at the age of about three. We went north with the car. That’s when my father built a cairn to my brother and I couldn’t understand why we were building a cairn, you know. A heap of stones. And then I don’t remember my father ever mentioning my brother again except if somebody else brought it up and I was definitely discouraged from not talking about Ian. Coming back, again we got to York. Very crowded. Overcrowded train definitely. We only just squeezed into a compartment. Very crowded on the platform and at that time the porter broke my favourite bottle of orange juice. We did have another one as well but that didn’t taste nearly as nice. I’m still annoyed with that postman [laughs] Sorry, porter. They always had uniforms etcetera. And thinking of that you got your orange juice which was great and cod liver oil. You were supposed to have a teaspoon of cod liver oil a day. Yuck. I bit the spoon so much I cracked it. Must have been able to do an awful lot of damage even with baby teeth. But —
JS: You mentioned staying on a base in a, in a, in a Nissen hut with WAAFs.
RH: Yes.
JS: That’s obviously been a big impression that stuck with you.
RH: Yes. But only bits of it, you know. The Nissen hut and the shape and a row of beds and I was in one somewhere in the middle and of course everybody was talking to me and chatting. I suppose they were waiting to be demobbed by that time. There was a heater but I don’t think it was on so it must have been summertime. And my mother leaving me. But she came back and that was a bit of nuisance. As I said I must have been spoiled rotten. And although it was just after the war there used to be parties for the children on the station and we all got a present. And I think the WAAFs and whoever else was on the station, especially with skills would make a toy. I had Donald Duck. I’ve still got Donald Duck [laughs] He’s in the roof space. And of course the boys all got a wooden toy or something similar. I’d have far rather had a wooden toy.
JS: So what was that?
RH: Pardon?
JS: So what is Donald Duck made from?
RH: Don’t ask. Health and safety would have a fit [laughs] The eyes could be taken out at a risk. I haven’t a clue what the, that stuffing was. Probably a kapok and felt, and he was yellow and he had a green hat, a little jacket so they must have been busy with sewing machines. In fact, dolls were wasted on me. I had quite a few of them, and my gollywog which I loved and you never thought of it in a racist way. He was your much loved gollywog with a smiley black face. And somebody in the village made doll’s clothes for me. Absolutely beautifully made. Obviously on a machine. All the little smocking. All the little bands around the sleeve. Beautifully made. I did not have much time for dolls at all. Occasionally you would. But no. Not dolls. And people, if your child had outgrown things you passed them on. And the front was cut out of your sandals in the summer so you didn’t have to use your shoe coupons. And your paddling pool was never a paddling pool it would be a large tin, oval tin washing tin container. You could just about sit in it. And all the water had to be carried over out of the garden etcetera. Oh and in the summer you got either an extra ration of sugar or an extra ration of jam so that if you could get fruit you could make some more jam. Which meant that people who had fruit and the sugar, and a neighbour had blackcurrants and I can remember picking the blackcurrant. I think they probably did far more picking than I did but you didn’t eat them and you made jam. But fruit was a great treat. No bananas ‘til the end of the war and then you only got one banana. And the shop had a picture of bananas in the window, ‘Mummy, they’ve got some more bananas.’ ‘No. Those aren’t real.’ I wouldn’t believe her until we went in to the shop and they told me. ‘No, those are not real bananas. You won’t get any more for a long time.’ Yes. And of course queues were absolutely normal. And the butcher was Dewhurst at the time. He was quite cheery. Always talked to me. And children didn’t wander off. They stayed with their mother and if they were very young they had reins. I had some pretty pink reins. But on one occasion I didn’t want to talk and he said, so he said ‘Lost your tongue?’ I wasn’t going to talk so I went and put my tongue out. Oh dear. I was in trouble for putting my tongue out to someone. ‘Go and stand outside the shop.’ And afterwards I had to come back and apologise and I still didn’t know why. I mean I’d been told it was bad manners but I didn’t want to talk and I showed him that I had not lost my tongue. That was not how the adult world works.
JS: It was very logical though.
RH: It was very logical [laughs]
JS: Yes. Queuing for everything must have just been part of life.
RH: It was. Queuing for everything and standing beside your parents, well your mother, and fathers were very much not there. As I said I was very happy. I think that was the best bit of my childhood because although you knew what was happening and you were told what was happening you didn’t understand the implications. And the barrage balloons always seemed to be very high up. Again, that’s something you can just remember. Oh, yes. That’s the barrage balloons that are up there. You didn’t think twice about it. And you walked a lot more than you [pause] And somehow you made your rations go and stretch. And tripe was very nice until my mother tried cooking it in milk. Yuck. I refused to eat tripe in milk. Otherwise it was alright, you know, I don’t know how she cooked it at any other time but cooked in milk. No.
JS: No. I suppose it’s what was happening at that time to you at your age would just have been the norm.
RH: Yes. Exactly.
JS: It wasn’t as if something had phenomenally changed.
RH: Well, things and also of course things didn’t seem to change afterwards anyway, because the rationing continued and the very cold weather continued. My father built a snowman in the winter of ’47 so it was obvious that was quite something and the garden was covered with snow for ages. And you could scrape the ice off the inside of the window ‘til you got down into the one warm room. Except they started doing the shipping forecast after the war and when my father came back there was to be absolute silence while he listened to the shipping forecast. That was impossible. Totally impossible. ‘Go outside.’ And it was dark out there and I was more or less almost clinging to the door handle but I wasn’t go to show him I was afraid. I was damned if I’d show him I was afraid [laughs] I don’t think he’d have cared anyway but he wouldn’t have realised that he was, you know being heartless or uncaring. But that’s what, that’s what daddy told you, don’t argue. But I do argue. That’s what daughters do. They argue. Not for long.
JS: Great. Thank you very much.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Rhona Hay
Creator
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James Sheach
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2018-04-26
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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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AHayR180426, PHayI1801
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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00:37:34 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Civilian
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Berkshire
Description
An account of the resource
Rhona Hay was a very young child during the war and lived with her mother while her father was away serving in the RAF. Her brother was also in the RAF and was killed during a training accident. She recalls the acceptance of the bombing and so on as part of everyday life. She describes rationing and the make do and mend habit. One day an incendiary hit the jam factory and she saw the sky alight with the glow of the burning while she and her mother watched.
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Temporal Coverage
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1940-09-24
1944
19 OTU
bombing
crash
home front
incendiary device
killed in action
Operational Training Unit
RAF Kinloss
training
V-1
V-weapon
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/195/3328/AAllenRM160809.2.mp3
0e0b76b16f6cef1602bcaf97be83a19b
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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Allen, Richard Murray
Richard Allen
Richard Murray Allen
R Allen
Richard M Allen
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with Richard Murray Allen (b. 1925, 435362 Royal Australian Air Force).
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-08-09
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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Allen, RM
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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DG: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre; my name is Donald Gould, and I'm interviewing Richard Allen at his home in Pymble, a suburb of Sydney in New Souith Wales, Australia. How old are you, Richard?
RA: Ninety one.
DG: And where were you born?
RA: In Brisbane in Queensland (pause).
DG: Where did you go to school?
RA: Well, actually I went to primary school in Mount Iza because my father went there during the depression, he was an engineer in the power house there. We spent eight years there. I did my primary schooling there, and I did my secondary schooling, two years of it in those days, which would be the equivelent of about year ten now, I did that at the State Commercial High School in Brisbane.
DG: And er, Mount Isa's a mining town, isn't it?
RA: That's correct.
DG: What was your father doing there?
RA: He was an engineer in the power house.
DG: Oh, I'm sorry, yeah (chuckles). When war broke out can you remember where you were, what you were doing, how old you were?
RA: Yes, I was fourteen. Nineteen thirty nine it was, and I was still at school.
DG: And when you were at, when you were at school did you have any thought that you might end up in the war?
RA: Yes. I joined the Air Training Corps as soon as it was formed. From memory that would have been about nineteen forty one, and I joined the Air Training Corps, and we were given, apart from marching and drilling, and all that sort of thing, we were given certain instructions in morse code, sending and receiving of course, and meteor-, meteorological education, and other things relative to the Air Force. And I was in the Air Training Corps until April nineteen forty three, and on the tenth of April, which is my birthday, I er was actually accepted by the Air Force and ten days later I was in camp at the initial training school.
DG: Now you left, you finished school in forty three?
RA: No, I finished school actually in nineteen thirty nine.
DG: Oh, I beg your pardon. Oh you, oh you had finished then?
RA: Oh yes.
DG: Oh I see. Right, right. Okay then.
RA: I finished school at fourteen, which was a bit young in those days. Most kids would have finished high school at fifteen or sixteen, but I'd had primary school, because it was a small country town I'd done two years in one, which meant I could finish school a bit younger than most people. So, I joined the Air Training Corps which was formed during the war, about nineteen forty one. Because I always wanted to get into the Air Force rather than the Army, and I knew that when I turned eighteen I would be put into either the Air Force or the Army because there was conscription for home service, but I thought I might as well volunteer and go wherever they told me to go.
DG: Why the Air Force and not the Army?
RA: Oh, I suppose because (chuckles) it appealed to me more. I can't think of any other reason.
DG: No? And did you erm, when you, when you then, when you then joined the er, the Air Force did you have any, any idea as to what you, what you wanted to do?
RA: Oh yes. Everybody wanted to be a pilot (both laugh). But on initial training course there were about a hundred and eighty on the course. Courses were going in about once a month in those days, and there were about a hunudred and eighty of us. I think there were about ten pilots and about, picked from the course, and about er perhaps ten or fifteen navigators, and the rest, the rest were, were appointed as wireless air gunners for further training. Well wireless was easy to me because I could send and receive, er twenty five, thirty words a minute because of my training in the Air Training Corps. Ah. So the wireless course, which was six months, was pretty easy, actually. The gunnery course only lasted a month, then our training was completed in Victoria, and within a month we were on a troop ship to England.
DG: So what place you, you, was all your training in Victoria?
RA: No. The initial training and the wireless training, which was a total of, initial training was one month, wireless course about six months, that was all done in Queensland. The wireless course, the initial training course, my pardon, was at Kingeroy, a country town in Queensland, and Merriburra in Queensland was the wireless course, and then in Victoria was the gunnery course, which was at West Sale. There was an Air Force station at East Sale, that's why I distinguish one from the other.
DG: So, you were then in the Air Force and receiving this training. Did you have any idea where you might end up? Did you know you might go to Europe, or-
RA: Oh yes, almost certainly, almost certainly. Actually, I was selected as a navigator on the initial training course, and then the next day they sent for me and said, 'look, I'm sorry, you were selected as a navigator but we find that you can't go overseas until you're nineteen. That's against the law. So you're going to have to be a wireless operator.' So, I was a bit peeved by that, but, you know, you have to accept your fate from these people.
DG: Yes. And so, when, when did you-
RA: Actually, I got to England before I was nineteen. I reached England in April, I beg your pardon, in March nineteen forty four, before I was nineteen. It didn't seem to matter then.
DG: No. So, you went from Victoria. Where did you go from -
RA: I went on leave for a few weeks, and then got on the troop ship. I came on leave back to Bradfield Park, Sydney, which you'd know well, and we were there for about three days.
DG: Right.
RA: And then on to the troop ship.
DG: And where did you, where did you, where did you disembark?
RA: In England?
DG: Are you- You didn't go, you didn't have training in Canada?
RA: No.
DG: No?
RA: No navigators -
DG: Ah, of course yes, yes. That's right. Yes. (DG talking across RA throughout this exchange)
RA: Navigators went there, and I think the odd pilot, but mostly the navigators. I guess because it was pretty flat.
DG: And what, and what places did you do further training in the UK?
RA: Well, when I got to UK I was given a staff job, at a Pilot's Advanced Flying Unit, up in the Cotswolds, a place called erm, Windrush, and our job up there was to fly at night time with pilots who were converting from single engined to multi engined aircraft. They were actually converting on Oxfords, which weren't a very pleasant aircraft, but we used to fly with the trainee pilots at night time, so if they got lost we could get them a bearing on the wireless to get them back to, to Windrush. I was there for a couple of months and back to Brighton, which was the RAAF holding unit, and then I was posted to operational training at a place called Kinloss in Scotland, and er, just near Fin- which was the aeordrome, just near Findhorne Bay, I believe there's a permanent base there now, and from there we went to Bottesford for operational training, and converting from, from Wellingtons which we'd flown in at operational training, and er (pause) we then went to heavy conversion unit at Bottesford. Perhaps that's not what I said originally, but it was a heavy conversion unit where we converted onto Lancasters, and then we went to, we were there I guess for about a month, maybe a bit more, then over to 101 Squadron, Ludford Magna.
DG: When you arrived -, and what er, you were a wireless operator, what rank were you at that stage?
RA: I landed in England as a Sergeant, and I, after six months you were automatically promoted to Flight Sergeant, and after tweve months automatically promoted to Warrant Officer, unless you'd kicked a Squadron Commander in the shins, or something. (pause)
DG: And er, 101, and that was at Ludford Magna?
RA: That's correct.
DG: And what type of aircraft were you flying there?
RA: Lancasters
DG: Can you tell me just a little bit about your dialy life at the base? What, what did you do?
RA: Not a lot. I'm blowed if I know. I often think about that. (DG laughs) I don't think we did much at all. Unless the, the, the unit was shut down because there was going to be an operation on, and the mess was closed twelve hours before that, I believe it was twelve hours, I think we used to hang about the hut, or talk, or play cards. Occassionally, if we weren't wanted, we'd go into Louth, er, for a few drinks. But, I can't remember what we did normally, other than that.
DG: The rest of your crew, were they, er what nationalities were they?
RA: An English captain, English engineer, I had an Australian navigator, me wireless operator, a Canadian bomb aimer, and two Scottish gunners, mid upper and rear.
DG: I believe that Ludford Magna wasn't, the airfield, wasn't very well drained.
RA: I don't remember, the strip itself was bitumen, I know that, but off the- I think it was commonly called Mudford Magna. Mudford Magna, because it was pretty sloppy, I clearly remember that.
DG: What sort of problems did that cause?
RA: The same problems as slopping about in muddy circumstances normally.
DG: And I understand that there was a fog dispersal system that was initiated there, or trialed.
RA: Yeah. They were still testing it. After May the eighth when the war was finished in Europe, I recall that aircrew was called upon, I think more than one day, to do circuits and bumps and testing this FIDO thing, Fog Intesnsive Dispersal Of, um FIDO, and it was a system where there were two pipelines, one on each side of the runway, and at intervals, at least, the pipelines had oil in them, I presume, wouldn't have been petrol, would have been oil, and they were lit, and the idea was so that if there was a fog the heat would disperse the fog. But I remember that on a couple of foggy days we were given the task of trying this thing, or testing it, or anyway, it hasn't, it couldn't have been a great success because I don't remember ever hearing of it being used anywhere else.
DG: So how, there were lines along the side of the airfield.
RA: Two pipes along the strip.
DG: And, obviously outlets for the oil. How did, how was that lit?
RA: No idea. No idea, I was concerned with, you know, getting set up to do my part on the aircraft while somebody else did that. Some of the ground staff, no doubt, were handling that while we did what we had to do.
DG: If it was a day where you were going to fly a mission, presumably that night, what was that day like, what, what was your routine then?
RA: Well, I can't clearly remember then because, you know, I only did, according to the log book, which is long since list because I, we've moved, according to my log book I only officially did one operation.
DG: Ah, right.
RA: And, er although there was some discussion about that, they wouldn't let us count a couple which we did (pause) which the Flight Commander or Squadron Leader said, no, they didn't count, but anyway. So I have very little memory of what we did, what the day was like. I remember that we had to be at the briefing at a certain time, I remember that we had to pick up our parachutes, I remember being driven out to the aircraft, I remember that we would have been er, you know, I remember putting on my harness, the parachute harness, I can remember putting on my Mae West, and I can remember standing up when the officer came in to brief us, and lots of funny little things, but er, what I clearly remember though on coming back, that was the important, well perhaps before, the important part for me was that we got a little, a ration to take with us on the aircraft for when we were flying, so we had something to nibble, you know, something to eat, whether it was a sandwich, or also Mars bar, and of course I'd never seen a Mars bar, because we didn't have Mars bars in Australia pre-war, that I ever saw, and as a kid I knew a lot about lollies, and so the Mars bar became very important, and that was where I was introduced to them.
DG: Can you remember what the target was?
RA: Yeah, Rotterdam. We were dropping food at Rotterdam.
DG: Ah, right. At what, well what, what, do you remember the date? Or month, year, whatever?
RA: Yeah, it was May the seventh, nineteen forty five.
DG: Ah right. So yes, that would have been very near-
RA: I can clearly remember part of the briefing was that if you fired, er if you were fired on you're not to return the fire, the gunners were not to return the fire, because we were only at five hundred feet, or thereabout, five hundred seems to stick in my mind, which seems pretty low. But I clearly remember as we crossed the Dutch coast, I was standing in the astrodome and shortly after that, and I could see the German light arm placements along the top of a dyke. They were looking at us, and we were looking back at them, sort of thing, but we'd been instructed that we wouldn't be fired on, but in the event that we were the gunners were not to return fire, which er, you know, I didn't approve of much, and nor did the gunners, but nobody fired on us anyway.
DG: Oh that was just as well, it would have made things a bit difficult under those circumstances. There were some, some people who, who had bad nerves, did you ever, and they, they were, they might have said they couldn't, didn't want to fly a mission, or something, and they were accused of having a lack of moral fibre. Did you come across any of that?
RA: When we, when we were at operational training in Scotland we had initially an Irish bomb aimer, and suddenly he seemed to disappear and he was replaced by a Canadian, a Canadian bloke, and it was always a mystery to me because it all, all happened so quickly, and I have since reflected on it and thought well, maybe he did turn it in then because we were constantly asked, or told, that if we didn't want to go on, now was the time to stop. 'Cause later on, you know, would be no good. You'd be letting the other fellows down.
DG: Yes. Yes. Did you, did you? So you didn't have any real first hand knowledge of that?
RA: No.
DG: No. Did you hear about, hear any stories about -?
RA: Ah, we heard stories about it, yes.
DG: How were they treated?
RA: Oh, pretty badly, you know, they weren't shot, but, you know, they were, lost their rank, and were sort of drummed out of the, out of the service, well out of sight anyway. Yes it was well known that if you went LMF you were in big trouble. Yeah.
DG: So, you didn't er, your mission was (pause) pretty uneventful, nothing -
RA: Pretty uneventful except that we were dropping, amongst other things, bags of flour, which was very exciting, but no, we were pretty low, and as we, they, they weren't too sure that when the bomb aimer released flour as he would release the bombs, they didn't seem to be too sure it would release properly, and my job that day, I'd been given a sort of a toggle. I had to lie on the floor of the aircraft as we approached the field that we were dropping the stuff in, and if they thought, if it held up, I was to work this toggle somehow to make it release, and I remember lying on the floor and when the bags of flour hit the airstream the, the, the flour all, well you know what flour's like, it went everywhere and I was covered in flour from the top of my head to the tip of my toes.
DG: Presumably some of the bags got out alright.
RA: They all got out, but it was the rush of air, you know, flour goes everywhere, you can imagine dropping a bag a flour, it hitting a gale.
DG: They weren't in some sort of canisters or anything?
RA: No, just hessian.
DG: But-
RA: We were very low. We were very low, we were right down below the five hundred feet.
DG: Oh, right. Ok.
RA: We were down below the height of the spires and the buildings.
DG: Oh, I see. But still, you know, a bag of flour hitting the ground, even from that height- (unclear, talking over one another)
RA: But when it hit the flip, the slipstream, I can tell you, it went, (chuckles) didn't burst a bag but-
DG: Oh, I see, the bag, yeah, oh, right, because some gets through the hessian. Yes, of course, I see. It's not the (unclear) it's not airtight, I see. Did you drop anything else, or was it just-
RA: No. Well, there may have been, but it was the flour that got me.
DG: Did you see people out coming to-
RA: Oh the field, the edge of the field was stacked with people. Crowds, of people. So certainly saw people, yes. Apart from the Germans we'd seen, we saw.
DG: Were Germans still at their post?
RA: Yes, yes.
DG: They'd just been told to stop firing? They hadn't been-
RA: The armistice hadn't been settled, you see.
DG: Yes, so they hadn't actually been officially captured or under control of-
RA: No, they were debating, they were debating the terms, I suppose.
DG: And it was just a ceasefire.
RA: They were debating what was to happen and there was a ceasefire.
DG: Yes.
RA: Which was a good thing, I suppose, from my point of view.
DG: Oh yes, you'd have been, you'd have really been a sitting duck.
RA: Well, we probably wouldn't have been doing it, at that height, anyway.
DG: Yes, yes. So ah, did, did you, when you were, do, on that mi, on that flight, on that mission, did you know that, that would be the last one you'd fly?
RA: No, no. No.
DG: You didn't know?
RA: No, we got out of the aircraft when we got back in the afternoon, and the groundcrew said, 'the war's over'. It had by then been announced. The armistice was-
DG: You had flown some other missions? That weren't counted? What were they?
RA: Well, we don't know, we were told, we just flew down over France somewhere. I think they were diversions of some sort.
DG: Oh, I see.
RA: You know, making the Germans think there was going to be an attack there, or an attack here. But anyway, they didn't let us count those.
DG: And did anything happen on those?
RA: Ah, no, we saw other aircraft, other Lancasters, which at one stage I remember we were tri- we were having our first experience of a thing called Fishpond, which I was operating, which was a screen which, with wiping, there was sort of a wiper going round at all times. It was supposed to pick up any other aircraft, beneath you, of course, wouldn't do it above, and I remember operating that. It wasn't very efficient. I remember saying to the gunners, 'look I can see something that looks to be suspicious'. I've forgotten whether it was below us or off to one side. But they said, 'ah, yes, it's another Lancaster. We've been watching it for ten minutes', so, you know, I was pretty slow on the Fishpond (chuckles). Anyway.
DG: But of course in those days that sort of technology was all very new, and it wasn't terribly easy to operate, or accurate or, I don't suppose.
RA: No. I seemed to be seeing things all the time, you know (chuckles) I suppose being a bit nervous.
DG: So when, when you'd flown your last mission, erm, what happened to you after that?
RA: Erm, some weeks later we were, we officially came out, see we'd been testing FIDO, we'd, I think we'd ferried an aircraft up to Lossiemouth, er, for, we'd taken an aircraft up to Lossiemouth, and then we brought it back with a couple of other crews that had also taken a couple of aircraft up there. And the RAAF announced, we were told that Australian, all the Australian air force, or air crew, were to be grounded, and they were calling for volunteers to form an Australian squadron to go to Burma. And you could volunteer for that squadron, or you could wait and get the troop ship home, and then go North, because the Japanese war, the Pacific war was still on. So I though, no, I been away from home now for, you know, sort of, eighteen months, more or less, I thought well I'll go home first and then let them do what they want to do with me.
DG: One fellow told me that some people in Bomber Command had received white feathers from the people in Australia. Did you ever hear about that?
RA: No.
DG: No. When you, when did you come back to Australia?
RA: October nineteen forty five.
DG: And what, what happened to you then?
RA: I was sent, I was given leave, told to report after about two or three weeks to Sandgate, RAAF Sandgate holding unit, and I was discharged. December nineteen forty five.
DG: And what did you do then? What did you do for work?
RA: I went back to work.
DG: Right.
RA: We were offered a rehab course, I took a rehab course, in accounting, so, and that was by correspondence so that took me, that was forty five, that took me another five years to complete that, night time, part time, an so on.
DG: Right. And where did you meet your wife?
RA: At work.
DG: Ah, right. What, what, so you, you an accountant or?
RA:Well, I was doing my accountancy, but I was working for a company that sold machines that did accounting, you know, they were accounting machines. Machinery that could handle ledgers, and most accounting is a ledger, so I was working for them, and she was working for them, and there we are (chuckles).
DG: And do you keep in touch with any people from Bomber Command?
RA: They're all gone, they're all gone, as far as I can see. The only had one, the only one in Australia was the navigator, he did, I probably shouln't mention his name, he did law, he'd been a policeman, he did law, and I picked up the paper one day, The Australian, and here his name was, he'd, he'd tickled the trust fund, I believe, so I think he finished in gaol.
DG: Oh dear. How did you, how were you treated after the war? As being with Bomber Command
RA: Alright. No problems.
DG: Yeah, yeah, right. Well thank you very much. That's much appreciated.
RA: Oh, pretty easy, pretty painless.
DG: Thank you.
RA: Not very interesting.
DG: Always interesting. Finish.
Dublin Core
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Identifier
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AAllenRM160809
Title
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Interview with Richard Murray Allen
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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00:28:57 audio recording
Conforms To
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Pending review
Creator
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Donald Gould
Date
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2016-08-09
Description
An account of the resource
Richard Murray Allen was born in Queensland, Australia. He joined the Air Training Corps and later volunteered for the Royal Australian Air Force on his eighteenth birthday. He trained as a wireless operator in Australia, before being posted to England, where after further training, he flew one operation with 101 Squadron from RAF Ludford Magna. He went home to Australia in October 1945, before being discharged in the December that year.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
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Australia
Great Britain
Netherlands
England--Lincolnshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1945-04
1945-05
Contributor
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Peter Adams
101 Squadron
aircrew
FIDO
lack of moral fibre
Lancaster
Morse-keyed wireless telegraphy
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Oxford
promotion
RAF Bottesford
RAF Kinloss
RAF Ludford Magna
RAF Windrush
training
Wellington
wireless operator