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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/609/8878/PMcNamaraL1502.2.jpg
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/609/8878/AMcNamara150722.1.mp3
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
McNamara, Len
L McNamara
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
McNamara, L
Description
An account of the resource
Two items. An oral history interview with Len McNamara (1924 - 2020, 1814123, 185344 Royal Air Force) and a photograph. He flew operations as an air gunner with 10 and 75 Squadrons.
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
2015-07-22
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AM: Ok,so, this interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Annie Moody, and the interviewee is Len McNamara. And the interview is taking place at Len McNamara's home, in Southport, on the twenty second of July two thousand and fifteen. So Len, if you would just tell me a little bit about your childhood, background, and then how you came to join the RAF.
LM: I was born in Bristol in nineteen twenty four. My father was a chef, or cook as they called them in those days, and he worked at Fishponds, Bristol Mental Hospital, which is at Fishponds, on a very huge estate there, and my mother was a mental nurse. I was the eldest of three boys, I had a normal Elementary School education, went to night school, and when I was, left school at fourteen I was an apprentice plumber. Joined, as most lads I was associated with, joined the Air Training Corps, which had a very strong following in Bristol, and after going through, suffering, seeing the bombing of my home town, Bristol, I decided, if I could, I would like to join the Air Force, and be a member of the bomber squadrons. In December nineteen forty three I volunteered for air crew, and I went down to Euston House in London on a three day selection board, and was selected for air crew, and was told I would be called up later. Um, in March nineteen forty three, on the twenty first, the day I was exactly eighteen and a half years old, I reported to Lords Cricket Ground ACR-
AM: (interrupting) Nineteen forty four.
LM: Nineteen forty three.
AM: Forty three or forty four?
LM: Forty three.
AM: Ok.
LM: Um, after spending about three weeks in London, Earls Court Road, being kitted out and doing elementary field programmes, I went up to Bridlington to Air Gunners ITW. The course up there lasted approximately six weeks, and from there I went down to (pause) um, Elementary Gunnery School which was at Bridgenorth. Actually, did nothing at all there, cos they were just setting it all up and it was just hangers. From there I went to number one ATS at Pembrey, in Wales, did my gunnery course, and we were flying on, doing the gunnery on Blenheims, with Lysanders towing the drogues.
AM: So you, you were shooting at drogues.
LM: Yes, shooting at drogues. I passed out and was presented with merit honours in August of forty three, and from there I went to 10 OTU at Abingdon. At Abingdon it was crewed up, the skipper being Pete Catterswife, who was a Canyan, navigator was a-, from Taunton, and the wireless operator air gunner was an Australian, Bob Wright, and I can't think of anybody else who was crew at that time.
AM: How did you get together? Who approached who?
LM: We just all went into just a big room, and all I remember is being introduced to the crew. I don't know whether it was the navigator, or what, because (unclear), and he was West country, from Taunton. It could have been that. Anyhow, we crewed up there, that's right, navigator (pause), oh, and the bomb aimer, who was an ex Glasgow policeman, Bob McLuer. And I think we spent about two to three weeks at Abingdon, flying on Whitleys, and once the crew, skipper was solo on the Whitleys, we then went out to the satellite airfield at Stanton air, air, Stanton Harcourt. On completion of the OTU we then went up to Marston Moor, and did our conversion on to Halifax. Then they were flying Haliax ll's, which weren't all that clever, but nevertheless, the Halifax was a very well built aircraft, and more crew comfort than some of the others. On completion of the course at Marston Moor, we then went to Driffield on an escape and evasion course. I think it was about two weeks there, doing all sorts of things, getting over barbed wire, crawling through ditches, you name it, and we finished up with an escape and evasion exercise where we were dropped off in pairs on the North Yorkshire Moors, and then had to find our way back to Driffield. One, two of the Australians had a good experience, they got as far as (pause) oh, seaside town. Scarborough.
AM: Scarborough.
LM: And they found an army vehicle which was unattended, and drove back in that. I think the outcome was that it was some army Major's transport. Anyhow, they did that. And we, some of us got to Norton. We jumped on the train there, and when it got, not to Driffield station, to one of the minor stations before, we got out the wrong side and back in to Driffield without being stopped or caught. Um, after doing this escape and evasion, we were posted to the Shiny Ten Squadron in January nineteen forty four at Melbourne, just outside York. There were several crews went there, and we did two mine laying operations from Melbourne. On one of them the aircraft was shot up a bit by ack-ack, but the only comment was 'several holes in the aircraft, no member of crew hurt' (chuckles). From there, one five eight at Lissett were converting to the Halifax lll's, and also they'd lost one flight, C Flight, which went to Leconfield to form another squadron. So there were four of us, new crews of us at Shiny Ten who were then posted to Lissett. And we went there, and were on B Flight. Lissett was a very happy station. Everybody was very sociable, and a good atmosphere all round. While there I was having sinus problems, so I went up to the hospital at North Allerton, and had to go and have a minor sinus operation. As a result of that I was limited to flying below ten thousand feet. At that time I, with my own crew, had completed seven ops, and because of my sinus problems I was grounded from flying on operations, so they had a spare gunner in my place. On one of those trips to Tournai on (unclear) they got shot down. Three of the crew bailed out, the navigator and the flight engineer became prisoners of war. The rear gunner who had taken my place as a spare, he bailed out, but his chute failed to open, and he was found in a lady's, in France, in a lady's back garden, and his chute pack with him unopened. So it was quite a shock for the lady concerned. I have visited where the crew crashed, and also where everybody was found. I went with my son, er two of my sons and a grandson, and we found the local mayor was very cooperative, and showed us everything they could. The crew, the other ones who didn't survive, are buried in a small plot by the War Graves Commission in Meharicourt, and I have made a few visits there. There are quite a few members of 158 buried there, also the famous air gunner VC, Jan Mynarwski is buried there. From then I spent the rest of my time at Lissett as a spare gunner. Fortunately I was in the position of, I did fly with some crews for quite a period. One was Ted Strange. His air gunner, rear gunner had appendicitis, so I flew with them on their last seven ops, and they were a very fine crew, and I got on very well. I then was crewed up with Sam Weller, B Flight commander. Trips with him were few and far between, but I did, I then was crewed up with another Australian crew, and I did their last six ops with them. I did a couple of odd spare trips, and, but very quiet time really. I did fly with one crew, Canadian crew, which I wasn't happy with, and when I got back I said to the (unclear) that I didn't wish to fly with them any more because there was too much talking, and not enough attention paid to the job in hand. He assured me I wouldn't fly with them any more, and I didn't, and tragically, they did lose their lives on an operation not long after. In the October of, correction, in September of forty four I was then crewed up with a Canadian crew, and I flew with them for my last trips, my remaining trips of (unclear). I did, I think it was five or six with them, and then one day we came back form a daylight raid on Cologne, on thirtieth October, that was, and the Wing Commander, Wing Commander Dobson, came out to meet me, and said, 'congratulations, you've finished your tour now, and your commission is through'. The crew only had about three more ops to do to finish their tour, and I said, 'oh, I'll stay with you if you want', and the Wing Commander said, 'you've had enough, done enough. You've had nine months continuous operational flying, you've done your share, you're going to have a rest'.
AM: So that was that.
LM: From then I was posted to Langar, just outside Nottingham, as an instructor. Wasn't enjoying that very much , and a call went out for two second tour gunners, and Tony Dunster was an ex 4 Group gunner like myself, on Halifax's, we were posted, he volunteered, and we went down to Wolfarts Lodge to crew up, and we crewed up, the crew we crewed up with, the skipper was on his second tour, he was a New Zealander, and the rest of the crew, the wireless operator, the bomb aimer and the navigator, and flight engineer, had all been together on their first tour, flying Stirlings, as had the captain. And, I must admit, none of us were very enthusiastic about the Lancaster. Those of us on Halifax's said that the Lanc was a Woolworth's effort, and the Halifax was the Marks and Spencers, In all honesty, the Halifax was more favourable to the crews. It was easier to get around in, and easier to get out of in an emergency. Neither the Stirling boys, nor Tony and I liked the Lancasters at all. One incident we had with the Lancaster, was we were down at, way down in, er, Germany, I can't remember the target at the moment, this conversation, but it was way down, oh, Magdeberg, it was, and we were just doing the run in on the target, and we had an engine go up in flames. Nothing to do with any enemy action, it's just we had a glycol leak which caused a fire in the engine, and the engine couldn't be, it wouldn't feather, so we went all the way back to base with an engine, a prop just windmilling, and got back an hour after everybody else.
AM: Safely, though.
LM: Safely. One of the best jobs we ever did was the Manna Operations to Holland, dropping food. We loaded our crews ourselves, they had like a hammock in the bomb bay, and we loaded everything there, then we went over and dropped the food. And that was the most, the best thing we ever did.
AM: How many drops did you do on Operation Manna?
LM: Two.
AM: You did two.
LM: Yes
AM: How low were you flying?
LM: Oh, practically ground level. It was amazing because (pause)
AM: Could you actually see the people?
LM: Oh yes. As you were flying over there were people in their boats, and that, waving like mad to you, and some of them waving that enthusiastically they could tip over, but it was really fantastic to see it, and doing it.
AM: As a contrast to what you were doing before.
LM: Oh yes. Before, I mean before it was a question of destruction, but this question was saving lives. So, and (pause)
AM: Going back to the destruction, if you like, what, what, what did it actually feel like for you, there in the, as a, you were a rear gunner?
LM: Yeah, rear gunner. Well, actually it's amazing because being the rear gunner you never saw what you were going in to, you only saw it as you were coming out of it. And I was one of the gunners, there was loads of us, we never looked for trouble. Some, you had some people were gung-ho, drawing attention to themselves, but I was always taught, and others did, never draw attention to yourself. Just sit there quietly watching, and keeping your eyes open.
AM: Did you actually ever use the gun?
LM: Never.
AM: Never?
LM: No. I seen them, but you, just you sit there quietly, keeping an eye on what-
AM: But you could have done if you'd had to.
LM: Oh yeah.
AM: And what was it like in the suit, when you were all plugged in? Were you always warm, because it was really cold, wasn't it?
LM: Yes, but I really enjoyed it in the rear turret. You were in a world of your own there, you were your own companion. The only thing, it did get very cold, but then we had electric suits, and something we could never understand, ICW at Bridlington, you had to strip a Browning down, blindfolded. It's all laughable when you think of it, because in the turret it was minus forty, if you'd touched any metal you'd have frostbite, so why did we have to do all that?
AM: But you could, if you had to? With gloves on.
LM: Yes, if you had to. (laughs) But that was er-
AM: What, what do you think about the bombing now? You know, in retrospect.
LM: Well, it's more accurate, isn't it. I mean, you've got all the aids.
AM: No, sorry. I mean about when, when you were actually doing the bombing, dropping the bombs , what, what do you think about that now, in thinking about-
LM: I, I've still no regrets about it at all. Having lived and seen my own city destroyed, with no problems at all. And all I can say, it's like people are on about it all, what all the fuss and bother's about. There has been a book written since then, which I have. Written, I forget the name of the author, but he had, once the Communists had gone from Eastern Germany, and all the records came out, there was a lot going on there, all the equipment for submarines being manufactured there, it was a big staging post for the Eastern Front. There was loads of military there, and we were quite justified. I don't know what, all this outcry afterwards. It's easy to be wise after the event.
AM: And you got the DFC?
LM: Yeah, yeah.
AM: For the number of tours.
LM: Gary has got a letter that shows-
AM: Has he?
LM: Yeah. But there were, I mean, I had, I know I flew with numerous crews, but with the exception of the odd one or two, I was fortunate, I flew with very good, well experienced crews, and some of them had had an horrendous time. In fact, er, can we have just a (unclear).
AM: Yes, of course. (rustling noises)
LM: When Douggie Bancroft, Flying Officer Bancroft, who I did quite a few, they, they got badly shot up, and they landed at Hurn Airport, in, er, outside Bournemouth, and nobody ever understood how they managed to get the aircraft back there. In fact the instrument panel is in Canberra, in a museum in Australia, from that aircraft, and obviously the crew that survived, er two of the crew, they never found, never found their bodies. They reckon they must have fallen through the hole in the aircraft where it was badly burnt. And they all got immediate awards, DFMs and DFCs. They thoroughly deserved it. But they were a fantastic crew that I had the privilege to fly with for the remainder, the rest of their tour.
AM: Yes. So, I'm looking at all the different ones. So you had a Kenyan pilot, Canadian pilots, Australian pilots, New Zealand pilots, English pilot. You went through the lot.
LM: Yes, yes. I was lucky.
AM: Any difference? What were the differences of the nationalities? Other than the obvious ones about language.
LM: Yeah, there isn't no difference at all. They were all first class captains. Very happy crews, and, you can't explain the comradeship with your crew. You were closer than you were with your own brothers. I suppose the reason, you depended on each other for your lives. We had a good social life together, and that's it.
AM: Did you get down to Bridlington, from Lissett?
LM: Yeah, yeah. I've walked back from there many a time.
AM: You've walked? From Bridlington to Lissett?
LM: (laughs)
AM: How far's that?
LM: About eight miles. Eight, ten miles. Yep. Come back many a night in the crew bus, not on the seat, but on the floor (laughs).
AM: You enjoyed it, then?
LM: Oh yes. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
AM: And then, as, after that, you ended up with 75 squadron?
LM: Yeah.
AM: And then, I'm just looking at a sheet of paper here than Len has given me with all his pilots on. So, 75 New Zealand squadron, you were there 'til the end of the European war.
LM: Yes. Yes.
AM: So what was it like at the end, then? What was your last tour? Were they Operation Manna? Er, not tour, sorry, your last operation.
LM: I don't know.
AM: Because the Operation Manna ones would have been, May forty four?
LM: They were May time, weren't they. Because the war finished, I think it was in May. It was May, wasn't it?
AM: Yeah.
LM: I know because everything went mad on seven five squadron at Mepal, but (pause) that was fantastic, because when we come back off leave from seventy five New Zealand, all of us crew, we all used to come back, meet up in London, before coming back to Mepal, and have a night in London. But we used to go to Mepal village. Lovely, all the Kiwis getting to do their war dance in the bar. It was great.
AM: So what was it like at the end, then? What, how did it, for you, how did it end?
LM: It was just like a, really a bit of a let down. I thought we weren't treated very good. I know the New Zealanders were going to go out on, I forget what they call it, they were going to go out to India, and that. They went to Scampton, all the Kiwis, and all the English people, we were shipped up to Snaith, in Yorkshire, just to be selected to ground jobs, and I finished up at Ringway, on the parachute school, to initially, to be instructor. But I thought, 'no thank you'.
AM: No? You hadn't enjoyed it the first time round.
LM: So that was that.
AM: So what did you do.
LM: I can't, I'm trying to think, 'what did I do?' (Pause) Oh, yeah. I finished up, from there I went out to India, that's right, went out to Karachi, and we did nothing. Christmas, it was. Christmas of forty four, that's right. Arrived in Karachi, and there's four of us in a tent there, and we were just doing nothing. We used to go in to Kara-, it was Mauripur Airport. We used to go in to Karachi, and there was a club there, and that. We used to go in gharrys as they called them, the horse drawn taxi there, and we were told not to say anything as they went through some areas, let the driver sort I out, and that was that. But-
AM: How long were you there for? Was that forty four or forty five?
LM: That was forty four.
AM: Forty four. So that was before the Operation Manna, then?
LM: No, it was after everything.
AM: Oh, ok.
LM: Let's see. (pause) The war finished, I finished my tour and ops in October forty four, no, this was forty five, of course it was.
AM: So it was forty five.
LM: Forty five.
AM: I'm just trying to get my chronology right.
LM: No, forty five, it was. We went out to there, and then from there we went across to Ceylon, and then we went up to Kandy.
AM: What were you actually doing?
LM: Nothing!
AM: Oh, right.
LM: We were just shipped out the way. And we finished up at Kandy with a few more bomber, ex Bomber Command people, and then they decided to give us a three months Officers admin course. (chuckles) And then at the end of that we were shipped out to Singapore, we went on the Cape Town Castle, it was. Yeah. From Ceylon to Singapore, and I finished up on the embarkation unit there, working. But my sinus problems came out again, and I went in the hospital there. And the hospital was at Changi, which used to be, as I understand it, was a mental hospital, and of course all the Japanese were in (unclear) all around the beds, cleaning and that. And then I was sent home from there, repatriated.
AM: How did you get home?
LM: They flew me home.
AM: On what?
LM: A York. Flew me home, in stages, you know staging all the way through. Landed at Lyneham. Where did I go after that? Oh, then, (pause) that's right when I got back (pause), I missed that out, yeah, we went through Compton Bassett, and we did a code and cypher course, and we were all told when we went there, irrespective of what happens, you will pass the course, and we weren't, we were allowed to go to the Officer's Mess to collect our mail, and we had to pay the Officer's Mess bill, but all they did, they curtained part of the airman's dining hall off, and gave us that as a lounge with a field telephone to the Officer's Mess if you wanted any drinks. Obviously we never bothered, we always used to go into the local (unclear) and that. I'd forgotten about that, it'd all gone.
AM: I'm dragging it all back out.
LM: Yeah, I forgot all about that. 'Cos we, we went there before we went out to Ceylon, er, out to Karachi, and that.
AM: To go to Ceylon, and Karachi, and Singapore, to do nothing, just-. How many of you?
LM: Oh, there must have been hundreds of us. We were treated like dirt, at the end of the war, irrespective of your rank. We were just shipped out there out the road, out the way. The Navy got rid of all their surplus air crew. The RAF hung on to all of us.
AM: Why do you think they did?
LM: I don't know. I mean, I, because I'm a number, a (unclear) a number, I wasn't demobbed until forty seven. May forty seven.
AM: Could you have been, if you'd have wanted to go earlier?
LM: No. We weren't given the choice. We were all just shipped out, well we all thought personally we were just pushed out the way. They didn't know what to do with us.
AM: Was that RAF in general, or just Bomber Command?
LM: Well, I don't know, it was RAF, to do with RAF, not Bomber Command.
AM: They were still paying you?
LM: Oh yeah, yeah, but it was disgusting. That's right, I forgot about that. Yeah, that's right, I went-
AM: Seems a long way to go to do nothing.
LM: Well, it was, I mean, finished up at, in fact, the Officers Mess, embarkation Officer's Mess was out, Karikal House it was, and it was out by number ten dock gate, and in a beautiful big house and grounds. And a Japanese Admiral died there earlier, he's buried in the grounds of this big Karikal House, beautiful, and huge grounds. But, er, but, it's like the food we had there, it was all dehydrated stuff. And chicken, we used to see them coming in crates.
AM: And then they had to sort of wet it to cook it?
LM: Oh yeah. But, it was horrible.
AM: So what happened when you were eventually demobbed?
LM: I went, I was, we went up, I forget where it was, it was up Lancashire way somewhere, and just went up. A nights stop there. And just give the uniform in, and the suit, and that was it. It's a big laugh, because, because of the weather back here, there was a shortage of vegetables, and that, no potatoes, and all that jazz, but, I can't even remember the name of the camp where we were, when we were demobbed. Somewhere in the Lancashire area, I don't know where it was.
AM: What did you do afterwards, Len?
LM: I went back to finish my apprenticeship. I went back to finish my apprenticeship in plumbing. What happened, you went back and finished it, and you got full tradesman's rate, but the firm was compensated by the government for that. Got my indentures, and that was that. And then, I got fed up. I wished I hadn't of come out. The reason I come out was we were going to get married, and my wife wasn't keen on the service life, as she thought. So, I come out, and I thought, 'I'm fed up with this, I want to go back in'. So I went and they said, 'oh, you'll have to come back in as an airman, because your commission’s gone'. And I thought alright, I'll come back in the air traffic control branch.
AM: So this was after you'd finished your plumbing apprenticeship.
LM: Oh, yes. I was working as a tradesman.
AM: So you worked as a plumber?
LM: Yes, but I was getting fed up with it, and I was missing service life, and I wanted to get back into it. And the pity of it is, once I got back in, with the travel you did, and that, my wife thoroughly enjoyed it.
AM: Where did you meet your wife?
LM: Oh, I met, during the war we were at Bristol, we went out to Bath in the building business, working on bomb damage repairs, and we were doing work, just at the bottom of the road (unclear), and we were working on it, and that's how I come to meet her. She was fifteen and I was seventeen then.
AM: So that was before the RAF, even? You met her before you joined?
LM: Oh, yeah, oh yeah.
AM: And when did you get married? What year did you get married?
LM: Got married in forty seven, June forty seven. We were engaged, and that was that. Well, after I come out, I come out in May forty seven, and we got married in the June.
AM: When you went back in, then, so you did your plumbing, and then you went back in to the RAF, what did you do? What sort of things did you do?
LM: Air traffic control.
AM: You were in air traffic control.
LM: Yeah, air traffic control, straight on. And it was fantastic. Everybody was so kind to me. Don't matter what rank, station commanders, it was just what ribbons I had, and I was better treated then than we were at the end of the war, at Compton Bassett, and places like that. Because they were all wingless wonders there.
AM: So how long were you in air traffic control for? (pause) Ish.
LM: Oh, from fifty three to seventy one.
AM: Oh, right through.
LM: Yeah, I enjoyed it. Lovely. Yes, I trained on GC, ground control approach as a director, what they call a director, on that, and then became a local controller.
AM: Which airport were you based at?
LM: I was at, down at (pause) down at (pause), oh I can't think, it's where all the helicopters are down south, Chinooks and all that, I'll soon tell you.
AM: It's gone.
LM: Odiham! I was just going to pick the tankard up, because when I left there they presented me with a tankard. I was at Odiham, and, oh, that's right, because while we were at Odiham we had a mobile x-ray that come round, and they found Renee had TB. So she went into a sanatorium that way, and they transferred her to one outside Bath. Of course, we had young children, and mother, not, two of my sister in laws lived in Bath, one had the two girls, we had two girls then, and then there was two boys, and mother had the two boys in Bath. So I was then posted to, I'd been at Chivenor, that's right, I'd gone from Chivenor up to Colerne outside Bath, so that's it, they moved me to Colerne on compassionate grounds, because my children were in Bath, and they did that. And then from Colerne, when everything was, my wife was back and that, went up to Dishforth. Dishforth, Dishforth out to Germany, Wildenrath in Germany. So that was that. That's where I, and then I come home from Wildenrath in Germany, and, where did I go? Trying to think. (long pause). Oh God, no, I can't remember where I was when I came home.
AM: Oh well, it doesn't matter. What was it like being back in Germany?
LM: It was lovely. I was at Wildenrath, and the Dutch people we used to go on a roam on, and the German people were alright. In fact, on Wildenrath they had what they called GSO, German Service, and oh they were using what they had, huts and that, as married quarters. It was great. I enjoyed it. I can't think where I was. Oh, of course I was, I was down at Halton when I finished. Yeah, that's right, I went to Halton. I was the sole, all they had a Halton was a grass airfield, and Chipmonks for air experience for the cadets, you know, the apprentices, and I was the sole controller there. It was lovely. Had a fantastic time there.
AM: Brilliant. Well, thank you very much. That was really interesting.
LM: Sorry I couldn't remember names going through.
AM: Oh, don't you worry about that.
LM: But they're all down there, and Gary's got a copy of the recommendation for the DFC.
AM: Thanks, Len. I'll make sure we take a copy of that, then.
LM: Oh, I think I've got another spare copy.
AM: We'll find one. 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 Len McNamara
Creator
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Annie Moody
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-07-22
Format
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00:40:20 audio recording
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AMcNamara150722
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
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Royal New Zealand Air Force
Royal Canadian Air Force
Description
An account of the resource
Len McNamara was born in Bristol in 1924. An apprentice plumber, he joined the Air Training Corps and volunteered for aircrew. Discusses his initial training at various stations, the gunnery course he passed with merit and honours, an escape and evasion course he attended, and crewing up with Pete Catterswife, a Kenyan. He flew Whitleys and then then converting to Halifaxes. Len was posted to 10 Squadron at RAF Melbourne. He discusses mine laying and bombing operations, aircraft damage, social and service life at RAF Lisset, military ethos and the award of the Distinguished Flying Cross. After sinus problems, he was a reserve gunner going on operations with various aircrews. Len was posted to RAf Langar as an instructor, but volunteered as second tour gunners and was posted to RAF Woolfox Lodge to crew up with a New Zealand pilot on Lancasters. Discusses engine problems, Kenyan, Canadian Australian, New Zealand and English pilots, talks about Operation Manna and discusses 75 New Zealand Squadron. At the end of the war he finished up at RAF Ringway as parachute instructor.
Len was then posted to various locations abroad, did a code and cipher course and was demobilised. He went back to his plumbing apprenticeship, got married, settled in Bath but wanted to get back to service life. He started back as an airman and went into the air traffic control branch serving at different stations in Great Britain and Germany until he retired in 1971. Len was into post war meetings and memorial visits.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Germany
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Yorkshire
England--Cheshire
England--Rutland
Sri Lanka
Singapore
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1945
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending revision of OH transcription
10 OTU
10 Squadron
75 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
bombing
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
crewing up
demobilisation
Distinguished Flying Cross
escaping
evading
final resting place
Halifax
Halifax Mk 2
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
military ethos
military living conditions
military service conditions
mine laying
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Operational Training Unit
pilot
RAF Abingdon
RAF Langar
RAF Lissett
RAF Melbourne
RAF Ringway
RAF Woolfox Lodge
recruitment
training
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/549/8811/AKirkDJB150610.2.mp3
b456a190eebd5766875b7ddfcfe95964
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
Kirk, Dennis
Dennis John Bonser Kirk
D J B Kirk
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Kirk, DJB
Description
An account of the resource
Two oral history interviews with Dennis Kirk. He served in a reserved occupation but also in the Home Guard and as an air raid warden. On 5 March 1943, Lancaster ED549 crashed attempting to land at RAF Langar. Denis Kirk was first on the scene and helped the only survivor.
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
2015-11-15
2015-06-10
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.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command centre, the interviewer is Clare Bennett, the interviewee is Mr Dennis Kirk. The interview is taking place at Mr Kirk’s home at Plungar, Nottinghamshire, on the tenth of June twenty fifteen. Right Dennis, so whereabouts were you born?
DK: I was born at Barkestone, in the next village, and my brother and my sister, and my father and my mother lived at Harby Farm, Barkestone
CB: What date was that?
DK: That was er, we lived there ‘till nineteen twenty-nine, then we moved to [unclear] Plungar in nineteen twenty-nine.
CB: So, you were born, in?
DK: April the twenty fifth nineteen twenty [laughs].
CB: And, do you remember much of your early life?
DK: Well, I, I had a good life, you know, in, in the village. Everybody played games and that, and the school was at Barkestone you see, but then, when we moved to Plungar in nineteen twenty-nine, we had to walk to Barkestone school every day then, in the morning and then back in the afternoon [laughs]. I played all sorts of games, but er, it was a nice little school it was, yeh.
CB: Was your family in farming then?
DK: Yep, yeh, well the family started farming in about seventeen ninety [laughs] but, I didn’t want to be a farmer, I wanted to be a wheelwright or a butcher, but you did what your parents told you in those days [laughs], you didn’t tell them what you wanted to do [laughs].
CB: They told you, so what did you do after school, you know, after you left school?
DK: Well, I helped the butcher for, at weekends, used to help him deliver two or three, when I left school, and then ‘cos I worked on the farm from then on, yes.
CB: And, war was started, so you’d be about er, twenty, something like that?
DK: I was twenty-one when the plane crashed, yes
CB: Right, and you were in the Home Guard?
DK: Home guard and fire watch, yes.
CB: So, was it because you were in a reserved occupation, that you were into farming?
DK: Yeh, at the time, you could have been called up, but you never, you had the medical but you weren’t called up, you see, but one or two round here were kept because the short of, short of, labour round here at the time, yes.
CB: Did you want to join the forces?
DK: I would have liked to join the forces, yeh, but didn’t have the chance, no [laughs].
CB: So, you did your Home Guard duties?
DK: Yeh, yeh.
CB: And, so, what did that -?
DK: Well, we used to have a, have a, on a Wednesday night, in the, used to do some training there, then every Sunday morning, we either did some training or in this [unclear] hill, had er, had places to jump into pits, and things to climb across [laughs], whether it made any good, I don’t know [laughs]. And then at times they would take us into, up to Eaton, where there was a lot of disused mines, where we used to use a Lewis gun or a Sten gun, but it was interesting a lot of it, but, you mean, you thought you were doing a bit of good for the country, but it was, when we were on the bridge, we never saw a soul at all, we’d just got the guns and rifle there [laughs].
CB: Of course, I’ve got to mention Dads Army, haven’t I, you’ve watched that. Does that bear any resemblance to what you did?
DK: No, [emphasis] no [laughter] But, anyway, we enjoyed the, you had a night out, once, I say, different people, each week, I mean, old people and the young ones as well. This chappie was with me, he weren’t a young chap when playing cards, he were good company [laughs].
CB: So, the, the night that we’re interested in, it was obviously just an ordinary night for you that night?
DK: yeh, well, we’d just walked up the village, we always checked in the village for lights and things, if any lights on.
CB: And this is March the fifth nineteen forty-three?
DK: Nineteen forty-three, yeh.
CB: Yes.
DK: We was just walking down back to the Home Guard hut there, and we heard this plane making a weird sort of a noise. Funny, I can’t describe the noise it made and it just went dead, and the plane just went down there and of course, we expected to find it on the rail track, but when we got down there, there was only a survivor on the rail track.
CB: Did it, was there a loud crash or?
DK: Well, it must have woken all the people up there you see, but it just went straight down.
CB: Right.
DK: And, we got the laddie off the railway line and took him there, and just, then me friend and I were walking down to see the plane and we saw these three men thrown out in a matter of space as this, they must have come out the front of the plane, and then the rear, he was in the turret upside down, but there was two more dead in the plane.
CB: So, you are right up close now?
DK: Say?
CB: You were right up close to this Lancaster?
DK: Oh yes, yes, we walked all round it, you see, yeh.
CB: You didn’t think it was going to explode or anything like that?
DK: No, no, I said, ‘any bombs?’, they said, ‘no, no’, so I think they must have run out of fuel or something.
CB: Who did you ask?
DK: Well, no one said that, but someone said, perhaps a shortage of fuel, in one of the letters, I think it said from -
CB: But, at the time, but at the time, you went up to it, you didn’t know whether it, bombs or anything else?
DK: No, within, within, quarter of an hour, the whole lot of serving aircrew, airmen from Lanc, came running to the plane, you see.
CB: I see.
DK: But then we walked away and left, left it to them because it weren’t our responsibility, you see, no.
CB: So, you could see the bodies, in and around it?
DK: Yeh, yeh, yeh.
CB: And, also, one of the, the crew had been thrown out, you say and landed on the -?
DK: On the railway line, yeh.
CB: And, did you go up to him?
DK: We, we, got him off the rail track and took him to the houses, yeh.
CB: So, did you think he was dead or could you see that he was alive?
DK: He was walking on the railway.
CB: Oh, right.
DK: No, no, we couldn’t see his face, but I think he had a head injury, but what, but what they said didn’t they, Joan?
JK: Someone said he had severe head injuries, but he was, he was, compos mentis, because you said to him, ‘are there any bombs on the plane?’, and he said, ‘no, we, we disposed’, you know, ‘we got rid of them all’.
DK: He was only eighteen, but he, he walked pretty well on the rail track, I mean got him off the rail track and took him to the farmhouse there, so, what happened to them, I said everything was lost until nineteen, until sixty-three years afterwards, when they found this, this chappie found a bit of metal.
CB: Oh, can you tell me about that, who was that, was it er, somebody with a metal detector?
DK: The man in the, who was a metal detector and he, what he said was, he found this bit of metal, that’s in Waltham, Waltham museum, all the details there, and er, he kept it for two years [laughs] in his shed, didn’t know what it was. And another gentleman on this village said, ‘ask Dennis, ‘cos he saw a plane crash there’, but erm, it was very interesting to, no one seemed to know what part of the plane it was, where from the plane it had come off, but, in the end I think someone did sort it out, where, where it, which part of the plane it was.
CB: So, you saw them, you saw the crash and the survivor?
DK: Yeh.
CB: And then they came running from RAF Langar?
DK: Yeh.
CB: To pick up the -
DK: Yeh, ‘cos it was in, if it had gone another half mile, he would have landed, but he wasn’t going the right way, he was going, if you like, would you like to see the memorial or not? [laughs].
CB: Yes, we can have a look later.
DK: He was going, how to explain, he was going straight, he would have gone to Bingham, instead of, at the rate he was going, yeh.
CB: Right, did you think he sort of lost his bearings as to where he was going, or -?
DK: Well, I think, I feel for sure, he’d run out of, he couldn’t go no further, no.
CB: Right.
DK: But, but, he, they say that then or some years or so, will never really know what happened to, until this chappie found this metal, then after that Tim Chamberlin found where three of the crew were buried at Long Bennington, but - [laughs].
CB: So, it had, he’d done a forced landing, hasn’t, hadn’t he?
DK: Yeh, er, yeh.
CB: So, er, with, as you say with little fuel.
DK: Well, if he had gone on that way, he’d have landed on the airfield, he was going, not in the right direction for the airfield, but you see below here is an old airfield from the first World War [laughs], but whether he’d got that on his map I don’t know [laughs].
CB: When did they come and take the rest of the plane away?
DK: I say, we had to work again, it was cleared, it was cleared up the same day, yeh.
CB: Oh.
DK: On one of these long, what do they call them, they used to collect them at [unclear], you see, but this plane weren’t smashed up a lot, no.
CB: No.
DK: No, but it, they say, I’ve read in books about it, flying, the pilot, there was not a spark at all.
CB: No, well no bombs and no fuel, so -
DK: No, no, no, there couldn’t have been any fuel, ‘cos I’m sure it would have caught fire.
CB: So, the, the gentleman with the metal detector has found this, and then research starts on it, on this, on this crash I take it?
DK: Pardon?
CB: Did research start then on to what had happened?
DK: Yeh, it was Chamberlin, Tim Chamberlin, who started it all up, you see, then of course, the village got involved, and then that’s when we did a collection and well. Tim got the, Tim got the whole service involved himself, didn’t he, Joan.
JK: Yes, he found the erm, Padre that retired.
DK: Air Force Padre, yeh.
JK: Air Force Padre to take the service and erm -
DK: No.
CB: Yes, the Venerable Air Vice Marshal, Robin Turner.
JK: He organised the service, for the Lancaster and Spitfire to have a flypast after the service.
CB: Who did the research to find the families of the crew?
JK: Well, we all kind of did a bit. Tim did the Canadians because he had a brother in Canada, erm, I don’t know how we found the Barbadian, erm, I think it was David Webb that found -
DK: He found the Barbadians on the wotsit.
JK: Yes, he found the Barbadian, I think, on the, by doing some research on the internet, and erm, then various people, we found out where they were all, the English people were all buried, and did research into the different areas where they were buried, but of course, why we couldn’t find out, how we couldn’t find out er, about them from that. We put adverts in newspapers and you know, in the local area but er, then you see we found the others, quite a few of them had moved, because the, well, found out that the ones from Tyneside had moved down to Daventry, and the Portsmouth ones had moved to Southampton, so we couldn’t, never occurred to us to find out in the Southampton area or the Daventry area. We did all the research in the local area where they were buried.
CB: So, you had, erm, a dedication of the memorial?
DK: Yeh, yeh.
CB: Erm, to the crew of Lancaster ED 549 of a 100 Squadron, on the twenty second of September twenty twelve.
DK: Yeh.
CB: And, erm, [pause] as you say, the Venerable Air Vice Marshal Robin Turner.
JK: That’s right.
CB: Led the, and did erm, did the survivors?
DK: There’s that, what we found at the start, you can have it [unclear], that’s all we found to start off with, you can have that book as well.
CB: Thank you. So, the survivor, erm, Sergeant Davies, erm, he was, his family, erm, he’d died by this time hadn’t he, died in his fifties?
DK: Oh yes.
JK: Died in his fifties.
CB: So, who, who was, did his, some of his family manage to come to the service?
DK: No, no.
JK: No, because we couldn’t find, we found about them after, oh I think it was in the November, after the service, and it was because he was doing, he was asked to do some, his father was asked to do some, no, his son was asked to do some research when he was living in Cyprus, erm [pause] on Bomber, erm, bomb gunnery instruction and it was through that, that he found out, about the erm, the crash here and er contacted us. And he rang up and just said, ‘I’m the survivor, er, I’m the son of the survivor of the aircraft’, [laughs] so, we were all a bit gobsmacked [laughs].
CB: So, you managed to find -
JK: Because the Air Force didn’t know, couldn’t tell us whether he had actually survived or not.
CB: Oh, so you managed to find the family of the Canadian and er -
JK: Yes, yes.
DK: Yes, we found the Canadian.
CB: And the family from Barbados, but not the, not the English survivor.
JK: That’s what we couldn’t understand. I mean, the one that we found out about after was the Hallet family, er, and Emily Hallet rang us from Southampton, but we got the names of the brothers of the, the man that was killed and we found out where they, where they lived, erm, and I say, one lived in Nottingham, and I searched through all the Nottingham telephone directory and rang every Hallet in the Nottingham telephone directory. One was in Northampton, and I forget where the other one was, there were three brothers and er, but no success at all.
DK: That’s, that’s where the plane crashed though, if you like, we can take you down and see where it is [unclear], it’s quite, it’s a rough road, if you like see where the memorial is, would you like to see it, the memorial?
CB: Yes, we can do that later.
DK: The people, the people, Gills of Newark did the memorial, because they did it for a reasonable price you see, but people all in this village contributed to the cost of that, there’s still a bit left in the kitty, to keep it, and our neighbour he did, did something else with it, where the memorial is, yeh. But Tim, now, the Chairman, is now, is redoing it, a book now about the whole families, at the time he’d only got the Barbados and the Canadian, but he’s doing a new book.
JK: Updating the book.
DK: Updating it, yeh, it’s very interesting [unclear] volunteer, yeh, while you’re talking to me.
JK: He’s an American.
CB: Well, you live quite close to RAF Langar, so, and other, and other airfields round here, so you must have seen other crashes and -?
JK: Well, yes, I said, I saw the one which crashed in Belvoir Woods, that plane flew from Syerston, a trainer plane, that killed them all, then, then, there’s one crash near Belvoir, that was all, just one survivor there, then the one crashed in [unclear] Branston there, and there was, no survivors there, then, then at Barnstone, that little village opposite Langar there, there was one crash in Langar there, no survivors and er -
CB: Did you ever get used to all these crashes then?
DK: Well, you see [laughs], you see the Lancs were flying over regular and you just took it for granted that they’d crash you see, then the one which blew up on the airfield, there was some ones not taking the ones not, the ones not, taking a certain, I don’t know, [unclear] it blew up you see, yeh, but er, no but is was er, you’d see them taking off on the way from Langar there, yeh.
CB: So, you carried, carried on your Home Guard duties until the end of the war?
DK: Yeh, yeh [laughs].
CB: And then you went back to farming, I believe?
DK: Farming, we were farming at the time as well, you see, farming in the daytime, yeh [unclear] [laughs].
CB: Did you find wreckage as you were farming round here or -?
DK: No, no, [unclear] you see, but er, let’s see, in, in [unclear] where was it? They came to bomb, bomb Derby one night during the war, but they diverted to Nottingham and did a lot of damage in Nottingham, then they dropped all the bombs round here.
CB: Right.
DK: And they dug two, time bombs off the farm and we had fifteen craters filled in [laughs], but no one was injured, no one, no one was killed, right from Cropwell Bishop to Plungar, they just scattered the bombs, [laughs] [telephone ringing] but we were lucky really, yeh. But they say you [unclear] the war, but you met a lot of lovely people, and these people who came to the dedication, you couldn’t wish for nicer families. To me, because they had a house at Normanton near the Bottesford airfield and they were very impressed with that, after we had done this function that day. My wife did that in the morning, about thirty from abroad you see, then we had the church service, and so many went back to the village hall, was a meal for everyone, the rest came here [laughs] and er, had a lovely, er, I know it was war, but it was really nice, meeting up with them. And so, then Tim found out, Tim the Chairman, found out about the museum at Waltham, so we visited that then.
CB: Do you think that the people of Plungar, erm, sort of came together?
DK: Yeh, yeh.
CB: With this memorial and finding out, and the ceremony?
DK: Mr David Webb who lived at [unclear], he did a lot towards it and then, I said, he guaranteed to find out as much as he could, and Chamberlin got, but at Bennington, there’s an old chappie still alive, he cares for those graves, for I don’t know how many years until he wasn’t capable of doing it, so someone else has taken over since then, but er, [laughs].
CB: So, it’s been er, it’s been sort of, positive effect?
DK: Yeh.
CB: On the, on the village this, to have this memorial and this event?
DK: Yeh, people who have never set foot in church [laughs], I say, my son was going to play the organ but he got this [unclear], my cousin he played for the service but [unclear], he played for the service, and we had the Reverend [unclear], he took part in the service, and I rang the bell [laughs]. And my wife, she, she put, you know, people into which places they wanted to be and we had the boy there, because as they lined the footpath [laughs] so, it was really nice, I won’t forget it you see, no.
CB: When the erm, crash happened did any official come and interview you or anything like that?
DK: No, no, they sent nothing, never heard a thing from them. I know a chap who went down to have a look at it and they told him to get out, so we left it. When the plane went down, we walked round, and when this drove of crew came from Langar airfield to check on it, we moved away and maybe just forgot [laughs].
CB: So, they picked up the remains of the crew, and also, the survivor and then, took them away?
DK: So, where, where they took the dead people too, you know, I don’t know where they took them, where they took those too, but we, as I say, and this chap we moved away and left it with them. It was their job, yeh, but I’d never seen a dead, a dead man before you see, but they were just in an awful state, so they must have gone out the front of the plane, I don’t know, yeh.
CB: With the force of it, had thrown them out I suppose?
DK: Yeh.
CB: Well, Dennis, that’s -
DK: If there’s anything else to show you while I’m at it then, [background noise] but they were very good to me, weren’t they?
CB: 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
A name given to the resource
Interview with Dennis Kirk. One
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Clare Bennett
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-06-10
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AKirkDJB150610
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.
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
Civilian
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:22:34 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Dennis Kirk was born in 1920, to farming parents, in the village of Barkestone in Nottinghamshire. He says that he didn’t want to be a farmer but when he left school he had to work on the farm. When the war started he wanted to join up but because farming was a reserved occupation, he couldn’t, so he joined the Home Guard instead. He relates how, on 5 March 1943, whilst on patrol at night, he witnessed the crash of Lancaster ED549, in which six of the seven crew were killed. He tells how he helped the injured survivor to a nearby house before personnel arrived from nearby RAF Langar. He describes how, 63 years later, the discovery, by metal detector, of a part from the aircraft stirred up memories of the crash and prompted research into the event. He tells of how the whole village joined in, collecting for a memorial and trying to locate the relatives of the crew. A memorial ceremony was arranged, presided over by a retired RAF chaplain and a Spitfire flypast. A memorial stone, paid for by the village, and an information board were unveiled at the crash site.
Dennis also goes on to describe two other wartime crashes in the area.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-03-05
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Barkestone
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Vivienne Tincombe
civil defence
crash
final resting place
Home Guard
Lancaster
memorial
RAF Langar
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/549/8812/AKirkDJB151130.1.mp3
c049e4214c8ef271b87110e8d887eb23
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
Kirk, Dennis
Dennis John Bonser Kirk
D J B Kirk
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Kirk, DJB
Description
An account of the resource
Two oral history interviews with Dennis Kirk. He served in a reserved occupation but also in the Home Guard and as an air raid warden. On 5 March 1943, Lancaster ED549 crashed attempting to land at RAF Langar. Denis Kirk was first on the scene and helped the only survivor.
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
2015-11-15
2015-06-10
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.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DE: So this is an interview with Dennis Kirk for the International Bomber Command Digital Archive. My name is Dan Ellin, we are in Plungar and it is the 30th of November 2015, and also in the room are –
ET: Ernest Twells from Barkestone-le-Vale who’s a friend of Dennis Kirk.
DE: Thank you.
AT: Anne Twells, also from Barkston.
JK: Joan Kirk, Dennis’s wife.
DE: Thank you very much. Dennis could you tell me a little bit about your early life and where you grew up?
DK: I was born at Barkston in 1920, 25th of April and went to Barkston school ‘til I was, ‘til, ‘til I left and came to Plungar in twenty – we came to live in Plungar in twenty nine. But in those it was a lovely village and everybody joined in and you played your games and you know, really, really nice living there. And a few very nice school teachers at the time, a Mrs Gulliver, a Miss Whittaker and a Miss Thorpe, they were the teachers in those days. Then we came to Plungar, but you see, then when we got to Plungar we had to walk everyday from Plungar to Barkston school to get there eight o’clock in the morning [laughs] and sometimes we came home for dinner and sometimes we stayed there full, full time. And then, then where we came, when I became eleven, you were moved to Battersby school. I was at Battersby school ‘til, ‘til I was fourteen, then left school and stayed to work on the farm.
DE: Mhm.
DK: Which I didn’t, I didn’t want to be farmer [laughs] I wanted to be a joiner [emphasis] or, or a joiner or a blacksmith you see –
JK: What?
DK: In those days your parents said what you were going to do –
DE: Mhm.
DK: Not like [laughs] it is today. So I had a good life, and of course I stayed, stayed on the farm and, and helped for a long time, and then when the war came we, it became very busy, and – so when they want someone to join the Home Guard, or join the Home Guard or the fire watch and this night in nineteen forty, forty –
JK: Three [emphasis].
DK: Forty –
JK: Three.
DK: Forty-three was it? Yep in 1943, we just been round the village to check if there was any lights on, Tom Moles and myself, and on our way back we heard this aircraft coming, and suddenly it went dead and we thought it had crashed on the railway line below the village. So we went down to see what had happened and getting onto the rail track we bumped into this young man, and I said to him ‘are there any bombs on the plane?’ He said ‘no we’ve dropped all the bombs.’ And then we got him off the railway line, which is next to the canal, and we took him to Grange farm where Mr and Mrs Bell lived, and they’d been in the seventies and he took care of him. I don’t know how long for but we went down to see where the plane had crashed. We found it – wasn’t on the railway line it was just below [emphasis] the railway line, and never seen anything like it before. And there was three, three thrown out at the front, there was a Barbados man in the centre and there was another two each side, and then we walked to the rear end and the rear gunner, he was dead inside the, in his turret, but we never saw the other couple. So we started moving away then then the fire engine came, but it, they had a look and said [unclear] ‘cause nothing they could do, and without, the ground [unclear] aircrew, well ground staff from Langar Airfield, it was only about half a mile away.
DE: Mhm.
DK: So, so we left it and went back to our Home Guard hut ‘til – now you see, when you did Home Guard in the winter time, you signed on at seven ‘til half past five in the morning, but in the summer time you weren’t on ‘til ten to half past five [laughs] in the morning, and we finished half an hour – but that was it, nothing more was heard of it and then it would be about, what was it, sixty years ago –
JK: Sixty years ago.
DK: Did you say? Pardon?
JK: Mm. Pardon?
DK: Sixty years after when he found it –
JK: Well yes, yeah –
DK: Bolton [emphasis].
JK: It would be, hmm.
DK: And they said that John Bolton found this part, kept it in his garden shed, and then someone said ‘see Dennis’ and he said ‘what would it be’ and we found it was a piece of metal from a bomber [emphasis]. Then I contacted Jim Chamberlain who had associations with Bomber Command and he sorted that booklet out [emphasis].
DE: Mhm.
DK: But other than that I – it was a shock to see three people lying dead there you see, something you’d never seen before [laughs].
ET: Didn’t you say though they looked as though they were asleep Dennis?
DK: Pardon?
ET: You said they looked as though they were asleep.
DK: They were lying there -
ET: When?
DK: They were lying just like this here, so much apart, I can see, can see, see ‘em to this day, I can see the Barbados man in the centre now but –
DK: Yeah. But, you see but all, from then on, every book which was produced said the plane burned out.
DE: Mhm.
DK: But there wasn’t a spark at all. You could just hear the engines flip, cooling off there, but that was it so. But then my wife contacted Alan [?] didn’t he, and she said they were diverted to Scampton [emphasis] where it wasn’t safe to land, then they sent them to Normanton, Bottesford, but they came round here -
DE: Mhm.
DK: Some years ago –
JK: It was misty at the time –
DE: I see.
JK: And that’s why they were diverted.
DE: Hmm.
JK: [Unclear] aircraft, airfield.
DK: And some years ago I bumped into a chappy from Harby who’s father’s on the, their look out post you see, and they saw this plane go down he said he did two circles then went down but he wasn’t in the right direction to for Langar Airfield. But it, well [unclear] it could have been on Langar Airfield, but he was going straight down instead of to airfield that was the sad [emphasis] part about it, yeah.
DE: I see so it was, so they were close but –
DK: Yeah.
DE: Mm.
DK: Mm.
JK: And with it not burning out [emphasis] we think that they had just run out of fuel –
DK: They’d been, burning –
JK: Because they’d been diverted to two or three airfields before they arrived here.
DK: See where the three lads are buried in Bennington – report there said ‘it had burned out’ –
DE: Mhm.
DK: But we said ‘no,’ there wasn’t a spark you see, no – it had just gone, yeah.
DE: So was it, was the aircraft all pretty much all there then?
DK: All [emphasis] there, I suppose the undercarriage would still be up would it Ernest?
ET: He might have actually put it down –
DK:‘Cause it seemed level you see.
DE: Mm.
DK: The thing was, where the railway head was, it was here, the rear to it was almost – so how [emphasis] they’d missed the rail track I do not [emphasis] know.
DE: Mm. Is the railway on an embankment there then?
DK: It’s, it’s still there –
DE: Mm.
DK: It was, it was a fair [unclear]. In my days all the hedgerows on the railway were cut, nicely trimmed so, you couldn’t of got through the hedge so I often wondered how, how he landed on the, on the, on the rail track –
DE: Mm.
DK: When he was thrown out the plane, he was a mid upper. What was he, a mid upper?
JK: Was he – I can’t remember. It’s in the book.
ET: Didn’t you also say Dennis –
DK: So if he was thrown out there, but you see the rail track would be as high as this bungalow [emphasis] so.
DE: Mm.
DK: No one seems to answer that – how he was thrown [emphasis] out.
DE: Quite, yeah.
JK: [Unclear].
DK: But the thing was, when we met, when we met his son, who came from, doctor from [unclear], he never talked about his air mates, you see.
DE: Mm.
DK: We been round the council –
JK: The thing was though –
DK: After he’d left the Grange Farm with the Bell, Bell family, he was staying at Normanton I think then they took him to Wrawkby [?] –
JK: Wrawkby –
DK: Where they took most of the crashed people –
DE: I see.
DK: That’s all I know about it [laughs].
JK: But you didn’t know at the time that he was injured because –
DK: No.
JK: He walked onto the Bell’s with you didn’t he?
DE: Mm.
JK: But the son [emphasis] said that he obviously had quite a severe head [emphasis] injury.
ET: Mm.
DK: So whether he’d been through a –
JK: But it wasn’t an obvious [emphasis] –
DE: Right.
JK: To Dennis on the railway line.
ET: The actual railway line now is disused, it’s when BT [?] came and shut them down [JK laughs] but when Dennis say at the time it was a good job it was three in the morning because it could probably have been hit by a train, you don’t know –
DE: Mm. Do you think it’s – do you think the three men were [emphasis] thrown out or do you think it’s, he, he dragged [emphasis] them out of the aircraft?
DK: No, he, he was nowhere near them you see. No, no, they must have been thrown. But they were, they were laying so neatly, one here, one there, yeah.
DE: Mm.
DK: And there’s any – I don’t suppose there’s anyone left on at Langar who remembers it because [laughs] there’s not many around like me.
DE: Mm, quite.
DK: No, no –
ET: Dan did say, if he, if he dragged them out and then he thought if he went on the railway line he’d, he’d actually end up somewhere.
DE: I, I don’t know.
ET: You don’t know do you?
DK: No it’s a, it’s a – at the time of the crash it was a grass field, but now the farmer’s planted trees now but, I could take you – when, when Tom Moles and myself walked up there, I can see the fence which we got over to get into the field and saw these, these men there.
DE and ET: Mm.
JK: But the mystery is how that man got on the railway line isn’t it?
DK: Yes that’s what, that’s what [laughs].
JK: The survivor, how he got onto it.
DE: Mm.
DK: Could he have been thrown out?
DE: Who knows? Who knows? No.
DK: No. But they certainly wouldn’t have got through the hedgerow, see in those days railway hedges were neat and tidy, and weren’t, where the bridge is, there’s no bridge now you see, and he wouldn’t have got it up, up the bridge because the bridge was over the railway as well.
DE and ET: Mm.
DK: But no it –
DE: And then what happened to the aircraft then?
DK: Well we never went back you see, we were farmers weren’t we, had to work. They must have moved it away the following day. There’s a lad in our, who’s, who rarely got, didn’t go on the computer [unclear], but he – my wife catered for it but it, and his family, put in – for thirty years, and then, then one day I was doing the garden, doing the garden, and he came up the drive, I was just inside the garden there doing it, and he said ‘you’re bloody selfish, you want all the limelight.’ I said ‘what?’ to him. In fact his [unclear] started shouting to me again, said ‘you’re bloody selfish, you want all the limelight.’ He said, he said ‘you never went anywhere near that crash.’
DE: Oh [JK laughs].
DK: So, so I mean, he’s my age, he’s been a pal all my life but it really grieved me for thinking that –
DE and TE: Mm.
DK: I’d seen enough of the [laughs]. So we haven’t had anything else to do with one another since.
DE: Oh dear.
DK: But no [laughs].
JK: Well he went down to the crash later [emphasis] didn’t he?
DK: Yeah, yeah. You see after we got the laddy off the railway line which is just down here you see, we walked down this, and across the field, and that’s when we went to see – but as soon as the RAF lot were down we thought it wasn’t our business to be – we were in Home Guard uniform but we moved away so as there no hassle you see.
DE: Oh I see, yeah.
DK: But the two must have been – but I’ve often thought to myself [laughs] I’d ought to have gone and touched one of those men to see if he was still –
DE: Mhm.
DK: But at that mo – you’re so taken aback with something like that [laughs] hmm.
DE: Mm.
DK: But no, I’m pleased they did a memorial to them and, hmm.
DE: And the memorial, there was nothing until sixty years afterward so –
DK: Pardon?
DE: There was nothing until sixty years afterwards, quite recently –
DK: No, no, no. No one ever mentioned it you see. There were planes crashing all around, no one ever mentioned it, the crash at Plungar, but –
DE: Mhm.
DK: But tell you, there’s crashes all the way around here.
DE: Can you tell me a bit about some of the other crashes then?
DK: Pardon?
DE: Can you tell me about some of the other crashes?
DK: Well. The, the first crash I came across was in, in, at the top of the Wood Hill at Barkston, what, a plane from Syerston crashed through there, and then, then later on there was another one crashed at Belvoir. And by all accounts the one at Belvoir – if this is true, all accounts – the only survivor he got a – but he could hear a clock striking at Belvoir Castle, and he crawled to Belvoir Castle [DE makes noise of disbelief]. And then the nanny there cared for him and got him into the Grantham Hospital.
DE: Mhm.
DK: But the one at Brampton [?], I mean you read that one, that’s what happened at Brampton you see, then there was one crashed in Heaton [?]. I don’t know where it was from but there’s a laddy in the village who saw the crash when it had happened and then there was one crashed at Barnston, the church is here it crashed in the field below [laughs], but the one which blew up, on the Saturday night they were taking off to bomb somewhere, and I was, I was cutting the lawn at the farm there, and all of a sudden whoosh, and smoke went out every chimney and the lot blew up. And then nothing more ‘til I read it in a book after it.
DE: Mhm.
DK: Hmm. Then that’s that one lady [unclear], you’ve read about [unclear], and that’s about it [laughs]. ‘Cause yeah, they were crashing all around [emphasis].
ET: Hmm.
DK: ‘Cause after, after, after we’d opened the war memorial that day, the corporal came from Melton didn’t he? When they came and had a cup of tea here where they, with the lady.
JK: Which was that? I don’t know – there was so many people [JK and DK laugh].
DK: And he was involved in a Wellington in Melton Mowbray at the time, but there’s perhaps more details in some of these places – sort it out really.
DE: Mm.
DK: Yeah.
DE: Mm [DK laughs]. The, the one that exploded on takeoff –
DK: Yeah.
DE: How close was that to houses?
JK: Very near.
DK: Well my first wife – and the runway was almost, you know where you come behind the point – it wasn’t far away.
DE: About fifteen hundred yards or something like that.
DK: Yeah. And she said at the time, it blew all the windows out.
DE: Mhm.
DK: And fired the petrol out of the plane, fired the hedgerow, but it didn’t do any damage, only the windows, yeah, mm.
DE: I see.
DK: Mm. But we loved to see those [unclear] you see them taking off because [laughs]. Yeah.
DE: Mm.
DK: Mm. So it’s any good to you, what I’ve told you [laughs].
DE: No [emphasis] it’s wonderful stuff, yeah.
ET: [Unclear].
DE: Erm, I wonder if you could tell me a little bit more about what it was like in the village during the war?
DK: Well [laughs] people just carried on doing their jobs and only that night when we were bombed very heavily, but, but no one was injured [emphasis] –
DE: Mhm.
DK: It just, they’d just dropped all their bombs all around [emphasis] they’d just – what did it say on that book?
JK: Oh we, we read the ‘Bletchley Park’ book, and apparently they knew this plane was coming over to bomb Derby from the information at Bletchley, and they diverted it from Derby, they were able to divert the route from Derby to Nottingham. And then they must have had another diversion to bring it back. And they bombed, they put some bombs, dropped some bombs on Nottingham, and then they – I don’t know how they did it. I mean the Bletchley Park –
DK: Just going for a wee [laughs].
JK: They were code breaking, it was quite beyond me in the book [laughs] but they, they diverted eventually from Nottingham and they just dropped the bombs over Plungar [emphasis], and one or two other villages –
DE: Mhm.
JK: On the way back. But it was interesting in the ‘Bletchley Park’ book because it said they knew [emphasis] they were coming to Derby and they shot twenty odd planes down before they reached the country – well, just off the coast, crossing the coast.
DE: I see.
JK: Have you read that book?
DE: I haven’t no.
JK: It’s worth reading.
DE: Okay, I’ll put it on my list.
JK: Yes, do [emphasis]. I was fascinated by it. I didn’t understand the computer business about it [laughs] in it, but the stories. And – this is nothing to do with Plungar but, it said that they knew [emphasis] they were going to bomb Coventry, and they didn’t know what to do, but Churchill said ‘it will have to go ahead, because if the Germans, if they know that they’ve been diverted or it’s been stopped, they’ll know we’ve cracked the Enig – er, cracked the code’ –
DE: Mm.
JK: That will put the end to the Enigma code.
DE: I see, yes. I have heard that, yes.
JK: Mm.
DE: And you were at university in Leicester at the time?
JK: Yes, yes.
DE: What was that like?
JK: Well it was just like a normal little town, they didn’t get that much bombing at all [laughs]. I mean I lived in Leeds [emphasis], but we got very little – I think we had one big raid in Leeds and that was it. I was ill at the time because I was in bed and we were watching it through the bedroom window [laughs].
DE: You didn’t feel the need to go to a shelter then?
JK: No, we didn’t realise it was so near [DE laughs]. We could see all the flashes and hear the noise but – I was in a suburb of Leeds so we didn’t get bombed in the suburb. They were the other side of the river. But it was the doctor that came in the morning to say that the south of the river had been bombed, and I think they’d had a bomb at the hospital too. Leeds General Infirmary.
DE: What did your parents say to you?
JK: Go on?
DE: What did your mum and dad say to you?
JK: I don’t think they said –
DE: No.
JK: In the war, you accepted [emphasis] things –
DE: Hmm.
JK: It was most peculiar really.
DE: Mm.
JK: I mean it was happening so many times and to so many places –
DE: Mhm.
JK: You just accepted what had happened.
DE: Ooh what’s that?
DK: Incendiary bombs.
DE: That’s what I thought it was, yeah [DK laughs].
ET: Don’t put it on the fire [JK, DK and AT laugh].
DK: Oh no, we put one on the fire, and it used to [unclear] we used to throw them on the fire. That’s gone off you see. When they dropped, you see, the striker was in there, and that was sealed off with insulation tape, and that came. And they just used to burn away [laughs].
DE: Mhm.
DK: I’ve had two or three at one time with the fins on still.
DE: Wow.
DK: But all around they kept [laughs]. Are you wanting it?
DE: Oh I don’t know.
DK: You can have it if you like [DE and DK laugh].
DE: Thank you very much. For the tape, I’ve been given a used incendiary bomb, wonderful.
DK: Have you seen one of those Ernest?
ET: Well, I’m worried about Dan having it in his boot and then we’ll see on the news later on that –
DE: Yes [all laugh].
ET: Can I take a picture?
AT: [Unclear].
ET: Do you want to hold it Dennis, with Dan?
DK: Pardon?
ET: Do you want to hold it with Dan?
DE: He wants to take a photograph.
AT [?]: It’s like a Christmas cracker [laughs].
DE: I’ll just pause the tape for a second.
[Tape paused and restarted.]
DE: Start the tape. So where did you find an incendiary bomb Dennis?
DK: In the field.
DE: Uh huh.
DK: See we had two time bombs dug out on the farm –
DE: Mhm.
DK: And [laughs] I remember the last one being dug out. It dropped down, and I was collecting the cows to milk them, and they wouldn’t let me move the cows because this bit of disturbance [laughs]. And this – during the war, the road from Plungar to Barkston was blocked, the road from Stallone to Plungar was blocked, the road from [unclear] was only open road for about a week or more, you see ‘cause there was bombs everywhere [emphasis]. Yeah, mm. Bombs had gone off [laughs] but on the Barkston Lane where you go to where Ernest lives, there was five council houses there, and that had to be brought out ‘cause there was a time bomb dropped in the field opposite where they were. They dropped a time bomb there and two in our field, yeah, mm.
DE: So did someone diffuse those or did they just wait for them to go off?
DK: No they diffused them all, yeah.
DE: Mm.
DK: They don’t [unclear] long time, yeah. Mm. They brought the soldier down from Yorkshire light infantry, they lived in the old school room while they guarded the road ways.
DE: Mhm.
DK: And, at night my mother used to take these soldiers on guard, either some sandwiches or something, to eat.
DE: I see.
DK: We were grateful for what they did, yeah. Mm.
DE: You were, you were saying earlier that you weren’t really short of food here.
DK: Oh no, no. We’d have been better off as we are today if we’d had the same amount of rations [DK and DE laugh]. [Unclear] no, everybody was helpful [emphasis], you see, helped one another same with the probably [unclear] in the garden, everybody shared things. There was never any –
JK: Mm.
DK: Were they? No. And with us having a farm you see there was plenty of milk anybody wanted milk.
DE: Mhm.
DK: I know we were rationed but really not being a – we didn’t know there was a war on in a way [laughs]. Mm, mm.
DE: But it must have been fairly hard work for you if you were keeping watch at night and then working on the farm in the day?
DK: [Laughs] well you got used to it.
JK: Yes, you were at watch at night and when you came off you went and milked – did a five o’clock milking didn’t you [laughs].
DK: Oh yes, that’s what had happened, go and round the cows up and milk the cows. This chappy who was with me, Tom Moles, he was a pal of mine, he was on one of the little engines on the iron horse like up at Belvoir there, he’d all of that but, yeah [laughs] had a good time.
DE: Mhm.
DK: And during the war you see, you met up with so many lovely people – Air Force men and Army lads and you even got the Yanks [emphasis] down here at times.
DE: Did you?
DK: Yeah [laughs]. One night – I must tell you this, one night the Yanks came down here –
JK: [Unclear].
DK: And they came into the pub and had a lot of ale, and then they got the horse out and was riding the horse [laughs] around the village in the morning [DK and DE laugh].
ET: And what about the Land Army?
DK: Pardon?
ET: The Land Girls?
DK: About land – well they associated with the air men, you know. They really enjoyed, they were very pally with them at the, at the Plough at Stallone.
ET: Mhm.
DK: But during the war, you helped out with a Land Girl they did a wonderful job which had never been – well they’ve got a medal now, but for what they did and the type of work they did on the farm, it’d be a dirty job, threshing machines and digging and going to – it wasn’t the best life but they stood up to it well, yeah.
DE: Mhm. And where were they from, the Land Girls?
DK: Well there was one from where [laughs] near where Ernest – I’ll show you a photograph [laughs]. I’ll put some eggs [?] on and [unclear] –
JK: Oh –
DE: I’ll just pause the tape again.
[Tape paused and restarted.]
DE: So you’ve got a – the tape’s started again and you’ve got a newspaper article.
JK: These are made of sawdust –
DE: It’s so nice to be remembered. And these are all Land Girls are they?
DK: Yeah [laughs].
JK: Well it’s alright there, yes.
ET: One of these?
JK: Yes.
DE: So where did the Land Girls live?
DK: In the old Wretch [?] at Stallone –
JK: [Unclear].
ET: It will.
DE: And did you, did you have anything to do with them then?
DK: I fancied them [DK, AT and JK laugh]. I have to tell Ernest – what have you got there?
JK: But you fancied ginger haired ones –
ET: I’ve heard, I’ve heard the ginger haired ones –
DE: Oh right, I see.
DK: Just a second.
DE: But were they more interested in fliers and aircrew then were there?
DK: Oh no they were very [unclear] – that was Bottesford Air Field at the time [papers shuffle]. That was when they drilled for oil in the village –
DE: Mhm.
DK:For ten years. That was a Lancaster which crashed in the Trent near Newark.
DE: Oh, I see. [Papers shuffle] did you ever want to volunteer and serve in one of the armed forces?
DK: I would have liked the opportunity, but you see, you were stuck with the farm with the workers gone.
JK: You weren’t allowed to, were you?
ET: No.
DK: Where’s she gone [papers shuffle].
DE: So the, the station just down the road –
DK: There’s a station at Red Mile.
DE: Mm.
DK: There’s one at Stallone. But they never put a station near to the village, that was the sad thing, quite a way away, hmm. I don’t know where that photograph’s gone.
DE: Did they open during the war, or were they –
DK: Yes, yes, no they, that was one I fancied.
DE: Oh.
DK: But, but she was ginger headed but it didn’t suit my [unclear, laughs].
DE: So that was Amy Tapplin.
DK: She came from Kimberly, Nottingham [laughs]. And they were, they – and that’s after the golden year [unclear].
DE: Oh I see.
DK: I don’t know if you’ll want any of these.
DE: I might take a photo of that page later on I think.
DK: Pardon?
DE: I might take a photo of that page later on if that’s okay.
DK: Yeah.
DE: So the stations that were opened, were they on farmland before, what was farmland before the war?
DK: Yeah, yeah, the stations –
ET: I think Dennis might think you meant railway stations –
DE: No I mean, oh sorry, I mean the RAF stations, the bases.
DK: The Langar one –
DE: Langar.
DK: There was a lot of parachuting from there, and some private planes go. But the Normanton one is quite an industrial station it is, yes.
DE: Now it is, yeah.
DK: Mm.
DE: Before the war was it farmland?
DK: Langar, at Langar before was farmland. But down here, there’s a hundred acre round here –
JK: Round here.
DK: That belonged to the Duke of Rutland, it was air field in the First World War.
DE: Oh I see, wow.
DK: I don’t know of sort of planes it was, but it was made as an airbase – because you can pick maps [unclear] little book there, and it tells you where the air fields were in the First World War, yeah.
DE: Mm. What did the farmers think to losing all the land?
DK: Well [laughs] I think they were compensated well, you see. You see the one at Langar there, think it belonged to two or three farmers, but one man bought it off since then and he’s just passed away, yeah. But it was a wonderful thing to take the land, yeah. But to help the losses [?] out, war out, yeah.
DE: Right. So there wasn’t any resentment, they thought it was a good way of making a few quid then?
DK: Pardon?
DE: It was a good way of making some money was it then, selling your land [AT, JK and ET laugh].
DK: Yes, but the worse thing actually – you were ruled by the War Ag Executive Committee during the war.
DE: Mhm.
DK: And they came round these, to tell you what to do and what not to do. Well they didn’t know a lot about what they were talking about [laughs], they offended a lot of old farmers [laughs].
DE: Because they were telling them what crops to –
JK: Mm.
DK: Mm. With us they said ‘grow potatoes’ Well no way could you grow potatoes ‘cause it was too heavy clay [emphasis] land.
DE: Mhm.
DK: But they wouldn’t listen to you, you just did what they told you [laughs]. Oh dear.
DE: But you were okay because you were a dairy, dairy farmer?
DK: We, we got everything, we got dairy cows and chickens and sheep and fat peas [?] and we worked with horses in those, it wasn’t tractors at that time.
DE: Mm.
JK: You bred –
DK: Pardon?
JK: You bred shire horses didn’t you?
DK: Yeah, mm, mm. We’ve been around since about the 1790s [laughs].
DE: Yeah. Erm, so that’s what it was like working on a farm. What was it like being in the, in the Home Guard?
DK: Well you did a parade every Sunday morning, but we did, we had to do a keep fit in the village [unclear] whether it meant much I don’t know. But in – where the property is built now, we dug a big trench, used to dive into the trench and climb up the [laughs] –
DE: Mhm.
DK: But whether it meant anything I don’t know [laughs].
JK: Dad’s Army [laughs].
DK: But no, we had to have these lessons, and we [phone rings].
JK: Oh.
DK: I was going to say –
JK: Oh it might be the dress makers –
DK: We were taught how to shoot with a Lewis gun, and we had a Stanley gun as well.
DE: Oh really?
DK: Terrible [laughs]. We went to an old disused iron ore pit with a Stanley you see, and this laddy, he – and it wasn’t ejecting the rounds, it kept [laughs].
DE: Wow.
DK: I think the people telling you what to do didn’t know much about it themselves.
ET: Mm.
DK: It was good fun though, yeah.
DE: And was it a mixture of people from the village of all ages –
DK: Yeah, all who wanted to join. Some never joined you see, but no, some of them, my father did with his friend, some were elderly people, but the young was right down to my age, at that age, we were pleased to do something for it.
DE: Mm.
DK: But for the first twelve months, where the canal’s down here, and then the railway – and we were on the railway bridge for twelve, without any cover at all from clocking on at night in the morning. And then we managed to get an old chicken hut and that’s where the Home Guard were [laughs].
DE: Right. And that was your duty, was fire watch basically was it?
DK: Yes, yes. It went around you see, yeah.
DE: Yeah.
DK: No, no I had a good life and I’m still here [laughs].
DE: Indeed, yeah. So what, what happened at the end of the war? What did you do after the war?
DK: Still farming, yeah. But after the war ended, they came round in nineteen, 1953 –
JK: It was my German friend Giezla [?] from Grantham, so I said I’d ring him back [laughs].
DK: Looking for oil.
DE: Mm.
JK: She comes on and she talks and talks and talks for half an hour [laughs].
DK: And then they came to the farm and they drilled at Barkston before the war, the Texans, they drilled at Barkston,
JK: She never stops talking.
DK: They didn’t find any oil, so they came to the farm, and they said to my father want to drill in the stack yard, that was near to the – he said ‘you can go anywhere else other than in the stack yard, and they moved a field up from the stack yard and they found oil straight away at three thousand feet down.
DE: Crikey.
DK: And then we had one there, we had one, two, three, four – we had had five pumps going, but the thing, we didn’t get any for the oil you see –
DE: So how did they –
DK: It belonged to BP and the government.
DE: Mhm.
DK: You were just compensated for the road way to the, where the oil pumps were, and, and they help you out in some way but you didn’t get any for the oil they took, they were very good. I was talking to a chappy, I was talking to a chap who lives in, he’s in Mansfield now but he was a rear gunner in the Lancaster, and he was shot, he crashed somewhere in the East Coast, and he was in hospital for six month, and then he got out and he got a job with a, with a [unclear] electric board, but about two years ago he got a phone call from someone, and it was the pilot [emphasis] off the plane, they were the only two, both thought they were dead –
DE: Oh I see.
DK: They were still alive. He, I’d got a little poem somewhere what he gave me about a rear gunner, I can’t find it, I’d like to find it sometime. But it was a lovely poem, this old chappy put together [laughs] mm.
DE: Mhm.
DK: No it was – everybody were content, they weren’t moaning [emphasis] during the war.
DE: Mm. So how do you feel about the, the crash site, you know, being remembered after so many years, ‘cause I mean it was forgotten about wasn’t it?
DK: Yeah, yeah, could be – no ‘til, what, until this chappy found this bit of metal – I was in the garden one day and he came by and he said, John Bowman [?], he said ‘you know something about the aircraft which crashed do you?’ and so I said ‘yes,’ and then he brought this piece of metal, it’s about this length –
DE: About three foot.
JK: [Unclear] yes.
DK: Mm. And then we contacted Tim Chamberlain, who he had connections with Bomber Command all the time, he does a wonderful job, he’d put two or three talks on at a time, he soon found out that the three are buried in Bennington Churchyard. The three, three that were killed here –
DE: Yes.
DK: And then there are three others Bennington Churchyard.
DE: So how do you know Tim Chamberlain is it, who wrote –
DK: Pardon?
DE: How do you know Tim?
JK: We didn’t really did we?
DK: No not really [laughs] –
JK: He must have heard about this and came to see us.
DK: Mm.
JK: He did the memorial, there’s a memorial at Langar Air Field –
DE: Mhm.
JK: And he was responsible for that, doing that.
DE: I see.
JK: Mm.
DK: No he did a lot. And when it happened, this is between us, when Tim planned all that the village didn’t want – we were gonna have a thousand people [emphasis] here you seen, but the, our locals –
JK: They wanted to keep it –
DK: Who run the village wanted to keep it quiet [emphasis].
DE: Oh I see.
ET: Mm. I remember that yeah, mm.
DE: But there’s, there’s now a stone there isn’t there?
DK: Pardon?
DE: There’s now a stone, a stone, a memorial there?
JK: A memorial.
DK: It’s a lovely one, all the –
JK: Actually [emphasis] –
DK: All the village people contributed to this here. It’s a lovely stone isn’t it dear?
JK: I don’t know whether you can get it still, but a Barbadian came up from London and recorded the whole service [emphasis] and the flypast –
DE: I see.
JK: And he put it on Youtube.
DE: I’ll have a look.
JK: And it’s under Plungar –
DK: Lancaster –
JK: Lancaster memorial, on Youtube.
DK: It’s worth listening to, to see me ringing them out [laughs].
JK: Have you seen it?
ET: I’ve seen it, I’ve forgot all about it Joan.
JK: Is it still there?
ET: Yeah, it will be.
JK: Do they delete them after so long?
DE: No it’ll still be there probably we’ll have a look.
JK: It’s about an hour and five minutes.
DK: And then we had the Lancaster and two Spitfires fly over you see.
DE: And this was two or three years ago?
JK: This was on the day that – is, is the date in that book?
DK: Is it on, on that book there wasn’t it?
JK: It’s September nineteen, two thousand, oh I can’t remember. It must be three years ago.
DE: 2012 I think.
JK: Yeah, three years ago, it was September. But he, he filmed it from the rear of the church and unfortunately, you know, it’s only a tiny church and they were all these heads [laughs] in front of him so some of it you can’t see. But the opera singer sang –
DE: Mhm.
JK: A, a song he’d composed himself, so you get all that.
DE: I see.
JK: And then Dennis rang the bells afterwards and you see him in the belfry ringing the bells.
ET: And how did you ring the bells Dennis?
DK: Pardon?
ET: How did you ring the bell?
DK: Ding dong [laughs].
JK: There were two of them.
DK: But the thing was – we were, my son and I were in the belfry there, and then there was a laddy there who’s father, in this book [pause].
ET: When I saw you Dennis you were using your foot.
JK: Yes I think he –
ET: Like that.
JK: I think he rings two bells you see.
DE: Oh right.
JK: Hand and foot [laughs].
DK: This chappy was prisoner of war you see.
DE: Mhm.
DK: He was shot down, and his son came to sit with us. This lad, he went to see the prisoner of war camp that his father was in, but [laughs] in front of me – there was two rows of seats there, there was this chappy and he’s moving his bloody head the whole time [laughs].
JK: [Laughs] you see his head moving in front of the camera [DK laughing].
DE: Oh I’ll have a look at the video.
JK: I mean it was such a tiny church that it was cramped.
DK: No, it was a lovely service, and the thing was, what was the man who took the service, he’s on there.
JK: Er Robin, Robin –
DK: It was a, was a –
JK: He was an air vice marshal.
DK: To do with the Air Force, you know.
DE: Mm.
JK: He’s a retired air vice marshal, he lives in Southwell. He sings in the choir in Southwell Minster.
DK: No it was a really [emphasis] lovely day, and I remember, we stood on the lawn here and saw the Lancaster fly over and the two spit – we were very lucky.
DE: Mhm.
JK: They did four circuits round the village.
DE: Oh smashing.
ET: It was amazing.
JK: It was lovely.
DK: Then, then was it last year sometime? My nephew who lives on the farm – his son in law works at Coningsby [emphasis].
DE: Mhm.
DK: On the plane there. And we had a day there didn’t we [laughs].
JK: Yes he got, he got permission to take us to Coningsby and we saw them repairing or doing some maintenance on the Lancaster.
DE: Yes, yes.
DK: During the war, better just tell you, during the war, they decided to take us to Melton Air Field to have a ride round in a Dakota [emphasis]. And they loaded us all up on the Dakota and then the mist came –
JK: Mist came down [laughs].
DK: So I never had a ride [laughs] so I’ve never been in a plane [laughs].
DE: Oh dear.
ET: Oh Dennis.
DE: Who was it that was trying to arrange that for you then?
DK: Pardon?
DE: Who was it that was trying to arrange that for you?
DK: The Home Guard like to get us onto the air field – it was only a small air field at Melton – but there was about lads from this village and then [unclear, laughs].
DE: Right.
DK: We got lined up and sitting down laughs]. That was the wonderful thing so when we went to Coningsby we saw the old Dakota there.
DE: Mm.
DK: It’s a wonderful plane isn’t it, the Dakota.
DE: Yes [emphasis], [DK laughing].
DK: So we’d better go and see the site had we?
DE: I think we’d better had, yeah.
DK: If you want – you want to go, do you?
DE: Yes please, yeah if it’s well, it’s not raining is it? No.
JK: I don’t think it is.
DK: We’re not bad, we’re not bad to get out here, but you and Ernest –
JK: Well you can get out, it’s not very far from the road is it?
DK: Can walk and see the memorial, but we’re not – we can take you to the plane crash and show you where it crashed then.
DE: Mhm.
DK: Is that alright?
ET: That’s fine.
DK: Have you got a good vehicle?
DE: Erm, yes.
JK: The road to where it crashed can get a bit bumpy, isn’t it?
DK: Yes [laughs].
DE: That would be great, yeah. So you’ve always, always sort of followed, I’ve noticed with your book of clippings, you’ve always followed the history of the RAF.
DK: Yes [laughs]. Anything else going. I was looking today, when Belvoir sold all the property in 1921, I’ll let you have a page you can see what they all made then [emphasis] [laughs].
DE: Oh yes.
DK: So I don’t know what’s going to happen, they’ll perhaps go on the skip when I’m gone [laughs].
DE: Oh dear, no, no.
ET: Oh Dennis no, no.
DK: Unless Ernest wants them.
ET: You must put on them ‘do not throw away.’ [JK laughs].
DK: Pardon?
ET: Put on them ‘do not throw away,’ ‘retain’ [DK laughs] or send them to an archive somewhere.
DK: Yeah, they’re not interested in old things –
DE: No sometimes, yeah, you do get that unfortunately [DK laughs].
JK: We remember too much Dennis don’t we?
DK: Pardon?
JK: We remember too much of the past [DK and JK laugh].
DK: Now when they talk about things, the price she says [unclear] years ago [laughs].
JK: Prices, prices get Dennis. ‘That cost so and so,’ I said ‘Dennis you don’t live in this world.’
DK: I’ll not be [?] –
DE: Mm. It is –
JK: ‘You can’t buy that it’s a waste of money,’ well it’s either that or nothing.
DE: Oh dear.
DK: I’ve had two hearing aids [?]. I’ve had two lots, I’ve had the national health one and then I’ve had the, what are they?
JK: Specsavers.
DK: So now I can hear a bit more ‘cause she can’t hear what I’m saying [laughs] or I can’t hear what Joan’s –
DE: Right.
JK: No you can’t hear what I say. I can hear what you [emphasis] say because you shout [JK and DK laugh]. Deaf people do shout, don’t they?
DE: They do.
DK: No you see, I’m not [unclear]. But people don’t realise – and it was a lovely life years ago you see, everyone helped one another and you lived with your – didn’t sit your parents in an old home to end their days, you looked after your parents didn’t you in those days? And you lived well and fed well and [laughs], mm.
JK: Well you did on the farm.
DK: Pardon?
JK: You did feed [emphasis] well on the farm.
DK: No, I’d have liked to be a wheelwright and join or a butcher you see.
DE: Mhm.
DK: But you see, I was saying in my day they had the say –
JK: Your parents told you what to do –
DE: Mm.
DK: So what do you think, ‘why do you think we’ve got the farm?’ Because, we worked from scratch to get the farm you see [laughs].
JK: And you owned [emphasis] it.
DK: There’s a tree up there, and you go up there – it was planted in 1852 with my relations.
DE: Really?
DK: It’s an old chestnut tree, yeah. Right at the top there [laughs].
DE: That’s smashing.
DK: And I’ve got some books, Ernest is going to take them to the archive. The, when he was an auctioneer in Valier [?] in 1852 [laughs].
DE: They would be interested in that yeah, definitely. Well thank you very much, I think I shall –
DK: Well [unclear] you [laughs].
JK: Yes.
DE: I shall press stop on there, unless there’s anything else that you can think of that you’d like to tell me [pause].
DK: No I tell the people a lot about the, this, this was gardens [emphasis] years ago – well it belonged, well the church, it was supposed to belong to the church, but it belonged to his lordship up at Belvoir.
DE: Mhm.
DK: They were very good landlord, different to what we’ve got, we’ve got now [laughs].
JK: When I bought the plot it was glebe [emphasis] land, it belonged to the church. And then a man in the village was doing research up at Belvoir for the old duke –
DE: Mhm.
JK: Last, the previous duke. And he found that this land belonged to Belvoir in 1792, and it was called Hive [?] Close. And, but nobody can find out how the church acquired it [laughs]. So whether it still really was the duke’s and he missed out on the sale – not that he got a lot for it, he didn’t ‘cause it sold just before prices went up, but –
DK: Shall we get off Ernest.
JK: Got no idea [emphasis].
DE: Yep –
DK: Get your gear on and I’ll get mine.
DE: I’ll press stop on there, 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 Dennis Kirk. Two
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Dan Ellin
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
2015-11-30
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AKirkDJB151130
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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Civilian
Royal Air Force
Format
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00:45:06 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Dennis Kirk was born in Barkston 1920, and lived on a farm near Plungar. Recalls when the war started and the War Executive Committee told farmers what to produce; talks about the Land Army. Being in a reserved occupation, he joined the Home Guard with military training; while on duty he responded to a crashed aircraft accident dealing with casualties before the Royal Air Force arrived at the scene. Dennis dealt with unexploded ordinance carrying out defusing. He also talks about civilian life in wartime, land use for airfields with compensation for the land owners, and BP post war drilling for oil, reunions, and the RAF Langar memorial.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Leicestershire
England--Plungar
England--Nottinghamshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Carolyn Emery
bomb disposal
bombing
civil defence
crash
final resting place
home front
Home Guard
incendiary device
memorial
RAF Langar
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/647/8917/ATinsleyR150604.2.mp3
1eeab019890c4025d5470d7ef66f9a51
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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Tinsley, Dick
Richard Tinsley
R Tinsley
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Tinsley, R
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Dick Tinsley (Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a pilot with 115 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-06-04
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
DK: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre, the interviewer is David Kavanagh the interviewee is Dick Tilsley the interview is taking place in Mr Tilsleys home on the 4th June 2015.
DK: So can you remember which year it was, that you joined the Airforce?
RT: Yeah, it must have been 1944 I suppose.
DK: 1944...so how old would you have been then?
RT: Mmm 20
DK: So what were you doing prior to that? Were you in education?
RT: Education I suppose and Public Schooling so yes i was.
DK: So what school was that?
RT: In Northampton, one of the public schools [pauses] we farmers were often sent to these public schools.
DK: And what was your reasoning for wanting to join the airforce?
RT: Well I knew I was going to mmm I had....errr my family had always been in farming and we lived at Moulton, do you know where Moulton is?
DK: Yes, yeah
RT: Near Holbeach and my Mother came from Northamptonshire as a Farmer's daughter and they got married had three sons, and I was the third. The eldest one had got set into Farming before the war started, and when the second one came in he'd already joined the Territorials
DK: Right
RT: Only assuming only being , mmm what do you call it [?] patriotic I think and of course they were the best people, you know, the go getters, they they wanted to do something like that. We went to Lincoln and they just paraded around a bit once upon a [unclear] that sort of thing. So when war declared they were called up straight away.
DK: Yeah?
RT: I was at home ,still at school I think then I remember the local err army [what do you call it] Anti-aircraft unit?
DK:Yep
RT: Arrived in our park which was was just a field that's all, and they set up shop and searchlight and I thought it was wonderful, good old war, as I was about 16 or something but i think we had all heard so much about the first war and the blood and guts of the trenches anything to get out of that or get into what soppy thing there was going at school, anything was soppier than trenches.
DK; had your Father been in the First World War?
RT: No
DK; No?
RT: I lost an uncle
DK: An uncle ok
RT: In other words his brother-in-law he got in perhaps he was drafted, or...I never knew him and he was sent to the front and they were resting in a barn behind the line as the Germans dropped a shell on them and he was wounded in the back and died.
DK:Oh dear
RT: Yeah that's the second time....and emmm it might have been the other.....
DK: So you've decided to join the airforce then, yeah?
RT: Mmm I was at school it was quite a rough military day bolshing you bossing you , so I had a rifle for the day you had one...you had one err you had one year, day a term which they did sort of military exercises.
DK: Right.
RT: And erm and so and of course when they started the air force thing it was much more lexid to go out to aerodromes and in [unclear] and all that and err when it came to been called up and then we were eventually called up and went to grading [?] station.
DK: Right.
RT : That was in Bedfordshire somewhere and then we were sworn in and all that, then we went to London and Lords cricket ground where they did injections for you and all that sort of thing. After that I decided , [unclear] decided what are they going to do with you, I don't know how well we passed, I don't think we knew but it was good enough.
DK: Yeah, err you went in immediately then for err pilot training, was that …..?
RT: Well everybody was yeah
DK: Everybody together right
RT: Yeah
DK: So….
RT: On the whole the navigator was the second most err posetic and brightest then you get the wireless op ,then the bomb aimer then gunner. They hadn't got me on on to being a pilot yet because then they sent you, if you passed that pilot you went to a grading school just near coventry, it's not too far from here, where you did twelve hours flying, and err they assessed you as to whether you were fit for pilots training.
DK: And that the first time you were at the controls?
RT: Yes.
DK: Flying?
RT: Yes it was a Tiger Moth.
DK: Tiger Moth yeah.
RT: Then they sent you home and waited until they wanted to call you up to go to Canada. So they sent us to the Queen Mary which was docked at the Clyde and we cruised across to Canada, you might say this was a dangerous trip I suppose they were getting away with taking these fast liners and risking getting in the old....errrr caught up in the German submarines.
DK: Mmmm yeah
RT: Which how they got away with it I don't know but they did get away and they filled them full and on the return journey they were full of American troops absolutely jammed full bringing them over for D-day which was quite a lot we did, anyway .....and then what happened?
DK: You've got to Canada...
RT: And err [coughs] forgive me muttering but i've got a very weary brain.....I don't mind the weary brain....but....
DK: That's ok take your time.
RT: It's... errr….
DK: You've arrived in Canada then?
RT: Yeah there was a PDO a personnel reception centre.
DK: Right.
RT: Which was a whole aerodrome full of personnel, err personnel huts where they held you, and kept you amused, held parades, this, that and the other until they got an airfield to send you too, and that you didn't get any decision on that at all you just do when you're told that was about four days out to Regina that's roughly where we were at, dead centre of Canada, in the Prairies.
DK: Right, right.
RT: You got contact with them then ?
DK: No.
RT: Oh... then they had a course on a single engine plane which was a thing called a Cornell.
DK: Cornell yeah.
RT: A Fairchild Cornell yes.
DK: It’s listed in your logbook. Cornell
RT: Yeah....is it there?
DK: It's in there yes...you are doing aerobatics there.
RT: Mmmm...
DK: Did you like the Cornell?
RT: Yes, yes.
DK: Doing acrobatics there.
RT: Yes, then some went down to America.
DK: Right.
RT: The Americans were helping us out you see, then they went over to single engine planes but I never went on that.
DK: So how long were you in Canada for then?
RT: I was there 10 months.
DK: Really [emphasis]?
RT: Yeah well that was because, well that was a good do because I was out of the war for 10 months and things went by and .....[laughs].
DK: Do you remember much about Canada?
RT: Yeah yeah.......didn't matter to me it was as cold as could be in winter [laughter]and er that whole...that whole aerodrome belonged to the British, well it belonged to the the Canadian air force but that where the RCAF came in.
DK: Oh right I see yeah yeah.
RT: Then, then after we finished that we went on to what we called Senior flying training corps which was fast that one,er.... it was err was what do you call it, sometimes I think of these things and sometimes can't, Richard doesn't help as he wasn't there?
DK: There's an aircraft called the Crane here....
RT: Yeah that's it, the Cessna Crane.
DK: It seems like you were flying Ansons and Cranes.
RT: Ansons were British aeroplanes, if we did anything in training, in training Cranes then after 6 months, can't think what would take all that time but it would...
DK: Looking at the log book there are a lot of flights on the Crane right through February 1944.
RT: Yeah that would be.
DK: Nearly everyday.
RT: Yeah that would be, that was a twin engine plane they were sort of the general idea that was for Bombers.
DK Then the Anson from March 1944?
RT: I don't know, I don't remember that, I honestly don't remember the Anson, there wouldn't be many they were British versions...........they come out of date as far as a Bomber came they were our efforts for getting the war to have a good bomber Avro, Avro [emphasis].
DK: Avro Anson yeah?
RT: Yeah.
DK So you've then come back to England?
RT: Yes I came back.
DK: Was that on the Queen Mary again?
RT: No, it wasn't
DK: Arrh another ship?
RT: Yes, I can't remember the name of it, but it will be on there I should think, [pause] it could have been any of those but it will be on there I'm sure.
DK: Yeah, I can't find it at the moment. It says here you went to Derby then?
RT: What for?
DK: Barniston?
RT: Burnaston.
DK: Burnaston, sorry.
RT: Burnaston yes, that was a flying course within UK conditions, Burnaston.
DK: So was it a big difference, flying in Canada than flying in the UK?
RT: Mmmm I remember one of the Australian, Canadian he was in charge of us on the area, he said "yous boys in the old country, say you'll get lost" [laughter].
RT: Then of course at that time we were relying on the Canadians services far more.
DK: Then you come back to Burnaston?
RT: Mmm.
DK: Then you are flying de Havilland 82. Do you remember much about that?
RT: I don't, I'll see if i can recall it.
DK : It's the Dominie I think?
RT: Oh dear, DH yeah....[pause] flying around training again.
DK: It says its number 22 EFTS is that familiar?
RT: It's familiar but....
DK: I've noticed you.....
RT: I rather think it was a twin engine.
DK: A twin engine yeah, and then you got the Dakota here.
RT: Ah that….
DK: RAF Leicester East.
RT: The war had ended.
DK: Arrh ok.
RT: Leicester East was the Transport Command place, and...
DK: Sorry I'm jumping ahead of myself here.
RT: And, they sent us out to Cairo, in these Dakotas but they were going to have to organise what they conquered in the Middle East, so one fine day they flew overnight to the centre of Cairo airport.
DK Really?
RT: And, err...
DK: So just going back a little bit here, February 1945 you’re with the Heavy Conversion Unit.
RT: Yes.
DK: At Langar, 1669 heavy conversion unit, err, was that the first time you saw the Lancaster?
RT: Well it wasn't in my case, but ........ but it was really but from somewhere I just had a day out with them , we just had a trip.
DK: What did you think when you first saw the Lancaster, laid eyes on it first saw it? Did it fill you with confidence?
RT: Yeah i think so, i don’t I can't remember anything about that bit or the bit we did, then until the war ended or rather until the ...err.
DK: Do you remember much about Langar and the Heavy Conversion Unit?
RT: No,no we just arrived and we were got into crews, we were all old soldiers at that time.
DK: I’m just noticing here you have got a mention of an engine fire.
RT: Yes I presume that there was.
DK: You help put out a fire, do you remember that? [ laughter]
RT: No i don't at all.....
DK: Come on.....drive it down....poke him, poke him [laughter].
RT: I do remember it now, but I can't say I'd remember otherwise.
DK: Do you remember much about the incident of the engine fire?
RT: No, not at all it was over Wales.
DK: Over Wales?
RT: It was on a training trip over Wales I'd forgotten all about it.
DK: You landed ok though?
RT: Yes, and that was it no doubt it was only a scare, or something but anyway well whatever it was the fire extinguisher put it out and it wasn’t long till we got back to the airfield.
DK: So following the log book then you then joined 115 Squadron at Witchford.
RT: Yeah.
DK: Do you remember much about Witchford?
RT: Yeah it was 3 miles outside Ely typical wartime airfield built in 19....built just near where I went to school, where I went to school is.
DK: Coincidence [laughter].
RT: Witchford, I gathered from reading books later that there was two squadrons stationed there, so obviously they built airfields, bomber airfields as fast as they could.
DK: So I'm looking at the logbook here it's got March the 18th, would that have been your first operation there? Its Buschstrass?
RT: Bruchstrasse.
DK: Bruchstrasse, sorry.
RT: Apparently it was an oil refinery in the Ruhr, we weren't told very much about about it, except that we missed it.
DK: Oh [laughs].
RT: Apparently the beam was set, they had got it wrong.
DK: Right
RT: But anyway plenty of them missed, yep.
DK: Well, it says here it was a daylight raid, got in brackets there day, so you were flying in the day?
RT: Yeah a bit of both.
DK: Right ok.
RT: They were the...red were night and….
DK: Right.
RT: What does that say?
DK: Thats green.
RT: what does that say?
DK: That's err Heligoland?
RT: Yeah that's an island south of Hamburg somewhere.
DK: So there was two operations to kill on the 9th and 13th April.
RT: Yes i suppose so, yes.
DK: Do you remember much about those?
RT: No i dont, we were just told by the bomb aimer afterward that we didn't hit the target presumably we couldn't see it, we weren't told much, then the war ended.
DK: So then into May then, so there's 1, 2, 3, 4 so that looks like about 5 operations.
RT: Yeah.
DK: Does that sound about right?
RT: Yeah.
DK: So five operations and then three operation Manna operations?
RT: Yeah.
DK: Does that sound about right, so do you remember much about Operation Manna? How did that make you feel knowing you were dropping food rather than bombs?
RT: I’m sure it made you feel very good, we didn't know what we was in for first time, we was going to Germany with bombs at 20,000 feet and the next day we were going ten hundred feet or whatever it was over the Hague or Dane Hauger [?] whatever the Danes call it.
DK: The Hague , so the food drops were at low level then?
RT: Yes well as low as they dare because it mustn't burst they were either in double sacks or whatever they chose.
DK: Do you remember seeing the people on the ground?
RT: Yeah.
DK: And what were they doing?
RT: Waiting for something to happen, to see what they could get.
DK: Were they waving?
RT: Yeah.
DK: So you could see all that?
RT: Oh yes I can clearly remember one plane flying nearly along side us they got a sack a sack of food stuck in his bomb bays when he came back no doubt it got dropped in somewhere.
DK: So at that point then the war in Europe had ended?
RT:yeah just.
DK: Just yes.
RT: I think you will see that's there the.....
DK: What were your feelings at that time then were you.....?
RT: Without a doubt very pleased now that's ...one thing that's quite interesting coz those crew members there about three of them so bored with things presumably they were somewhat aware it wasn't really dangerous anymore, they wanted to see the their names up on the list… I was one if I had a job to do I'd do it, I probably wanted the job but didn't want to be the end bit the end bit of meat.
DK: So how long after the war then did you stay in the air force? Was it another…..
RT: As little as possible.
DK: You wanted to get out did you?
RT: Yes yes, I never wanted to get in and I just was a good boy did as I was told and passed exams as I was supposed to.
DK: So can you remember what year you actually left?
RT: Oh, now that would be, it will be in there somewhere [refers to logbook].
DK: You are still here, 1947.
RT: It would be then, it was the Spring.
DK: So you left in 1947? Thats after a period in the Middle East?
RT: Yeah we were sitting about the helm a lot doing nothing, because they over calculated the amount of aircraft they had to keep in the Middle East to keep things working.
DK: They had to find you something to do.
RT: Yes find us something to do, pity really it was a stage of one's life when you wanted to get on with something.
DK: Just going back to the end of war in Europe, at that period was there any mention to you about perhaps having to go out and fight in the Far East?
RT: No.
DK: You didn't no.
RT: No the others who went back, straight away and they split us all up, no doubt I'd go for a longer leave at home, but they kept very strictly to this, what do you call it? Code of release by time and… when your number came up because you had been in for so long, and you were so old or so I’d got out.
DK: So how old would you have been when you left?
RT: Forty Six [?].
DK: And after that did you go back into farming at that point?
RT: Mmm, yeah all that time sitting in the Middle East for about a year, sitting on my bum really. It was in the desert I got jaundice, nothing apart from a waste of time for everybody, I could see what the plan was, it was just they wanted things to be able to go to North Africa someone to go down to Nairobi and do this or that. [pause] Have you seen any other log book?
DK: I have seen some, yeah quite a few.
RT: They are all pretty similar.
DK: Yeah they are more or less the same yeah, so how do you look back on that period now?
RT: A waste of my youth and pretty boring, I was stationed at Ely, there wasn't much at Ely. It wasn't even far from home that wasn't.
DK: Did you used to pop back home when you could?
RT: Mmmm.
DK: Yeah because it down the road, that was something.
RT: Well there wouldn’t be the transport for it but I got home somehow, if you had a motorbike you'd be home in an hour or so.
DK: You had a motorbike then did you?
RT: I didnt no, there wasn't any petrol for one thing.
DK: That's true, ok well thanks you very much for that I will stop this 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 Dick Tinsley
Creator
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David Kavanagh
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-06-04
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ATinsleyR150604
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
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00:29:29 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
Dick was from a farming background and joined the Royal Air Force in 1944. After going to Bedford, he was sent to Lord’s cricket ground. Those passing as a pilot went to a flying school near Coventry to be assessed for pilot training on a Tiger Moth. Canada followed, where Dick went to a personnel reception centre and then an airfield in Regina. He did a course on a Cornell and then went to a senior flying training corps on a Crane.
After returning to England, Dick did a flying course at RAF Burnaston. In February 1945 he went to 1669 Heavy Conversion Unit at RAF Langar with Lancasters. He helped to put out an engine fire on a training trip over Wales. Dick then joined 115 Squadron at RAF Witchford. He recalls a daylight operation to an oil refinery in the Ruhr. A target was also missed in Heligoland. There were two operations to Kiel. He was involved in Operation Manna to The Hague. Dick was sent to RAF Leicester East after the war had ended and flew C-47. He was sent to Cairo. Dick left the RAF in Spring 1947.
Contributor
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Sally Coulter
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Coventry
England--Derbyshire
England--Leicestershire
England--Nottinghamshire
Canada
Saskatchewan
Saskatchewan--Regina
Germany
Germany--Helgoland
Germany--Kiel
Great Britain
Netherlands--Hague
North Africa
Egypt
Egypt--Cairo
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1945
1946
1947
115 Squadron
1668 HCU
bombing
C-47
Heavy Conversion Unit
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
RAF Burnaston
RAF Langar
RAF Leicester East
RAF Witchford
Tiger Moth
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/995/10626/PMossH1801.2.jpg
8fef87e0bf60954cc3caced45b9ca9a0
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/995/10626/AMossH181114.1.mp3
010bf15446d62b4b91fa96ccbdb97bc0
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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Moss, Henry
H Moss
Harry Moss
Description
An account of the resource
Twenty items. Collection concerns Henry Moss (1925 - 2020, 3041799, Royal Air Force). He served as an air gunner with 138 Squadron at RAF Tuddenham. Collection consists of an oral history interview, his flying logbook, documents and photographs.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Henry Moss and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-10-30
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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Moss, H
Requires
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Henry Moss, Flight Sergeant, served in the RAF between 22 October 1943 to 10 April 1946. He trained as an Air Gunner and was involved in bombing Kiel, Potsdam, Heligoland, and Bremen before taking part in Operations Exodus, Manna and Revue with 138 Squadron. Henry was demobilised in 1946.
Henry left school in Bradford aged 17½ just before the outbreak of war with no qualifications . He worked in a variety of jobs including a garment fitter where he made waterproof clothing for dispatch riders. Henry passed his National Service medical board and joined the Air Transport Corps which led him to choose to join the Royal Air Force.
Henry was ordered to go to Viceroy House in London to be fitted with his unforms and receive his inoculations before moving on with his next stage of his training. He was then posted to RAF Usworth in February 1944 for his primary training. This was made up of marching and learning to salute, and basic tests on arithmetic and writing to place recruits on their trade path. There were people from many different places around the globe. https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/28928
Henry learned how to strip down and re-assemble a Browning gun blindfolded but found this a pointless exercise as at altitude, it impossible to manipulate the small parts of the weapon with gloves on.
After RAF Usworth, he was posted to RAF Pembrey to the Introductory Gunnery Course at 1 Air Gunnery School flying Ansons. He did not experience air sickness and enjoyed flying. While here Henry learned about ‘offsetting’ the release of the bombs and how to aim accurately. He was surprised to learn that from his own records that he had scored 98.5% in the exam. Over his time at RAF Pembrey, he fired a total of 300 rounds. Henry was finally selected as an air gunner/wireless operator.
Henry’s next posting was to (26 OTU) RAF Wing on the Vickers Wellington, where he crewed up. His first pilot made a mistake during a landing and while the landing was safe, the pilot was sent home. His second pilot was Sergeant Crawford who he felt safe with for the rest of the war. From here Henry went to the 1669 Heavy Conversion Unit RAF Langer on Lancasters, and 138 Squadron RAF Tempsford. Henry flew to Kiel twice; both flights were at night and while he was involved in the sinking of the German ship Admiral Sheer, he did not see anything. Henry flew operations to Potsdam and a daytime operation to the Naval base on the island of Heligoland. He can remember being able to see the other aircraft and watching the torpedo boats below; he thought the operation was a bit of a ‘dead duck’. Henry’s final operation was to Bremen when they were hit by flak but ‘nothing vital was hit’. Henry referred to Operation Manna as ‘Spam Runs’
After the war ended Henry was involved, as a camera operator, in Operation Revue which was the creation of a digital map on mainland Britain as an aid to town and country. Henry was demobilised from Personnel Dispersal Centre 100 having achieved the rank of Flight Sergeant. In total he completed 436 hours 20 minutes flying. He went straight back to his previous job as a garment cutter in Bradford, but he did not stay in contact with any of ‘his’ crew.
Claire Campbell
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DK: Right. So this is, I’ll just introduce myself. This is David Kavanagh for the International Bomber Command Centre interviewing Henry Moss at his home on, what’s the date? Right. The 14th of November 2018. I’ll just put that there.
HM: Yeah.
DK: If you just speak normally. Yeah. That’s looks ok. So, if I can ask you first of all Henry what were you doing before the war?
HM: [laughs] [coughs] I had all sorts of jobs before the war. I left school just before the outbreak of war. Being in, I lived at Bradford at that time.
DK: Yeah.
HM: I was just leaving school. The boys without any qualifications went into the mill. Worked in the mill. From the mill I worked in a greengrocer’s shop. From the greengrocer’s shop I worked in a dye works. And then I went into garment cutting. Making waterproof clothing for the Army.
DK: Right.
HM: Cape down sheets, and dispatch rider’s waterproofs. And I stayed in that until I was called up at seventeen and a half.
DK: So what made you decide on the RAF then?
HM: Oh, I always fancied the RAF. I was in the ATC.
DK: Right.
HM: Previously to the RAF. And from the RAF at seventeen and a half it must have been November time 1943, got my call up papers to report to Viceroy Court in London.
DK: Right.
HM: That was a big block of flats that overlooked Hyde Park.
DK: Viceroy Court.
HM: Viceroy Court.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
HM: I forget what the district was now.
DK: Yeah.
HM: But it looked over Hyde Park. And the mealtimes, part of the building went to the zoo in Hyde Park —
DK: Oh right.
HM: And were fed. And others, like myself stayed in the building. We got kitted out there with uniforms, inoculations and all that stuff. And I think it must have been sometime early December we moved up. We moved up to Usworth. A primary training. Normal primary training. Marching, saluting and all that stuff. To let, to let you know you’re in the Air Force.
DK: How did you take to that? Did you like it or was it something you, because you would you have done it in the ATC?
HM: Oh, it was something entirely new.
DK: Right.
HM: I was a bit apprehensive at first going down to London. First time really away from home.
DK: Yeah.
HM: In Bradford. A small town. Well, I’m saying it’s a small town. It’s a big town now. All on my own in a strange, trying to find this Viceroy Court. I found it rather daunting. But once I got there I was alright. When it came to moving of course we had transport from Viceroy Court to the station. Train laid on for us to go up to Usworth.
DK: Right. That’s where you did your —
HM: Northumberland.
DK: That’s where you did all your square bashing was it?
HM: Did all the square bashing.
DK: Yeah.
HM: Initial training.
DK: So at this stage then do you have any idea of what trade you wanted to do in the Air Force?
HM: I hadn’t a clue about it.
DK: So you hadn’t been divided out yet as to pilots and —
HM: Pardon?
DK: You hadn’t been divided out. Pilots, navigators, and —
HM: Oh no.
DK: No.
HM: Not up to this point.
DK: No.
HM: No. You hadn’t a clue what. What it was all about. You did various tests. Arithmetic tests and a bit of writing and so on. They decided I could go as a wireless operator/air gunner.
DK: Ok.
HM: I forget the name of the place we went to now. Anyway, whatever it was we did basically wireless operator or learning the Morse Code.
DK: Right.
HM: Practicing that.
DK: So, so these took the form of classes then were they of Morse Code. Morse Code classes.
HM: Yes.
DK: Yeah.
HM: Mostly. Yeah. There were Morse Code classes.
DK: And how many of you would be in there for the class?
HM: I should think about a dozen.
DK: Right.
HM: All tapping away going beep beep beep beep beep.
DK: And was it something you took to then was it? Something you found easy.
HM: I didn’t find it particularly easy but I managed it.
DK: Right.
HM: And also between the learning the Morse Code was learning about the Browning machine gun. The 303 Browning. Taking it to pieces. What it did. How many shots it fired. What the effective range was. And learned all those bits and pieces. I didn’t think a lot of that was necessary because if you got a fault with your guns if its more than just cocking and trying it again.
DK: Yeah.
HM: You can’t do anything because it’s so cold up there and you’ve got your gloves on and the tiny pieces. I found some of that was a bit superfluous.
DK: So what did the gunnery training consist of then? Were you, were you actually firing the guns at targets?
HM: Not at that time. No. It was just sort of introducing us to the gun.
DK: Ok. Right.
HM: Learning about it.
DK: And just taking them to pieces [unclear]
HM: Taking them to pieces and putting them together again.
DK: Yeah.
HM: We got so we could do it blindfold. And that was —
DK: Did they, did they time you then as you were?
HM: Oh no. They didn’t time you but as it got near the end of the course you’d have done it blindfold and somebody would take a piece out and you’ll be feeling all over for it. But the Morse Code. I passed on that alright. Passed on that, and we went to [pause] I can’t remember the sequence we went in but eventually we went to —
DK: Was it the Operational Training Unit?
HM: Burry training. Burry Port in South Wales.
DK: Oh right. Ok.
HM: To an airfield there. And that was gunnery training.
DK: Right.
HM: More or less a first shooting.
DK: So what, what —
HM: The, it was a Martinet aeroplane. That was a single engine type towing a drogue.
DK: Right.
HM: And you’d go up in an Anson. I think it was four of us went up in the Anson. Took it in turns trying to shoot at the drogue. The way they could sort out who’s was what, the bullets were painted differently on the —
DK: Oh right.
HM: On the bullet itself so if it hit the drogue —
DK: You’d know whose it is.
HM: Red was yours. Blue was somebody else’s.
DK: Yeah. So did you, did you find, presumably that was the first time you’d flown then was it? In an Anson.
HM: That was the first time I’d actually flown.
DK: Yeah.
HM: Yeah.
DK: So what was that like then?
HM: Well, then again it’s exciting.
DK: Yeah.
HM: Starting to fly. And that was, that was the feeling most of the time. When are we going to fly? What’s it going to be like? Will I be sick? Will I get airsick or —
DK: And, and were you?
HM: That was a worrying thing. Some did.
DK: Yeah.
HM: Most of us didn’t but —
DK: You didn’t then.
HM: I wasn’t airsick at all.
DK: So what was the Anson like? Presumably it was a bit cramped in there with four of you at the back there.
HM: It was a little bit. Yes. I remember that it was each side of the fuselage there was a little table and two of you sat at the table. You did this shooting at the drogue to see how well you could aim it and fire it.
DK: Yeah.
HM: They told you about offsetting for the distance.
DK: Yeah.
HM: And one thing and another.
DK: And was it, was it something you were, you were quite adept at? Could you, were you quite a good shot? Or —
HM: Not particularly [laughs] I must have been adequate because I passed through all right.
DK: Right. So —
HM: Then again we did a bit of Morse Code but not much of it. You just keep refreshing yourself.
DK: Yeah. So, so at this stage you could have still been —
HM: Oh, I could have been turned down. Yes.
DK: Turned down. Yeah. Or you could still have been a wireless operator as well then.
HM: I could have been a wireless operator.
DK: Yeah. So after your training then in Wales where did you move on to next?
HM: That [laughs] I can’t remember these places.
DK: Don’t worry. Yeah. Would this have been the, the OTU?
HM: Yeah. It would have been the OTU.
DK: It might actually be in the logbook.
HM: It’s probably in my logbook.
DK: Let’s have a look.
[pause]
DK: Right. So just for the recording then I’ve got number 1 AGS Pembrey so that was Gunnery School.
HM: Pembrey.
DK: Pembrey. Yeah.
HM: Yeah.
DK: Air Gunnery School. It’s got your results here. You look like you’re quite good.
HM: Are they?
DK: Yeah. Exam result ninety eight point five percent.
HM: Oh, well that’s not so bad [laughs]
Other: Wow.
HM: Yeah. Is that the —
DK: So you’re —
HM: Oh, that’s when we went to OTU is it?
DK: That’s the OTU.
HM: The Lancaster.
DK: Ok.
HM: Yeah. They were the actual flights.
DK: So that’s the flights in the Anson then.
HM: That was the flights. Yeah.
DK: So they’re from June 1944 and it’s got how many rounds you fired here.
HM: Yeah.
DK: Three hundred rounds. So one to three tracers. Two hits.
HM: [laughs] Two hits.
DK: You’ve got eighteen hits here.
HM: Yeah.
DK: It says total flying nineteen hours and forty minutes. All in Ansons.
HM: In the Anson.
DK: Yeah. So that’s at the end of the training.
HM: That’s the end of the training at Pembrey.
DK: Yeah.
HM: Yeah. Then we went to —
DK: It doesn’t actually say does it?
HM: It doesn’t say does it?
DK: So you’re on Wellingtons.
HM: Operational Training Unit.
DK: Right.
HM: In Wellingtons.
DK: So for —
HM: Then you did the crewing up.
DK: Right. So can you say a little about the crewing up then? How you all got together to form a crew?
HM: Well, you were all in a room. You chatted with various people and somebody you got on with and you’d say, ‘Oh you’re a gunner. Shall we crew up?’ ‘Yeah. We’ll be alright.’ Then you look for a navigator, or the navigator were looking for gunners. Or a pilot was looking for gunners. You finished with a crew.
DK: So, and can you remember your pilot’s name?
HM: Yes. Colin [Runji?]
DK: Right.
HM: He was an Australian.
DK: Australian.
HM: He was evidently quite a sportsman in Australia. Although being English we’d never heard of him.
DK: So he was quite famous in, in Australia then.
HM: He was quite, yeah something in Australia.
DK: Oh, here we go. At the back it says it’s 26 Operational Training Unit.
HM: Yeah.
DK: Does that ring a bell? 26 OTU.
HM: That doesn’t mean a thing to me.
DK: Right.
HM: But if you look in the records —
DK: Yeah.
HM: You’ll probably find it.
DK: Yeah. That was on the Wellingtons then.
HM: Yes.
DK: So that was between July ’44 and November ’44.
HM: Yeah.
DK: So can you remember much about flying in the Wellingtons? What it was like?
HM: Yeah. Well, we did a lot of take-off and landings. Training for the pilot. The air gunners had nothing to do. They just sat in the turrets.
DK: Right.
HM: And hoped for the best.
DK: So were you, for these training flights then were you sitting in the, in the rear turret?
HM: In the turret.
DK: Yeah.
HM: In the rear turret or mid-upper turret.
DK: Yeah. Would you be in the rear turret when you took off then?
HM: If I was in the rear turret. We used to swap around.
DK: Right.
HM: Sometimes be in the rear. Sometimes the mid-upper.
DK: Yeah. So how did you find the Wellington then as an aircraft? Did you feel quite safe in it?
HM: Oh yeah. Yes. No problems with flying with it.
DK: Right.
HM: They [pause]
DK: But you felt quite safe.
HM: What can I say? Oh yes.
DK: ’Cause you mentioned earlier about an incident where the pilot landed and he shouldn’t have done.
HM: Yeah. That’s in the Wellington.
DK: Right. Can you just repeat that? What happened?
HM: Well, I don’t, I don’t think I made a comment about it because we didn’t know that until after the flight.
DK: Right.
HM: He just disappeared. And when making enquiries we found that he’d been sent home or whatever it was.
DK: So what, what had he done wrong?
HM: Well, coming in to land he was doing a circuit. He come into what they called funnels. The pilot’s flying nice and steady ready to land. Got the gear down, the flaps down, and you as you were approaching you’re supposed to watch for a verey pistol.
DK: Right.
HM: Or you’re supposed to notice it if was fired. Well, this particular flight there’s a red verey pistol fired and evidently the pilot didn’t seen it.
DK: So if he had seen it he should have gone around again.
HM: He should have gone around again.
DK: Yeah. Because why would, do you know why it was fired? Was there something on the ground?
HM: Well, it would only be if there was somebody on the runway.
DK: Right.
HM: Ready. Getting ready to take off.
DK: Right.
HM: So he was sat at the end of the runway. You sort of went over the top of him.
DK: So there might have been a collision then.
HM: Oh, quite possible.
DK: So he just, he went. So you got a new pilot then.
HM: So we, started well basically we went to the end of that course and then crew up again.
DK: Oh right.
HM: With another. Make another crew.
DK: So you had to crew up all over again.
HM: All over again. And then really start the course again.
DK: Oh. So this is, this is when you would have then got the Australian pilot
HM: That’s when we got —
DK: The second time around.
HM: No. The first time.
DK: Oh the first time. Right.
HM: The first time it was an Australian pilot.
DK: Right.
HM: Then we [pause] I put my glasses away, I want them.
DK: Have you’ve got his name there?
HM: Yes. [Runji]
DK: [Runji]
HM: Lots of different pilots.
DK: Yeah.
HM: As [Runji] Then flew there. Warrant Officer Wild. [Runji] [unclear] [Runji] Watkins. But, but [Runji] was the main pilot at, in the OTU.
DK: Right.
HM: [ ] [pause] at the end of the course as I say we crewed up again.
DK: Right. So that’s the second time.
HM: This is the second time around.
DK: Right.
HM: When we flew with somebody called [Adey?], Flying Officer Bond. Then we got Sergeant Crawford who ended up our pilot.
DK: So —
HM: We flew with him for the rest of the time.
DK: So Crawford became your pilot.
HM: Yeah.
DK: Second time around. Right.
HM: Yeah. And he was a sergeant.
DK: Right.
HM: Evidently, as far as I can make out he was in the Air Force when war broke out. He was an engine fitter on one of the [pause] no, on one of the [pause]
DK: A pre-war thing was it?
HM: The [pause] big water platform.
DK: Oh the Flying Boats.
HM: The [pause]
DK: Seaplane?
HM: Just had a new one. Must have been commissioned just recently.
Other: Aircraft carrier.
DK: Oh aircraft.
Other: Aircraft carrier.
DK: I’m with you. I’m with you. Right.
HM: He was on an aircraft carrier.
DK: Right. Ok.
HM: Somewhere out east.
DK: Right.
HM: And as soon as war broke out and he asked to be remustered.
DK: Oh right. Ok.
HM: And then he came back to England. Then he went out Canada for his pilot’s training. Did his training in various aeroplanes.
DK: Yeah.
HM: Then he came back to England and then finished up.
DK: At the OTU.
HM: Yeah. The OTU.
DK: So that was Sergeant Crawford then.
HM: Sergeant Crawford.
DK: And was he a good pilot?
HM: He was. Yes.
DK: Yeah. You felt confident then with him did you?
HM: I felt very confident with him. Something else. I wish I’d made more comments.
DK: Yeah.
HM: About what went on.
DK: So how —
HM: On one of the [pause] No. It’s not there. On one of the flights, it was a night time flights everything was going all right. Taxied round, end of the runway. Started taking off. Just got off the ground and he had to close one of the engines down. There was something overheating or something and Mayday. Mayday. And he just flew around and landed again on one engine. So he must have been a reasonable pilot.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
HM: That was a bit scary. You didn’t know whether the aeroplane would fly with the one engine or not.
DK: Yeah.
HM: But he made a very good job of it.
DK: Yeah. So you felt quite confident with him after that.
HM: Oh, yeah. Yeah.
DK: So did you have a conversation with him about what had happened to the engines, do you know or did you just —
HM: Well, it wouldn’t mean a thing to me.
DK: Right.
HM: It was a runaway prop.
DK: Yeah.
HM: I didn’t know what a runaway prop was. I still don’t.
DK: So after, how did you feel then about having to do the training twice? And have to go back again.
HM: Not very happy because it —
DK: No.
HM: The crewing up with [Runji] then having to go through it again.
DK: Yeah.
HM: That was annoying. But once we got —
DK: Crawford.
HM: Our pilot. Crawford. We were quite happy. We’d got a, we’d got a crew. We got on very well together.
DK: Yeah.
HM: And that’s the one on the, on the picture there.
DK: Ok. So just for the recording then just looking at your logbook then it says here you then went on to 1669 Heavy Conversion Unit.
HM: Yeah. That’s when we converted to the Lancaster.
DK: Right.
HM: And that was at —
DK: Langar.
HM: Pardon?
DK: Langar.
HM: Langar.
DK: Langar.
HM: Yes. Up in Nottinghamshire I believe it is.
DK: So that was at the Heavy Conversion Unit then and we’re talking February 1945. Is that? Or was it ’44?
HM: February. Oh it might have been.
DK: Yeah. Because that’s ’44.
HM: I joined the squadron in early March.
DK: Right. So the Heavy Conversion Unit then would be February.
HM: Langar, yeah. That was converting to the four engines.
DK: Right. So how did you feel? That was the first time you saw the Lancaster then was it? Close up.
HM: Yeah.
DK: And what did you think?
HM: Oh, we’re going up in those [laughs] How does it stay up there? But —
DK: So was it quite a change after the Wellington then?
HM: Yes. Because the Wellington, two engines it was a smaller aircraft. You think fine. But when you get to the size of a Lancaster. And in the Wellington you did evasive action.
DK: Yeah.
HM: But it’s hard doing evasive action in the Lancaster. A big aeroplane doing acrobatics. You wondered how it’s going to go but it went very well.
DK: Yeah. So you felt quite confident in flying in those.
HM: Yeah.
DK: I see here you flew as the mid-upper gunner.
HM: Yeah.
DK: What was that like then? What were the views like?
HM: Oh, the views was fantastic. I would say you could look all around.
DK: Yeah. And presumably it’s here that you got the extra crew because there’s more crew in a Lancaster than the Wellington.
HM: No. We still had the full crew.
DK: Oh right. In Wellingtons.
HM: We just had the same crew in the Lancaster as we had in the Wellington.
DK: Oh ok. So that was, that was just training then on the Lancaster just to get —
HM: Just training on the Lancaster
DK: Yeah. Yeah
HM: And getting used to it.
DK: Yeah.
HM: How to evacuate quickly and that sort of thing [laughs]
DK: Right. And then it’s got, looking at your logbook here we’ve then got March 1945 you’ve got to 138 Squadron.
HM: Yeah.
DK: So can you say a little bit about 138 Squadron? What they were?
HM: 138 Squadron is a mysterious squadron. As I say it was a Special Operations Unit before I joined. They were flying Lancasters. Before we joined they were basically Halifaxes.
DK: Right.
HM: And Lysanders. Their job was to take ammunition and food to the Resistance. So instead of going out in a bomber stream.
DK: Yeah.
HM: They’d go out in a single Lancaster to a field somewhere in France and drop the supplies to the Resistance.
DK: Oh right.
HM: Or the Auster. That was the single engined. Do you know the Auster?
DK: Yes. Yes. Yeah.
HM: Yeah. Fixed undercarriage. Single engine. If there was a special agent wanting to be picked up and brought back to England then they’d use the Auster.
DK: Right.
HM: Then again find somewhere. Find a field somewhere in France. Land. You’d probably drop an agent. Pick another agent up.
DK: Yeah.
HM: Pick one coming back then take off and bring them home.
DK: Right.
HM: Most of it was at night. Well, it was all night time. The nickname for 138 Squadron at the time was The Moonlight. Moonlight squadron.
DK: Right.
HM: Or Tempsford Taxis. Obviously they were based at Tempsford.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
HM: And with the taxiing service in and out to France or Germany whatever. You got the taxi then.
DK: Yeah.
HM: But when, when I joined it was decided that they were not, it was after D-Day, that it was no longer needed because they take the agents in on the ground from there.
DK: Yeah.
HM: So they reverted to Bomber Command.
DK: Right.
HM: And that’s when I joined them.
DK: So by that point it was an ordinary bomber squadron.
HM: It was an ordinary bomber squadron. Yes. Whereas before, reading about it now when I, in the bomber squadron all the crews went to the briefing. With that there was just a pilot, navigator and bomb aimer.
DK: Yeah.
HM: Only those that need know knew where they were going and what they were doing.
DK: Right.
HM: So the air gunner would go along. Not knowing where they were going. They might discuss it amongst themselves.
DK: Yeah.
HM: But they weren’t supposed to. Go out and come back again but they weren’t allowed to discuss it with another aircrew.
DK: Right.
HM: Missions were never discussed between aircrews.
DK: So —
HM: It was very secretive.
DK: Yeah. So what, what then is kind of your role as an air gunner? What are you supposed to do?
HM: Yeah.
DK: On an operation.
HM: On an operation you just sit there in the turret scanning, looking for any enemy aircraft. Which I never saw.
DK: No.
HM: Never fired my guns in anger.
DK: Right. You’d have tested the guns presumably on the way over did you?
HM: You could do but we never did.
DK: Right.
HM: Well, we didn’t.
DK: Is that, I notice when you joined the squadron you’d gone on some training trips. One with an H2S radar.
HM: Yeah.
DK: And another one with GH bombing. Was that the GH bombing on?
HM: Yeah. That, that is basically for the navigators. Navigators —
DK: Yeah.
HM: GHS or HS2 and the Gee were all navigational aids.
DK: Right. And you’ve got something here. Just special training. You can’t remember what the special training was can you?
HM: Special training.
DK: Bit mysterious. Maybe you can’t tell me.
HM: I haven’t a clue.
DK: Ok. So looking at your logbook again then it’s got your first operation here was to Kiel.
HM: Yes.
DK: So what was it like then when you finally —
HM: Kiel?
DK: Got an operation?
HM: Well, it’s exciting. We hadn’t been in long enough. We hadn’t experienced a bombing raid. We didn’t know what to expect. I was excited. And well, we flew out. Nothing, nothing untoward happened.
DK: Yeah.
HM: There were searchlights and the flak but you expected that.
DK: Yeah. So you’ve gone out as the mid-upper gunner on this raid.
HM: Yeah.
DK: Yeah. And can you remember seeing much of the target itself when you were over Kiel?
HM: Yes.
DK: What was that like?
HM: Basically if that’s Kiel you flew across, it’s like, where Germany and Denmark. It’s —
DK: The border.
HM: What do they call it?
Other: Jutland?
HM: The prominence of Denmark.
Other: Yeah. Yeah.
DK: A strip of land.
HM: There’s a border it goes across.
DK: Yeah.
HM: Well, we flew across the part of Germany which was close to the border with Denmark. And as you’re flying along you could, you could see the fire, ‘That’s it. That’s it.’
DK: Yeah.
HM: That must be the target.
DK: Yeah.
HM: Now, yes. And no. That’s not it. And we were flying along and the navigator made a mistake or something. We flew past the target. When navigator realised that he’d gone wrong we had to do a loop.
DK: Right.
HM: The pilot wouldn’t turn around and go that way because he’d be joining the bomber stream. He’d be flying against them.
DK: Yeah.
HM: So he went around that way and joined the stream again.
DK: Right. So you went over the target.
HM: So we then flew towards the target.
DK: Yeah.
HM: Bombs away. Let’s go home.
DK: Could, when the bombs were dropped did you notice any turbulence or whatever.
HM: Oh yeah.
DK: You were flying up.
HM: The result was that bit of lift.
DK: Yeah. So you’ve come back from your first operation then though it hadn’t gone according to plan.
HM: Yeah.
DK: How did you feel when you got back?
HM: Oh, it’s hard to remember [pause] We just thought well that’s that.
DK: Yeah.
HM: That’s it.
DK: Job done.
HM: That’s done. The job done.
DK: Yeah.
HM: Wait for the next.
DK: And did you have to go along to a debriefing, or anything? Were you debriefed?
HM: Yes. When you landed you went to debrief. And the intelligence office, officers there. The crew was all there. What was your experience? Did you notice anything? Did you? How did it go? Or as I say we’d no experience. Just a, just a normal flight. Just flak.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
HM: Just searchlights. But nothing affected us.
DK: Yeah.
HM: It was all going on around you but —
DK: So your aircraft was never hit by flak then.
HM: Not that particular time. It was later on.
DK: Oh, ok. Ok.
HM: That was on the [pause] about a few days later we went again to Kiel.
DK: Right. I’m just looking at the logbook here. This is —
HM: Yeah.
DK: Just for the recording. You’ve gone to Kiel on the 9th of April.
HM: Yeah.
DK: And it’s
HM: That was our first one.
DK: And you’ve actually got here the German ship the Admiral Scheer sank.
HM: Oh, that was the second.
DK: Was that the second one?
HM: That was on the second one.
DK: Ok.
HM: No. There’s two there. And the Admiral Scheer was sank the second. That’s why we went back a second time.
DK: Right. And did you see the battleship down there?
HM: No.
DK: No.
HM: No. We were too high.
DK: Yeah. So you did, let’s say Kiel on the 9th of April. Then the 13th of April Kiel again.
HM: Yes. That was when the Admiral Scheer was sunk.
DK: Right. And then 14th of April you’ve then gone to Potsdam.
HM: Yeah.
DK: Yeah.
HM: Yeah. The following night. We thought that was a bit rough is that. Two. One after the other.
DK: Yeah. And then —
HM: But then thinking about it ‘43 and ‘44 when the bombing was really going, they’d be doing that every week. Three or four times a week they’d be flying.
DK: Yeah. And then looking at your logbook again you’ve then done a daylight raid because it’s in green.
HM: Yes. Heligoland. Heligoland.
DK: Heligoland. So that was on the 18th of April.
HM: Yeah.
DK: ‘45.
HM: That was [laughs] A bit of a dead duck.
DK: Right.
HM: Heligoland, I don’t even know where it is. It’s just, as I say Denmark land. Germany. And it’s just a little island.
DK: Yeah.
HM: Evidently, it was a naval spotting station and spotting transport where our ships were.
DK: Right.
HM: And there again, there was a little bit of flak. There wasn’t a lot.
DK: Yeah.
HM: Because it was such a small island. No searchlights evidently because it was daylight.
DK: Yeah. Could you see a lot more of the other aircraft then in daylight? What was the —
HM: Yeah. You could see them around you.
DK: Yeah. But presumably you couldn’t see them at night time.
HM: At night time you couldn’t.
DK: No.
HM: I did once.
DK: Right.
HM: Then again I should have made a note of it. At Heligoland you could see the torpedo boats feeding away out from the island. The island was just one cloud of bomb bursts.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
HM: You couldn’t see much of the land for the smoke and debris from the bombs.
DK: So that was hit quite hard then.
HM: Pardon?
DK: It was hit quite hard was it?
HM: Yeah.
DK: You say you saw an aircraft at night.
HM: Yeah.
DK: Was that quite nearby?
HM: That was a night flight. There again I don’t know which flight it was.
DK: No.
HM: Because I never made a note of it. I was in the mid-upper gun, mid-upper turret and suddenly there was this shadow went up. We were going and it went up in front of us.
DK: Right.
HM: I recognised it as a Lancaster. At night time. No lights. No nothing but there was this shadow went up in front of us.
DK: Right.
HM: If it had gone up a minute or two later or we’d been a minute or two earlier we’d have —
DK: Collided.
HM: Real come to.
DK: Was that, was that a bit of a frightening thing to see then was it?
HM: Yeah.
DK: Yeah.
HM: He was doing evasive action. I don’t see why they should do it at night.
DK: Right.
HM: Because you’ve got, I don’t know how many aircraft were on that raid but if you could have five or six hundred or the thousand bomber raid going over the target for some time. Granted the aircraft are stacked and the first ones would be higher, the ones behind them should be a bit lower.
DK: Yeah.
HM: But you’ve always got that creep. Someone’s got there a bit early. Some had got there a bit late. So there’s bound to be some mix up.
DK: Yeah.
HM: And if you start weaving about in a stream of aircraft. He, he couldn’t see any other aircraft.
DK: Yeah.
HM: All he is doing is just hoping for the best. His gunner must have seen something and told the pilot to corkscrew. But that was it.
DK: Yeah. Could have been, could have ended a bit disastrously couldn’t it?
HM: It could have done.
DK: So after that you’ve then done on the 22nd of April ‘45 a daylight raid to Bremen. Do you remember going to Bremen?
HM: Yes.
DK: And you’ve got here in brackets flak holes. Is that when you’ve been hit?
HM: Came back with some holes in it. Yeah.
DK: Right.
HM: Yeah.
DK: So what was that like then? When your aircraft was hit?
HM: Well it, quite normal. There’s plenty of flak, plenty of [pause] plenty going on and suddenly and there’s click click. ‘Has somebody dropped something?’ [laughs] No answer from the crew. Just as though you were driving along and somebody threw a stone at you.
DK: Yeah
HM: Or there was a mob throwing stones at you. But fortunately nothing, nothing was hit that was vital.
DK: Yeah.
HM: None of On the controls or oil pipes. It was just a hole in the fuselage.
DK: Right. Right. Was that anywhere near you? The hole in the fuselage or—
HM: I think it was actually by the bomb bay.
DK: Oh right. So almost underneath you then.
HM: Well, near. Yeah.
DK: Yeah.
HM: Just forward of the mid-upper gunner.
DK: So, so then you’ve got one more raid. What does that say? Operation the Hague. You see that one there. It’s a daylight one again. It’s a [unclear] one.
HM: Oh yes. Holland was starving.
DK: Right.
HM: They were all, they wanted some food. Somehow they made communication with the Germans. We could go in and drop food in Holland as long as we drove on a, or flew on a specific line.
DK: Yeah.
HM: Course. At a certain height. They’d let us go in and drop food and nobody would fire at us. Hopefully [laughs]
DK: So this this —
HM: So that was dropping food at the Hague. Holland.
DK: Oh right. Right. It is the Hague then. So that’s what became known as Operation Manna then.
HM: Operation Manna.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
HM: We did that a couple of times I think.
DK: So that to the Hague then was the 3rd of May. And then you’ve got another one. Operation Manna on the 8th of May.
HM: Yeah.
DK: It looks like you’ve done two trips there.
HM: Yeah.
DK: Right. So could you see the people on the ground as you were dropping the food?
HM: Oh yeah. Yeah. You could see them walking about. There were civilians waving.
DK: Yeah.
HM: Looking up at you.
DK: So how did you feel about that then? Dropping the food after dropping bombs. It was it a bit different.
HM: Well, it felt a bit strange really seeing the Germans down there walking about [laughs] and you’re flying.
DK: So you could actually see the Germans down below as well.
HM: Oh yes.
DK: Yeah. So you were very low level then.
HM: Yeah. I think it was about a thousand feet.
DK: Right.
HM: Something like that. And then there was after that there’s Exodus.
DK: Yeah. Operation Exodus. So what was Operation Exodus like?
HM: That was bringing prisoners of war back.
DK: Right.
HM: We flew out. We flew to a base at Juvencourt in France. Picked up I think it was about twenty. Twenty ex-prisoners of war.
DK: Right.
HM: The sat around in the fuselage. We’d land. They’d come and climb in and find themselves a perch. Then we’d fly back again.
DK: Right. So how many of those trips did you do?
HM: About four or five I think.
DK: Right. And did you speak to the ex-POWs? Were they —
HM: Well, what we’d called, I mean to say you didn’t get much chance because you was in the turret. As soon as you landed it was basically loading them on
DK: Right
HM: And then taking off and coming home again.
DK: Right.
DK: So they were quite relieved to be going home were they?
HM: Oh yes.
DK: Yeah. Had some of them been a prisoners for a length of time do you know?
HM: I would imagine so. I’ve no idea. Like I said, we didn’t really get a chance to speak to them. Then again when you’re flying you can’t have a conversation.
DK: No.
HM: Because of the noise.
DK: Yeah.
HM: We could be this close. I could shout at you and not tell what I was saying unless you were watching me and could do a bit of lip reading.
DK: No. Just going back to that what were the conditions like then as a mid-upper gunner? Presumably you’re were very cold up there.
HM: It was cold. Yeah.
DK: What were you wearing?
HM: Well, you were wearing your normal clothes. In fact you got issued with some special underwear. Long johns and long sleeves.
DK: Yeah.
HM: There was a mixture of wool and silk. Climbed in to that and then your normal uniform on top of that, and then you’d have a padded, padded overalls thing on
DK: Right
HM: Like a boiler suit done up the front. And then you got your overall. The one that you see us wearing on some of the pictures I think. It’s just sort of a canvas flying suit.
DK: Right. So, so altogether then you flew well one, two, three, four, five. Five. Five operations.
HM: Five. Five operations. Yes.
DK: And then a couple of Manna trips and the Exodus trips.
HM: Yeah. Well, they weren’t counted as operations.
DK: No. No.
HM: The five as you go along. That would have been counted towards you —
DK: The tour.
HM: Tour.
DK: Yes. And that would have still been thirty if the war had gone on.
HM: Oh, it would have been thirty.
DK: So how did you feel then as the war’s ended? Were you quite relieved at that point?
HM: Yeah. I suppose we were.
DK: Yeah. And did —
HM: The airfield just, just erupted. I don’t know where they came from but there were verey pistols firing off all over the place.
DK: And just go back a bit. Did you meet any of your crew off duty at all? Did you get to know them?
HM: Oh yes.
DK: Yeah. So what did you do?
HM: Yeah.
DK: On your off duty time.
HM: We’d usually go along to the local pub. You get to know the locals.
DK: Yeah. And, and did you keep in touch with the rest of the crew after the war?
HM: No. We didn’t.
DK: No. No. So you’ve all gone your separate ways then.
HM: We all went our separate ways.
DK: You haven’t been in touch with them since.
HM: No.
DK: No.
HM: When I got married the wireless operator, I sent invites to them all but there was only the wireless operator turned up.
DK: Right. So —
HM: I heard later Howard, he’s always on the internet looking at things. Our pilot evidently emigrated to Canada.
DK: Right.
HM: And there was an obit. I’m presuming it was our pilot. There’s an obituary to a Flying Officer Crawford who had died in a nursing home. He was a bit older than we were. I think he was about twenty eight, twenty nine.
DK: Yeah.
HM: When we was only, I was nineteen.
DK: Yeah.
HM: So he was an old man.
DK: Yeah [laughs]
HM: Evidently this pilot officer Andrew Robertson Crawford had died in this nursing home in Toronto.
DK: Oh right.
HM: Who’d emigrated from England after flying with the RAF. That’s all that’s all there was it.
DK: Sounds like it would probably be him them.
HM: And a bit of what he’d done in Canada. He’d gone to college and qualified as some sort of engineer.
DK: Right.
HM: Although he was qualified with the RAF as an aero engineer.
DK: Yeah.
HM: He’d qualified as something else over there.
DK: So presumably you left the RAF quite soon afterwards then did you?
HM: Oh yes.
DK: Yeah.
HM: When I came home on leave I used to visit the place where I worked beforehand. The garment cutter.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
HM: And one time I went the boss asked me, ‘Would you like to come out?’ I’d just met the wife then, or girlfriend and I said yes. He said, ‘I’ll try and see what I can do.’ Of course, if you’d got a job to go to and the boss enquired can you come home you were allowed early release.
DK: Oh right. Ok.
HM: So within about a week of that, seeing the boss and him saying yes I was on my way home. Demobbed.
DK: Wow. So it happened quite quickly then.
HM: Oh, it did.
DK: Yeah.
HM: Yes.
DK: Quite, quite unusual from some of the people I’ve spoken to. Hanging on for months before they got demobbed.
HM: If you, if you got a job to go to I believe it could be, could be done.
DK: Oh, ok. Ok.
HM: And evidently he wanted me back so —
DK: So, so how do you after all these years how do you look back on your time in the RAF? How do you feel now about it?
HM: Quite happy about it. I thought it was [pause] I thought it was a good spell.
DK: Yeah.
HM: It’s an experience you couldn’t have anywhere else. Yeah. It was quite, I found it quite a good experience.
DK: Yeah. You found it useful in later life then did you? Sort of that experience.
HM: Not really [laughs]
DK: Oh [laughs] Ok. I’ve just got your photo here.
HM: Yeah.
DK: I wonder if, are you still able to name, name the crew? So that’s, that’s to the recording here that’s a Lancaster of 138 Squadron.
HM: That’s a Lancaster of 138 Squadron.
DK: And that’s the one you flew on operations.
HM: Yeah.
DK: So do you know, can you name them all here?
HM: Yes. There’s —
DK: So that’s, that’s the ground crew presumably at the front there.
HM: That’s the ground crew. I can’t remember their names.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
HM: That’s Ted Bramsgrove. He was the navigator. Then there’s me. Then there’s Tom Kelsall, he was the engineer. That was the pilot, Flying officer Crawford.
DK: Yeah.
HM: Eric Scott. He was the bomb aimer. Oh, what’s his first? Fry was his surname. He was the wireless operator. And Duncan MacGregor he was the other gunner.
DK: So he would normally be in the rear gun turret would he?
HM: Yeah.
DK: For the most part. Though you did swap over didn’t you, at times?
HM: We did swap over. Yeah.
DK: So they were a good crew then were they?
HM: They were. Yeah.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
HM: Yes. He was a farmer. He was a school teacher. He was a shop assistant. I don’t know what Mac was.
DK: So quite varied.
HM: He was Irish. He’d come from Northern Ireland.
DK: Yeah.
HM: Belfast.
DK: So quite a varied background then.
HM: Oh yeah.
DK: Yeah. And that’s your ground crew there.
HM: That’s the ground crew.
DK: Yeah.
HM: Which looked after the aircraft.
DK: So did you have much to do with the ground crew at all? Or —
HM: Not a lot. No.
DK: No. You just wanted to make sure the aircraft was ok.
HM: You’d chat to them when you went out to dispersal to climb in.
DK: So that’s you there then. Second from the end.
HM: Yeah. Second on the left.
DK: Second on the left. Ok then, that’s —
HM: I’m thinking you must, I think Howard had that.
DK: Yeah.
HM: And he asked me what all the names were.
DK: Yeah.
HM: I think he sent that.
DK: Yes. If he hasn’t I’ll make sure he does.
HM: Yeah.
DK: That’s a great photo that. Ok then. I think that will do. I’ll, but thanks for that. I’ll turn off. Turn this off now. Thanks for your time.
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Interview with Henry Moss
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David Kavanagh
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IBCC Digital Archive
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2018-11-14
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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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00:55:40 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
Henry grew up in Bradford and left school just before the outbreak of war. He had various jobs like working in the mill, a greengrocer’s shop, the dye works and then garment cutting for the army. At 17 and a half was called up in London where he was kitted out and had the necessary inoculations. He had been in the Air Training Corps so chose to apply for the Royal Air Force. He was told he could be a wireless operator air gunner, trained in Morse code and learned about the .303 Browning. The recruits were sent to RAF Pembrey in South Wales for gunnery training where they worked on Martinets and Ansons. They then went to 26 Operation Training Unit to crew up and fly on Wellingtons. Henry spent time at 1669 Heavy Conversion Unit in Nottinghamshire to train on Lancasters as mid-upper gunner. He was posted to 138 Squadron which was a special operations unit working on Halifaxes and Lysanders aircraft dropping supplies to the resistance. They also dropped off or picked up agents in France. Their first two operations were to Kiel. Henry recalled a daylight operation to Bremen in 1945 when they suffered a hole in the fuselage from anti-aircraft fire. During the war they did five operations in all, plus trips for Operation Manna and Exodus. The crew did not keep in touch after the war. When Henry was demobbed he went back to work for the army garment firm.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Yorkshire
England--Bradford
England--London
Wales--Carmarthenshire
France
Germany
Germany--Bremen
Germany--Kiel
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Contributor
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Sue Smith
Julie Williams
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1945
138 Squadron
1669 HCU
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
Anson
anti-aircraft fire
bombing
Gee
H2S
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Lysander
Martinet
Morse-keyed wireless telegraphy
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Operational Training Unit
RAF Langar
RAF Pembrey
RAF Tempsford
Resistance
Special Operations Executive
training
Wellington
wireless operator / air gunner
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1135/11674/PSnookT1801.2.jpg
137dd66e818f1d402186e607d2a8fd6b
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1135/11674/ASnookT180215.1.mp3
9ff814d0899d0cb6cb145b2b6d6a72b7
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
Snook, Tony
Tony Snook
T Snook
Description
An account of the resource
Four items. An oral history interview with Tony Snook (b. 1925, 1813151 Royal Air Force) as well as his service release book and photographs of his crew. He flew operations as an air gunner with 115 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-02-14
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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Snook, T
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DK: Right. So, this is David Kavanagh for the International Bomber Command Centre.
TS: Yeah.
DK: Interviewing Tony Snook on the 14th of February 2018 at his home. Right. Ok. So, I’ll just put that, if I just put that there.
TS: Yes. Yes.
DK: I’ll, I’ll keep looking down to make sure it’s still, still working.
TS: Yes.
DK: Ok. So can I first of all ask you what were you doing before you joined the RAF?
TS: School.
DK: Ah.
TS: Well I left school. I was at Maidstone Grammar School. I left school in 1942.
DK: Right.
TS: When I, that was sixteen and, no. Seventeen. That’s right. And you were allowed to join the Air Force for aircrew at seventeen, at eight, seventeen and a quarter and then they kept you waiting for a year until eighteen. Then they called you up to Regent’s Park and you was, but you were actually sworn in.
DK: Right.
TS: And you got a number there. That, in, in 1942. That’s right. And then I went in in 1943.
DK: Right. Was, was the Air Force something you chose then? Is it something you wanted to do as opposed to —
TS: Well, I want to because I joined the, I went, the ATC. The school had an ATC squadron and I rose up and became a sergeant in the ATC and we used to go to camps. To West Malling just outside Maidstone which was a night fighter station which had Beaufighters and Defiants and Havocs. That was Douglas Boston with a searchlight in the nose.
DK: Yeah.
TS: Which used to illuminate supposedly and the Defiants flew alongside and shot it down. It didn’t often happen unfortunately. But anyway we used to go there and, that’s right 1940 I was fifteen and we were there and we were sent out to sweep up around the dispersals and things like that, you know. Just to, make do with us really. And the corporal, the engine, the engine fitter said, ‘Have you ever flown?’ I said, ‘I’m fifteen years old. How could I fly during the war?’ He said, ‘We’ll see what we can do.’ So anyway, the pilot came along to the Beaufighter. He was a flying officer then and he said, ‘Do you want a trip lad?’ So I said, ‘I’d love one.’ So he took me up in this Beaufighter. I stood in the well behind the pilot holding on to his seat. Well, it was still wartime. How would, how would health and environment think about that nowadays? [laughs]
DK: No health and safety.
TS: Yes. Anyway, that, but that was that but you know I was interested in aeroplanes anyway naturally. But that was wonderful I thought.
DK: So what did you think of your first flight then when you were —
TS: Wonderful.
DK: Yeah.
TS: Yeah. Because I could see. Just there was the chap’s head. And he was a Flight Officer Widdows who died about twelve years ago.
DK: Right.
TS: His, because I look at the Telegraph every day to see if I’m in it [laughs] But he was in there. He lived ‘til a hundred as an air commodore.
DK: Oh right.
TS: And his wife was about five years ago she lived till a hundred and she died about five years. So both of them lived ‘til a hundred.
DK: A hundred. Yeah and that was at —
TS: And —
DK: Sorry. Go on.
TS: Well, I mean then I was in. Because after that, we had actually what I first joined at the school was what they called the OTC. Officer Training Corps which was Army naturally.
DK: Right.
TS: And then I transferred to the ATC when it started. And so therefore at seventeen and a quarter I went into the Recruiting Office and applied to join for aircrew and they said alright. We went up to the house. Air Ministry house in London.
DK: Right.
TS: What was it called?
DK: Is it Ad Astra house is it?
TS: Ad Astra house.
DK: Ad Astra House. Yeah. Yeah.
TS: Something like that.
DK: Yeah.
TS: And you were given a medical and a small education test. And then you were sworn in and given a number. And you also were given a little silver badge which you put in the lapel of your jacket to say that, because you know people used to think oh, he looks a hairy, he’s not in the Service. We used to wear this little badge.
DK: Oh right.
TS: A little silver badge.
DK: Is that to stop people perhaps turning on you then and —
TS: Well, it might be. I mean it didn’t often happen —
DK: No.
TS: Very often.
DK: No.
TS: I mean surely they could see that the lad was probably not old enough to be in the air anyway. And I went in finally in November 1943.
DK: Right.
TS: Yes.
DK: So where was your first posting to then? In November 1943.
TS: ITW at Newquay.
DK: Right.
TS: Because I went in as PNB.
DK: Right.
TS: And I passed through ITW. Then they sent us to Theale near Reading.
DK: So that’s the PNB. Pilot, navigator —
TS: Bomber.
DK: Bomb aimer.
TS: That’s right. Yes. Yes.
DK: For the recording.
TS: And they sent us to Theale, outside Reading which was an EFTS. Elementary Flying Training School.
DK: Right.
TS: Which had Tiger Moths. And we did twelve hours there and I soloed after seven and a half and then completed the twelve. And then they had, this was just after the invasion, they didn’t lose as many as they expected. And there were rumours going around that so many people were [pause] if you were chosen as a pilot or that you wouldn’t. You know you probably might be made redundant. And this did happen a lot. The Air Force weren’t very kind at times, you know.
DK: No. No.
TS: No. Because naturally if we were PNB most of us that’s what we wanted to be. A pilot.
DK: Yeah.
TS: So anyway they thought I’d make a better air gunner [laughs]
DK: Was that a reflection on how you flew then or —
TS: No, because I got a good report from my instructor.
DK: Oh right.
TS: About flying. I mean after I soloed in seven and a half hours.
DK: Right.
TS: Which wasn’t bad.
DK: So it’s literally because they thought they wouldn’t need so many pilots then.
TS: Well, going forward when we went to Heavy Con Unit, flew Lancasters then we obtained an engineer.
DK: Right.
TS: And who was it? A pilot who they didn’t want. And you’ll see it on his, on the photo there.
DK: Yeah. Yeah. Oh right.
TS: With his pilot’s wings. And he was the engineer. They sent them to St Athans and gave them an engineer’s course. And there were lots of them so really I suppose that I was lucky because I kept flying because I met people who were with, started with me earlier on and they were doing one might say menial jobs about. And then I went to, they sent me to Stormy Down in South Wales to start the gunnery course. We didn’t used to fly from Stormy Down. We flew from an aerodrome nearer to Cardiff. Right on the coast. Which is now Cardiff International Airport I think and I can’t remember the name of it. It belonged [pause] I saw it began with P. But anyway we flew in Ansons there with the gunnery exercises and then after we’d done that we went back to Stormy Down and took the last exams and passed out and given our little brevets which that’s one there.
DK: Yeah. For the air gunner.
TS: Yes.
DK: Yeah. So, was ,was the air gunnery something you took to quite well then?
TS: Oh yeah. I’m a very, I suppose really I’m very, I was service minded. I wish I’d stayed in. But nothing mattered to me. I did what, you know.
DK: Yeah.
TS: It was what I liked so —
DK: So what sort of targets did you used to have to shoot at?
TS: Drogues behind the mainly Miles oh [pause] Miles, anyway. It was —
DK: Miles Masters was it?
TS: Masters. Something. Yes. Yes.
DK: So, they’re pulling a drogue and you’re —
TS: That’s right. Yes.
DK: Shooting at that.
TS: And the, to differentiate which gunner had, had got hits on the target the actual project, the bullet itself was painted with a soft paint and that used to make a mark on the drogue.
DK: Right.
TS: When it went through.
DK: Oh right.
TS: So anyway, did that and then after that I was, and one or two other off from Stormy Down went to Upper Heyford. North of Oxford.
DK: Yeah.
TS: Which was an old permanent station. A lovely place it was. All brick built and a lovely place. But we didn’t fly from there because they were laying, they were putting runways down. I think they were getting, the Americans had it afterwards. Maybe you remember that F 111s —
DK: Yes.
TS: Used to fly from Upper Heyford.
DK: Yes. Yeah.
TS: Anyway, we went to Upper Heyford and we, it was a lovely place as I say. And on the second day there, we had a sort of induction on the first day we were all put in to a big room. So many pilots, so many engineers, so, not, sorry not engineers, so many navigators, bomb aimers, and wireless op and two gunners and they said, ‘We’ll be back in an hour. Sort yourself out in crews and make sure you like him because you’ve got to fly with him.’ And that’s what they told us. So in an hour’s time all the people got together. I mean another gunner that I said, ‘Come on, Ron. Let’s join up together.’ And who do we look? ‘He looks alright.’ So we went over with Johnny Rimer, an Australian. So, that’s how we crewed up.
DK: Do you think, do you think that worked well?
TS: Yes.
DK: Because you’re, it was a bit unusual. The military normally you’re told here, there and there.
TS: That’s right.
DK: But with this —
TS: Yes.
DK: You had to sort yourselves out. It was very unusual.
TS: It was unique. No doubt.
DK: Yeah.
TS: It’s never happened since. You don’t get anything in the service which you sort of pal up with somebody and say maybe, I don’t know, a tank. It might be with a tank. It might be. I don’t know.
DK: Yeah.
TS: But that’s how they used to do it and it worked. Because I can never remember anybody saying, ‘Oh, you know, I don’t like you. I’m going to get out,’ because it didn’t happen. Everybody stayed the same. Yes.
DK: And is that where you found your pilot then was it?
TS: That’s right. Yes.
DK: And what was your pilot’s name?
TS: Johnny Rimer. John Rimer.
DK: John Rimer.
TS: An Australian.
DK: Right.
TS: From [pause] well, near Melbourne Australia. In fact we used to send, write and send Christmas cards right up ‘til the time he died which was two years ago.
DK: Oh right.
TS: Yeah.
DK: So there, can you remember the other crew you met up with there? Would have been your navigator?
TS: Yes. George, the navigator.
DK: George, the navigator.
TS: George, like, and he’s there anyway.
DK: Right.
TS: That’s George I think. There.
DK: Right.
TS: And he came from Warrington. But I can’t remember. It’s funny really I can’t remember his surname. I remember George.
DK: Yeah.
TS: Because that’s all it was to us. George.
DK: Yeah.
TS: And Eddie Harrison was the wireless operator.
DK: Right.
TS: Ron Stedman. Ron Stedman was the mid-upper gunner.
DK: The bomb aimer?
TS: The bomb aimer. The bomb aimer. Swettenham. Len Swettenham from London. The East End of London.
DK: Right.
TS: And he went out to Australia after the war and Johnny Rimer sponsored him.
DK: Oh right.
TS: He went out there. And that was the crew. And I’m the only one left of them. Everybody else has gone.
DK: So your flight engineer then. He came along later.
TS: Later. At Heavy Con Unit. Yes.
DK: Right.
TS: And he was the only one that was put into the crew.
DK: Yeah.
TS: He, you know, he didn’t say, look around and say, ‘I want to join them.’
DK: And can you remember his name?
TS: Yes [pause] Dick Tinsley. And they’re big farmers at Spalding.
DK: I’ve met him.
TS: Dick. Yes.
DK: Yeah.
TS: As a matter of fact I couldn’t remember his surname. He, funnily enough he was a bit the odd man out. He wasn’t very much of a beer drinker which we all were.
DK: Yeah.
TS: And I was in, I was invited to East Kirkby.
DK: Yeah.
TS: To the Lancaster.
DK: Yeah.
TS: In Lincolnshire. And my friend at the Golf Club is one of the, I think he’s one of the trustees. Paul [Mutitt]
DK: Oh right.
TS: He leant me a magazine and in the magazine was a reunion in Holland for the Manna trips.
DK: Right.
TS: And there was Dick Tinsley with a frame, you know.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
TS: To help walking. So obviously he wasn’t very good on his pins. But whether he’s still there or not I don’t know.
DK: Well, I saw him. I interviewed him for the IBCC on the 4th of June 2015. So he was still alive then.
TS: Yes. 2015 was when this photo was taken.
DK: Oh, ok.
TS: When they all did the trip to Holland.
DK: Because rather oddly I actually live nearby. I’ve since moved but I lived just up the road from where he was.
TS: Did you really?
DK: And I got to know his son. Also Richard Tinsley. And they, they knew the lady that my wife and I were renting a house off at the time.
TS: Oh yes. Yeah.
DK: So I went to see Dick Tinsley the senior and interviewed him then. And as I say it was 115 Squadron.
TS: Squadron. Yeah.
DK: And he said then he was a pilot, co-pilot. So he trained as a pilot.
TS: Yes.
DK: But as you say ended up as a flight engineer.
TS: They were never regarded as co-pilots.
DK: Yeah. Flight engineers.
TS: They were flight engineers.
DK: Yeah. That’s strange. Well, I think, I’m pretty sure he’s still alive.
TS: Is he?
DK: I haven’t heard anything to the contrary.
TS: No. No.
DK: Would you like me to find out or —
TS: Well, it’s a long time ago.
DK: Yeah. Well. I’ll ask anyway.
TS: Yeah. Yeah. Yes.
DK: I’ll let you know.
TS: No. I’d be interested to know if he’s still alive.
DK: Yeah. I was still in touch with his son just a few months ago.
TS: Were you?
DK: I’ll speak to his son.
TS: Yes.
DK: Yeah.
TS: Well if you take my phone number you can just give me a ring sometimes.
DK: Yeah. Sure. Yeah.
TS: And tell me.
DK: Yeah.
TS: Anyway, where did we get to? Heavy Con Unit didn’t we?
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
TS: That’s right.
DK: And do you remember where the Heavy Conversion Unit was?
TS: Yes. Langar, outside Nottingham. And as a matter of fact there was a factory next door to the airfield which reconditioned Lancs which had been damaged and they brought them there and they repaired them. And we did the course on heavy, on to Lancasters there. And that included which we didn’t know, I mean from Upper Heyford we were always flying in Wellingtons. Hercules engine Wellingtons which I forget now which mark they were but anyway Wellingtons have Merlins and we always had Hercules Wellingtons. And of course we did lots of cross countries but nothing outside. When we got to Heavy Con Unit we had to fly longer cross country’s down into the middle of France and back. And on two of them we had engine fires.
DK: Right.
TS: On the port outer. We didn’t, I mean, it was dangerous yes but I mean the graviner put it out straightaway and we just flew the rest of the trip on three engines and feathered the props and —
DK: So, what, what did comparing the two what was it like flying in a Wellington? What were they like as aircraft?
TS: Well, it was flying. On the other hand of course in Wellingtons there was only one turret so one of us used to go in the turret and one of us used to sit by the pilot because it had a, although the pilot’s sitting on the left hand side always and there was a seat. Some of them even had dual control. They used to sit there for the cross country. And another thing you used to go down and look through the astrodome and things like that.
DK: Right.
TS: Yes. Yes.
DK: So you got to the Heavy Conversion Unit then.
TS: Yes.
DK: Was that the first time you saw the Lancaster?
TS: Yes. Yes, it was.
DK: And what was your impressions when you saw that?
TS: Well, we reckoned it was a wonderful aeroplane anyway [laughs] and we, we had an instructor who, who was a bit wild and he used to throw it about. When he did a corkscrew you knew you were in a corkscrew. Yes. You know, he was the type of chap who if anything was in the fuselage through said, through you know you’d get parachutes coming up off the ground and going down like that and then flopping down. He was, he certainly used to throw it about. No doubt about it. But they put up with it.
DK: Yeah. Can you remember his name at all?
TS: No. He was, I honestly can’t remember his name.
DK: So the —
TS: Because after John, after John was passed out by him which wasn’t very long anyway we used to fly without an instructor after that on, you know cross countries, practice bombing trips with little twenty pound bombs and, but as I say these two cross countries from Langar down into mid-France and back again.
DK: Right. And you mentioned the corkscrew manoeuvre.
TS: Yes.
DK: What was that in aid of then?
TS: Well, you see you were sitting, sitting in the turret and you, ‘Skipper, enemy port quarter, five hundred yards.’ And you’d inform the skipper about it and then you would say, ‘He’d turn, ‘Prepare to corkscrew port.’ And then as he started to turn on his, the skipper would put, because you always turned into the attack. Turned in. Dived down. Turned to starboard. Back up. Over the top. Down and like that. That was a corkscrew.
DK: So it —
TS: And the rear gunner was expected to keep up a dialogue all the time that the attack was happening.
DK: Right. So, what, how would you describe your role as a rear gunner then? You’re sitting there and what is it you’re supposed to be doing for your —
TS: Well, you’re searching all the time. I mean not when, not when we were going to Italy bringing troops home. Things like that. But if you were anywhere near where there may be fighters you were searching. Going from port to starboard, port to starboard, port to starboard all the time. And looking up.
DK: So —
TS: It was better for you to look down in the main because —
DK: Yeah.
TS: The mid-upper looked up of course.
DK: Right. So you had to work as a team with the mid-upper gunner then.
TS: Yes. Yes. He didn’t, he would say anything if it was important but your dialogue was with the skipper.
DK: Right. So from the Heavy Conversion Unit then, you’ve then gone to 115 Squadron.
TS: That’s right. Witchford. Yes.
DK: At Witchford.
TS: Yes.
DK: So that was your first posting then.
TS: That was the posting. It was around about February 1945 anyway.
DK: Right.
TS: Yes. Yes.
DK: And, and you mentioned before, just before we put the tape on, the recorder on, the type of Lancasters they had there.
TS: I think they were Mark 1s when we first went there but they were gradually replacing them with Mark 3s.
DK: Right.
TS: They had had, in fact in my Lancaster, I’ve got a big book on the Lancaster and it does show 115 with Hercules. They are Mark 2s.
DK: Right.
TS: But funnily enough I mean the Hercules was a wonderful engine but the Lanc preferred Merlins.
DK: Merlins. Yeah.
TS: So they were reequipping them with Packard Merlins and paddle blades, you know.
DK: So by the time you got there then all the Mark 2 Lancasters had gone had they?
TS: Gone. That’s right. Yes. Yes.
DK: So how many operations did you then fly with 115 squadron?
TS: We flew five.
DK: Right.
TS: Three Manna trips. And there were two that won’t be recorded anywhere which I did.
DK: Right.
TS: And they won’t find anything about them.
DK: Right.
TS: No.
DK: So where were they to then?
TS: Well, they were just over somewhere.
DK: Oh ok. So that wasn’t with your crew then.
TS: No.
DK: No. Ok. So you did five altogether then.
TS: That’s right. Yes. Yes. Two nights. They were both to Kiel. And one to an oil refinery in the Ruhr. These were daylights. And one to, daylight to Bad Odesloe in North Germany and and the island in the North Sea [pause]
DK: Oh, Heligoland.
TS: Heligoland that’s right.
DK: Yeah.
TS: That was the last one.
DK: Right.
TS: Yes. Yeah. And coming back from it was a bit, it wasn’t amusing because the ground crew didn’t like it. Coming back from Bad Odesloe we used to fly in loose vics and after you know you got away gradually they broke up and we were formating with one. And just crossing the Dutch coast near Sylt and bang, bang, bang, bang three anti-aircraft burst right on our nose. A terrific clang and I said to the skipper, ‘I think we’ve been hit.’ Anyway, nothing seemed to be the matter but when we got down it had gone through the elsan [laughs] And the poor ground crew had to, I mean it hadn’t been emptied before the ground crew they had to clear this up. They weren’t pleased.
DK: Oh dear. So was that the only time you were hit by gunfire then or anti-aircraft fire?
TS: I think it was. That was the only time. I didn’t know of another time. No. No. No.
DK: No. You never saw any German fighters or anything like that.
TS: I did see one over Kiel.
DK: Right.
TS: And it was one of these. I think they used to call them lone wolfs. A FW190. And he was well above us and he dived down but some, he just went off. Kept going down. I could see him against the, where the, you know where the fires were down below. Going down. He just went down. It was an FW190 and I think they called them lone wolf.
DK: So the operations then, the bombing operations were all in daylight.
TS: No. The Kiels were night time.
DK: Oh right. Ok. Ok.
TS: Both. Yes.
DK: Right.
TS: Yeah. It was when the pocket battleship was hit by somebody from 115 Squadron actually.
DK: And was it your crew?
TS: And did a lot of damage to it.
DK: Was that your crew by any chance?
TS: No. It wasn’t. No.
DK: Oh [laughs]
TS: I remember very much the pilot who whose aircraft did do it and he was one might say, a bit of an uncouth sod [laughs] He used to eat peas off a knife. But he was a skipper and —
DK: Yeah.
TS: And I think it was his crew that did it. Yes.
DK: Right. So you mentioned earlier just before we put the recording on your pilot then went back to Australia.
TS: That’s right. Yes.
DK: So what happened to the rest of the crew then?
TS: Well, the mid-upper came with me to another crew and the rest just disappeared.
DK: Right.
TS: And I never heard. The only thing I did hear, Len Swettenhan, the bomb aimer he went on. He was taken off flying altogether and he told me that he went out to Singapore and he did quite well for himself because he was got put in charge of a stores down there [laughs] And I think he did quite well out of it. The pilot. Naturally Johnny went back and became a doctor in Australia.
DK: Right.
TS: Dick Tinsley, I’ve no idea what he did. He just disappeared.
DK: Yeah. I can tell you what he did.
TS: Well, he —
DK: He took up with farming so —
TS: Went to farming.
DK: Farming yes when I saw.
TS: Well, they were. When you’re going through you often see Tinsleys.
DK: Yeah.
TS: On those things in the field.
DK: When I saw him in the fields at the back they had about four hundred head of sheep.
TS: Oh really.
DK: So it was the sheep farming he were in to.
TS: Yes.
DK: And he did mention that post-war he just took up with the farm again.
TS: That’s right.
DK: That’s been passed on to his son now.
TS: That’s right. Yes. Yeah. Of course, they were, they were a big farmers weren’t they?
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
TS: And who else? Oh Eddie Harrison. He was just given menial jobs until he was demobbed. And then when he came from Liverpool. He went back to Liverpool and worked for the Liverpool Harbour Board. The Mersey Harbour Board. And funnily enough I didn’t hear ‘til later on through the Squadron Comrades letter that he’d moved to Oulton Broad. So I phoned him up and arranged to meet him at the pub at Gillingham. And we met there and had a drink and then he went off. And I’d gone away on holiday. When I came back I phoned up to make a [pause] and he’d died while I was away.
DK: Oh. That’s a shame.
TS: George. George was, I don’t, he was a lovely fella. A chap I always admired. Navigators. They used to sit at that desk with a chart and take us out there and back again not seeing anything. And really they were wonderful. How they could goodness only knows. They really were wonderful. George [pause] nobody, I asked the rest of the, you know the crew that like Johnny and Len Swettenham and Eddie if, because Eddie, George lived at Warrington which wasn’t very far from Liverpool. But he’d had nothing to do with him. No. No. He just disappeared. So that’s, and of course Ron Stedman, the mid-upper gunner, the last of the crew I’ll tell you in a minute. But he is not here anyway. But that was the, how the crew broke up.
DK: Yeah.
TS: And we went with a Flight Lieutenant Cantrell.
DK: And to which squadron did you go to after that?
TS: Oh, it was still 115.
DK: Oh, still in 115.
TS: Yes.
DK: Oh right. Ok.
TS: Yes.
DK: If I could just take you back a little bit you mentioned that you did three Manna.
TS: Manna trips.
DK: Manna trips.
TS: That’s right. Yes.
DK: So how did you feel about that? Were you —
TS: Wonderful. Wonderful. And one of the things that gave me great satisfaction, more than dropping bombs probably was when we were flying about five hundred feet and I looked down. There was an old gentleman with a black, a black Homburg walking along the dyke and he took his hat off and went like that. And I thought that’s wonderful. And funnily enough the other thing too with regard to Mannas that when we, when I went back to live in Kent at Bearsted there was a chap came and lived in the same road who’d been on the, he’d been in the army in Holland and he’d married a Dutch girl. And she was one of the people around Amsterdam Racecourse waiting for this food to be dropped. And you could see them all around and German soldiers all the way around.
DK: Yeah.
TS: Because [pause] I forget now where it is though I have read it that we started those Manna trips and we had no, no permission from Germany. They, although they’d been approached about it they hadn’t given anything. And I believe, I understand that another thing I’ve read is that because how it happened was that Prince Bernhard and Queen Julianna were living in London and they, through the Underground they learned how bad the Dutch were for food because the Germans had flooded their fields with salt water and things like that. And they approached Winston Churchill to ask if he could do anything. And that’s when he started. He gave the Air Force the order to do these Manna trips. And the Americans did it as well.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
TS: And in fact there was a major major major something. He was a south African on the squadron who used to wear the South African khaki uniform and he was one of the people that helped to develop these panniers which they put in the bomb bays and filled with food.
DK: Right.
TS: And this lady, when she learned that I was one of them she was overjoyed.
DK: So you could —
TS: Yes.
DK: You could see the people waving to you [unclear]
TS: Yes. Yeah. They were all standing around it.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
TS: Because we dropped into Amsterdam Racecourse and the other one. The other big [pause] Amsterdam. What’s the other big city in the Netherlands?
DK: Rotterdam? Or —
TS: Rotterdam. That’s right.
DK: Yeah.
TS: Yes. Yes. In fact, I think Rotterdam is now the big international airport isn’t it?
DK: Yeah.
TS: But that’s where we dropped them. There. Yes.
DK: So what sort of height were you at then when you —
TS: Well, we used to fly over the Dutch coast at about five hundred feet.
DK: Right. And do you know what sort of foodstuffs you were taking?
TS: Well, potatoes. You know. Dehydrated potatoes. Things like that. And lots of tinned stuff.
DK: Yeah.
TS: Yes, all kind of things which you could drop which would, which would be you’d think you know would put up with being dropped.
DK: Yeah.
TS: And we always used to get our chocolate ration and things like that and throw them out. I used to throw them out the back [laughs]
DK: So with 115 then you’ve now moved to a different crew.
TS: Yes.
DK: And did you fly any more operations with the second crew then?
TS: No more operations. The war finished then you see.
DK: Right. Ok.
TS: Because Johnny, the war finished when Johnny was taken away.
DK: Right.
TS: It was three or four days after the war finished.
DK: Right. And I’ve got, just for the recording here I’ve got a picture of you and you crew and the Lancaster behind it. Can you came them all now? Who’s who?
TS: Yes. That’s Dick Tinsley.
DK: Dick Tinsley. Yeah.
TS: Yeah. That’s George the [pause] George the navigator. Eddie Harrison the w/op. John Rimer the skipper. Ron, now [pause] what was the bomb aimers name?
DK: Ok. So that’s the bomb aimer.
TS: Yes. And me.
DK: Oh right.
TS: And Ron Stedman the mid-upper.
DK: Ah. Yeah. And was that your Lancaster at the back there?
TS: No.
DK: No.
TS: No. I mean people say, ‘Oh, you did all those?’ ‘No. That was the Lancaster that did it not us.’ And they asked what, what we meant and there was bombs on for bombing trips.
DK: Yeah.
TS: And windmills for Manna trips.
DK: Oh right. Oh, the windmill’s a Manna trip.
TS: Yes.
DK: Oh ok. Yes. Dick, Dick Tinsley has got that photo.
TS: I don’t doubt it. Yes.
DK: [unclear]
TS: Because how it happened was when we were, when we knew Johnny was going we went down to the photographic section and got hold of a WAAF down there.
DK: Right.
TS: And we stood and took, she took that photo for us.
DK: Well, I’ll definitely speak to his son. As I say when I saw him a couple of years ago he, well as you say he was walking with a bit of difficulty but I’ll see if he’s still around.
TS: Yes.
DK: I’ll let you know.
TS: Yes. I would imagine that he must have had something to do, or you know goes over to East Kirkby to the, at times because he’s not very far away from there.
DK: No. No.
TS: But he might be so incapacitated now. I don’t know.
DK: I’ll have a word with his son.
TS: He’s probably about two years or more older than me anyway.
DK: Yeah. So the war’s come to an end then.
TS: Yes.
DK: What were your plans then? What were you going, intending to do?
TS: Well, I wasn’t intending. I wanted to stay flying. That’s all. Which we did.
DK: Right.
TS: And when the crew broke up and then of course some weeks after that they started these trips to Italy bringing troops home. We used to fly down there and bring twenty home at a time.
DK: Right.
TS: And of course there was no need for both of us to go and Ron wasn’t terribly keen so I used to go all the time. We did three of those. And I used to look after the soldiers on the way back and probably give them a cup of coffee if they had —
DK: Can you remember where you picked them up from?
TS: Yes. Bari.
DK: Right.
TS: On the east coast of Italy.
DK: Right. And how many did you have in the aircraft each time?
TS: Well, there was the, that’s right, five of us because the mid-upper never used to go. And twenty troops.
DK: Right.
TS: Yes. And we used to put the officers in the bomb bay at the front [laughs]
DK: So some of the, some of the soldiers presumably hadn’t seen England for some years.
TS: Oh, they’d been in the eighth army.
DK: Yeah.
TS: They hadn’t been home for four years or more.
DK: Yeah.
TS: Never seen. And I met one, I don’t know how I came to meet him actually but he hadn’t been home for four years and we took off from Bari in the morning and we dropped them at, we used to use two aerodromes. Either Glatton near Peterborough or Tibenham just over the other side of the 140. Tibenham there because they had customs facilities and we dropped him at Tibenham and he was home for tea.
DK: Wow.
TS: But of course, you know it took, it used to take a bit of time coming from Bari. It’s not like the jet age.
DK: Yeah.
TS: When you do it in a couple of hours. It used to take us five and a half hours or so to —
DK: So, you were going over the Alps presumably then were you?
TS: No. I’ll tell you another thing. We always flew down to Marseilles.
DK: Oh right.
TS: Straight and then across the north of Sardinia to Naples and then to Bari. And we weren’t allowed to take parachutes.
DK: Oh.
TS: Because it wouldn’t have looked very good if we’d had parachutes and the twenty troops didn’t.
DK: Didn’t. Oh, I see.
TS: And that was it. The only one who had a parachute was the skipper. And he had to sit on his of course. The first time we went down we got near Naples and of course they, well luckily there was no one within sight of us anyway although there were Lancasters behind us coming down. And we asked Johnny Cantrell, we’d like to circle around Vesuvius and have a look down the crater. And that’s what we did. We circled around, had a look down a crater and then on to Bari. And the last time that I went down there we stayed there. We went down on November the 30th 1945 and through bad weather in England they kept cancelling the trip. Day after [pause] So we got up to Christmas and we’re not going to get home for Christmas and they gave us the option of either going to a holiday. We were, by the way at that time we had flown from Bari over to Pomigliano outside Naples and that’s where we were, then we landed there. And there’s a picture in my Lancaster book. All the Lancs at Pomig’ and our aircraft is in there somewhere.
DK: Oh right.
TS: But anyway, we went there and they gave us the option of either going to Rome or a holiday resort down south of Naples. Well, we, we chose Rome. So they took us in a QL Bedford. Most uncomfortable. About five hours on the drive up to Rome and we spent three days at Christmas in Rome.
DK: Right.
TS: In a football stadium. That’s right. And they, we had a wonderful time there. A lovely Christmas dinner with an Italian tenor singing to us. And we came back on January the 3rd. And that is a bit of a sad time for me after that because when we got back, the second day after coming back the gunnery leader called me in and he said, ‘You’re going off to an instructor’s course. Gunnery instructor’s course.’ So I said, ‘Oh, alright then. Yes. And then I’ll be back.’ And he said, ‘No. You won’t be coming back.’ So I said, ‘Well, I don’t want to go then. So cancel it.’ He said, ‘You’re going and that’s all there is to it.’ So I went. I went over to Andreas on the Isle of Man first of all and I wrote to the, I wrote to the crew. Never had any reply. Then I wrote to another skipper who was a friend of Johnny’s and he told me that ten days after that they were all killed. And in, I don’t know whether it’s in that Lancaster book but in one Lancaster book I have it gave every, the registration number of every Lancaster that was built and what happened to it.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
TS: And on February the 3rd 1946 they were out on a cross country and it blew up over Red House Farm in, in, [pause] over, near Warwick anyway.
DK: Right.
TS: Yeah. Leamington Spa.
DK: Right.
TS: Yes. And they were all killed because, and do you know the only reason I got to know this because I went home on a weeks leave around about that time and I’d taken a pair of shoes home. I used to take my shoes home and have them resoled. And the little boot mender in the village said, ‘Tony. What are you? You’re not here.’ I said, ‘Why?’ He said, ‘Well, in the paper you were one of a crew that was killed.’ And my name was in there. How it had got in there I don’t know. But anyway that’s how I found out about it.
DK: Oh dear.
TS: And I tried to find out what happened. No, no one would say. No.
DK: And that was your pilot then.
TS: The pilot.
DK: Yeah.
TS: And then strangely enough when I left Andreas and I went to the Central Gunnery School at Leconfield —
DK: Yeah.
TS: And I passed through there and went and they said, ‘Would you like to come back, Tony?’ So, I said, ‘I would like to come back here,’ because they had nice cricket facilities and rugby and it was a nice place to be. An old peacetime drome. So I went back to Andreas and they called and I went back to Leconfield.
DK: Right.
TS: As an instructor at the Central Gunnery School. And going back from leave from there one, I used to go up from Kings Cross from Kent and there used to be probably a paper train where you could go in and sleep for the night. And then they’d go off about 5 o’clock in the morning back to Hull you see. And anyway, down the cab was Bill Quinn. The wireless operator. I said, ‘Bill.’ He said, ‘I know what you’re thinking, he said, ‘Do you know what happened? I had sinus trouble that morning and they wouldn’t let me fly.’ So somebody else took his place.
DK: And rather strangely your name was down as one of the crew then.
TS: That’s right. Yes. Yes.
DK: Yeah.
TS: Yes.
DK: If, if you’ve still got the book has it got the serial number of the aircraft?
TS: Well, I don’t. No. I don’t think I, the book, this book I got with all the numbers in it I got from the Suffolk Library.
DK: Oh right. Ok.
TS: I don’t think mine has. I’ll get it out in a minute.
DK: Yeah.
TS: And just have a look at the back.
DK: You can’t remember.
TS: I don’t think it has. No. I can’t remember.
DK: No. No. You can’t.
TS: Numbers like that are so long.
DK: So it’s February.
TS: About February the 3rd it was.
DK: 1946.
TS: Yeah. It was the only Lanc that crashed around about that time.
DK: Yeah. I’ll have a look into that for you.
TS: As a matter of fact I thought that we were the last one or our, that aircraft was the last one that 115 lost. But some [pause] when I left Kent and come up to Norwich and working here and in the building next to our works a chap was interested in aeroplanes and he said, he said, ‘Tony,’ he said, ‘I saw an advert in the paper asking anybody who, about that time to get in touch.’ And I got in touch with these people and apparently whether they, because they went over to Lincolns and then to of all things Super Fortresses afterwards. And on, over North Norfolk they were they were either on an exercise affiliating with fighters and one crashed into them and that these were relatives who were asking if anybody remembered them.
DK: Right.
TS: And then as I say I went to Leconfield and I stayed there until November ’47. Then I came out. And I had a lovely time there.
DK: Just stepping back a bit. The relatives were trying to get in touch with which accident? Sorry. That was another one was it?
TS: Another one. Yes.
DK: Another one. So a plane.
TS: Yes.
DK: Did it hit a Lincoln or a Super Fortress?
TS: It collided with it.
DK: But it was —
TS: It was either a Lincoln or a Lancaster.
DK: Right.
TS: One of the two.
DK: So it’s around the same time.
TS: Around about the same time. Yes.
DK: Same time. Right. Ok.
TS: Yes. And they doing you know a big air exercise with the fighters affiliating with bombers probably intercepting them.
DK: Right.
TS: Which was very unfortunate. But it was so unfortunate when things like that happen. I mean Johnny Cantrell and his crew had done, they had done about fifteen I believe when we joined them and of course they go and do that and then they’re all killed.
DK: Oh dear.
TS: I have some ideas on it but I’m not going to —
DK: No. No
TS: Tell you.
DK: Fair enough.
TS: In there. You appreciate that.
DK: No. No. That’s fair enough. Right. So when did you actually leave the Air Force then?
TS: November ‘47
DK: Right. Ok. And what career did you go into after that?
TS: Well, I got married by the way.
DK: Oh right. Ok.
TS: In February the 10th. In fact it was our seventy first wedding anniversary last Saturday but my wife died three years ago. But that was our wedding in 1947.
DK: Right.
TS: And I had nothing to do. I mean I’d never done anything before going in the Air Force and I had some screwy idea pf another friend of mine because we lived in Kent in among fruit orchards of buying up the fruit in an orchard and that didn’t work out. So I went to work for a company called Serck, S E R C K whose headquarters was in Birmingham. And funnily enough they used to make the oil coolers for the Hercules engines.
DK: Right.
TS: They also made the oil coolers for the Concorde.
DK: Right.
TS: They developed that using fuel going through the matric to cool the oil. Which was a good idea but sadly they’ve gone now. They were sold to BTR. A load of asset strippers.
DK: Oh dear. The old story. So all these years later how do you look back on your time in the Air Force?
TS: An adventure. Yes. it was. Yes. It was. How I would have felt after doing thirty ops I don’t, I might have been nervous and one thing and another because lots of people were. I mean the great time when Bomber Command were really desecrated in a way was ’42 ’43 and up to almost the invasion in ’44. And when we went, when we went as I say we were sprogs really when we went there. And the Germans, you know they were so few, short of fuel. I mean the ones over the Ruhr. I did see some. This was in daylight but there were so many Spits around us and one thing and another that none came near us. But, whether, whether I would have felt different but altogether it was a great adventure. There’s no doubt about that.
DK: Ok. Ok that’s great.
TS: Yeah.
DK: Let’s stop it there shall we?
TS: Yes. Alright then.
DK: On that positive note. Well, thanks very much for your time. That’s been absolutely marvellous.
TS: Well, I hope it’s you know I’ve been —
DK: No. It’s very good.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Tony Snook
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
David Kavanagh
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-02-14
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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ASnookT180215, PSnookT1801
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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00:49:17 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
Tony Snook was an air gunner and served on 115 Squadron in the later stages of the Second World War. A member of the school air training corps, he had his first experience of flight when his squadron partook in a summer camp. He describes how an opportunity to stand behind the pilot of a Beaufighter holding onto his seat came about. He enlisted as a PNB (pilot, navigator, bomb aimer) in November 1943, after leaving school. Following initial training he successfully undertook elementary flying training, however, after D-Day there was an excess of pilots, and Tony was moved to an air gunnery course on the Isle of Man. He describes meeting his crew and arriving at RAF Witchford in February 1945, where they joined 115 Squadron flying Lancasters. Five operations were undertaken before the end of hostilities. He describes the only time they came under fire and, unfortunately for the ground crew who cleaned up the aftermath, the major damage was to the elsan toilet. As members of his crew were discharged after the war, Tony was allocated to another crew. He describes several operations to Bari, Italy to repatriate soldiers from the Eighth Army in Lancasters that ferried twenty passengers and five crew. In 1946, Tony was posted to a gunnery instructor course and then to the central gunnery school at RAF Leconfield. In February 1946, shortly after his posting from 115 Squadron, his crew were all killed in a tragic accident. Tonywas discharged in November 1947, he regards his flying career as a great adventure, but appreciates that flying operations in 1945 were completely different from those undertaken earlier in the campaign.
Contributor
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Ian Whapplington
Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Netherlands
Italy
England--Kent
Wales--Bridgend
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Oxfordshire
Italy--Pomigliano d'Arco
Netherlands--Amsterdam
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-11
1945
1946
115 Squadron
28 Squadron
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
Beaufighter
bombing
Flying Training School
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Operation Dodge (1945)
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
RAF Langar
RAF Stormy Down
RAF Upper Heyford
RAF Witchford
sanitation
Tiger Moth
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/632/8902/PRichardsonF1626.1.jpg
edbc9910d8670345e32dbd2d7c165993
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/632/8902/ARichardsonF160608.1.mp3
82512c612198a756aa05e521ec205c81
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
Richardson, Frederic James
F J Richardson
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Richardson, FJ
Description
An account of the resource
13 items. An oral history interview with Flight Lieutenant Frederic Richardson ( - 2020, 1234575, 146433 Royal Air Force), his log books and photographs. He flew operations as a pilot with 207 Squadron.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Frederic Richardson and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-06-08
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
DM: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre, the interviewer is David Meanwell, the interviewee is Fred Richardson. The interview is taking place at Mr. Richardson’s home in Woodham Surrey on the 8th June 2016. Fred if you could tell me a little bit about your, where you were born and growing up and your family?
FR: Born in a place called Glusburn in West Yorkshire, situation is about a hundred yards from the Horsforth, Horsfield Mills, woollen mills. Er my father was a poultry farm manager and I spent the first two or three weeks of my life in the in Clitheroe whilst he was getting rid of the particular farm that we were on. We then came back to Glusburn and he was and we and he was running one in a place called Eastburn which is halfway between Skipton and Keighley. We then moved to Sutton-in-Craven which is next door to Eastburn and eventually to Keltus Avenue in Cross Hills and that’s when things started to improve a bit. And it was from there that I started my movements towards the war time. There were three young pals, one Geoffrey was eight days older than I was, Alvin was a year older, his father was the local dentist who happened to be friendly with the local postmaster, who also incidentally was a lieutenant colonel in the 6th Battalion Duke of Wellington’s Regiment, and that way Alvin became a territorial. Geoffrey and I decided that we wanted to join the Fleet Air Arm and we got the invitation to go down I think to Gosport but I can’t be sure where. We had the interview and we both were unsuccessful, me because I hadn’t played for the school first fifteen at rugby, and Geoffrey because he was a civil servant, so we decided then and there soon as we get back home we’re going to sign up for the RAF, and that’s exactly what we did. Two weeks later we got our calling up papers and told to report to Cardington and at Cardington they said, ‘What do you want to do?’ So we said, ‘we wanted aircrew, one pilot and one navigator.’ ‘You can’t do that’ they said. So we said, ‘Right, we’ll both go as pilots’, and that’s how the thing started. So this is now March ’41 and the first stop is down to Bournemouth, and funnily enough whilst we were there I happened to meet a young lady, which by circumstances I had no control over, I actually married her four years later. [laughs] So from Cardington, Bournemouth, we then moved on again eventually finished up at the Aircrew Receiving Centre in Monkton. At which point there was a split, Geoffrey was taken off to go and start flying Tiger Moths at Brough, near Hull, and I was left and eventually I got moved up the rest of the country as far as Gourock[?], and then put on board this ship the “Louis Pasteur” taken across to Canada. And we’d been in Canada about two weeks and each morning there would be a roll call and eventually I got in one and and we were told, ‘You’re going down to Texas’, No. 1 BFTN, British Flying Training School, Texas, and that’s where we went, took three days to get down there by train. And er we arrived on the Sunday morning, [unclear] by now we have to wear civilian clothes as well, and so we didn’t have, went to the training course there flying the Stearman biplane, then the Vul Vultee Valiant was a single engine, and the Harvard of course was a single engine one. When all that was done, okay that’s fine you’re now a sergeant and you’re a pilot, I got various signatures that said I could temper dash with discretion, that seemed to be the thing to do. And then, ‘Where do you want to go when you get back to England?’ He said, ‘It’s either Harrogate or Bournemouth.’ I said ‘I want to go to Harrogate don’t I?’ so where did they go Bournemouth. So I thought at least I know somebody in Bournemouth, and I managed to find that she was still there and that’s where it that started. Anyway the first thing after we’d left Bournemouth was going to the Airspeed Oxford Base at Long Newnton near Tetbury, and then once we’d cleared that one we were then transferred to 29 OTU North Luffenham. At which point I get a navigator, and a wireless operator, and one gunner, and the wireless op and the gunner were both Canadians, and he the wireless op was a flying officer and here I’m and here am I a sergeant. [laughs] Anyway that was the way it went and when that finished we were then moved out to Wigsley which was the Conversion Unit for going onto squadrons and we were flying Manchesters and Lancasters there and that’s when I picked up a flight engineer, and a bomb aimer, and another gunner, the gunner being Wallace McIntosh at that point. And eventually I suppose it must have been January we actually transferred from there straight to Langar and stayed there. Oh sorry I should go back and say that during the time that we were at OTU we went and did a leaflet raid over Paris and eventually they allowed me to treat that as my first operation. So I then went and did twenty-nine ops at Langar, all of which are recorded in the, in the book, two of which finished up in Blida in North Africa because it was too far to get back and the first time and the second time fog bound and we couldn’t get back so we went on to there. And virtually that’s, that’s the operation side finished so.
DM: When you and your best friend, I assume he was, wanted to go into the Fleet Air Arm originally.
FR: Yeah.
DM: What made you want the Fleet Air Arm in particular obviously flying was part of it.
FR: Yeah.
DM: But why the Navy rather than the Air Force can you remember?
FR: No, no I can’t remember the reason why I just I suppose.
DM: How old were you then?
FR: Eighteen I suppose just.
DM: So you hadn’t been called up obviously?
FR: No.
DM: The idea was to get in ahead to do something you wanted to do?
FR: Yes. I think I suppose even by the time that we actually signed with the RAF we were still underage so that’s, that’s got that far. But then I suppose once I’d finished the tour we’d I’ll oh yes I’ll tell you one little bit that’s part of all that lot. I was apparently, I was, Bomber Command issued the edict that all captains of aircraft had to be commissioned, so as a sergeant I had to apply, I didn’t want to but I had to apply for it, and my parent company group captain said, ‘Well he’s he’s all right but not really suitable for an officer.’ So I didn’t get anywhere until I got a telegram saying would I go to the AOC’s place in Grantham to meet the Right Honourable Sir R. A. Cochrane, Ralph Cochrane. And he said, ‘How many trips have you done?’ I think at that time I’d done about nineteen, said, ‘Any aiming point photographs?’ I said, ‘No’. ‘Target area?’ ‘Yes, got one target area one. ‘Mmm’, he said, ‘You’ve managed so far, I think the group captain’s a bloody fool you’ve got the commission’. And that was it so that’s got rid of that bit. [laughs] So then having finished we went I went on two or three different stations flying the Wellingtons, Gamston was the only one I can remember for sure. And then we got transferred to Wymeswold, and at Wymeswold they had a Lancaster repair factory on one side of the thing so we could see what was going, going on with all that like, and er we also had a subsidiary place at Castle Donnington, which of course now is the East Midlands Airport. And we’d been flying night, day and night, from either place until they eventually decided that Wymeswold was no longer a Bomber Command OTU it was to be a Transport Command OTU, at which point we got the Dakotas in and so I flew them for a while. Eventually I suppose it got to the point that was war had more or less finished and that’s when I found out that I’d been sent this Class B Release which meant I had a job to go back to which was better than most of them. I think I was actually offered to stay in the RAF or to join what became BOAC, and the stories they said for that one was if as captain if you make a bad landing you get immediately demoted so I thought it’s not worth trying. So I took the B Release went back to the Rustlers Iron Company in Keighley, Yorkshire. And I suppose we’d been there a couple of years by which time I, I was able to produce a family [laughs] and that’s that was when Andrew was born 1950. And we moved from where we were in Keighley to a house in Bingley, and I was then working for one firm in Bradford called Wool Textile Supplies and a bit later on I worked for Metal Box in Shipley, but I couldn’t get on with them because I wasn’t an internal auditor and any promotions you had to be an internal auditor, so in the end I said, ‘Fiddlesticks’. And my wife wanted to go back to London where she’d been born so we did eventually, 1954 I think it was when we moved down, then I joined a firm called The Dominium Rubber Company which I found out shortly was part of the US Rubber Company Group. I’d been there about eighteen months when the company secretary left and I was promoted to company secretary for that particular lot, and I’d been there another year and they said, ‘We want you to go and run the factory up in Dumfries’. So date wise I mean I’m not entirely sure when, let’s see if it says on here, no I haven’t got any dates down. I must have been up there ooh, trying to think, ‘cos Andrew was going to school in Dumfries, but he was going to a Catholic school and his mother didn’t like that so I got him transferred to the Ashville College in Harrogate, which meant he’d got to go over there and we were still left where we were. And then I got transferred to Edinburgh, chief accountant up in Edinburgh, and that lasted until eventually I suppose ’67, yes that’s right ‘cos you’d be you were still at university by then. So we came back down here and I didn’t have a job to go to. Although in fact I had there was supposed to be something going on because he’d, the accountant, the head office man up in Edinburgh decided that he wanted to set up an accounting room team in London, for the whole of the US Rubber Company outfit, and he was called back to the States and his replacement instead of coming to London went to straight to Edinburgh, so I’m now working for a bloke in Edinburgh, so I thought this is ridiculous, so I moved again. And that’s got with a firm called Allcorn Rupp[?], something with Allcorn[?] after it, down at Rochester in Kent, and eventually I suppose about 1972 or so decided that wasn’t going to go out either, so of course I think when I got there they were supposed to be liquidated, so I had to liquidate the thing before anything else. So at home twiddling my thumbs and luckily I found one or two places I could go and apply for a job and eventually I went down to Basingstoke to a firm down there and saw a lot of things and it looked as though I was not too badly off and as the bloke was going out of the office I said to him, ‘Excuse me, you still got Formica?’ So he said, ‘Yes.’ I said, ‘Well Dan Mercede [?] worked for you in Formica.’ ‘Yes’ he said. Well, I said, ‘Dan Mercede[?] was the auditor in charge when I was chief accountant in Edinburgh.’ Two days later I got the job, so now I’m part of the De La Rue Company which I stayed until I retired, officially retired in 1987. At which point I said, ‘Have you got something I can do?’ And they said ‘Yes you can run our two charity shops.’ Which meant I could go sort of a ten till four job rather than anything else, until the end of two years there, the new boss of the unit said, ‘I don’t want any more retired employees working for me.’ So cheerio, and that’s when I finished doing anything really, since then I’ve been as part of the set up of the U3A in this area, and also joined a little firm known as DAIRS [spells it out] Disability Advice and Information for Runnymead, stayed with them for a while and then I think I decided to give it up altogether, and that’s the end of it.
DM: When so looking sort of taking the whole together you were demobbed, you went back to work, did you have any contact with people you had been in the Air Force with after that for some time?
FR: No, no we forgot when we all packed in to pass notes round, some of the crews did, but for some reason I didn’t, I suppose mainly because I didn’t have a full seven crew at the end of the day that I’d been with the whole time there were only four of us who started and finished.
DM: So did you, when did you start exploring that part of your history so to speak, was it after you retired?
FR: Mmm, I don’t quite know, I don’t quite recall how it started, but anyway the the local editor somebody decided to form an association of the RAF at Langar, and I suppose we got some way of finding out, anyway. We started going and it’s during that time that I got contacted by Wallace to say that he wanted to write this book so I had to get in touch with Mel Rothe [?] who was doing the writing for him and send all the information that I could so that he was able to write the book as it is.
DM: So that was done for the airmen was it?
FR: Yes, yes. That was I suppose the end of it, fair enough.
DM: Did you, or do you belong to the Squadron Association or Bomber Command Association, did you join any groups?
FR: Only the, this this one one association which is finished now anyway. No I didn’t belong to any other group.
DM: Take you back to when you went to America?
FR: Mmm.
DM: Did you say it was the “Louis Pasteur” was the vessel?
FR: Yes it was French.
DM: Was it a frightening crossing, or were you sick? [laughs]
FR: No, (a) to the second bit no, er not altogether because luckily we had a battleship and two destroyers accompanied us they were going to Bermuda so they, it’s only the very last day that we had to flout[?] on our own across the water, and I suppose even then there was bloody U-boats can still be out here, anyway we got through it all right.
DM: Did you come back by ship as well when you finished training?
FR: Yes, oh yes, “Duke of York” I think, I think the “Duke of York”, I’m not entirely sure on that one.
DM: You made that okay as well obviously as you wouldn’t be here now.
FR: Yes.
DM: So you first time you flew a plane was Texas was it?
FR: Mmm, yes.
DM: How was it, can you remember that first flight?
FR: No problem, somehow I felt at home in them I think. My, there was a fella sitting in front of me showing me what to do but after that I sat in the front and he sat behind so he could tell me what to do.
DM: I know you said when you went to America you had to wear civvies so this was before Pearl Harbour was it?
FR: Yes, Pearl Harbour was actually happened whilst we were there, we suddenly woke up one morning to hear the story but that particular night when it happened we’d gone to stay with the link trainer instructor, he’d got a large bed and all three of us were in the bed, suddenly he said, ‘Bloody hell’. And that was it. So things got a bit chaotic after that day I don’t think the Americans knew quite what to do.
DM: But were there any changes where you were, I mean did they suddenly bring in Americans to be trained and things like that or was?
FR: No. I think the whole time that I was instructing back here I saw one American, Canadians, New Zealanders, South Africans, anything, but we only had one American. They must have trained them over there.
DM: When you were in Texas you obviously had leave I assume while you were there from time to time?
FR: Not very often really. Certainly not enough to go.
DM: You didn’t go travelling?
FR: We did, I think we, we went down to um the south, Galveston I know, must have been Houston before that, Houston between in Texas, I think so.
DM: Yeah, I think, my geography’s not that good about Texas but I think so.
FR: I’m sure we went there because we, I think we went with this link trainer instructor took us down there the three of us, we went to the cathedral for the Christmas mass, and then we went down to Galveston to see if we could see any British ships down there and that was about it. Used to play ten pin bowling out there, No. 1 BFTS’ Team was doing very well was beating the locals, I never got onto the team so I don’t really know. That’s about it I think.
DM: Do you remember your first flight in a Lancaster, well I suppose a Manchester before a Lancaster?
FR: Well the Manchester was only local training stuff. It was a bit bigger than the Wellington but I wasn’t that entirely impressed with it, at least I was less impressed with it once I got into the Lancaster to do these few trips round, ‘cos I found the Manchester was very heavy to manoeuvre the controls, the Lanc was a lot easier than that, and then as I say, I’m not quite sure how we actually got from there to Langar [coughs], I don’t know whether we flew or we didn’t, I might have done. I don’t see how we could have done ‘cos we’d have had to use a Wigsley plane to do it, no they must have put us some way there, how we got there, don’t ask me. [coughs] I know we arrived there and that was it. Because I’d lost, I’d lost my navigator by then, he er, he took us there, we did a thing on the Wellingtons over the North Sea and we were supposed to come back I think South of the Humber but for some reason we didn’t we came right down the Humber and suddenly at a thousand feet I could see all these barrage balloons, so [unclear] stick and climbed and got round them, so I thought if that’s the only way he can do I don’t want him, it’s the only time I’ve actually sacked anybody I think.
DM: So how did that work, did you just say to the CO I don’t want him anymore?
FR: Yes, yes, I explained why and yes so the bloke that I actually got when I got to Langar was somebody who’d done about five trips already. And that’s the way it seemed to go so I finished with seven crew only four of whom had been there from the start, but that’s life. Others were John Stevens he had seven and he still had seven when he finished and he’s the only one who came back to the association with all seven. I think John McIntosh was he’d got he finished with his seven, his flight engineer flew with me once so you had to do that when you were without and they didn’t have a flight so you grabbed anybody you could lay your hands on. [coughs] That’s life.
DM: So as the captain of a plane what was your approach were you sort of a stickler for discipline or?
FR: Er not too much discipline, but I told them, ‘You do what you’re supposed to do and that’s it.’ And that’s the way they accepted it, and that’s the way we went through the whole lot, nobody, nobody quibbled, just got on with it which is the way it should be.
DM: Of the sorties that you did over enemy territory.
FR: Mmm.
DM: Are there any that particularly stick in your mind as for for you know any particular reason really it could be a good reason or a bad reason?
FR: I think there were probably two which I would class as bad reasons, we were attacked twice by fighters, Wallace claimed one of them anyway and scouted the others away. [coughs] I suppose the one that eventually decided I wanted to enjoy these two to Blida ‘cos it was somewhere else, the first one we’d been to Friedrichshafen and from there it was a long way and going across the Med at about five hundred feet It’s not the best thing to do but we did it. Second time we went was to bomb a power station just outside Milan, there were only seven of us in the raid and we were each given an allocated height to go in to go round [coughs] the end of which one bloke unfortunately caught it. The rest of us we managed to get out of it, but whether we did any damage I wouldn’t know, sometimes you can’t tell we’d seen the bombs go down but that’s about it. So that’s the only, the only two things that I think I liked about that lot. [laughs]
DM: What about when you were off duty what was the social life like?
FR: I suppose I wasn’t used to it and I didn’t do it, honestly can’t remember what I did when we weren’t.
DM: You weren’t a great drinker or?
FR: No, I have an odd one now and again but not to any great extent, and I think that’s probably when I started smoking a bit more than anything. But I don’t, I don’t remember going to the local pub at all, just wasn’t wasn’t in my bringing up and I didn’t see any point in it so ‘cos if I get too tight I wouldn’t know what I’m doing you know, give it up.
DM: Do you have any, or did you after the war, did you have any feelings about how people who’d been in Bomber Command were perceived or treated ‘cos as you know there was a lot of controversy you know about what had happened and then how people were treated after the war, or did you just get back into civvy street and get on with it?
FR: More or less that, I suppose the only time there when Dilys and I went and did a tour sort of around touring Europe [coughs], and we saw Dresden and that was enough.
DM: So was Dresden still hadn’t been rebuilt when you were there?
FR: No.
DM: Right.
FR: No I don’t, I don’t think I was too worried about Bomber Command being bellyached ‘cos some of the things they had done were good, and some of the things that they had to do were not good, that’s it, it wasn’t, you didn’t blame them you blamed the hierarchy.
DM: What about more recently you know there was obviously there’s been some controversy over, controversy might be too strong a word, but over not being a campaign medal for Bomber Command for example but you got the clasp?
FR: I don’t, I didn’t one of those things, I didn’t think it was necessary, we’d had the, we’d had the Aircrew Europe thing, we’d had the Defence Medal, we had another two or three like that, and I’d got the big gong so so what, you know I wasn’t ‘cos did Fighter Command get anything I don’t think so.
DM: I think well the Battle of Britain they got something didn’t they?
FR: Yes, well I mean again that’s something special, I I don’t mind.
DM: Did any of your missions go to Berlin?
FR: Oh yes, two or three times, in fact I don’t know where, where, we went more than, more than once we went to a fair number of places. I suppose the Ruhr Valley was our main target and so was, so was the flak, but touchwood we were we weren’t struck, had this searchlight shot out one night that was it.
DM: So one of your gunners shot the searchlight?
FR: Yes. No we, we got caught by it and we had hell of a job getting out of, we did eventually but I don’t think we did any firing on that particular raid [coughs], no I think that’s about it.
DM: When you went on raids were you sort of nervous, [clock chiming in background], apprehensive or was it you just got on with it?
FR: You just got on with it, I don’t, I don’t think there was there wasn’t any particular place that we were going to that scared me to hell, no. I don’t think even doing it did that I was aware that were others about but nobody came near enough to cause a problem for when you think there must have been a thousand planes flying about at one time just somewhere within the vicinity a bit scary. [laughs]
DM: Yes probably not to think too much about it. Do you know what happened to your friend that you joined up with?
FR: Yes, well he, well he, he wasn’t able to finish the Tiger Moths, and so he was sent to Canada and he did his training in Canada, qualified there and then stayed there as an instructor and spent his entire time in Canada, married a Canadian girl. Actually we’d, he, he brought her back, I met her two or three times, her father was either the mayor or some high ranking bloke in the council and he died out there as well, and I’ve got it a copy of his gravestone it’s in the files.
DM: After you met the lady who became your wife?
FR: Yes Dilys.
DM: Dilys, when you had leave did you go to see Dilys or did you go home?
FR: I think, I didn’t, it was whilst I was instructing after we were from Wymeswold, I was able to put the bicycle on the train and go down to Oxford from there changing at Leicester anyway the trains went then. I would see her then, but it took a while before we got serious enough to actually do it, and somewhere or another I’ve got a cigar case [laughs] that says when we did it, it’s it’s in the service somewhere. No she had decided that she didn’t want to (a) to marry me whilst I was still libel to be shot she didn’t want to be a widow, and when it came to the time to do it, she said, ‘wait until you’re the same age as me and then we do it.’ ‘Cos she didn’t want to look as though she’d been picking up young ones, and I was only, I had only to wait a few months for that, ridiculous isn’t it, so I was still married in my uniform it looked better.
DM: When you said about the medals was it the DFC that you got?
FR: Yeah.
DM: Where, did you go to the Palace for that?
FR: No funnily enough we were at home in this house in Riddlesden, near Keighley, and the postman came and put a packet through the window in the kitchen, when we opened it up that was the DFC that’s how I got it.
DM: So there was no ceremony at all?
FR: No ceremony at all. [blowing nose] I think the note, there was a letter with it that said the King was sorry but he had too many to do, words to that effect anyway. [coughs] I can’t think of anything else that would be of any real use.
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 Frederic James Richardson
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
David Meanwell
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-06-08
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ARichardsonF160608, PRichardsonF1626
Conforms To
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Pending review
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.
Format
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00:47:44 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Description
An account of the resource
Fred signed up for the Royal Air Force as a pilot at Cardington. After Bournemouth, he went to the Aircraft Receiving Centre in London and subsequently to Canada. He trained at the No. 1 British Flying Training School in Texas on Stearmans, Vultee Valiants and Harvards.
Fred was sent back to Bournemouth, then the Airspeed Oxford base at RAF Long Newnton. He was transferred to 29 Operational Training Unit (OTU) at North Luffenham before going to a conversion unit at RAF Wigsley, flying Manchesters and Lancasters. Fred contrasts the two aircraft. He moved to RAF Langar and carried out a total of 30 operations including one leaflet drop over Paris. Fred then went to two or three different stations flying Wellingtons. He transferred to RAF Wymeswold, which became a Transport Command Unit OTU rather than a Bomber Command OTU. Fred then flew C-47s before the war finished. He left the RAF and worked in in a number of different locations. Fred was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.
Contributor
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Sally Coulter
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
France
France--Paris
29 OTU
aircrew
C-47
Distinguished Flying Cross
Lancaster
Manchester
Operational Training Unit
pilot
propaganda
RAF Langar
RAF North Luffenham
RAF Wigsley
RAF Wymeswold
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2197/39108/PDydeFW17010005.2.jpg
7876ec0cdea69d5c247f9348e41a298b
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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Dyde, Frederick William. Photo Album
Description
An account of the resource
The album contains documents and photographs.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-09-24
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Dyde, FW
Transcribed document
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Transcription
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Sgts Mess
R.A.F Langar
No [underlined] Nottingham [/underlined]
29th [underlined] Sept [/underlined]
43
Dear mother,
Just a few times in answer to your letter received this morning, we have the day to ourselves so I am writing whilst I have the chance. Glad to hear that you are all keeping in good health as it leaves me the same & you will be glad to hear that I have now got my dentures, I got them a week ago yesterday & feel quite used to them 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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Letter to Fred Dyde's Mother
Description
An account of the resource
A letter to Fred's mother explaining he is fine and has his new dentures.
Creator
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Fred Dyde
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1943-09-29
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Nottinghamshire
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
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eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Correspondence
Format
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One handwritten sheet on an album page
Identifier
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PDydeFW17010005
Conforms To
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Pending text-based transcription. Under review
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
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-09-29
Contributor
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Cara Walmsley
aircrew
RAF Langar
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1173/22585/LTurnhamK1850743v1.1.pdf
60af354d52897c1730aa17cb44ec26e3
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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Turnham, Ken
K Turnham
Description
An account of the resource
11 items. An oral history interview with Flight Lieutenant Ken Turnham (1924 - 2018, 1850743, 197068 Royal Air Force) his log book and documents. He completed 29 operations as a wireless operator with 115 Squadron.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Ken Turnham and catalogued by Trevor Hardcastle.
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
2017-10-09
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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Turnham, K
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Ken Turnham's navigator’s, air bomber’s and air gunner’s flying log book
Description
An account of the resource
Ken Turnham’s RAF Navigator’s, Air Bomber’s and Air Gunner’s Flying Log Book, from 27th October 1943 to 14th April 1945, recording training and operations as a Wireless Operator. Based at RAF Yatesbury (No. 2 Radio School), RAF Mona (No. 8 (Observers) Advanced Flying Unit), RAF Lossiemouth (No. 20 OTU), RAF Langar (1669 Heavy Conversion Unit), RAF Feltwell (No. 3 Lancaster Finishing School) and RAF Witchford (115 Squadron). Aircraft in which flown: Dominie, Proctor, Anson, Wellington, Halifax Mk 2, Lancaster, Oxford. Records a total of 28 completed operations (17 day, 11 night) plus one re-call. Targets in Germany are: Bruchstrasse (Langendreer), Chemnitz, Cologne, Dessau, Dortmund, Dresden, Duisberg, Essen, Hallendorf, Henrichshutte, Hohenbudberg, Hüls, Kiel, Ludwigshaven, Munster, Neuss, Nuremberg, Potsdam, Rheydt, Saltzbergen, Siegen,Trier, Vohwinkel, Wesel and Wiesbaden. His pilot on operations was Flight Lieutenant Briggs. Final entry (April 1945) reads “CERTIFIED COMPLETION OF FIRST TOUR”
Creator
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Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
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David Leitch
Terry Hancock
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.
Format
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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
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LTurnhamK185074v1
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Norfolk
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Wiltshire
Scotland--Moray
Wales--Anglesey
Germany--Bochum
Germany--Chemnitz
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Dessau (Dessau)
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Dresden
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Essen
Germany--Hattingen
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Krefeld
Germany--Ludwigshafen am Rhein
Germany--Marl (North Rhine-Westphalia)
Germany--Münster in Westfalen
Germany--Neuss
Germany--Nuremberg
Germany--Potsdam
Germany--Rheydt
Germany--Salzbergen
Germany--Salzgitter
Germany--Siegen
Germany--Trier
Germany--Wesel (North Rhine-Westphalia)
Germany--Wiesbaden
Germany--Wuppertal
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944-12-16
1944-12-21
1944-12-23
1944-12-27
1944-12-28
1944-12-31
1945-01-02
1945-01-05
1945-01-06
1945-01-22
1945-02-02
1945-02-03
1945-02-08
1945-02-13
1945-02-14
1945-02-15
1945-02-18
1945-02-19
1945-03-02
1945-03-06
1945-03-07
1945-03-08
1945-03-11
1945-03-14
1945-03-17
1945-03-18
1945-03-21
1945-03-24
1945-04-13
1945-04-14
1945-04-15
115 Squadron
1669 HCU
20 OTU
Advanced Flying Unit
aircrew
Anson
bombing
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
Dominie
Halifax
Halifax Mk 2
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Operational Training Unit
Proctor
RAF Feltwell
RAF Langar
RAF Lossiemouth
RAF Mona
RAF Witchford
RAF Yatesbury
training
Wellington
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/305/24579/LMillerRB423155v1.2.pdf
9f14a06741bef06dd5b293dcaa776f9c
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Miller, Robert
Robert Bruce Miller
Robert B Miller
Robert Miller
R B Miller
R Miller
Description
An account of the resource
Three items. An oral history interview with Robert Bruce Miller (1924 - 2021, 423155 Royal Australian Air Force) a photograph and his log book. He flew operations as a navigator with 51 Squadron.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Robert Miller and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-04-30
2017-01-29
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
Miller, RB
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
Robert Miller’s observer’s and air gunner’s flying log book
Description
An account of the resource
Observer’s and air gunner’s flying log book for R B Miller, navigator, covering the period from 15 November 1942 to 10 April 1945. Detailing his flying training, operations flown and instructor duties. He was stationed at RCAF Winnipeg, RAF Clyffe Pypard, RAF West Freugh, RAF Abingdon, RAF Marston Moor, RAF Snaith, RAF Langar and RAF Woolfox Lodge. Aircraft flown in were Anson, Tiger Moth, Whitley, Halifax and Lancaster. He flew a total of 41 operations with 51 Squadron, 21 daylight and 20 night. His pilot on operations was Warrant Office Faulkner. Targets were Morsalines, Lens, Hasselt, Orleans, Aachen, Bourg Leopold, Trappes, Paris, Amiens, Douai, Foulliard, Martin St L’Hortier, Siracourt, Oisement, Mimoyecques, Wizernes, Villers Bocage, Croix D’Alle, Les Catalliers, Nucourt, Evrieville, Bottrop, Kiel, Foret de Nieppe, Tracey Bocage, Bois de Cassan, Nieppe, Hazebrouck, May-sur-Orne, Foret de Mormal, Brest, Hamburg, Lumbres, Venlo, Nordstern, Wilhelmshaven, Boulogne and Neuss.
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
Cara Walmsley
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LMillerRB423155v1
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Belgium
Canada
France
Great Britain
Germany
Netherlands
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Atlantic Ocean--Bay of Biscay
Atlantic Ocean--English Channel
Belgium--Hasselt
Belgium--Leopoldsburg
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Oxfordshire
England--Rutland
England--Wiltshire
England--Yorkshire
France--Amiens
France--Boulogne-sur-Mer
France--Brest
France--Caen
France--Cherbourg
France--Douai
France--Hazebrouck
France--Lens
France--L'Isle-Adam
France--Lumbres
France--May-sur-Orne
France--Neufchâtel-en-Bray
France--Nieppe
France--Nieppe Forest
France--Nucourt
France--Oisemont (Canton)
France--Orléans
France--Pas-de-Calais
France--Paris
France--Rennes Region
France--Saint-Omer (Pas-de-Calais)
France--Villers-Bocage (Calvados)
France--Vire Region (Calvados)
Germany--Aachen
Germany--Bottrop
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Neuss
Germany--Wilhelmshaven
Manitoba--Winnipeg
Netherlands--Venlo
Scotland--Wigtownshire
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
France--Morsalines
Manitoba
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1944
1945
1944-05-10
1944-05-12
1944-05-22
1944-05-23
1944-05-24
1944-05-25
1944-05-28
1944-05-31
1944-06-01
1944-06-11
1944-06-12
1944-06-13
1944-06-14
1944-06-15
1944-06-16
1944-06-17
1944-06-18
1944-06-22
1944-06-23
1944-06-24
1944-06-27
1944-06-28
1944-06-30
1944-07-01
1944-07-04
1944-07-06
1944-07-07
1944-07-09
1944-07-15
1944-07-16
1944-07-18
1944-07-20
1944-07-21
1944-07-23
1944-07-24
1944-07-28
1944-07-30
1944-08-03
1944-08-05
1944-08-06
1944-08-07
1944-08-08
1944-08-09
1944-08-25
1944-08-26
1944-08-27
1944-08-31
1944-09-03
1944-09-11
1944-09-14
1944-09-15
1944-09-23
1944-09-24
10 OTU
1651 HCU
1652 HCU
1669 HCU
51 Squadron
Advanced Flying Unit
Air Observers School
aircrew
Anson
bombing
Flying Training School
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Master Bomber
navigator
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operational Training Unit
RAF Abingdon
RAF Clyffe Pypard
RAF Langar
RAF Marston Moor
RAF Snaith
RAF West Freugh
RAF Woolfox Lodge
tactical support for Normandy troops
Tiger Moth
training
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/995/25279/LMossH3041799v1.1.pdf
a610b6faea5aec12ee53fb0ae13c4a6b
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
Moss, Henry
H Moss
Harry Moss
Description
An account of the resource
Twenty items. Collection concerns Henry Moss (1925 - 2020, 3041799, Royal Air Force). He served as an air gunner with 138 Squadron at RAF Tuddenham. Collection consists of an oral history interview, his flying logbook, documents and photographs.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Henry Moss and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-10-30
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
Moss, H
Requires
A related resource that is required by the described resource to support its function, delivery, or coherence.
Henry Moss, Flight Sergeant, served in the RAF between 22 October 1943 to 10 April 1946. He trained as an Air Gunner and was involved in bombing Kiel, Potsdam, Heligoland, and Bremen before taking part in Operations Exodus, Manna and Revue with 138 Squadron. Henry was demobilised in 1946.
Henry left school in Bradford aged 17½ just before the outbreak of war with no qualifications . He worked in a variety of jobs including a garment fitter where he made waterproof clothing for dispatch riders. Henry passed his National Service medical board and joined the Air Transport Corps which led him to choose to join the Royal Air Force.
Henry was ordered to go to Viceroy House in London to be fitted with his unforms and receive his inoculations before moving on with his next stage of his training. He was then posted to RAF Usworth in February 1944 for his primary training. This was made up of marching and learning to salute, and basic tests on arithmetic and writing to place recruits on their trade path. There were people from many different places around the globe. https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/28928
Henry learned how to strip down and re-assemble a Browning gun blindfolded but found this a pointless exercise as at altitude, it impossible to manipulate the small parts of the weapon with gloves on.
After RAF Usworth, he was posted to RAF Pembrey to the Introductory Gunnery Course at 1 Air Gunnery School flying Ansons. He did not experience air sickness and enjoyed flying. While here Henry learned about ‘offsetting’ the release of the bombs and how to aim accurately. He was surprised to learn that from his own records that he had scored 98.5% in the exam. Over his time at RAF Pembrey, he fired a total of 300 rounds. Henry was finally selected as an air gunner/wireless operator.
Henry’s next posting was to (26 OTU) RAF Wing on the Vickers Wellington, where he crewed up. His first pilot made a mistake during a landing and while the landing was safe, the pilot was sent home. His second pilot was Sergeant Crawford who he felt safe with for the rest of the war. From here Henry went to the 1669 Heavy Conversion Unit RAF Langer on Lancasters, and 138 Squadron RAF Tempsford. Henry flew to Kiel twice; both flights were at night and while he was involved in the sinking of the German ship Admiral Sheer, he did not see anything. Henry flew operations to Potsdam and a daytime operation to the Naval base on the island of Heligoland. He can remember being able to see the other aircraft and watching the torpedo boats below; he thought the operation was a bit of a ‘dead duck’. Henry’s final operation was to Bremen when they were hit by flak but ‘nothing vital was hit’. Henry referred to Operation Manna as ‘Spam Runs’
After the war ended Henry was involved, as a camera operator, in Operation Revue which was the creation of a digital map on mainland Britain as an aid to town and country. Henry was demobilised from Personnel Dispersal Centre 100 having achieved the rank of Flight Sergeant. In total he completed 436 hours 20 minutes flying. He went straight back to his previous job as a garment cutter in Bradford, but he did not stay in contact with any of ‘his’ crew.
Claire Campbell
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
Henry Moss's flying log book for navigators, air bombers, air gunners and flight engineers
Description
An account of the resource
Air gunner’s log book for H Moss covering the period from 10 July 1944 to 20 March 1946. Detailing his flying training and operations flown as air gunner. He was stationed at RAF Pembrey (1 AGS), RAF Wing (26 OTU), RAF Langar (1669 HCU), RAF Tuddenham (138 Squadron). Aircraft flown in were Anson, Wellington and Lancaster. He flew a total of 3 night and 2 day operations (total 5) with 138 Squadron, targets were Kiel, Potsdam, Heligoland and Bremen plus several Operation Manna and Operation Exodus and Cook's Tours flights. <span>His pilot on operations was</span> Pilot Officer Crawford.
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
Terry Hancock
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LMossH3041799v1
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Atlantic Ocean--North Sea
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Suffolk
Germany--Bremen
Germany--Helgoland
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Potsdam
Wales--Carmarthenshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1945
1946
1945-04-09
1945-04-10
1945-04-13
1945-04-14
1945-04-15
1945-04-18
1945-04-22
1945-05-03
1945-05-08
1945-05-29
1945-06-04
1945-06-05
1945-07-08
1945-07-24
138 Squadron
1669 HCU
26 OTU
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
Anson
bombing
bombing of Helgoland (18 April 1945)
Cook’s tour
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Operational Training Unit
RAF Langar
RAF Pembrey
RAF Tuddenham
RAF Wing
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/632/26893/LRichardsonF146443v1.1.pdf
d8bc882744ba1ecd94a0fc58929c9193
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
Richardson, Frederic James
F J Richardson
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Richardson, FJ
Description
An account of the resource
13 items. An oral history interview with Flight Lieutenant Frederic Richardson ( - 2020, 1234575, 146433 Royal Air Force), his log books and photographs. He flew operations as a pilot with 207 Squadron.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Frederic Richardson and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-06-08
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.
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
Fred Richardson's pilots flying log book. One
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
LRichardsonF146443v1
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
Description
An account of the resource
Pilots flying log book for F J Richardson, covering the period from 4 November 1941 to 23 February 1943. Detailing his flying training and operations flown. He was stationed at No.1 British Flying Training School Terrell, RAF Long Newton, RAF North Luffenham and RAF Langar. Aircraft flown were PT-18, BT-13A, AT-6A, Oxford, Wellington and Lancaster. He flew a total of 3 operations, one with 29 Operational Training Unit and 2 with 207 squadron. Targets were Paris and Lorient. The log book also contained a picture with crew names of a Lancaster depicting their raid to Lorient.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
1942-11-06
1943-02-13
1943-02-14
1943-02-16
1943-02-17
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
Great Britain
United States
England--Wiltshire
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Rutland
France--Lorient
France--Paris
1 BFTS
207 Squadron
29 OTU
Advanced Flying Unit
aircrew
arts and crafts
bombing
British Flying Training School Program
C-47
Flying Training School
Lancaster
Lancaster Mk 1
Lancaster Mk 3
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
pilot
RAF Gamston
RAF Langar
RAF North Luffenham
RAF Ossington
Stearman
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/904/26906/OJonesWC1852503-180704-01.1.pdf
3fb014a610a788a5ef4a3a2c39620d36
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Jones, William
William C Jones
W C Jones
Description
An account of the resource
Nine items. An oral history interview with Stella Jones about her late husband, Sergeant William Jones (b. 1924, 1852503 Royal Air Force), his log book, documents and photographs. His photograph album is a sub-colection. He flew operations as a wireless operator with 218 Squadron.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Stella Jones 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
2018-07-04
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Jones, WC
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
William Jones Service and Release Book
Description
An account of the resource
RAF Form 2520A issued to William. It contains details of his time in the RAF.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1947-04-03
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. Service material
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
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LJonesWC1852503v1
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
218 Squadron
aircrew
Cook’s tour
Dominie
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Operational Training Unit
RAF Chedburgh
RAF Langar
RAF Westcott
training
Wellington
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/904/26982/LJonesWC1852503v1.2.pdf
b5184633cbb82752d49c6c7fe3959179
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Jones, William
William C Jones
W C Jones
Description
An account of the resource
Nine items. An oral history interview with Stella Jones about her late husband, Sergeant William Jones (b. 1924, 1852503 Royal Air Force), his log book, documents and photographs. His photograph album is a sub-colection. He flew operations as a wireless operator with 218 Squadron.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Stella Jones 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
2018-07-04
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Jones, WC
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
W C Jones’ navigator’s, air gunner’s and air bomber’s flying log book
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LJonesWC1852503v1
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
Navigator’s, air gunner’s and air bomber’s flying log book for W C Jones, wireless operator, covering the period from 13 December 1943 to 23 May 1945. Detailing his flying training and operations flown. He was stationed at RAF Madley, RAF Llandwrog, RAF Westcott, RAF Langar and RAF Chedburgh. Aircraft flown in were Dominie, Proctor, Wellington and Lancaster. He flew a total of 19 operations with 218 (Gold Coast) Squadron. 8 Daylight, 3 night, 3 Operation Manna and 5 Operation Exodus. Targets were Kamen, Cologne, Wanne Eickel, Gelsenkirchen, Dessau, Bocholt, Hallendorf, Merseburg, Kiel, Bremen and The Hague. His pilot on operations was Flying officer R Wilson.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944
1945
1945-03-01
1945-03-02
1945-03-04
1945-03-05
1945-03-07
1945-03-08
1945-03-19
1945-03-22
1945-03-29
1945-04-06
1945-04-07
1945-04-09
1945-04-10
1945-04-22
1945-05-01
1945-05-03
1945-05-07
1945-05-11
1945-05-12
1945-05-13
1945-05-17
1945-05-19
1945-05-23
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
Netherlands
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Atlantic Ocean--North Sea
England--Buckinghamshire
England--Herefordshire
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Suffolk
Germany--Bocholt
Germany--Bremen
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Dessau (Dessau)
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
Germany--Kamen
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Merseburg
Germany--Salzgitter
Germany--Wanne-Eickel
Netherlands--Hague
Wales--Gwynedd
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
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
11 OTU
1669 HCU
218 Squadron
Advanced Flying Unit
aircrew
bombing
Cook’s tour
Dominie
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Operational Training Unit
Proctor
RAF Chedburgh
RAF Langar
RAF Llandwrog
RAF Madley
RAF Westcott
training
Wellington
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1490/27598/LMitchellJEF550261v2.1.pdf
18901a8a809c4bd6de323bef79617447
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
Mitchell, Mitch
John Ernest Francis Mitchell
J E F Mitchell
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
2016-02-27
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
Mitchell, JEF
Description
An account of the resource
59 items. Flight Lieutenant John Ernest Francis 'Mitch' Mitchell. Joined the RAF as a boy entrant in 1934 and trained as a wireless operator. Flew on Vickers Virginia, Handley Page Heyford and Whitley before the war. Completed an operational tour on Whitley 1939-41. After being rested he flew a second tour of operations as a wireless operator with 207 Squadron before retraining as a pilot post war. Collection contains his flying logbooks, memoires of his air force career and first operations, lists of his operations, correspondence and photographs.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by C A Wood and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
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/.
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
LMitchellJEF550261v2
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
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
John Mitchell’s wireless operator’s flying log book covering the period from 12 October 1941 to 9 August 1948. Detailing his flying training and operations flown as wireless operator. He was stationed at RAF Kinloss (19 OTU), RAF Forres (19 OTU), RAF Balnageith (19 OTU), RAF Langar (207 Squadron), RAF Spilsby (207 Squadron), RAF Winthorpe (1661 HCU), RAF North Luffenham (1653 HCU), RAF Abingdon (91 Group Communications Flight) and RAF Swinderby (21 Group Communications Flt). Aircraft flown in were Whitley, Lysander, Anson, Proctor and Monarch.Targets were Dusseldorf, Bochum, Freidrichshaven, Gelsenkirchen, La Spezia, Gladbach, Berlin, Leipzig, Tours, Bourg Leopald, Antwerp, St Valerie-en-Caux and Paris. He flew fifteen night operations with 207 Squadron. His pilots on operations were Flight Lieutenant Brandon-Trye, Pilot Officer King and Squadron Leader Pattinson.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Terry Hancock
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
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
Great Britain
Belgium--Antwerp
Belgium--Leopoldsburg
England--Lincolnshire
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Oxfordshire
England--Rutland
France--Paris
France--Saint-Valery-en-Caux
France--Tours
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Bochum
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Friedrichshafen
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
Germany--Leipzig
Germany--Mönchengladbach
Italy
Italy--La Spezia
Scotland--Moray Firth
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
1946
1947
1948
1943-06-08
1943-06-09
1943-06-11
1943-06-12
1943-06-20
1943-06-21
1943-06-23
1943-06-24
1943-06-25
1943-06-26
1943-08-30
1943-08-31
1943-09-03
1943-09-04
1944-02-15
1944-02-16
1944-02-17
1944-02-18
1944-04-10
1944-04-11
1944-05-07
1944-05-08
1944-05-11
1944-05-12
1944-05-24
1944-05-25
1944-05-27
1944-05-28
1944-07-14
1944-07-15
1945-06-14
1945-07-18
1945-08-03
Title
A name given to the resource
John Mitchell flying log book. Two
1653 HCU
1661 HCU
19 OTU
207 Squadron
7 Group
aircrew
Anson
Cook’s tour
forced landing
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Lancaster Mk 3
Lysander
Operational Training Unit
pilot
Proctor
RAF Abingdon
RAF Kinloss
RAF Langar
RAF North Luffenham
RAF Spilsby
RAF Swinderby
RAF Ternhill
RAF Winthorpe
training
Whitley
wireless operator
wireless operator / air gunner
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/632/35811/LRichardsonF146443v2.1.2.pdf
f9df367b4bc34be854c6e74670081902
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
Richardson, Frederic James
F J Richardson
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Richardson, FJ
Description
An account of the resource
13 items. An oral history interview with Flight Lieutenant Frederic Richardson ( - 2020, 1234575, 146433 Royal Air Force), his log books and photographs. He flew operations as a pilot with 207 Squadron.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Frederic Richardson and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-06-08
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.
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
Fred Richardson's log book. Two
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
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LRichardsonF146443v2
Description
An account of the resource
Pilots flying log book 2 for F J Richardson, covering the period from 3 March 1943 to 8 October 1945. Detailing his operations flown, flying training and instructor duties. He was stationed at RAF Langar, RAF Ossington, RAF Church Broughton, RAF Gamston, RAF Castle Combe and RAF Lulsgate Bottom. Aircraft flown were Lancaster, Oxford, Tiger Moth and Wellington. He flew a total of 25 operations with 207 Squadron. Targets were Hamburg, Saint Nazaire, Berlin, Kiel, Duisberg, Spezia, Stuttgart, Stettin, La Rochelle, Essen, Pilsen, Dortmund, Wuppertal, Dusseldorf, Bochum, Friedrichshaven, Cologne, Gelsenkirchen, Turin, Cislago and Leghorn. A second pilot on an operation was Flight Sergeant Kirkwood.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-03-03
1943-03-04
1943-03-22
1943-03-23
1943-03-27
1943-03-28
1943-03-29
1943-03-30
1943-04-03
1943-04-04
1943-04-05
1943-04-08
1943-04-09
1943-04-10
1943-04-13
1943-04-14
1943-04-15
1943-04-20
1943-04-21
1943-04-26
1943-04-27
1943-04-28
1943-04-30
1943-05-01
1943-05-13
1943-05-14
1943-05-23
1943-05-24
1943-05-29
1943-05-30
1943-06-11
1943-06-12
1943-06-13
1943-06-20
1943-06-21
1943-06-23
1943-06-24
1943-07-08
1943-07-09
1943-07-10
1943-07-12
1943-07-13
1943-07-16
1943-07-17
1943-07-24
1943-07-25
1943-07-29
1943-07-30
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Czech Republic
France
Germany
Great Britain
Italy
Poland
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Atlantic Ocean--Bay of Biscay
Czech Republic--Plzeň
England--Derbyshire
England--Somerset
England--Wiltshire
England--Nottinghamshire
France--La Rochelle
France--Saint-Nazaire
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Bochum
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Essen
Germany--Friedrichshafen
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Stuttgart
Germany--Wuppertal
Italy--La Spezia
Italy--Livorno
Italy--Turin
Italy--Varese
Poland--Szczecin
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1943
1944
1945
207 Squadron
82 OTU
aircrew
bombing of Hamburg (24-31 July 1943)
Lancaster
mine laying
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
pilot
RAF Castle Combe
RAF Church Broughton
RAF Gamston
RAF Langar
RAF Ossington
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1997/37473/LAllamAJ657570v1.2.pdf
35afd95ceedc2359f913fb0ce724721e
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/.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1945-03-20
1945-03-23
1945-04-08
1945-05-10
1945-06-25
1945-07-02
1945-07-03
1945-07-05
1945-07-12
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
Allam, A J
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
2017-12-06
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Allam, AJ
Description
An account of the resource
33 items. The collection concerns Warrant Officer Albert John Allam (657570 Royal Air Force) and contains his log book, memoir, documents and photographs. He flew operations as a pilot with 227 Squadron.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Peter Stuart Allam and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
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
A J Allam - pilots flying log book No 2
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LAllamAJ657570v1
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Description
An account of the resource
Pilot's Flying Log Book for A.J. Allam. Covers the period from 11 September 1944 to 16 July 1945 detailing his final training and operational flights. Listed at the back are all the stations he was posted to: RAF Wilmslow, RAF Dalcross, RAF Sywell, RAF Clyffe Pyard, RAF Lossiemouth, RAF Elgin, RAF Acaster Malbis, RAF Langar, RAF Syerston, RAF Balderton, RAF Strubby, RAF Graveley, RAF Little Staughton, RAF Wyton, RAF Bruntingthorpe and RAF Annan. Aircraft flown were Wellington, Tiger Moth, Halifax and Lancaster. With 227 Squadron he flew three night operations. Targets were Bohlen, Wesel and Lutzendorf. An Operation Exodus flight, an operation Post Mortem, and two Cook's Tours flights are also recorded. His pilots on his first operations were Flight Lieutenant Croker and Flying Officer Flying Officer Tate.
This item was sent to the IBCC Digital Archive already in digital form. No better quality copies are available.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Belgium
Germany
Great Britain
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Cheshire
England--Leicestershire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Northamptonshire
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Wiltshire
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Bamberg
Germany--Saxony
Germany--Wesel (North Rhine-Westphalia)
Scotland--Elgin
Scotland--Moray
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.
1944
1945
1945-03-20
1945-03-23
1945-04-08
1945-05-10
1945-06-25
1945-07-02
1945-07-03
1945-07-05
1945-07-12
1669 HCU
20 OTU
227 Squadron
Advanced Flying Unit
aircrew
Cook’s tour
Flying Training School
Halifax
Halifax Mk 2
Heavy Conversion Unit
Initial Training Wing
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Lancaster Mk 1
Lancaster Mk 3
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operational Training Unit
pilot
RAF Acaster Malbis
RAF Balderton
RAF Bruntingthorpe
RAF Clyffe Pypard
RAF Dalcross
RAF Graveley
RAF Langar
RAF Little Staughton
RAF Lossiemouth
RAF Strubby
RAF Syerston
RAF Sywell
RAF Wilmslow
RAF Wyton
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2160/41026/LSweeneyAE573980v1.2.pdf
ed313baa3dff5563a54732513ab64e74
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
Sweeney, Alfred Edward
Description
An account of the resource
One item.
The collection concerns Flying Officer Alfred Edward (Todd) Sweeney (Royal Air Force) and contains his log book. He flew a tour of operations as a pilot with 115 Squadron from RAF Witchford.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Malcolm Sweeney and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2019-02-20
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
Sweeney, AE
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
Alfred Sweeney’s RAF Pilot’s Flying Log Book
Description
An account of the resource
Alfred Sweeney’s RAF Pilot’s Flying Log Book from 17 May 1942 to 30 July 1962 detailing training, operations and post-war duties as a pilot and instructor, including VIP duties. (Several logbooks bound into one volume).
He was stationed at RAF Stoke Orchard (No. 10 Elementary Flying Training School), RCAF Station Neepawa (No. 35 Elementary Flying Training School), RCAF Station Carberry (No. 33 Service Flying Training School), RAF Carlisle (No. 15 Elementary Flying Training School), RAF Church Lawford (No. 18 (P) Advanced Flying Unit), RAF Desborough (No. 84 Operational Training Unit), RAF Wratting Common (No. 1651 Heavy Conversion Unit), RAF Feltwell (No. 3 Lancaster Finishing School), RAF Witchford (115 Squadron), RAF Langar (1669 HCU), RAF North Luffenham (1653 HCU), RAF Waterbeach (514 Squadron), RAF Syerston (1333 Transport Support Conversion Unit), RAF Almaza, RAF Aqir, RAF Kabrit (78 Squadron), RAF Palam (AHQ(I) Communications Squadron), RAF Fassburg, RAF Lubeck, RAF Bassingbourn and RAF Waterbeach (24(C) Squadron), RAF Marham (115 Squadron and Bomber Command Jet Conversion Flight), Bassingbourn (No. 231 OCU), RAF Boscombe Down (Handling Squadron), RAF Lyneham (216 Squadron) and RAF Watton (51 Squadron).
Aircraft in which flown: DH82C, Anson, DH82A, Oxford, Wellington X, Stirling I, Stirling III, Lancaster I, Lancaster II, Lancaster III, Dakota III, Horsa, Dakota IV, Halifax VII, York, Harvard, Lancastrian, Valetta, Washington, Meteor, Canberra, Varsity, Firefly, Pembroke, Valiant, Sea Venom, Vampire, Jet Provost, Sea Devon, Hunter, Pioneer, Whirlwind, Chipmunk, Comet, Beverley, Seamew, Venom, Javelin, Gannet, Swift, Vulcan, Hastings, Victor, Skeeter, Prentice, Auster, Devon, Heron, Bristol Freighter, Dragonfly, Shackleton, Viscount, Sea Prince, Sycamore, Sea Balliol, Lincoln, Sea Hawk.
Records 30 completed operations (22 night, 8 day) on the following targets in France and Germany: Amaye-Sur-Seulles, Beauvoir, Bec D’Ambes, Biennais, Bordeaux Bassens, Brunswick, Cap Gris Nez, Chambly, Cologne, Coulonvillers, Domleger, Dortmund, Dreux, Duisburg, Düsseldorf, Foret de Lucheux, L’Hey, Le Havre, Le Mans, Lens, Lisieux, Montdidier, Nantes, Ouistreham, Vaires (Paris), Valenciennes, Watten and Wissant.
Also includes photographs of various aircraft, various documents, technical notes, medal awards paperwork and VIP passenger lists (including Pandit Neru, Sir Claude Auchinleck).
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
Royal Air Force. Transport Command
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
David Leitch
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LSweeneyAE573980v1
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Canada
Egypt
France
Germany
Great Britain
India
Israel
Atlantic Ocean--Bay of Biscay
Atlantic Ocean--English Channel
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Cumbria
England--Gloucestershire
England--Norfolk
England--Northamptonshire
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Rutland
England--Warwickshire
England--Wiltshire
Middle East--Palestine
France--Domléger-Longvillers
France--Beauvoir-sur-Mer
France--Bordeaux (Nouvelle-Aquitaine)
France--Calvados
France--Dreux
France--Gironde Estuary
France--Le Havre
France--Le Mans
France--Lens
France--Montdidier (Hauts-de-France)
France--Nantes
France--Normandy
France--Oise
France--Opale Coast
France--Pas-de-Calais
France--Somme
France--Vaires-sur-Marne
France--Valenciennes
France--Watten
Germany--Braunschweig
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Düsseldorf
Manitoba--Carberry
Manitoba--Neepawa
France--Coulonvillers
France--Cap Gris Nez
Egypt--Kibrit
North Africa
France--Ouistreham
Manitoba
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1944-04-20
1944-04-21
1944-04-22
1944-04-23
1944-05-01
1944-05-02
1944-05-07
1944-05-08
1944-05-09
1944-05-10
1944-05-19
1944-05-20
1944-05-21
1944-05-22
1944-05-23
1944-06-02
1944-06-03
1944-06-05
1944-06-06
1944-06-07
1944-06-10
1944-06-11
1944-06-12
1944-06-14
1944-06-15
1944-06-16
1944-06-17
1944-06-18
1944-06-21
1944-06-23
1944-06-24
1944-06-27
1944-06-28
1944-07-02
1944-07-05
1944-07-06
1944-07-07
1944-07-08
1944-07-12
1944-07-30
1944-08-01
1944-08-04
1944-08-05
1944-08-08
1944-08-09
1944-08-11
1944-08-12
1944-08-13
1945
1946
1947
1948
1949
1950
1951
1952
1953
1954
1955
1956
1957
1958
1959
1960
1961
1962
115 Squadron
1651 HCU
1653 HCU
1669 HCU
216 Squadron
51 Squadron
514 Squadron
84 OTU
Advanced Flying Unit
aircrew
Anson
B-29
bombing
bombing of the Le Havre E-boat pens (14/15 June 1944)
bombing of the Normandy coastal batteries (5/6 June 1944)
C-47
Cook’s tour
Flying Training School
Halifax
Halifax Mk 7
Harvard
Heavy Conversion Unit
Horsa
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Lancaster Mk 1
Lancaster Mk 2
Lancaster Mk 3
Lancastrian
Lincoln
Meteor
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operation Dodge (1945)
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
pilot
RAF Aqir
RAF Bassingbourn
RAF Boscombe Down
RAF Carlisle
RAF Church Lawford
RAF Desborough
RAF Feltwell
RAF Langar
RAF Lyneham
RAF Marham
RAF North Luffenham
RAF Syerston
RAF Waterbeach
RAF Watton
RAF Witchford
RAF Wratting Common
Shackleton
Stirling
tactical support for Normandy troops
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
York
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1490/27529/BMitchellJEFMitchellJEFv2.2.pdf
79ab91df3c1f13c17172b651be8ac4d9
Dublin Core
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Title
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Mitchell, Mitch
John Ernest Francis Mitchell
J E F Mitchell
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-02-27
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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.
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Mitchell, JEF
Description
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59 items. Flight Lieutenant John Ernest Francis 'Mitch' Mitchell. Joined the RAF as a boy entrant in 1934 and trained as a wireless operator. Flew on Vickers Virginia, Handley Page Heyford and Whitley before the war. Completed an operational tour on Whitley 1939-41. After being rested he flew a second tour of operations as a wireless operator with 207 Squadron before retraining as a pilot post war. Collection contains his flying logbooks, memoires of his air force career and first operations, lists of his operations, correspondence and photographs.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by C A Wood and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
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Seeding the Storm
Squadron Leader John Ernest Francis Mitchell, DFC, wireless operator/air gunner, then pilot.
I had never known our headmaster at Eye Grammar to be taken aback. But when he asked at my leaving interview what I intended to do and I replied without hesitation, “I want to fly, sir”, it seemed to floor him. Possibly he had expected me to say something about Oxford or Cambridge , after all I’d been no slouch under his tutelage. And that might not have been so bad. What I had no intention of doing, though, was getting involved with the land.
The desire to fly, on the other hand was something that had become ever more compelling. What we tended to see in Norfolk were airships. But I knew all about the record breakers and their machines, but far more about the wartime aces of the RFC – the Royal Flying Corps – about McCudden, Mannock, Bishop, and to me, the greatest of them all, Albert Ball. And war fliers rather than civilian, for even in 1934 it was clear to those with eyes to see that another conflict was brewing.
I even knew the qualities needed in an aspirant war flier: ‘not exceptional, a good general education, a mechanical background advantageous, a fair working knowledge of maths and the application of simple formulae; more than keen to learn’. Apart from the ‘not exceptional’ – the very idea! – I more than fitted the bill.
The ensuing discussion went on for some time, but even then the Head was not happy.
“Think about it for a day or so, Mitchell”, he bade, “then come back and see me again”.
I dutifully did so. When, having satisfied himself that I was determined to pursue a flying career, he sent a recommendation to the local education committee
+”. As a consequence, just weeks later, a letter – railway warrant enclosed – invited me to present myself at Victor House, Kingsway, in London.
The interviewers surprised me! I had expected them to be knowledgeable about aeroplanes. Instead they seemed to inhabit some intellectual level, way above such things. Eventually, however, they descended from their Olympian heights to deliver their verdict.
At seventeen I was too young to become a pilot. Only here, as my face fell, they descended even further, to assure me that age was the only bar. Meanwhile, I could be taken on as either a wireless operator or an air gunner. Stifling my disappointment, I opted for the former and a short time later reported to the Electrical and Wireless School at RAF Cranwell, near Sleaford in Lincolnshire, where I was rigged out from cap to puttees, not forgetting boots that were initially reluctant to take the least shine, to begin my training.
It was clear that the government was among those with eyes to see, for some months before it had decided upon a vast expansion of the RAF. This meant the building of new airfields and the creation of new squadrons. It also meant a full-scale recruiting drive. And so it was that on 10 October 1934 I joined a Boy Entrant intake, doubled that year to nearly 600 for a nominal twelve months’ course.
We were not the only trainees accommodated in the double-storied blocks of Cranwell’s East Camp. There were also signals officers on short courses and air gunners who, after twelve weeks of instruction, were to take on an additional wireless-operating role. And there were Aircraft Apprentices, their entry too swelled to some 600.
The latter were boys like ourselves, from fifteen plus to eighteen who, also like us, wore the distinctive spoked-wheel arm badge. Only they had gained entry by competitive examination rather than education-committee recommendation, their three-year course qualifying them to maintain the RAF’s communication equipment – as opposed to operating it, as was our destiny.
And then, of course, just across the road, but infinitely remote from East Camp, was the gleaming new Royal Air force College where future leaders of the King’s Air Force studied in hallowed halls.
Our year-long course was packed full as we poured over wireless theory, disembowelled sets in workshops, achieved a mirror surface on those recalcitrant boots before strutting our stuff on the parade ground, and between times continued our studies in English, maths, general subjects and History of the Service –one Albert Ball’s machine guns was enshrined in a barrack- block hallway!
We tapped away at morse keys, strained into headsets, memorised the most frequently used of the Q and Z brevity codes – necessary with morse mssages being so protracted – and even got the feel of airborne operating in the Wireless School’s Wallaces, Wapitis and Valentias.
Off duty, sports were highly rated, and I was able to indulge myself to the full in those which interested me. With the compulsory boxing bout over I shunned anything further in that line, similarly soccer and rugby, but was to the fore in cricket and tennis. Where golf and croquet were concerned, however, I found myself pretty much a loner.
We finished the course on 12 July 1935, and, having found no difficulty in learning to send and receive morse at 20 words a minute and having been comfortable enough in my airborne sessions, I was able to replace the Boy-service wheel with the Signal’s arm badge, a hand clasping three , electrical flashes.
On passing out my posting was to No. 58 squadron at Worthy Down, near Winchester, a major bomber station which was to achieve singular distinction some years later when its Naval tenants, having re-christened it HMS Kestrel, the traitor William Joyce, Lord Haw Haw, announced that it had been bombed and sunk.
When I joined the squadron was operating Vickers Virginias, twin-engined biplane bombers which
even to my eager eyes appeared distinctly venerable. Nor was the wireless equipment any more youthful. This was the transmitter-receiver combination known as the T21083/R1082. Unfortunately it was not only unreliable but difficult to operate, even altering frequency requiring a coil change in both transmitter and receiver
One everyday problem was that to get any range at all we had to trail a wire aerial from beneath the aircraft, remembering to retract it before landing for fear of garrotting some groundling.
Except that the pilot would get engrossed in his own concerns and forget to advise when he was about to set down. Either that or, with the intercommunication system being so poor, his advisory wouldn’t get through, leaving me to bawl ‘ You’ve lost my bloody trailing aerial again’ even though my bloke was an officer.
Just the same, I counted myself luckier than a gunner colleague who felt a pattering on his helmet. On turning he got a face full of pee, his desperate pilot, far forward of him ,having stood on his seat to relieve himself into the air rush.
To a large extent then we were all learning, pilots and crew members alike. Although I doubt this showed when we flew our Virginias in tight formation over the packed stands of the Hendon Air Display. In reality, however, it became more the case a few months later when we began receiving the Handley Page Heyford, held to be very speedy, and the last word in design, with all-round protection that included a dustbin-like turret which could be lowered from the ventral –belly – position.
What the new aircraft brought with it, however, was a stepping-up of the flying task, with more and more long-range navigational exercises and bombing and air-firing by both day and night, the communications side of all these being my pigeon.
It quickly became evident too that , although trained as a dedicated wireless operator, I was still expected to fill in as a gunner: not the first evidence of the way the Service was being strained by the expansion.
For expansion necessarily meant a dilution of the experience embodied in both training school and squadron, with much of the training being left to the squadrons. And as these, in turn, lost their most capable men on posting –either to command or to bolster up new units – so their own experience level dropped. For example, new boy though I was, even I could tell that to have so many prangs – minor though most were – was not the way things should be. So many, indeed, that we never bothered logging them.
I was not in a position to know, of course, but not long after this the new chief of Bomber Command, the C-in-C, Air Chief Marshall Sir Edgar Ludlow-Hewitt, would stir resentment in the very highest echelons by reporting upwards even more fundamental shortcomings.
Foremost among these was the lack of a definite policy regarding the crewing of aircraft, only pilots being considered full-time fliers. Observers and gunners, the other two categories of flier, were drawn from volunteer airmen, highly qualified tradesmen who, after a flying duty, would pocket their one or two shillings a day flying pay and return to their workshops. True, there were already moves afoot to employ full-time gunners, but like those we had trained alongside, these were then to double as wireless operators. Indeed, it was to be 1942 before gunnery and signals were to become completely divorced.
Blissfully ignorant then of the true state of things, what we all knew was that, just like the war, newer and longer-range aircraft were only just over the horizon. And with that in mind we did not complain when pushed yet harder.
What did not improve, and totally disrupted continuity, was the number of times they had us upping sticks: another thing the Commander was to comment upon! Our first uprooting came on 13 May 1936, when we relocated to Upper Heyford, near Bicester in Oxfordshire. At least, though, this heralded the arrival of the Armstrong Whitworth Whitley, the monoplane bomber which, through Marks One to Five, was to see us well into the war. Even so, it has to be admitted that Whitley crews suffered a fair amount of ribbing because of the aircraft’s characteristic nose-down ‘sit’ which was especially pronounced at high speed. But by and large we were happy with it.
True to form, however, my current bloke, a flight lieutenant at that, cost me four teeth on our first landing as the undercarriage, only half-extended, folded beneath us. I suppose he was busy congratulating himself on having remembered that he now had retractable wheels – many pilots didn’t remember. But as the blood streamed from my mouth all he could offer was ‘I didn’t realise the selector had to go so far’.
From the wireless operator’s standpoint the major benefit brought by the Whitley was its state-of-the-art Marconi radio installation, the transmitter/receiver combination known as T1154/R1155, a vastly more flexible equipment than those we had struggled with before. It still incorporated a trailing aerial, but otherwise it was far more sophisticated than previous gear, although the gaily coloured knobs of its transmitter belied its complexity.
Certainly my dedicated training came into its own and ‘Send for Mitch’ became the cry of the day, so that, although still a newish-joiner, I found myself acting as what I would soon become, the squadron’s signals leader.
Upper Heyford, however, afforded us only a breathing space, for by the end of August 1936 we had moved again, this time to Driffield, near Bridlington, in Yorkshire. And in February 1937 we were off down south once more, to Boscombe Down in Wiltshire.
Here we did settle to some extent, although there was a bombing detachment at Aldergrove, in Northern Ireland, where we were permitted to drop live bombs into Loch Neagh, followed by a stint which took us to Pocklington to the east of York at West Freugh, near Stranraer, for gunnery. On that detachment, having done a gunnery course at Catfoss, near Hornsea, I was able to exercise my new found skills from all our gun positions, front, dorsal (top of fuselage) and the ventral dustbin of our Mark Threes, firing 300 rounds from each, largely at sea markers. Another gunnery detachment took us to Pocklington, to the east of York. But on 20 June 1939 we moved north again, this time to Linton-on-Ouse, in Yorkshire.
Such detachments gave us a flavour of what our war might be. But the results were not always that comforting. My gunnery scores were consistently deemed satisfactory. But we did hear that whereas the previous year’s averages for air firing had been an acceptable 20%, this year, with fewer experienced instructors in the schools and competent gunners spread more thinly on the squadrons, averages were running closer to 0%.
Equally concerning, we had noticed that even when we were permitted to drop live bombs – for there always seemed to be some rare wild bird or other which took precedence, or some influential landowner - a high proportion proved to be duds, or at best ineffectual. In lieu of the real thing, however, we dropped practice bombs, or trained on the camera obscura.
This was an optical training aid which had us fly towards a building – identified by a flare at night – with a large hole cut in its roof. A lens would then project the approaching aircraft’s image onto a table where instructors would assess the accuracy of the run-in. At his calculated release point the pilot would press the button, when either coloured smoke or a parachute flare by night would enable the wind effect to be calculated and the likely striking point ascertained.
Other noteworthy exercises we flew at this time involved dropping very powerful flares, the forerunner, as we were later to realise, of the Pathfinders’ target markers. Arguably even more significant was the detailing of a squadron aircraft to patrol near the BBC’s Daventry aerial, a perambulatory sortie that led directly to the development of radar.
We were great moaners, of course. But even where the unsettling moves were concerned we conceded that some were dictated by extra construction work, most of our roosts having come into being under the expansion programme. For essentially, while we noticed shortcomings, we saw it as our part to master the equipment we’d been given and leave others to worry about the rest.
Even so, though one might push shortcomings from the mind, the international situation could no longer be ignored. More particularly when, on 1 September 1939, Hitler’s forces attacked Poland which, to the surprise of many, turned out to be our ally. But nobody on the squadron was surprised when, next day, we were dispatched to Leconfield, near Yorkshire’s east coast and so that much nearer Hitler’s Reich.
At 1115 hours on 3 September 1939 we listened to Chamberlain’s fateful broadcast, and as darkness fell ours was among ten Whitleys laden with propaganda leaflets which got airborne for Germany, my log book recording that the ‘Anti Nazi War’ had begun.
On that first operational sortie I was flying with my regular pilot, Flying Officer ‘Peggy’ O’Neill, aboard a familiar Whitley, K8969. Even so it was the most surreal of experiences to be droning over a blacked-out Germany where millions of people were both ready, and willing, to kill us. Not only that, but to be doing so carrying nothing more lethal than propaganda leaflets. And leaflets intended to do what – destroy the resolve of a nation already cock-a-hoop over its Polish blitzkrieg?
We could not know that Churchill had only grudgingly conceded that leaflets just might raise Germany to a ‘higher morality’. Or that our future leader, ‘Bomber’ Harris, would declare that the only thing such ‘idiotic and childish pamphlets’ accomplished was to satisfy a requirement for toilet paper. Again, though, our job was to drop leaflets. So on we droned.
The route was to be wide-ranging across the Ruhr, specifically targeting both Essen and Dusseldorf before overflying the Maginot Line and turning for home. I suppose, at a certain level, we were on edge the whole seven and a half hours we were airborne, but training sustained us. Then, too, besides feeding our leaflets from the dustbin turret, we had set other tasks.
These included assessing the effectiveness of the German black-out. Was it broken by any well-lit areas, which would, therefore, be dummy towns? Additionally, were the airfields active? What road, rail or waterborne movements did we notice? Were searchlights evident? And was there any anti-aircraft fire? In fact, the latter question led to an animated on-board discussion. Until we concluded that what we had seen was some transient light flashing on low cloud. And just as well, for when we eventually got back to base this was a point they really grilled us on.
Once more, of course, we were not to know that Higher Authority had accepted that the RAF was not yet up to bombing by either day or night, any lingering doubt being dispelled by the losses early raiders sustained. That, as a consequence, our nocturnal paper delivery was now being pragmatically viewed as a means of building up an expertise in long-range navigation that might eventually allow Bomber Command to achieve most of its war aims through precision attacks by night.
Certainly, a little later, we all heard the broadcast Harris made, warning the Nazis of ‘a cloud on their horizon’… presently no bigger than a band’s width, which would break as a storm over Germany’. And hearing it we realised that we, of course, were that cloud, the seeders of that storm, the attendant fosterers of its fury.
Unfortunately, the Whitley soon proved unsuitable to the task. Early evidence of this being supplied on that first foray when, having crossed the Maginot Line, an engine faltered, committing us to a descent. Fortunately, although there was a pre-dawn mist, Peggy was able to put us down near Amiens. Nobody was hurt, but the aircraft was in a sad state. And so our first op finished in a French field, with a civil Dragon Rapide biplane being sent to pick us up and return us, initially to Harwell, near Oxford, from where we were recovered to Linton.
The Whitley’s engine trouble proved to be symptomatic, and although the squadron was tasked with leaflet drops for a few more days, there were so many problems, not least the dustbin turrets freezing in the lowered position – they could provide belly defence when needed but caused enormous drag whenever extended – that at the end of October 1939 we were reassigned to cover the English and Bristol Channels, and the Irish Sea, as convoy escorts.
This tasked diversion finished in early May 1940, when we moved back to Boscombe Down, by which time I had flown 12 patrols and a further 53 operational hours. More significantly, we had also received Mark Five Whitleys which, newly powered with the more dependable Rolls Royce Merlin Ten engines, finally enabled our crew to feature on the bombing battle order.
Ops then followed in quick succession. Initially we raided objectives in Norway, bombing Oslo aerodrome on 17 May 1940 and landing after a 9 hour 15 minute flight. Results, however, were said to be disappointing, the target having to be revisited the next night. After that we attacked Stavanger, a seven hour forty minute flight. And what fraught trips these were, often wave-hopping following a snaking fjord with cliffs disappearing into the darkness above. But again, training paid off, and we doggedly pressed on through to our objectives, although from the outset we had little faith in the outcome of the expeditionary venture itself.
Then too, the phoney war was over and events to the west were moving swiftly. So it was that we faced about, being tasked to bomb the Albert Canal bridges at Maastricht – a day after the debacle of the Fairey Battles, and the suicidal gaining of two VC’s – before passing on to raid a bridge at Eindhoven and then Schiphol aerodrome.
Following that we switched to the Ruhr, to Gelsenkirchen and Dusseldorf, returning after a night or two, this time pairing Gelsenkirchen with Duisberg, each sortie taking between six and seven hours. Only now, in an unsettling taste of things to come, I was obliged to record ‘Heavy ack-ack’.
At this juncture I should, perhaps, mention that the contemporary entries in my flying log book do not specify the actual targets, but only ‘Operations Norway’, ‘Operations France’ and ‘Operations Germany’. RAF crews, of course, are always restricted in this field, log books being official documents and scrutinised monthly by flight commanders. At that particular period, though, there was an extra dimension. For invasion was very much on the cards. ‘You don’t want some Gestapo thug reading that you bombed his Auntie Olga in Berlin’, we were told, ‘so just make it ‘Operations Germany’. Which we did.
Even so, an incorrigible rebel, I kept a separate record of those early ops, entering the actual targets later in the war.
As the Germans advanced, so we were reassigned to the interdiction bombing of roads and railways. On 21 May 1940, for example, we attacked the rail junction at Julich, dropping 4,000 pounds of bombs and coming away satisfied that we’d significantly disrupted communications, although achieving nothing like the destruction of a few years later.
We also returned the Ruhr, to Hamm, and again to Essen, dropping 10,000 and 14,000 pounds of bombs respectively.
After that, as the Battle of France intensified, we visited more and more French targets, bombing railways, roads and convoys at La Capelle, Amiens and finally Abbeville. The situation was often fluid and on at least one occasion I received a timely recall signal which stopped us bombing our own troops.
And on 11 June 1940 we did a special flight – purpose unspecified – to Guernsey, spending the night there before returning to Linton. To learn two days later that the decision had been made to give up the Channel Islands without a fight!
France itself fell on 26 June 1940, after which we switched to German targets once again. Notably a seven hour op to the Kiel Canal when I flew with a different crew, piloted by a Flight Lieutenant Thompson, on a sortie which moved me enough to declare in my log book, ‘Hell’ova Night’.
An outing that did not receive a similar accolade – though why I cannot recall – was the next one I flew with Peggy O’Neill. We successfully raided a factory in Turin, but on returning over the Alps flew into rougher weather than any of us could have imagined. There was so much snow, ice and turbulence that the engines started playing up, one temporarily cutting out altogether. Our co-pilot wanted to abandon, but Peggy gamely soldiered on, somehow retaining control of the machine and eventually winning clear. But what a trip that was! Possibly too traumatic for me to face entering anything but ‘Operations Italy’.
By now ops had become a way of life. With fear as its natural concomitant, for cringe down though we must as flak and bullets tore through the airframe, fear had to be lived with. Indeed, we received a master class on the subject from one particularly persistent fighter. Pass after pass he made, riddling us on each, with Peggy desperately sacrificing height for any speed we could muster. ‘He’s determined to get us’, he gritted, as the wavetops prevented further descent. Only abruptly the attacks stopped. For a while, communally holding our breath, we watched the fighter holding off. Then, finally, concluding that he had run out of ammunition, we scurried for home, well aware that it had been our narrowest squeak yet!
Such things were wearing. But they had to be borne. For back then there were no set tours of operations. The squadron bosses, though, knew the score. And on 1 July 1941 I was posted away, off ops, to No. 19 Operational Training Unit, at Kinloss, near Inverness.
Since January 1940 all gunners had become full-time aircrew and, in theory at least, sergeants, with the ‘AG’ beret being introduced in the December. So I had become a reluctant wireless operator/air gunner, first a sergeant and then a flight sergeant. The instant aircrew senior-NCO, understandably enough, was not that popular with the regulars. ‘You got promoted pretty swiftly, didn’t you?’ became a common jibe in the sergeant’s mess. But you couldn’t win, for when I received an overnight commission it was to be greeted in the officers’ mess with ‘And where did you spring from?’ As for the commissioning, naturally I’d always known that I was upper-crust material, even so I was disturbed at being summoned by my commanding Officer – not on this occasion, the Head, but the feeling could be similar when you put out as many little blacks as I habitually did. This time the interview was not protracted, just friendly. But still resulted in my travelling to London, only this time to Messrs Gieves and Hawkes of Savile Row, to be fitted for a new and shiny rig. ‘And your bank account, sir? ’ ‘Barclays , has been for years’ An NCO with a bank account! Upper crust, you see! Only there was still that pilot’s course…
At Kinloss the task was to train Whitley crews for No.6 Group using both the main airfield and its satellite at Forres – Balnageith. I was to spend just four months here, and not uneventful months at that, for training had its share of excitement, not least on 3 September 1941 when I was in another crash, this one significant enough to be logged!
In mid-November 1941, however, I was sent to Enniskillen, in Northern Ireland, to deputise for the established station commander. The area was a political hotbed – I had to tote a revolver! – so although the RAF had flying facilities at both Aldergrove and Killadeas and both a maintenance and a group headquarters at St Angelo, the predominant presence was army. As it was, my caretaker duties were not particularly onerous, the mess I frequented at Killadeas was sumptuous and I got myself happily involved with some sailing craft I found on Loch Erne.
This detachment gave me a break from the routine of training, but it was to set a pattern I was to find increasingly irksome as the years went by. I was assured, of course, that each stores check or unit inquiry befitted me just that little bit more for higher command. As it did. So why did I invariably feel ‘joe’d’?
Certainly I had periodically applied to return to ops, my hopes soaring whenever signals arrived requesting aircrew for ‘special duties’. In August 1942 these were for the proposed Pathfinder Force and in early 1943 for what we were eventually to discover was to be No.617 Squadron. However, all such applications were blocked by my immediate boss. ‘They want the best’, he would say. ‘But I do too, Mitch, so you stay’.
Eventually, however, an Air Ministry posting arrived for me and on 20 May 1943 – with every front page screaming ‘Dambusters!’ – I was posted to No. 207 Squadron.
I found the squadron at Langar, near Nottingham, still relieved to be rid of their Avro Manchesters – a disastrous machine – and happily settling with that queen of the skies, the Lancaster.
As signals leader I might have chosen my own captain, but having accepted the first to be programmed with me, Flight Lieutenant Brandon-Tye, I never had cause to regret it. And so, after just four hours of acclimatisation flights, I began my second tour of ops.
Initially we concentrated on the Ruhr, so that in short order I became re-acquainted with Dusseldorf and Bochum, although this time around in the Lancaster, taking about an hour less over such sorties, just over 5 hours. Yet how adversely so much else had changed!
Certainly the defences had really got the hang of things now, with droves of searchlights and seemingly impenetrable box barrages on every run up. Not to mention the radar-guided predicted flak! As for the night-fighters..!
Not that I was surprised – shocked, I’ll allow, but not surprised! – for two years back we’d prowled the night sky alone, whereas now we offered the defences score upon score of targets.
Shortly afterwards, on 20 June 1943, we bombed an industrial objective at Friedrichshafen, on Lake Constance, after which we overflew brilliantly lit Switzerland – a wonderful, fairytale sight! – to set down after nearly ten hours at Blida, on the northern coast of Algeria. And to show no favour to any Axis power, next day we bombed La Spezia, the Italian naval base, the homeward trip taking just nine hours and ten minutes.
After that, though, it was Happy Valley again – the Ruhr – and to Gelsenkitchen, a place I had last visited in May 1940, over two years before, and on successive nights. So perhaps they bore a grudge. For as we ran in we were well and truly caught by flak and then shot up by a whole procession of night-fighters.
Not nice! But the rear gunner, a commissioned lad from another crew, proved to be a good man to have along. As each fighter came in I was able to use the Monica rearward-looking radar to warn him, so that he was not only able to beat them off but, I fancy, to destroy at least one. Just the same, we were so badly shot up that we had to put down in Coltishall.
Though used to dealing with fighter aircraft, Coltishall’s groundcrew chaps pulled their fingers out – when didn’t they! – and patched us up, enabling us to return to Langar later that day. Our Lancaster, ED 627, had certainly done us proud. As for the rear gunner, he received a Distinguished Flying Cross for this spirited defence and would later, flying with his own crew, receive a bar to it for a similar exploit.
There was no such kudos for me, but I was well content with the way Monica had served us. Only I was already aware of whispers and a few months later, when it was actually proven that the Germans were indeed using its pulses to both locate and then home on us, it was hurriedly withdrawn from service.
Back at Langar, however, with ED627 spick and span once more, we were off a-raiding over Munchengladbach. And two nights later it was the Big B, my first trip to Berlin! 7 hours and 35 minutes simply packed with interest. And this would not be my last visit, some taking a whole hour longer than others and so packed with even more interest.
This initial Berlin outing, though, was our swan song from Langar, for in October 1943 we moved to newly-opened Spilsby, near Skegness, in Lincolnshire.
I was back over Berlin again, though, in the New Year, on 15 February 1944, and penetrating even further two nights later when we raided Leipzig, landing back at Spilsby eight hours later.
At this point, however, our tasking was changed and from April 1944 – shades of May 1940! – we were set to pounding communications networks. On 10 April this meant a wide-ranging series of strikes on Tours and Bourges in central France, and on Antwerp. Then, within the next few days, it was St-Valery-on-Caux, followed the next night by Paris.
It was clear to everyone that things were hotting up. Only at this point the boss handed me a signal. I knew what it was. But there was nothing to be said. For by now I had flown 830 hours by day and 439 by night, the majority of the latter being operational. I had also completed 66 ops – over two tours’ worth – and counting OUT callouts, 15 operational maritime patrols. Further, on 18 January 1944, I had been gazetted with the Distinguished Flying Cross. But alongside all this
I had also been part of a squadron which, by the war’s end, would have lost 154 of its crews; at the very least 1,232 men.
Even so I would love to have flown on D-Day, but it was not to be, and somewhat sadly shelving my flying log book for a while, I dutifully departed, on posting, to No. 1661 Heavy Conversion Unit at Winthorpe, near Newark, in Nottinghamshire.
Neither of my operational tours had been all work and unremitting dicing with death, of course. There had been periodic leaves. And in off-duty times there had been favourite pubs, the Flying Horse and the Black Boy in Nottingham coming to mind. Then, too, there had been sport. Lashings of it. Except that wheneve called upon to fill a soccer or rugger slot I’d unfailingly responded ‘Not likely, they’re too bloody dangerous’.
Only suddenly, it was all over. And between June and August 1945 I was able to fly on three ‘Cook’s Tours’, taking in, among other old haunts, Hamm, Duisberg, Wesel, Munster and Dusseldorf. It was not a case of gloating. On the other hand, both outbound and inbound we would overfly so many of our own towns blitzed unmercifully in those dark days when the Germans were riding high, when they had derided our leaflets and refused to adopt Churchill’s ‘higher morality’!
Though the Service was shedding personnel wholesale, my continuance seemed to be taken as read, and on 16 December 1946, after a spell with No.1363 Heavy Conversion Unit at North Luffenham, near Oakham in Rutland, I moved on to No 91 Group Headquarters as a staff signals officer.
The headquarters was situated at Morton Hall – nowadays a women’s prison - very close to RAF Swinderby, in Lincolnshire, my two-year stay giving me a deeper appreciation of the way the Service was run. But a headquarters was ideal too for getting things done, and as my tenure drew to a close, I resurrected the matter of my pilot’s course. I was certainly not too young any more, not after 14 years and a world war. So on 9 august 1948 I gleefully reported as a pupil pilot to No.6 Flying Training School at Ternhill, near Market Drayton, Shropshire.
I suppose maturity – in 1946 I’d met and married Joan – and a wealth of experience, allowed me to approach pilot training without fear of failure. And it clearly paid off. Starting on the delightful Tiger Moth biplane I completed my course on the American Harvard, an excellent advanced trainer, being very demanding and only too ready to take control.
And so, having begun my aircrew career with a wireless-operator’s arm flash, reluctantly enough supplementing this in late 1939 with an air gunner’s ‘AG’ brevet; readily swapped in its turn, in January 1944, for a dedicated signaller’s ‘S’ brevet; my chest finally bore the full wings so proudly worn in those old photographs by Bishop, Madden, McCudden and Ball!
The operational phase of my pilot training saw me back on Lancasters, this time at RAF St. Mawgan, Coastal Command’s training station near Newquay in Cornwall, where I was also checked out on the Avro Shackleton. This was a spectacular aeroplane – a great, grey-painted roaring machine outside, but with an interior hushed by jet-black drapes – which was eventually able to patrol for up to 21 hours. In every respect a far cry from the Virginia and Whitley! But aeroplanes are aeroplanes are aeroplanes. And for all that I held an above-average rating it was not that long before I was clambering out of a Shackleton whose tailwheel had collapsed after landing!
But aviation has a multitude of tricks. So that, on joining my first maritime unit, No. 2 Squadron at Aldergrove it was to find that, alongside the ~Shackleton, they were operating the Handley Page Hastings, essentially a transport and notoriously ungainly. As a new joiner I was to start off on these as a second pilot, which, at that time, meant raising and lowering the flaps – and watching. Once I had built up enough hours on type, only then would I be checked out on landing the beast. And I say advisedly, for I had watched pilots on their first landings skidding sideways, shredding tyres and even sliding off the runway.
As it was, my first Hastings sortie involved flying at 18,000 feet for some considerable time. Halfway through, however, my captain fell ill and passed out. And suddenly there were eyes on me from every corner. In the end, though, it worked out well, even to landing away to expedite medical aid, with my squadron commander recommending me for an Air Force Cross, although having to settle for a green endorsement.
Our bread-and-butter task at both St Mawgan and Aldergrove was to exhaustively patrol the Atlantic. But in July 1954, after a spell back at St Mawgan – by then the School of Maritime Reconnaissance – and six months on No. 220 squadron at nearby St Eval - I was posted overseas to No. 224 Squadron in Gibraltar. And what a tour it was! No longer just the Atlantic, but flights ranging through Ceylon, India, Iraq, Libya and both Madeira and the Azores. Except that in October 1957 it was back to freezing-cold Britain - with a decision to be made!
It was clear that the RAF had an interest in me and, indeed, even as I pursued my internal debate they sent me to Worksop, to No. 4 Flying Training School, for a jet familiarisation course. Twenty hours on the single-engined, twin-boomed Vampire. What a mind-blowing experience from the simplistic engine control to the swiftness – and unbelievable smoothness – of jet flight. Flight, moreover, with never, ever a mag drop!
A great interlude! But still my problem nagged. I was well aware that I had suffered a sea change. Possibly from seeing so much of it. For although further advancement in the RAF and even a new career in Civil Aviation offered, neither attracted.
In part, it was the ground jobs, the rationale for which remained the same; indeed, more so since I had become a squadron leader. For as I was a senior officer the RAF was primarily interested in my command and administrative abilities, not my flying skills. Yet being hived off to an admin job had always made me feel put upon.
Of far greater moment, though, Joan and I had never had the opportunity of setting up a real home together - and that really weighted. But – to give up flying…..?
Then again, since 1934 I had flown 1,400 hours as crew, a good proportion of it on wartime operations, and 1,600 hours as a pilot, almost all on operational patrols. Only….wasn’t I true that for some time now the zest had gone?
And that, when it finally found expression, I recognized as the crux. Accordingly, on 4 November 1957, I submitted my resignation.
Getting used to civilian life took some time. Eventually, however, unable to find a niche at any level I found acceptable, I sought advice from a golfing acquaintance who persuaded me to try my hand at vehicle sales. Initially this meant my matching commercial and agricultural vehicles to the needs of prospective customers. And it all went very well, so that within a matter of months I had developed a lucrative, countrywide chain of client contacts. Only to remain fundamentally unsettled. Until I confessed to my boss that I didn’t like my image as a flash-Harry car salesman. He was enormously amused. Yet puzzled also.
‘But ‘ he reasoned, ‘everything hinges on the company sales director.’
Company Sales Director! Ah! Suddenly all doubt vanished. Indeed, I rather think my golf improved too!
Above all, I finally had a real family home. - essentially for the first time since meeting Joan, back in Nottingham in 1946 (Joan Ball, as she had been then). Her father was Cyril Ball, a former RFC-cum-RAF pilot and brother of my boyhood hero, Albert Ball, VC.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Seeding the Storm
Description
An account of the resource
Account of John Mitchell's career in the Royal Air Force from Oct 1934 until November 1957. Writes of his early ambitions to fly, and joining the RAF as a wireless operator. Describes his training and early postings to Worthy Down on Vickers Virginia. Mentions difficulties of using early wireless sets and of lack of policy on aircraft crewing. Continues with describing his time on Whitley, having to qualify as an air gunner and comments on his first tour of operation in bomber command at the beginning of the war. Mentions flying from several bases and various targets up until the fall of France. Writes of career after completing his first tour in November 1941. He was posted as signals leader for his second tour on Lancaster and he goes on to describe operations from June 1943. Mentions doing three post war cook's tours and goes on to describe his career after the war when he retrained as a pilot.
Creator
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J E F Mitchel
Format
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Sixteen page printed document with tree b/w photographs
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Text. Memoir
Identifier
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BMitchellJEFMitchellJEFv2
Coverage
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Civilian
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Hampshire
England--Oxfordshire
England--Yorkshire
Scotland--Dumfries and Galloway
England--Hampshire
England--Winchester
England--Wiltshire
Norway
Norway--Oslo
Germany
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Jülich
Germany--Essen
France
France--La Capelle-en-Thiérache
France--Amiens
France--Abbeville
Great Britain Miscellaneous Island Dependencies--Guernsey
Italy
Scotland--Moray
Northern Ireland--Enniskillen
England--Nottingham
Germany--Friedrichshafen
Germany--Berlin
England--Rutland
Germany--Münster in Westfalen
Germany--Wesel (North Rhine-Westphalia)
England--Shropshire
Gibraltar
Italy--Turin
Germany--Hamm (North Rhine-Westphalia)
England--Cornwall (County)
Great Britain Miscellaneous Island Dependencies--Channel Islands
Great Britain
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
England--Nottinghamshire
Northern Ireland--Antrim (County)
Temporal Coverage
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1934-10-10
1935-07-12
1936-05-13
1939-09-03
1940-05-17
1940-05-21
1940-06-26
1940-06-11
1941-07-01
1943-05-20
1943-06-20
1944-01-18
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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
19 OTU
207 Squadron
220 Squadron
58 Squadron
6 Group
air gunner
aircrew
animal
anti-aircraft fire
Cook’s tour
Distinguished Flying Cross
fear
Harvard
Lancaster
Morse-keyed wireless telegraphy
Operational Training Unit
pilot
promotion
RAF Boscombe Down
RAF Driffield
RAF Kinloss
RAF Langar
RAF Morton Hall
RAF North Luffenham
RAF Pocklington
RAF Spilsby
RAF St Eval
RAF St Mawgan
RAF Ternhill
RAF Upper Heyford
RAF West Freugh
RAF Winthorpe
RAF Worthy Down
Shackleton
sport
Tiger Moth
training
Whitley
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1263/17136/AWilmetS190504.2.mp3
78852fd08bde8706c1253068111d0a6b
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Title
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Wilmet, Sheila
S Wilmet
Description
An account of the resource
One item. An oral history interview with Corporal Sheila Wilmet (b. 1924, 2090150 Royal Air Force). She served as a meteorologist at RAF Bottesford, RAF Coningsby, RAF Cottesmore, RAF Langar and RAF Spilsby.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2019-05-04
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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Wilmet, S
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
JM: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Julian Maslin. The interviewee is Mrs Sheila Wilmet. The interview is taking place at the home of Mrs Wilmet’s daughter Mrs Alison Belcher [buzz] on Saturday May the 4th 2019. Sheila, if I may, can I ask you to start us off by telling us a little bit about your family background?
SW: Well, I was born and brought up in Liverpool. On the outskirts. It was a really a little village which was later incorporated in to the city boundary. My mother and father had both been born in Ireland but at that time of course it was part of the British Isles and was governed from England. They had come over after the end of the First World War when my father as a returning soldier was not particularly welcome. He had served in the RAMC and found no difficulty in getting a job in a military hospital which was later taken over by the Ministry of Pensions. So I had a very conventional 1930s upbringing. Went to the primary school. Went to church on Sunday. Played out in the fields and woods which were around the house. Went to secondary school. Failed the eleven plus but they had a system in Liverpool where those who had just missed were accommodated in Central Schools. And when I was fifteen war was declared. It wasn’t a surprise I don’t think, to anybody but my father had been predicting it for years. And I took an exam for a private college and I went for the year there and passed my school certificate. That was 1940 and I remember somebody saying as we went in to the exam, ‘What does it matter what we get because the Germans will be here?’ But the Germans weren’t, fortunately and I got a job as a probationer teacher in a nursery school. This was the first nursery school as opposed to a nursery. It was an experiment and very interesting. And then in May of that year, 1941. It gets a bit hazy. We had a week of bombing and the devastation and the fires and I mean Liverpool was very, very badly bombed because of course they were after the docks and the river gave the game away. And then the bombing went on intermittently. We spent the night in an Andersons shelter at the bottom of the garden. And eventually we had the Christmas week where the bombing started as soon as it got dark and finished just as daylight was coming, and it was very hard to make one’s way home because there were unexploded bombs here and unexploded bombs there. But we just took it as part of life and carried on as best we could. When it came to the spring of 1942 it was my time to decide would I go to college, be coming up to eighteen and the war was going very badly and I think I thought they needed help [laughs] My father was very much against me just going down and joining up. He insisted that I would only join when there was something definite, and there was an ad in the Liverpool Post and Echo which said, “Red sky at night sailor’s delight. But this isn’t good enough for the Air Force.” So they were looking for women with some science in their background to train as meteorologists, and I thought that’s just the job for me. And down I went and signed up and about six weeks later I found myself on a train going to Gloucester for initial training etcetera.
JM: Thank you. Thank you. When you went and you asked to sign up did you actually specify that you wanted to be in the Meteorology department?
SW: Oh, I did. I did. I told them that’s why I had come. And of course we were all volunteers then so there was this feeling that if things went awry you could just say, ‘Well thank you but I’m going home.’
JM: Yes. Yes. Right. So, tell us a little more will you please about your service in Gloucester where you were training?
SW: In Gloucester we were billeted in an enormous hut. There were about thirty women and the beds were arranged. Some had their heads in the middle of the hut and some had their beds so it was alternate. Of course we’d never seen any of the others in our lives before and the only thing was we were all anxious. Anxious to do the right thing. Anxious about what might happen to us. Anxious about everything. And we got kitted out, and the worst thing I found was the great coat. Now this was March and it was very cold and because it rubbed the back of the neck. Otherwise, I managed quite well with everything else. And then we went out and we did square bashing on the square and after we’d done that for a week or so we were supposed to be in command, and we had to take it in turns to give the orders for right turn etcetera as we went. It was very difficult to choose the right moment and I remember the warrant officer shouting out, ‘Say something, if it’s only goodbye.’ So we had two weeks there. And then we went up to Morecambe and were billeted in boarding houses. And there we went to lectures about gas, and health and safety etcetera and who, whom to salute and when and how. And we also had all sorts of injections. I hadn’t been inoculated, no vaccinated against smallpox as a baby so I had to have that as well, which was fairly unpleasant. But I suppose we were there for perhaps three weeks and then we were divided up depending on what we were aiming to do, and I found myself in London billeted on Buckingham Palace Road in beautiful apartments and travelling to Lincoln’s Inn Fields each morning for lectures on the science of meteorology and, which was fairly difficult because my science was not really up to standard. Now. I wasn’t the only one. They were really looking for people with degrees, but of course they were very thin on the ground. We had a test every Friday, and if you couldn’t pass this you would be re-mustered. But however, we did pass and then with another girl we were sent up to a big house. Not a mansion but a big house in New York which is on the outskirts, a crossroads really on the outskirts of Coningsby Airfield.
JM: Yes.
SW: And we would travel up to the, in to the [pause] oh what do I want? Into the airfield on sort of lorry transport. Anyway, this wasn’t feasible if we were doing shifts, so we were put in then in barrack blocks on the airfield and introduced. There were just the two of us, introduced to the Met office and a very, very kind, very clever, very kind man who took us under his wing and helped us through the first few weeks until we got confidence enough. And because he was a civilian it was a little more informal than it would have been had he been in uniform. And one of our fairly regular visitors was Group Captain Gibson, and he would come in and ask the officer to explain the charts and what they meant, and what it would mean and how weather would travel etcetera etcetera. He was the only one that did that. The, the others would take whatever they were told at the briefing but he liked to know the ins and outs of it. The down side of this visit was that he would quite often say as he looked down at his big black Labrador, ‘Oh,’ he’d say, ‘N***** would like some cocoa.’ I thought, oh dear. So away I’d have to go to the, I wouldn’t call it a kitchen. There was a kettle [laughs] and I would do my best to make the cocoa. Make sure it wasn’t too hot, come out and present it to N***** while others were talking weather wise. And then he would say, ‘Thank you. Come on N*****. You’ve had your treat.’
JM: Could I just interrupt you for a moment?
SW: Yes.
JM: We are talking about Guy Gibson here, aren’t we?
SW: Oh, we are.
JM: Yes.
SW: Talking about Guy Gibson. Yes.
JM: I think I’m right in saying at that point he was the commanding officer of number 106 Squadron. Does that ring a bell with you?
SW: Yes. Yes.
JM: Were you aware that at that stage he was leading 106 to become one of the most successful squadrons in Bomber Command at that stage?
SW: No. We [pause] we felt he was special and Mr Finch, the mess officer would say, ‘He’s a little man but very big ideas.’ And that’s how I remember him.
JM: Yes. Yes.
SW: Yes.
JM: Yes, because of course history shows us that he had some, some people were rather negative about him, weren’t they? They said he wasn’t always a pleasant officer to work for.
SW: No.
JM: Did you find anything of that?
SW: No. No. No. And I think partly because Mr Finch was so, so pleasant and kind, and yes and he would, when he was explaining things to the wingco, he would do it in a very [pause] well, sort of sympathetic way, ‘I know why you’re asking the questions and this is the answer and this is why.’
JM: Yes. Yes.
SW: Yes.
JM: And these questions would be needed so that Gibson and the others could plan the night’s bombing raid for instance.
SW: Yes. They prob, yes the details of it [pause] a lot of the other officers would and later on would, would take what they were told but he was very keen to know why.
JM: Right.
SW: Why was the cloud going to be such and such or why was visibility or —
JM: Yes.
SW: Yes.
JM: I think that is a very interesting observation you make because in some sources Gibson is not always described as being very interested in science and bits and pieces. Others say that he was and you confirm that.
SW: Yes. Yes, yes. He was very keen to know everything that would have any impact.
JM: Yes.
SW: On his operation.
JM: Thank you. That’s what I hoped you would say.
SW: Yes.
JM: That fits in perfectly with the image of Guy Gibson as he was leading 106 Squadron.
SW: Yes.
JM: Before he was posted to the Dambusters, which is another story.
SW: Yes. Yes.
JM: That’s fascinating. Did, could you just tell us a little bit more about your actual duties? Were you a corporal at this stage?
SW: Yes. Well, there was what was called Stevenson Screens.
JM: I know it.
SW: Well away from buildings and it was our duty to go out every hour on the hour and read what instruments were in it, pressure mostly, and there was a sun recorder but, and then we would do observations by observing cloud type and amount, wind strength and direction err paper [laughs] [sound of newspaper sheets turning] Oh, precipitation. Yes. Temperature. We had a anemometer for wind, we had a nephoscope for clouds.
JM: Right.
SW: Speed I suppose. Yes. If we couldn’t estimate the height of the clouds just by eye we would have to send up a balloon. We had a little cubby hole beside the office and we would go and that’s where the cylinders of hydrogen were kept and we would fill a balloon red, white or blue according to the cloud not according to our fancy [laughs] And we would follow it with the theodolite for, again speed and, but mostly for cloud height. We would also estimate visibility. And then would come in and on a big like an architect’s big desk we would have a map of the British Isles on which were little circles for every Met station and they were numbered interestingly starting in Ireland and, and then on the teleprinter, a sheet would come through with the reports from all the other Met stations in quite a simple code and we would transfer the figures to symbols surrounding these little circles. We used a red and a blue pen fixed together. You just twiddled it to get which one you needed. Mostly blue but red was too much in the pressure. If it was falling you’d put it in in red and together with the other, if they were worse than the last report. And we would fill those in for all the hundred and forty eight or so stations on the map. Now, we did that every hour and every third hour, three, six, nine we did it on a bigger scale. And the Met officer then would interpret all those figures and draw his lines, and from that do his estimation of what conditions would be like 10 o’clock at night or whatever and then of course for the morning and would dew fall? Would fog form? And so on. And while he was doing that of course we’d be working away and keeping up our observations and sending through our little line of figures. It was quite intense while we were there. We were working away and another WAAF came and we just did eight hour shifts then really and kept going.
JM: I, I can imagine that you must have been curious having taken all these observations to find out more about meteorology yourself. Did you find yourself getting involved with the recognition of fronts and associated weather?
SW: Yes. Yes. Yes. Once you spend four hours, four years doing that you can’t get away from it. You can look out of the window now and I’ve brought my children up knowing this is a clearing shower and [laughs] ‘Don’t worry. Yes, it is heavy but it’s a clearing shower.’
JM: And I would also, for the record could you, I know what a Stevenson Screen is, could you describe a Stevenson Screen for people?
SW: A Stevenson Screen was a louvered rectangular box fitted on legs, about four feet high. It was louvered so that the wind could get in but not, but modified and yes the same with, as another said it was well away from buildings.
JM: Yes.
SW: Which you would notice if you were going out at two and three and four in the morning on a winter’s night. We just did it. It was part of, yes part of the job.
JM: Yes. Yes.
SW: So yes.
JM: Thank you. We’re still with you at Coningsby. Were you aware of the losses that the squadrons were taking? Were you involved in any way with that aspect of their work?
SW: No. We were for a while. The navigators used to come in after they’d been to the briefing and we would give them a card with the predictions for cloud, wind etcetera, visibility and ask them if they’d be kind enough on the way home to write in what was actually there. Now, we said it very apologetically because we knew that it was asking a bit much. If they were coming home they wouldn’t be safe until they crossed the coast and the last thing on their minds would be filling in a card. So we, we almost never got one back. And I think it was just something extra for them to think about. And that idea was dropped fairly quickly.
JM: Yes.
SW: So we didn’t actually see the aircrew at that stage, and of course being in the watchtower we were isolated from what was going on in the rest of the airfield.
JM: Yes. Yes.
SW: I mean we just had the hierarchy.
JM: Yes.
SW: Above us and [pause] yes.
JM: Yes. Yes. Thank you. So there came a point when you were posted to Langar.
SW: Yes.
JM: Could you tell us a little about that experience? Was it very similar to Coningsby or did it have its own distinguishing experiences for you?
SW: It was different. I suppose it was a newer airfield. We travelled in, in RAF wagons, and I remember seeing the sign for Langar at the side of the road. It was a lovely rural spot and the first glimpse I suppose I got of it was of a field of [pause] not buttercups [pause] not primulas. Oh.
AB: Cowslips.
SW: Hmmn?
AB: Cowslips.
SW: Cowslips. A field of cowslips. Absolutely golden in the sunshine. I thought oh this is going to be a lovely place. And then we were allocated a bed in the Nissen hut, which was very hot in the hot weather. Difficult if you’ve been on night duty and very cold in the cold weather. There were louvers on the rounded ends but the snow would come in and you’d wake up with it on the bed. That would give a warning what we were in for. We were quite a way from the airfield though. We all had bikes. Yes. I saw the Met office. It was in the watchtower but it was a different, a different set up. The airfield was much more linear [pause] And I suppose my main memory there was that there were three of us. We were covering the twenty four hours. Twenty four hours, and one of the girls got ill and for a while myself and my partner we did twenty four hours on and twenty four hours off. Somebody said, ‘What do you do in your spare time?’ [laughs] Very little. And we went there, I suppose it was May and, and then in the August I think it was there was this rumour that somebody from the BBC was coming. And well, coming but talk to us or what? Anyway, then it was he’s going on a flight and where’s he got? I think it might be a long one. Oh, poor man. Does he know what he’s letting himself in for because the losses? Anyway, if he was determined to do it, so he did come in to the office, spoke to the [pause] and didn’t speak to us. Well, there would only be one on at a time anyway. But we certainly worried about him.
JM: And this was Wynford Vaughan-Thomas?
SW: Yes, it was. Yes.
JM: Were you aware that he was a famous broadcaster even then?
SW: Yes. Yes. We’d heard him. But we did have radios. We had a radio in the office and we had a radio in the Nissen hut, and, and yes we kept well abroad of what was happening and we would also be very thankful for the music that came on. American Forces Network started at 5 o’clock. They were an hour in front of the Home Service or the Forces Network. So yes, we did know his name and his reputation and we were all very proud that it was too us he would come but we were very worried about him and of course his recording man.
JM: So he had somebody with him. A sound recordist, did he?
SW: Yes. He had a recording man. Yes.
JM: Yeah. Did you see the equipment they were going to record on to?
SW: No. No.
JM: Right.
SW: No. That would be like the aircraft.
JM: Yes. I see, yes.
SW: It would be away from us. In that sense we were kind of isolated.
JM: Yes.
SW: Yes.
JM: Yes. I wonder if you remember anything about him as a man in terms of his build or his voice? He had a very characteristic voice as I recall.
SW: A very distinctive voice.
JM: Very.
SW: Yes. Well, I would say he wasn’t past remarkable. I mean, he wasn’t exceptionally tall or anything like that. He was very pleasant and I think, yes, I can’t remember how he was outfitted but obviously for the trip he was well outfitted. Yes. And then we worried about him. We took it in turns to worry because of course if you’d been on all day or you were going on you would go and we would go to bed and you would definitely go to sleep. But the first question you know, any news? And if you were actually in the office you’d be listening. Listening. If they were due back at 4 o’clock and then it gets to ten past and where are they? And so it would go on and then, how many? It wasn’t an exact science because sometimes one of the planes, the flight would be aborted off the, off the runway. They wouldn’t have, they didn’t actually go so it was no good counting. Occasionally somebody would be fairly shot up and they would land, you know perhaps in Norfolk or something like that. So it was no good writing people off straightaway. You had to wait and find out. But yes we did know Wynford Vaughan-Thomas had got back. Yes.
JM: Do you remember whether he was showing signs of nerves before his, his trip? Do you think he knew what he was letting himself in for?
SW: Well, if he was he didn’t show it. I would say he was a professional man and people like that do what they have to do no matter what they feel inside.
JM: Yes. I think that’s a very good answer but as you pointed out there was, there were in fact two of them and we forget the nerves and the human characteristics of his, his technician don’t we?
SW: Yes. Yes. Yes.
JM: He must have been just as tense.
SW: I think it’s very true when something starts that’s what you’re concentrating on and he wanted to get there, and he wanted to get back and he wanted it to be right and I think that’s what took his attention.
JM: Yes. Yes. Did you ever get to hear the broadcast that they made?
SW: Yes. Yes. Oh, we did. Yes. Which I believe there is a production with visual and so forth?
JM: I imagine so. Yes.
SW: Yes.
JM: Yes. And whilst we’re talking about news that came through to you you’ve mentioned that you met Wing Commander Gibson. Were you aware of the Dambusters raid? You would have been at Langar then. Not at Coningsby.
SW: Yes. But they —
JM: Were you aware of it?
SW: They were only, yes but of course we knew the area.
JM: Yes.
SW: And, oh yes, I mean it was when I say common knowledge it was knowledge between people who were affected and of course we felt with our observations we were showing what, what the weather was. Our Met officer was having his input into the Lincolnshire, you know. We weren’t directly involved but we were involved on the periphery I suppose.
JM: Yes. Yes.
SW: It was all, and you know how it comes through the air sometimes.
JM: Yes. Yes. There must have been a sense of pride of being a part of that team though.
SW: Oh yes. Yes. Yes.
JM: Brilliant.
SW: Oh yes. And we would have known some of the other parties that went.
JM: Yes. Some of the boys that didn’t come back.
SW: Yes.
JM: Yes.
SW: Yes. We did.
JM: So you were, you were at Langar and then you were posted to Spilsby. Is that correct?
SW: Yes. Yes.
JM: Tell us a little bit about that will you, please.
SW: Yes. We’d rumbled off to Spilsby and it was a very deserted sort of establishment. The Americans had been there and they had left us without light bulbs. They seem to have, wherever they were going they seemed to think it would be short of everything. It was very, very basic when we got there. The only thing was they had left a couple of tubs of peanut butter and peanut butter sandwiches were the order of the day for a while. But I mean we got it up and running obviously and planes came in, and that was a very busy time. We had Windows by then.
JM: Windows.
SW: Windows were aluminium strips.
JM: Yes. Window. Yes.
SW: That were thrown out. Yes. To deflect the [pause] Yes. And of course things like radar were all getting much more sophisticated. It was, you can describe it like a step up instrument wise. And we tried out FIDO.
JM: Yes.
SW: The fog dispersal unit. Not always successfully because in, although it would be foggy it would be windy as well and it was distracting. I think it was the worst place for fog and poor visibility and the decision had to be made in conjunction with other obviously as to whether the planes could return. It wasn’t difficult to get them off but it was very difficult sometimes to get them to return. Nobody wanted them diverted. They didn’t want to be diverted. The minimum height for the cloud if I remember rightly was three hundred feet and it was very difficult in the dark to estimate it. And I don’t know about the others, but I know I’d send up a prayer, please don’t let me make a mistake. And they didn’t often have to be diverted but sometimes it was very dicey and cloud was the worst. If the cloud was nearly on the deck it was very difficult. I mean they didn’t have the instruments that they have today of course or anything like that and if a decision was made that they had to be diverted you felt as though you should run away somewhere and hide until they, in case you’d be blamed [laughs] But, yes there were. There were some, yes difficult decisions shall we say.
JM: Where the weather was marginal.
SW: Pardon?
JM: Where the visibility or the weather was in some way marginal.
SW: Yes. Yes.
JM: Yes. Yeah. Now, I understand that you are aware of the fact that there was quite a nasty accident at Spilsby.
SW: There was. Yes.
JM: Can you tell us a little about that please?
SW: I don’t really know much about it. All this talk of bombs in the bomb dump. Now, as we looked out from the watchtower, the perimeter tracks would go around and the dispersals were right, left and as far as you could see was where the bomb dump was. And I remember the talk about bombs in the bomb dump but to be perfectly honest I can’t remember in detail like as to how much damage was done or anything like that. Which seems strange but —
JM: But they were —
SW: But we just got on our bikes and cycled to work, and —
JM: But there was an explosion.
SW: Oh, there was an explosion.
JM: Yes.
SW: Yes.
JM: And people were killed or injured as a result of that.
SW: Well, yes. People out on the, yes the dispersal units. Yes.
JM: Yes.
SW: Where they would be loading. I mean, I remember them with these bombs on the trolleys going to and fro.
JM: Yes.
SW: Especially when they had an enormous one. And the thing to do for the ground crew was to write on it. You know, like people write on a cast on a broken leg or something like that. They would send messages on the side of this bomb. I never did. No. I didn’t think that was [laughs] but I do remember all the traffic with the, with the bombs. Yes.
JM: Yes.
SW: And there was always this talk about, ‘He’s reckless,’ You know, ‘The driver’s reckless. Hold on to your hat.’ The one thing there were any explosions in that. I remember a plane crashing with, on the, on take-off.
JM: With bombs on board.
SW: With bombs on board. Fortunately, no big ones on that. Yes, and I remember going to the funeral. Now, why? I can’t imagine. But we were supposed to so some representative had to go. Yes. I don’t know.
JM: And that was in Spilsby locally was it?
SW: That was at Coningsby.
JM: Oh. Coningsby.
[pause]
SW: I don’t know whether they had, you know the fire bombs.
JM: The incendiaries.
SW: Incendiaries. Yes. Fortunately, it didn’t seem to do, it didn’t do any damage in the village. Yes.
JM: So, was, was Spilsby your last posting during the war?
SW: No. From Spilsby we were sent to Bottesford.
JM: Yes.
SW: In Nottingham.
JM: Yes.
SW: Shire. And another busy station. The most remarkable thing there was the fact that we were there for the 8th of May, for the wonderful, wonderful news that the war was over. And, and we had, I think like we knew that the day before, on May the 8th was to be the day. VE Day. And anybody who wasn’t actually needed at work went on the church parade. We had it out in a hangar and we were celebrating yes, but we also knew there were so many that weren’t there to celebrate. It was a very sobering service. And then the NCOs, because I was a corporal there was no establishment for a sergeant and of course I never rose up the ranks we were invited to the sergeant’s mess for a celebratory drink. So away we went and tried to give the impression we were quite sophisticated which of course we weren’t and the gin that we were offered nearly knocked us off our feet. But, however, we thanked them and yes, all very nice and then we cycled off to the WAAF site, and made our way to Nottingham and I remember dancing in the street in the main area in front of the official buildings there and thinking how wonderful it was. And wonderful it was. Yes.
JM: Wonderful. I know that some personnel were given the opportunity to fly over Germany.
SW: They were. Yes.
JM: In things called Cooks Tours. Was that something that ever came your way?
SW: I didn’t fly over Germany but I did fly and I can remember going out to the, to the aircraft and saying something about a parachute. He said, ‘Oh, you won’t have a parachute. We’re not going that high. We’re not going high enough.’ I think we had to sign and say if things went amiss nobody would claim. But the inside of the Lancasters [pause] how they survived, those aircrew I’ll never know. It was cold. It was draughty. It was cramped. It was horrible. I never went as far as the poor old tail gunner, but even to get in to the cockpit you had to climb over obstructions and noise was incredible. The whole thing rattled and shook. And that was still while you were still on the ground. And taking off, I mean you wondered was this it? Was this the end of the world? Then it was interesting when we were in the air but it was still so, so uncomfortable and so, such hardship. I don’t know how long we were up. Less than an hour probably but to think of flying all the way to Berlin, to Italy. They went to North Africa. They needed, they needed awards for going never mind anything else. For surviving in that aircraft. Yes. It was, oh quite an experience. It really was. Yes.
JM: And when peace returned were you anxious to get demobbed and return to civilian life or were you tempted to stay with the RAF?
SW: No. There was no, there was no establishment. There was no we would have to re-muster into something else.
JM: Right.
SW: Yes. I think they had far too many personnel, women personnel. They were really looking to get rid of you in turn. Now, from, from Bottesford we went to Cottesmore.
JM: Yes.
SW: And there things were gradually sort of running down. But that was when we were flying to Holland and they were bringing people back from faraway places and things like that. And we went on a course about flying over the hump between Burma and India because of course the war in the east was still going on and, but then of course we weren’t needed but it was interesting. Yes. So, it was July 1946 when my turn came around to be demobbed and we went to a centre in Birmingham and handed in, you kept your best uniform. You could keep your underwear, which was not what most ladies were wearing and we had, well to start with we had these equestrian type knickers. The dark ones were called blackouts and the grey blue ones were called twilights. I have to say they were very good at keeping you warm if you were out on the airfield in the middle of the night but glamorous they weren’t. They did modernise them later. And the men got a suit, but the ladies got some money. And before we left we had these interviews as to what we were going to do, and, and they were quite clever because of course they were looking for certain groups of people. I knew which occupations were in need and so they were quite good at like saying, ‘Oh, you’ve done very well at these tests so you could, have you thought of being —’ this that or whatever was needed. And one of the things was teachers. Now, of course, I’d been a probationer teacher, a grade which never existed after the war so obviously teachers were needed so that’s where they encouraged you. They felt that your qualifications were such that you would be admirable for this. And jobs for, for women were very scarce on the ground in those days. You were a teacher, a nurse, a secretary, or in a shop or [pause] yes. Anyway, I went for the teaching and they had this scheme, emergency teacher training and instead of the two years because that’s what it was at that time it was thirteen months. But we got very short holidays. A week here and two weeks there and eventually passed out. And then we had to do two years’ probation at, well whatever they called the first. Yes. Instead of the year. So yes. So that’s what I became.
JM: Very good. Did, did, may I ask you did you make any friendships amongst your WAAF colleagues which endured after the, after your service?
SW: Yes. But not many because of course we were constantly split up. We didn’t, we started off, like two came up from London but it wasn’t very long before Barbara was posted somewhere else and you couldn’t keep track. There were no phones and things like that. But I did keep in touch with one girl. I went to her wedding, and but she lived in London which was a long way from Liverpool so we only saw each other occasionally. We wrote, and I went to stay with her for the Coronation and that sort of thing but of course over time.
JM: Yes.
SW: She had four children and, yes.
JM: Yes.
SW: Yes.
JM: I think the last thing I would like to ask you is when you reflect back on your, on your RAF service would you say that it changed you as a woman? Did it give you anything that would otherwise not have been open to you?
SW: Well, it gave me a lot more self-confidence, because I would not [pause] I would say I was very good. I was good at school. Not clever but good. I did what was expected of me. I was probably horribly boring, and yes it gave me self-confidence. I had to make decisions. It gave me an interest in other parts of the country, and with a broader outlook I would say. Not that I was confined at home because mum and dad were very good, but it was just different. And I suppose it did affect my teaching. Definitely. Yes.
JM: And you’ve been a lifelong supporter of Bomber Command.
SW: Oh, I have. Yes. Yes. Contributed money. Not much but some. But I’ve always stood up for them and been disgusted at it all being swept under the carpet and made to look nice. It wasn’t. It was the war. I mean I’d been in Liverpool. I knew what bombing was. Yes. But what else were we going to do? The war was, I mean I’m sure outside people I mean outside the country thought that we were finished. There was no way we were going to come back from this. Fortunately, we felt otherwise.
JM: Thank you so much. That’s an excellent note on which to finish. Thank you for a remarkable interview. Thank you very much indeed.
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 Sheila Wilmet
Creator
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Julian Maslin
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2019-05-04
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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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AWilmetS190504
Format
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00:59:53 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Sheila Wilmet grew up in Liverpool and was fifteen when war was declared. She describes the devastation of bombing in 1941, spending nights in an Anderson shelter, and navigating unexploded bombs during her commute. She volunteered after viewing a meteorologist advertisement, and upon receiving initial training in Gloucester and Morecombe, she completed an education in meteorology at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London. Firstly, Wilmet was stationed at RAF Coningsby where she met Guy Gibson. She also describes her duties which consisted of regularly observing, interpreting, and collating weather data using specialist equipment including a Stevenson screen, nephoscope, hydrogen balloons, theodolite and, anemometer. Secondly, Wilmet was posted to RAF Langar. She describes the Nissen hut living conditions, and the visit of BBC broadcaster, Wynford Vaughan-Thomas. Wilmet was then posted to RAF Spilsby. She talks about American peanut butter, making difficult decisions during bad weather, and the bomb dump explosion. She also recollects the developments in equipment including radar, Windows, and FIDO. Next, Wilmet was posted to RAF Bottesford. She describes both her somber emotions and the celebratory events of VE Day. Finally, she was posted to RAF Cottesmore and demobilised in July 1946 when she retrained as a teacher. Wilmet talks about her lifelong support of Bomber Command and distaste at the way they were remembered.
Contributor
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Tilly Foster
Julie Williams
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Temporal Coverage
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1941
1945-05-08
1946
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Merseyside
England--Liverpool
England--London
England--Leicestershire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Rutland
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Lancashire
Language
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eng
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
bomb dump
bombing
FIDO
Gibson, Guy Penrose (1918-1944)
ground personnel
home front
meteorological officer
military living conditions
Nissen hut
perception of bombing war
radar
RAF Bottesford
RAF Coningsby
RAF Cottesmore
RAF Langar
RAF Spilsby
shelter
Window
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/743/19914/MCleggPV[DoB]-150701-01.pdf
ad71298fb0817912eaa5f8dc06dc121c
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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Clegg, Peter Vernon
P V Clegg
Description
An account of the resource
Eight items and five sub-collections. Main collection contains a log of Pathfinder operations from RAF Wyton 1943 -1944, histories of the Avro repair facility at Bracebridge Heath, and Langar, a biography of Squadron Leader David James Baikie Wilson, biography of Squadron Leader Lighton Verdon-Roe, a book - Test Pilots of A.V. Roe & Co Ltd - S.A. 'Bill' Thorn, and two volumes of book - Roy Chadwick - no finer aircraft designer, Sub-collections contain a total of 29 items concerning the Aldborough Dairy and Cafe as well as biographical material, including log books for Alan Gibson, Peter Isaacson, Alistair Lang and Charles Martin. <br /><br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/1772">Aldborough Dairy and Cafe</a><br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/1768">Gibson, Alan</a><br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/1769">Isaacson, Peter</a><br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/1770">Lang, Alastair</a><br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/1771">Martin, Charles</a><br /><br /><br />The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Peter Clegg and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-07-02
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. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
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Clegg, PV
Transcribed document
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
[Underlined] THE AVRO
REPAIR
ORGANISATION [/underlined]
I) Bracebridge Heath.
[Page break]
[Underlined] Peter V. Clegg. [/underlined]
THE AVRO REPAIR ORGANISATION
INTRODUCTION
In 1939, prior to the start of WWII, with a growing number of Avro Ansons in RAF use, and the imminent equipping of RAF bomber squadrons with the new Avro Manchester, A V Roe and Co Ltd decided to establish a repair depot well away from its production facilities in Manchester. It was logical to look at a site near the operational airfields where their aircraft were based, and so a management team was sent across to Lincolnshire to find a suitable place close to the city of Lincoln – where a supply of labour could be guaranteed – and the depot was established at Bracebridge Heath, just south of Lincoln and close to RAF Waddington.
The organisation being set up was to comprise two main Divisions – the first one being the operation of a Repair facility for practically all the sections and assemblies of the Avro aircraft in widespread RAF service – and the second being the control and administration of groups of Avro engineers, known as ‘Contractor’s Working Parties ‘ or ‘CWP’s’ (later just called ‘Outworking Parties’), who were set up on every RAF base where large numbers of Avro aircraft operated.
When Avro aircraft suffered from Category ‘A’ damage (ie the repair was beyond the RAF unit’s own capability) the CWPs on the base took over, and requisitioned the necessary spares from Bracebridge Heath (and the factory in Manchester if necessary), and repaired the aircraft in a hangar allocated to them with the help of RAF engineering staff.
Where the aircraft suffered from Category ‘B’ damage (ie repairs on site were not possible, and the aircraft had to be dismantled for transport) the various sections of the Avro Ansons, Manchesters and soon Lancasters, were sent back on RAF ‘Queen Mary’ trailers to Bracebridge Heath for com[inserted] l [/inserted] ete overhaul and then for re-assembly.
When Bracebridge Heath first opened in late 1939, Ansons were initially dealt with there, the various sub-assemblies arriving by road, being completely stripped and rebuilt. Usually these were then taken down the A15 a mile or so to RAF Waddington, where a large Avro CWP was given the use of Hangar 1 for the duration of the War and re-assembled them there. RAF pilots from the base would be asked to test-fly them when ready, and pass them as fit for Service use again.
As the new Manchester heavy bombers went into service at Waddington with 207 Squadron from November 1940 and operations began over Germany in February 1941, the Avro CWP’s rapidly increased in number to cover all the RAF bases involved, and at the same time the size and complexity of the Manchester meant that Bracebridge Heath could not itself cope with the overhaul of all the components. Thus a number of other firms were asked to assist in repairing various parts of the bomber.
1
[Page break]
Soon, the increasing number of Category ‘B’ Manchesters and (from March 1942 onwards) Lancasters meant that Avro’s needed to open another suitable depot in the area, where complete Lancasters could be rebuilt rapidly from all the overhauled components, and put quickly back into service.
Thus it was decided to open such a facility at the newly-built RAF bomber station at Langar, Notts, in September 1942, controlled from Bracebridge Heath, where sections of Lancasters could – as at Bracebridge – be stripped down and repaired, but assembly of the complete aircraft could also be carried out on a small production line system. For this, all the components would be sent there from the many works now engaged in Lancaster repair.
Coincidentally 207 Squadron (of Manchester fame from Waddington) now re-equipped with Lancasters and moved into Langar in September 1942, the same month that Avro’s new works opened there. The history of this Avro site, embracing as it did an absolutely vital role over the next three decades, and yet a largely unsung success to the outside world, is now recounted here with the help of some of the surviving men and women who so conscientiously worked there between 1942 and 1968.
PART I
THE BRACEBRIDGE HEATH WORKS
The site chosen by Avro’s for their repair workshops and for the control of the CWP’s, was an old Royal Flying Corps (RFC) aerodrome at Bracebridge Heath, just 2 1/2 miles south of Lincoln on the east side of the A15 road, but more importantly, just one mile north of the large RAF bomber base at Waddington.
With a cemetery on one side, and a lunatic asylum on the other, the field at Bracebridge Heath had developed in the Great War as a landing ground (called Robey’s Aerodrome) where the Lincoln firm of Robey & Co began to build aircraft under licence (Maurice Farman Longhorns) later joined by Clayton and Shuttleworth Ltd (another local firm) building Sopwith Camels and Triplanes there. Short seaplanes were also built under licence.
In 1917 it became No. 4 Aeroplane Acceptance Park, where newly-built aircraft were flight-tested and accepted by the Royal Flying Corps (RFC), and six permanent brick and wooden lattice ‘Belfast’ hangars were built, together with a variety of temporary buildings.
The aerodrome closed in 1920 , and the six stoutly-built RFC hangars were used between the wars by the Lincolnshire Road Car Co (the local bus company) and other firms in the motor or engineering trades.
2.
[Page break]
[Map of Bracebridge Heath and environs indicating Lincoln one mile to the north, showing the Avro Repair Works and the Road between Avro works and ARF Waddington (along which some aircraft were towed). Waddington airfield also marked]
[Page break]
[AVRO Photograph of Bracebridge Heath, showing the Belfast Hangars]
[Page break]
[Diagram of A.V.R.O. Bracebridge Heath site showing the layout of the facilities]
[Page break]
As these substantial hangars were still in good shape at the start of WWII, Avros decided to requisition three of them for their new Repair Organisation, and took up occupation in May 1941, gradually expanding to other buildings on the site as the war went on.
Site Layout
The layout of the Avro site can be seen in Diagram 1 (not to scale). The No. 1 hangar was divided into three sections, being in effect Belfast hangars No. 4-6 of the original RFC aerodrome (their hangars 1-3 were in an identical block parallel to and on the north side of this, and the Lincolnshire Road Car Co retained use of these throughout WWII for use as a bus depot).
A security fence was built around the new Avro site, to segregate it from the bus depot and the other buildings were added as the War progressed.
The interior layout of No. 1 hangar is shown in Diagram 2. Both of these diagrams were prepared from memory by Frank Harlow who worked there from 1945 to 195 [deleted] 0 [/deleted] [inserted] 8 [/inserted] 1958 reflect the layout of the site just after WWII.
Frank recalls:-
“No. 1 Hangar was typical of the hangars of the Great War period, buttressed brick end walls and interior brick arched walls supporting wooden lattice-work curved roof trusses, in this case giving three large, clear, uninterrupted areas.
No. 2 Hangar, the Stores Hangar, and Canteen were all new buildings built during the War.
The diagram of the layout of No. 1 Hangar gives a general idea of its arrangement. All these different items were not necessarily being worked on at the same time but over an extended period.
No. 2 Hangar was almost exclusively used for the repair of Category ‘B’ Ansons after the war- all different marks.”
Personnel
When the works opened, the senior managers and personnel were drafted in from Avro’s Chadderton and Woodford factories, and many of the workers were recruited from towns like Hull, Derby, Coventry and Birmingham. Cyril Greenwood was one who came down from Hull to work there just after Avros opened, and at the age of 19 went to work in the newly built No. 2 Hangar.
At first No. 2 Hangar was used for stripping down Manchester bomber assemblies, and in particular the mainplanes – when repaired, the assemblies were sent back to RAF bases where the Avro CWPs put the whole aircraft back together again.
3
[Page break]
[Underlined] Frank Harlow [/underlined]
[Hand drawn diagram of the Avro BBH Site plan N.T.S.] [Underlined] Diagram 1 [/underlined]
[Page break]
[Underlined] Diagram 2 [/underlined]
[Underlined] NOTE:- ALL THESE AREAS OF ACTIVITY WERE CHANGED AROUND TO SUIT THE WORK AVAILABLE [/underlined]
Frank Harlow
[Underlined] SUPERVISORS AND MR. THOMASON HAD OFFICES ABOVE THE TIME OFFICE [/underlined]
[Underlined] INTERIOR OF No 1 HANGAR [/underlined]
[Page break]
No. 1 Hangar (Belfast type from WW1)
[Photograph of a hangar]
[Page break]
Soon, the Manchesters were replaced by Lancasters, which arrived in ever increasing numbers for the rest of the war.
The first overall Works Superintendent was Mr C L Hatton, who was drafted in from being Superintendent in charge of Avro’s Experimental Dept at Ringway Airport. He was in charge of both the Bracebridge Heath works, and the growing organisation of Avro working parties at RAF stations (CWP’s). Before long, he would also be in overall charge of the second Avro repair factory, set up at Langar, Notts.
The day-to-day running of Bracebridge Heath – the aircraft repair, and the stores side – was in the hands of Mr Thomason, and the Chief Inspector was Bill Sturrock.
Later on, ‘Snowy’ Langton succeeded ‘Charlie’ Hatton as overall Superintendent, and by then he needed a Deputy, Mr Dowell.
One of the early workers to be sent across from Manchester was Mr V A Savory, who was the AID Inspector, and his tall figure, always seen to be walking slowly around, was familiar to all for many years. He walked slowly because of the injuries he had received when he escaped from the crash of the R101 Airship at Beauvais in France.
Cyril Greenwood came from Hull in 1940 to work at Avros at Bracebridge Heath. He stayed until the repair of aircraft on site finished in 1958, but his first impressions of the job are interesting:
“In those early days we travelled to Avros by bus. At one time the bus company had a strike, but the Air Force and Army stepped in and provided us with various vehicles to get us to work!
We worked seven days a week from 07.30am sometimes until 19.00pm, including overtime. We had one weekend off once a month, and I was then able to go home to Hull. There were always long waits at railway stations and always crowded trains. I constantly got caught up in the bombing raids on arrival. The City of Hull took a very great battering.” (The Avro works did shut completely for the normal summer and Christmas Holidays.)
“In Lincoln, I suppose we were rather lucky, we had a share of German raids but no comparison to other places. (Rather surprising, seeing we were surrounded by aerodromes!) My first visit to Lincoln was to find lodgings, which I was to share with another Avro worker, who also came from the same city. He was a very good artist, he drew various caricatures of members of the staff (I still have one of our foreman, although it is now rather dilapidated). Sadly, he died quite young of meningitis.
My wife started work on ‘nights’ at Avros, dismantling the aircraft. All the screws, nuts and bolts which were attached to the all the wiring, had to be undone and kept for
4
[Page break]
renovation. When she decided to work ‘days’, she was put on a bench near me, where she was itemising and recording various spare parts all the time.”
Ken Mumby started work in 1942 at Bracebridge Heath and remembers:
“I started at A V Roe after working as an Electrician on East Coast Radar Stations, when the Manchester bombers were still flying. I only worked on Lancasters at Bracebridge Heath and also at Waddington before going ‘outworking’ to various sites. At Bracebridge Heath we had all the sections – nose, front section, centre section and rear section, etc. I was on the Electrical Section and in many ways it was so different to the modern day aircraft (we had to deal with the entire aircraft wiring in those days!)
I have vivid memories of a Manchester bomber in the early days, being towed on the A15 (minus wings) to Bracebridge Heath to be worked on … would be only about a one mile journey. I never saw a Lancaster being towed on the A15 and they were not done so, to my knowledge. At B [inserted] B [/inserted] H many girls cleaned aircraft with ‘Tricolene’ and were given a pint of milk a day to counteract the effects of fainting, etc!”
In those early days there were two main functions at Bracebridge Heath – Salvage (of damaged parts) in Hangar 2, and Repair of all the different sections in Hangar No1 (the 1914 block). Many girls were employed in the Salvage unit recovering various components and instruments, etc.
There were other girls taken on in Hangar 1, like Mary Chambers in 1941, who was placed in the fabric repair section. She remembers working first on Anson wings and tails, recovering them with fabric and doping them afterwards. Soon, Manchester tails and the [deleted] r [/deleted] n Lancaster parts arrived, to be recovered. Occasionally odd objects like some of the special bomb doors for 617 Squadron’s aircraft appeared at the works for repair. May also remembers that when Rolls-Royce Merlin engines arrived at Bracebridge either before, or after repair, the fitter who took charge of these were usually from Rolls-Royce itself. Large lorries and trailers would take refurbished parts from Bracebridge down the road to Waddington when ready, or to other RAF stations, and later, to Langar.
As the number of crashed and damaged Lancasters rapidly increased, neither Bracebridge nor the new Avro works at Langar (opened in September 1942) could keep pace. Thus, other companies were brought into the Avro Repair Organisation including Brush Electrical at Loughborough and Northampton (wing sections in particular); the LMS Railway works in Derby (centre sections, etc.); the Bailgate works in Lincoln (nuts, bolts, rivets and pipes, etc.); Avro’s own Yeadon factory (bomb-doors, etc.) and so on.
Outworking Parties in WWII
Keny Mumby was put on a ‘Contractor’s Working Party’ soon after starting at Bracebridge in 1942. He remembers:
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“While ‘outworking’, I worked at about 20 or so RAF Stations in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire, a lot of them Satellites, repairing damaged ‘Lancs’ from various raids. It was much more interesting than being in the Factory, and an interesting incident occurred when I was sent to Linton-on-Ouse (Yorks). As I approached the aircraft on dispersal, I didn’t think the aircraft were Lancasters at first because they had radial engines (Hercules). I am given to understand that they were one of the few Squadrons in England with the Mark II Lanc.
I also spent some time at Scampton with the ‘Dam Busters’ Squadron. At first we knew nothing of the planned Dams Operation. We had no idea, except that we saw the Bomb well modification to take the ‘spinning bomb’, and ‘Lancs’ flying about 30ft above us whilst we were at dispersal points working on other aircraft.
Whilst working at Syerston near Newark and at other sites, when night operations were taking place, we were not allowed off the ‘drome until all aircraft were over our coastline – which meant an hour or two’s delay in waiting for 25/30 aircraft getting airborne and away. This was in case there should be any ‘Fifth Columnists’ amongst us!
Most of the sections of the Lanc used to be delivered from Bracebridge by 60 footers (a common sight down Cross-o-Cliff Hill and along the A46 out of Lincoln, to the various ‘dromes and Satellites). This was the general means of transport I had to get to jobs. At other times we were taken by car, often by a Crash Inspector. I recall being taken to Woodhall Spa by an AID Inspector one day to work on a Lanc which had to have 2 starboard fuel tanks fitted. All I had to do was to connect up the fuel gauges and pumps, and the Inspector went to the other side of the airfield to look at another crashed Lanc. He didn’t take long, because the main spar was twisted and reduced to salvage, ‘Cat. E’.
Sometimes I went to ‘dromes further afield in Yorkshire, and on one occasion to an American base where we had to stay several days and lived in the Mess with the Servicemen. At other times, if it meant several days work we would go to the local Police Station for accommodation.”
Ernest Bradley was another Avro employee who started at Bracebridge in 1942, and was soon put into the Outworking Party down the road at RAF Waddington:
“I was in No. 1 hangar working on the Engine staff. I loved it because we could see the aircraft taking off on Bombing raids, and count them next morning when we came to work and believe me I saw some very gruesome sights. Any damaged aircraft came to us for repairs. I remember going into one Lancaster that came to us. I arrived at work one morning and it was parked outside the hangar, and had some holes in the wings and body. I climbed inside to check it out and the first thing I saw was a shoe saturated in blood and then I saw that the rear turret had a mass of bullet holes in it. It also had blood stains all over it, a very nasty sight, but of course we were at war. I saw an odd aircraft now and again that had belly landed, but were considered to be ‘write-offs’.
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Working on repairs it was common place that at least one worker had to go up with any aircraft repaired. It could be anyone of the workforce. At the end of the war, after working on an ‘Avro Lincoln’ it was due to be tested, and to stop any sabotage (the real reason) someone had to go up with it. I remember we completed this aircraft and I was having my tea break when the ‘Boss’ came in. He said to me: “Go over to the Parachute Hangar and tell them you need a Parachute”. I said: “What do I need one for?” He said “You will be going up at one-o’clock with the aircraft you have just worked on. The pilot will be down shortly”. The aircraft was duly taken out of the hangar ready for testing. Everyone looked about it, saying: “I wouldn’t go up in that for all the money in the world”. Another said: “It won’t get off the ground”, and “Glad it’s you not me!” After tea break a pilot officer came up to the aircraft. “Is this the one for the Test Flight?” The Boss said: “Yes, its ready and this chap will be going with you”. Even the pilot said to me jokingly: “If you have to bail out you will probably fall out of the parachute!” (But he did say he was only joking). A few of the workers standing outside on the tarmac said: “It’s been nice knowing you ‘Charlie’”, but I liked it when we got airborne. The pilot stood me behind his seat and said “Hold on to it!”
Tom Bourne, who worked at Avros as an aircraft fitter, firstly at Newton Heath in 1936, then Chadderton just before WWII started, was selected to be posted to Bracebridge Heath in 1940, as the new Repair Organisation began to expand. He poignantly remembers:
“We were housed in an old, First World War hangar, not far from RAF Waddington, home to 44 Rhodesia Squadron, who later took delivery of the new Lancaster bomber which was to take part in the daylight raid on Augsburg, Germany – and which resulted in Squadron Leader John Nettleton being awarded the VC.
After working at Bracebridge Heath for a while, I joined a small outworking party and made my way to RAF Skellingthorpe near Lincoln to repair a Lancaster damaged the previous night, while on a raid over Germany.
On reporting at the main gate, I was issued with a pass and entered a different world, where aircraft were taking off and landing every second. The sound was deafening. My party was directed in the general direction of our aircraft, which was on the other side of this huge airfield.
We started off walking round the perimeter, and were soon overtaken by a Lancaster trundling round to the take-off point. This was closely followed by another so we stood aside to let it go by.
This one stopped, with a squeal of brakes and the rear gun turret swung round, and the ‘Tail-End Charlie’ fired his four Brownings into a sand pit put there for this purpose. He was just clearing his guns, which was a normal procedure – although no one had told us! It caused some amusement with the cockpit crew, who had a good laugh at our expense.
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Following that, a tractor pulling a train of live bombs zig-zagged its way past. We decided it would be better if we walked on the grass!
We eventually reached our dispersal and safety! It was my first sight of a fully operational bomber and a Lancaster close up! As it had been on a bombing raid over Germany the previous night everything was in place – the ammunition racks leading to the gun positions were full of live bullets, all of different colours, denoting their particular use. One in every ten was a tracer – then came incendiaries, armour piercing and to make up the ten, the ordinary bullet.
On entering the aircraft, I could feel the atmosphere – the smell of sweating bodies, disinfectant from the ‘Elsan’, gunpowder and stale breath. The interior was still warm from the previous night’s operation. We read the damage report and finally got sorted out. The NAFFI [sic] van sailed by un-noticed, until it was too late!
At the end of our first day at Skellingthorpe, we trudged back round the perimeter, which was by then relatively quiet – all the aircraft were on their dispersals, being ‘Bombed-up’, ready for the coming night’s ‘OP’.
This was my first experience of a Bomber Station, and one that would be repeated many times over the next three years.
Lincoln was surrounded by Bomber Stations. From our digs in the High Street we could hear the different squadrons all starting their engines, one by one, until the air trembled with the noise! It would then go quiet, when they all assembled at the take off point. Then, one by one, they would open up and charge along the runway, the Merlin engines perfectly in tune. When the wind was in a certain direction they flew directly above our digs, their navigation lights winking in the night sky, disappearing above the clouds. Within minutes all the noise would be gone, and a deadly silence would descend. A large percentage of them would never return.
Next morning, after eight or nine hours airborne, the lucky ones could be heard circling above, awaiting their turn to land. Some had been shot up, others had wounded aboard, who would be met by ambulances, and stretchered off to the hospital on the station. We never made friends with the aircrew – there was never any time. They were here today and gone tomorrow.
This was a sample of life on a typical Bomber Station. Damaged aircraft were repaired, aircrew replaced, hearses, bedecked with flowers from grieving relatives, mingled with tractors pulling their loads of death. Bicycles by the dozen were being ridden in every direction, mainly by WAAF’s, who played a large part in everyday life on a Bomber Station.
Bomber Stations such as Scampton, Waddington and Skellingthorpe, all used Lincoln Cathedral as a beacon, on their return across the North Sea.
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In the hangars, a section was always reserved for ‘Old Bangers’, formally the pride and joy of aircrews, who had failed to return after a raid. If ‘OPs’ had to be cancelled, they would pile into them, and chase down the country lanes to their favourite watering hole. Here they drove the usually quiet locals mad, with their antics. After all, they had such a short life – every moment was precious – and if their lives were extended by spending a night in the ‘nick’ so what? Once a ‘Tail-end Charlie’ with staring eyes recounted when on the previous night’s raid, he opened up on an enemy fighter. It was only the presence of a Staff Sergeant that saved him from being a resident in the local ‘nick’! – you were always warned that ‘Careless talk costs lives’.
Every so often these ‘Old Bangers’ would be auctioned off to the local dealers, who would, in turn, sell them back to the new intake. They would eventually end up in the hangar to be auctioned off once again and so on.
There were the odd times when a little light relief helped to ease the tension. Once I was seated in my favourite W Op’s seat in the aircraft at dinner time while I watched the antics of two RAF officers, who rowed out in the middle of a static water tank. One of the officers stood up and pointed a pistol upwards. By the time he had plucked up the courage to pull the trigger, the pistol was pointing across the road and the contents ended up draped over the telephone wires. The two officers finished up in the bottom of the dinghy, laughing their heads off. It seems that the object was a new type of distress signal – a rocket propelled kite, to be used by aircrews who had ditched in the ‘Drink’ (come down in the sea) after being hit over the target. This was a common occurrence in the days of 1,000 bomber raids.
In those hectic days, as our lads were returning, so the Yanks were format [deleted] t [/deleted] ing above, on their way to bomb in daylight raids. On the nights when our lads were at home they met up at the pubs in Lincoln, with the Yanks. There was never any trouble, just high spirits. The Yanks were all six or seven feet tall – and usually commandeered all the city pubs. They, of course, had the money. They were also very generous and would buy anyone a drink!”
The war ends
As WWII came to an end Frank Harlow arrived at Bracebridge to work for Avro there. He recounts:
“The passing of time may have dimmed my memory, but I will remember the day I started work at A V Roe Bracebridge Heath – it was May 7 1945. The next day, May 8, was VE day and was declared a holiday.
I was one of a group of RAF tradesmen in 1942, given the opportunity to volunteer to work on aircraft production, initially for a minimum period of six months – after review it was decided to leave us doing this vital work of national importance. In the first place I
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was directed to Coventry, to work on the production of Bristol ‘Hercules’ engines, later in 1945 I was directed to work at Avros at Bracebridge Heath.
My impression on entering the gates was that it looked like a big scrap heap – bits and pieces of aircraft were dumped everywhere! Many times, however, this heap of junk yielded a vital item (not available in stores) to complete a job. Eventually, during the next couple of years the yard was gradually tidied up.
Inside the hangars things were more organised. I was placed with a group repairing Lancaster D3 and D4 sections which took up one side of hangar No1. On the opposite side was a fabric section mainly doing work on Ansons, ‘rebagging’ fuselages and recovering control surfaces and doping them. On the far side was a detail section making various items (ie brackets, ribs, etc., which were made of sheet metal, requiring cutting out and bending or folding), as and when needed for both ‘Outworking Parties’ and inside shop use. Also in this hangar, spaces were found for working on Lancaster fins and rudders, a drawing store, a tool stores and a spray bay.
Across the concrete yard another hangar (No. 2) at this time dealt mainly with repairs and re-building of Ansons, and employed quite a large woodworking gang.
Next to this was a large stores hangar dispatching sections and parts of aircraft daily to many destinations.
During the first couple of years while I was at Bracebridge Heath, some special jobs came along for attention, like a York for General Smuts of South Africa, a Lancastrian ‘Aries’ for polar flights and an Avro 504N for restoration.”
With the War over, Lancaster repairs continued for a time but Yorks, Lancastrians and then Lincolns began to appear in small numbers. Later, Ansons needing ‘Cat B’ repairs began to appear in continuous order, some landing at Waddington and actually being towed up the A15 on their wheels by a company tug. The tug also took some Lancasters on their main wheels – but minus their outer wings which were removed in Hangar 1 at Waddington. These Lancasters were on a one-way journey to be completely broken up at Bracebridge – hence the untidy ‘dumps’ that Frank Harlow saw on his arrival.
Ron Morley, who worked at Bracebridge from 1946 to 1958, firstly in the Engine Bay and later in Inspection, also remembers seeing the Lancaster’s – minus outer wings – being towed up from RAF Waddington along the A15, and on arrival at BBH, someone would operate the undercarriage lever, and the great aircraft would sink slowly to the ground. Men with blow torches would then move in to complete the scrapping.
A York or two were also towed up to Bracebridge with mainplanes removed, overhauled and towed back to Waddington for test-flying, but most Yorks (including that of General Smuts) were dismantled and re-erected in Waddington’s Hangar No. 1 – by now only half of which was needed by Avro’s outworking party there.
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The number of personnel working at Bracebridge (both in the works and with the Outworking Parties) had risen to some 1,582 at its peak in 1943 in WWII (approximately 1,100 being on day shift and 480 on night work), but soon after the war finished and Lancasters were no longer needed, the total workforce dropped to some 623 for the repair work on Ansons, Yorks and Lincolns.
The list of Category ‘B’ Yorks and Ansons repaired at Bracebridge Heath or Waddington by Avro after the War, as far as is known, is shown in Appendix ---
Cyril Greenfield remembers how, just after the end of the war:
“I was sent to ‘Waddington’ Aerodrome for a while. There we worked on the Yorks, servicing and refitting them. One of these belonged to Sir Winston Churchill (LV633 ‘Ascalon’). Field Marshal Smuts was another whose plane we refitted there (MW107). A pair of binoculars belonging to him which were said to be valuable went missing, and consequently we all came under suspicion and were all questioned about the loss. Eventually, they came to light again. We also serviced Mountbatten’s York and gave it a 100 hour service.
Back in the factory at Bracebridge again, Lancasters were now stripped of their turrets and other armament and were able then to be turned into passenger planes, some of which were sent to Argentina. We built wing tips and various parts for the Shackletons, including some sold to South Africa.
The Anson was another type we worked on, and I remember Sir Stafford Cripps (amongst other VIP’s) visited the factory and shook hands with me, saying he was very interested in what we were doing.
I thoroughly enjoyed my time and work at Avro’s and was so sorry when it was closed.
I made some good friends there, some have since passed on, some I still bump into.
I also met my wife there and (I might add) we have now spent 52 years together!”.
Frank Harlow remembers the transition from War to Peace at Bracebridge Heath:
“In my time, I remember that Ansons were towed along the A15 from Waddington to Bracebridge Heath.
Larger aircraft needing major over-haul etc, were taken apart at Waddington and elsewhere where outworking parties were based, the various sections and sub-assemblies being sent to BBH. In the event of major damage and repair it could mean replacements being taken from stores to help speed up the turn-around of aircraft.
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Complete assembly of Lancasters was not done at BBH, Outworking gangs being R.G.
Being responsible for this at Waddington and other RAF bases.
At BBH, salvage, repair and refurbishment of various sections and sub-assemblies of the Lancaster was one of the main jobs until some time after the war.
When they were finished, checked and inspected they went into stores to form a pool of serviceable items. For instance, my first work at BBH was on D4 sections under chargehand Mr Charlie Rogers. Up to 20 D4s would be on the section at any one time, they were completely stripped out, repaired, resprayed and turned out as good as new. Other sections were similarly organised, working on D3s, D2s and D1s, bomb doors, fins, rudder, etc, emphasis being placed on where the shortages were greatest. I well remember once that main planes were the top priority.”
Frank remembers the various people in charge at Bracebridge in the early 1950s.
In overall charge of Bracebridge, the Outworking Parties and Langar, was ‘Snowy’ Langton. His duties included travelling regularly to all these sites to sort out problems and keep in touch with the personnel.
Langton’s deputy was Mr Thomason, who ran the Bracebridge Heath works and devoted all his time to this.
The Chief Inspector was Bill Sturrock.
In No. 1 Hangar, Mr Rastall was in charge of the Detail Section. He was a ‘master of improvisation’ and worked wonders with the simplest of tools.
Mr Lawson – one of the earliest employees at BBH – was the Chargehand on various fuselage sections, while ‘Charlie’ Rogers was the Chargehand on the D4 sections.
Frank Vamplew was Chargehand on the mainplane sections.
“In No. 2 Hangar”, Frank remembers, “where the Ansons were undergoing repairs, Mr Andrews, Mr Brown and Mr Hutchinson supervised the work with Mr Pratt in charge of the woodworkers (‘chippies’). At one time in No. 2 Hangar, when the Electrical Section was based there, Mr Lance Wingard was in charge. The Hydraulic Section was also based in this hangar, but I cannot remember who was in charge.
Ron Morley also remembers the transition from War to Peace at Bracebridge Heath.
“I went there after the war and did not see an Anson for some time, as the factory was engaged in the demolition of Lancasters. Eventually the Ansons started coming in for Repair and Reconditioning, etc. I worked first in the Engine Bay, preparing Engines for the Lancastrians and Yorks. Then I joined the Inspection Dept. and soon found
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Myself in the Inspection Office, where I took over the job of Quality Control Inspector, which included the acceptance of Aircraft items for repair on Contract Loan, and issuing the details in the appropriate Departments for action. At that time I had about 20 Departments to inspect, and had to issue Reports on them each month (including Waddington, where we had half a Hangar where Lincolns were repaired). I don’t recall the exact date when the Ansons started to come in, but it was part of my duties to go to Waddington to check the Modifications embodied and to draw up a list of Appendix ‘A’ items (such as Radio Equipment, Clocks, Instruments etc) – in short, all Air Ministry Equipment destined to be replaced when the Aircraft returned to the RAF.
When I returned to BBH I had to prepare lists of my findings for the various Depts before the necessary work could be commenced. This particular work was not always as easy as it might seem – for instance one day our Transport Dept took me to Waddington in the snow and when I rang for them to collect me they said the road was blocked. I was the only one there at this time, so decided to walk back via the main Sleaford Road, which was the nearest, so I set off across the aerodrome where the wind was so fierce that it was blowing most of the snow in my direction. Luckily I had my ‘clapper board’ which I held in front of my face. I thought it was like Amundsen going to the Pole! When I reached the main road, the snow was quite deep, but it was only another half a mile and was I glad to get back!
My job latterly concerned the collating of all Modifications, etc, and typing them into the Aircraft Log Books and submitting them to the AID for perusal and signature, prior to the Test flight and despatch. I rarely saw the Test Pilots, but was informed of their arrival from Manchester or wherever.”
Developments in the 1950’s
Frank Harlow remembers how the 1950’s began to bring changes to the work at Bracebridge.
“Early in the 1950’s space was cleared for the building of the experimental delta wing 707 aircraft. Two were built, a 707A and 707C. When completed the aircraft were towed along the A15, which runs past the depot, on to Waddington airfield, and flown off from there. I did quite a lot of work on these aircraft, and recently after over 40 years I saw the 707C again in Cosford Aerospace Museum!
Various members of the supervisory staff had an interest in the building of the 707’s, in particular a Mr Taylor. I worked closely with him on several occasion during this period. Later, due to his recommendation I was transferred to the Machine Shop to the job of marker-out.
Meantime work was still continuing on Ansons, and Lancaster sections. About this time a small Machine Shop was set up at one end of the Stores Hangar, its main function being machine ‘one-offs’, or small batches of ‘priority’ and ‘urgent’ items. I had about eighteen months working there as a ‘marker-out’.
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As near as I can recall in 1953/54 a small Drawing Office was established, to which I transferred from the shop floor. The Drawing Office”, Frank remembers, “ was originally established to take over the work concerned with the development of the Vulcan, as Chadderton’s Drawing Office was getting swamped with work on the new Avro Supersonic developments of the Vulcan – the Avro 730 and later, 732. But cancellation of these projects in 1956 left BBH with DO capacity to spare. At this time at Langar work was proceeding on an order for the South African Air Force for Shackleton MR3 aircraft with tricycle undercarriage. The drawing office at Bracebridge Heath became involved with much of the work to do with modifications to these aircraft. This meant frequent trips to Langar, producing the necessary ‘on-the-spot’ sketches, and instructions for work to progress.
It was not unusual by the mid-50’s to see various sections of Lincolns, or Hunters undergoing repairs etc, but work in the repair hangars then tended to ease off.
Mr Stobart, often called ‘Tubby’ was in charge of the newly installed machine shop, while Peter Lodge came to BBH to set up the Drawing Office, and interviewed me when I applied to be transferred to his department.
The sections of Hunter fuselages I saw at BBH were new items in Primer paint only. I think they were sent in for modification, and returned to store.
Not having an airfield at BBH, flying and flight-testing did not take place, hence there was hardly any contact between personnel here, and the test-pilots at Waddington or Langar.
Equally, the Out Working Parties at Waddington, Scampton and elsewhere had very limited contact with the workers at BBH, in the normal routine.
I finally left A V Roe’s in 1958, after 14 happy years.”
Some funny stories were told of the towing efforts up and down the A15 road between Bracebridge and RAF Waddington. Ron Frost, who was born in Hamble and worked in Detail (and later the Jig & Tool Section) at BBH from 19 [deleted] 3 [/deleted] [inserted] 4 (1949) [/inserted] 9 to 1962, collected these from the monthly meeting of ‘Avro-ites’ who still meet on the first Thursday of every month in Lincoln, to talk of the old days:
“’Ron’ Dickens was the aircraft tug driver who carried out this task, and his friends remember that in order to swing on to the road from the works there was little room to clear the wingtips, due to a telegraph pole in the way. A chap had to unwind the turnbuckles supporting the offending pole to get past. This was standard practice until one day there was a cry from up the post – it appears they had missed seeing the GPO engineer up the post doing his job! Another story was told, that one day a large car met them head on, while towing an Anson on the A15. The car driver challenged their
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authority to be on the road with an aircraft in tow. The answer was: ‘We have been doing this for years’. The reply was: ‘Well, I’m the Chief Constable, so get permission from me in future!’”
The 707s
Five of these small delta wing research aircraft, built to provide data for the Vulcan bomber programme, were flown between September 1949 and July 1953, the last two being assembled at Bracebridge Heath and test-flown at RAF Waddington.
The first of these, an Avro 707A (WZ736) was actually test-flown at Waddington by Sqd Ldr Jimmy Nelson, AFC on February 20th 1953, and the second, an Avro 707C (WZ744) was test flown at Waddington on July 1st 1953 by Sqd Ldr Jack Wales, DFC.
Ron Morley remembers that there was a works dispute on at the time that one of these was waiting for its first flight, and the entire Inspection Dept was recruited to get it ready for flying.
Donald Broomhead, in the Wing Dept remembers working on making wing ribs for the 707s and John T Woods recalls:
“Eventually I made some of the patterns, being a cabinet maker by trade, for the prototype 707A aircraft. I have many memories of the days at Bracebridge Heath, including when the first 707 was towed up the Sleaford road to Waddington Airfield for its first flight, and one wing tip hit a tree! On another occasion, the 707’s undercarriage would not lock down.
Many of the machined parts of the Vulcan airframe controls were made in the machine shop at Bracebridge Heath. At this time I was a machine shop inspector, and I remember the difficulty we had with the aileron bearing housings!”
Bracebridge’s versatility
Len Binding joined Avros at Bracebridge Heath at the beginning of February 1946. He had served with the RAF in India during the War and was a brilliant airframe restorer. It was he who had discovered the glue in the wooden Mosquito wings was perishing in the humid Tropics, and had them grounded – thereby saving pilots lives.
He listed the chronological order of events as the 1950s and 1960s passed by at Bracebridge:
“With the war over, surplus Lancasters were being cut up for scrap in the open areas between the hangars when I arrived there.
Avro York and Lancastrian
In hangar C1, an Avro York and a Lancastrian were under-going major repairs. The fuselages were split at the transport joints and the sections fitted in their respective
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[Photograph of men around a prototype Vulcan aircraft] Avro 707A, WZ736, built at Bracebridge Heath, being towed up the A15 to Waddington Airfield to be flown by Sqd Ldr Jimmy Nelson, AFC.
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bogies. When structural repairs were complete and the sections re-assembled, the fuselages, complete with centre sections and undercarriages, were fully equipped and tested.
With the co-operation of the police, the aircraft, less mainplanes, would be towed from the factory along the A15 road to the boundary fence entry point at RAF Waddington. Factory personnel working on the station carried out fitment of mainplanes, outstanding work and finals.
Other departments at the factory were repairing York mainplanes – tailplanes – fins – ailerons – elevators and rudders. This work rapidly increased during the Berlin airlift.
Major repairs to a second Avro York followed, along with various sections:- (D1 and D2, [deleted] ) [/deleted] also [deleted ( [/deleted] D4).
Avro Anson (All Marks)
Major repairs and overhauls to Avro Anson aircraft commenced in B1 Hangar, followed by the manufacture of Anson metal tailplanes, mainplanes and centre sections in C1 Hangar. The Ansons were completed at Bracebridge Heath, then towed to RAF Waddington via the usual route.
Lancaster Spares
Various Lancaster fuselage sections, including undercarriages, wheels, tyres and brake units were serviced for the Argentine Air Force, which had bought a number of used Lancasters. This was part of the spares requirement.
Avro 707A and 707C
It was decided to build an Avro 707A and a 707C at the Bracebridge Heath factory, which included all the relevant sub-assemblies and the majority of details. Main jigs were installed for the assembly of front and rear spars, mainplanes, centre section, rear fuselage and fin, but the nose assembly was built at the Woodford factory and equipped at Bracebridge Heath. Wooden fixtures were used for the other major sub-assemblies.
Final assemblies and functions were carried out at Bracebridge Heath. The aircraft were then towed to RAF Waddington via the usual route, where finals and flight-tests were carried out.
A Slight Deviation from Aircraft!
During a slack period at Bracebridge Heath, C1 Hangar got involved with the manufacture of ‘Choc Ice Cream Machines’, which not only coated the ice cream with chocolate, but wrapped the final product!
Hawker Hunter Fuselages
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Quite a large number of crated Hawker Hunter fuselages were forwarded to Bracebridge heath [sic] for modifications. Jigs and the necessary parts were manufactured on site, and when modifications were embodied, the fuselages were re-crated and returned.
Shackleton MR2 and MR3 Aircraft
Jigs were installed for the manufacture of:
Outer mainplanes, inner mainplanes, fins, rudders, tailplanes, elevators and bomb doors.
Shackleton and Lincolns
Other departments carried out repairs similar to those mentioned above, plus fuselage sections.
Argosy AWA650 Freighters
The manufacture of the Argosy freighter was allocated to various sites. The Woodford factory task was the centre section. Bracebridge Heath’s task was to build the inner and outer wings.
A meeting was held at the Chadderton factory to discuss the programme, which I attended with the works superintendent from Bracebridge Heath. Pre-drilling had caused many problems in the past, so at my request they agreed to leave the rib flanges undrilled. However, I lost the battle regarding the tank bay inner skins, which were delivered pre-drilled.
I don’t know who produced the wing spars, but they had to be ‘returned to sender’. The booms had been produced from an incorrect material specification.
Eventually we received another set of front and rear spars, and so commenced building the inner wings. Although progress was good, it was impossible to meet the completion dates. The Armstrong Whitworth delegation was not satisfied, they wanted the workforce doubled. I think the theory was: ‘If the job took one man one hundred hours, a hundred men would produce it in one hour!’
The pre-drilled holes in the tank bay inner skins were not in line with the rib flanges, so blank skins had to be made and the workforce had to be increased to satisfy Armstrong Whitworth.
The inner mainplanes were removed from the jigs and put in transportation bogies before final fitment of the inner tank bay skins, in order to commence work on the second set. It became obvious to me that problems would arise and the job would take longer to complete.
Frank Wilson, the design engineer covering the queries and problems could see the humorous side of the job and wrote the fictitious Drawing Query Form below (Frank later became the Project Designer for the 748 aircraft). On my retirement, I went to see
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Frank Wilson at Woodford and he said: ‘Lenny, I’ve got something for you’ and gave me the Drawing Query Form that I had not seen since 1958!”
Works expansion
By the early 1950s, Bracebridge had acquired much needed extra facilities, as Len Binding recalled:
“In Hangar B1, jigs were installed for the manufacture of Vulcan engine access doors, and to keep up with the demand, a night shift was introduced.
Bracebridge Heath factory also by now had:
- A small but very efficient Design Office and a comprehensive Drawing Stores, complete with drawing printers.
- A large MOD store
- An average size Machine Shop was set up at the time we commenced to build the 707A and 707C, which proved a great asset. Outside contracts for machining soon began to flood in.
There was also an excellent Instrument Test Room and like the Machine Shop it was not short of outside contracts for overhauling and testing.”
The actual repair of aircraft and production of new ones (eg the 707s) all finished in 1958, however, leaving only the component repair and overhaul sections in operation and the control of the Outworking gangs – which by now had all kinds of varied tasks to undertake.
Outworking Parties in the later years
Bracebridge Heath’s Outworking Parties covered work at RAF and Naval Stations an also airports on the following aircraft: Lancasters, Lincolns, Shackletons, Vulcans, Victors, Nimrods, Phantoms, the Argosy, 748 and Andover (which included the ‘Queen’s Flight’ at RAF Benson and the VIP Flight at RAF Northolt).
The work included repairs (some were extensive), modifications, servicing and occasionally major inspections.
Len Binding, as one of the Foremen at BBH, was soon involved with the Outworking Parties and listed some of the tasks he was engaged on over the next 30 years or so from the HQ at Bracebridge:
“Shackleton Aircraft Grounded (July 1959):
In July 1959 the Shackleton aircraft were grounded at home and abroad until ‘Special Technical Instruction 69’ was embodied.
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Outworking Parties from the Bracebridge Heath factory carried out the necessary work on the applicable RAF stations in the United Kingdom. An inspector and I flew to Singapore to advise on the embodiment of the above mentioned Special Technical Instruction with 205 Squadron personnel at Changi and Seletar. Another team covered the aircraft in Malta.
The work involved the removal of the removal of the inner mainplane trailing edge, to expose the rear spar; then the removal of the web-to-boom attachment bolts and dowels in the area, measuring approximately six to eight feet outboard of the inboard edge of the rear spar bottom boom. The holes had to be cleaned and inspected using intrascopes, and all results were recorded. All web-to-boom bolt holes were then opened up to 1/32 oversize, and new oversize bolts and dowels fitted.
On my return from holiday, the next task was to commence changing the bottom spar booms of 205 Squadron aircraft, not only on the inner mainplanes but also on the centre section. To do this, quite a lot of equipment had to be removed from the fuselages.
We were allocated a hangar at Langar and commenced the removal of engines, bomb doors, inner and outer mainplanes, fuel and oil tanks and landing gear (undercarriages). All electric cables, etc had to be released and withdrawn from the rear fuselage and stowed in the centre section. The fuselages were split at transport joints (centre section front and rear spars) and the sections located in their respective bogies.
The inner mainplanes were transported to another part of the group for modification.
Centre section bottom booms were removed, using safety raiser and skates to take the weight after the web boom bolts had been removed and also to assist in withdrawing it.
The old booms then became the drilling patters for the manufacture of new replacements.
Then we had to re-fit and line up the pre-drilled holes of the new boom with the existing holes in the web, so that satisfactory drilling and reaming could commence. (Broaching equipment was not available.) When the booms were finally bolted to the webs, re-assembly then commenced.”
Channel Airways HS748s:
On August 15th 1967, at the grass airfield at Portsmouth, Hampshire, heavy overnight rain the previous day had made the grass very slippery and in the course of landing there, two of Channel Airways new HS748 Series 2 airliners each skidded when braking after touchdown.
Both aircraft damaged their undercarriages and one (G-ATEH) skidded through the boundary fence onto Eastern Road outside, blocking it.
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An over-enthusiastic Chief of Police ordered a tractor to tow this 748 clear of the traffic, back onto the airfield and in doing so the wire hawser of the tractor cut through the rear fuselage and rear pressure bulkhead – “like cheese-wire through cheese”, as Len Binding said.
He was invited to take a team down to repair G-ATEH and – as part of the usual procedure – they built a cover around and over the affected ends of the 748s on scaffolding, to enable them to work underneath in a dry atmosphere.
Len remembered:
“Our hangar was comprised of scaffolding covered with corrugated iron sheeting, and we used old railway wagons for our office and stores. We had very efficient central heating!”
(He was later congratulated by the Air Registration Board for an excellent repair to both aircraft.)
“Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd – Kanpur Division (Period 1966 to 1967):
Preparations to carry out a modification programme on Venezuelan 748 aircraft were just about complete, when I was asked to take over in India because the team leader had been flown home seriously ill. (He later died within a month or so of his return to Great Britain.)
India was an enjoyable experience, but I wanted to be more involved and also with different aircraft. However, the company flew me home for my 25th wedding anniversary and then tried hard to get me to return (but they could not persuade me).
Andover C.Mk1 (Avro 780):
At RAF stations Abingdon and Thorney Island, repairs and modifications were embodied on the above aircraft, including ‘The Flight Data Recorder’ and the rial installation of height encoding altimeters.
Andover C.C.Mk2 (Avro 748):
At the ‘Queen’s Flight’ at RAF Benson, various teams worked there embodying modifications and carrying out repairs. Similar work was also done on the VIP Flight at RAF Northolt.
748 Aircraft XA-SEY at Miami Airport (1968):
The repair consisted of replacement of cracked bottom skins and a reinforcing plate in the vicinity of the main undercarriage. This required the removal of the main undercarriage and pivot members.
The 748 aircraft was owned by Fernando Barbachano. He was quite a character, and very generous. On completion of the aircraft repair, Barbachano offered the team a free
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week’s holiday on the island of Cozumel, including the return fare to the island from Miami. Payment for drinks would be the individual’s responsibility. Two members of the team accepted the offer, and had a wonderful time!
Belgian Air Force 748 Aircraft at Brussels Airport:
Fuel leaks had occurred at wing access panels, caused by over tightening panel attachment screws. To rectify, all panels and frames were replaced.
748 Aircraft G-ATAM – the Company Aircraft leased to Philippine Airlines (October 1968):
Preparations for the lease of Avro’s own 748 aircraft G-ATAM, were carried out at Langar. The new registration was PI-C1020.
Towards the end of the lease, PI-C1020 was damaged at San Fernando Airport, situated on the West Coast of Central Luzon.
Philippine Airline employees repaired the aircraft, under the instructions of our Bracebridge Outworking Party.
AW Argosy Freighters (June 1969):
A hangar was made available at De Havilland’s works at Downsview, Canada for the repair of Argosy aircraft which had developed fatigue problems in the bottom boom if the front spar (inner wing), at the root end joint, port and starboard.
When building the Argosy wing, all holes were produced to BS 1916 H7 fit, whereas the Shackleton wing was to Newall Standard ‘A’ fit.
Simulated tests on replica joints proved the Shackleton joint was superior.
We experienced great difficulty in removing the bolts and bushes, but the breakthrough came when we warmed the spar boom and used liquid Nitrogen to shrink the bushes. The root ends were then cleaned, including the removal of stress corrosion. Reinforcing plates and shackles were re-plated at De Havilland’s. The holes were opened up to Newell Standard ‘A’ fit and oversize bolts were fitted. The main boltholes required oversized bushes to be fitted.
Blackburn Beverley Freighters:
At RAF Abingdon, a working party carried out a major inspection and a modification programme on the Beverley freighter.
Vulcans on various RAF Stations:
Bracebridge Heath had working parties on Vulcan stations at Finningley, Scampton, Waddington, Coningsby and Cottismore [sic], working on modifications and ‘Category 3’ repairs.
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The ‘Rapid Start’ modification programme commenced at RAF Coningsby. Other stations were involved later. (November 1969)
The work on ‘Blue Steel’ was mainly carried out at RAF Scampton. (October 1971)
I visited RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus on two occasions, once to advise 103 Maintenance Unit on repairs to a Vulcan that sustained a bird strike and had caught fire. The second time I went out with a small team to deal with corrosion problems.
Vulcan Fatigue Modifications (1001 and 1013):
The aircraft had to be jacked up and roughly levelled using the star plate, then finally rigged using a dumpy level and sighting rod. The trestles were positioned at the respective points and adjusted during the rigging procedure. At this stage the wing tips needed to be raised 1 1/2 inches so the root end wing joints were in the no-load condition.
Modification 1001 consisted of the removal and replacements of the front bottom wing root forgings port and starboard. (The forgings have four legs, one leg mates with the bottom boom of the mainplane, the other with the bottom boom of the centre section, the other two legs fit into the transport rib, one vertical the other one aft.)
Modification 1013 comprised the removal of shackles and reinforcing plates from the remaining wing root forgings, port and starboard, that were not covered by Modification 1001. The shackles and reinforcing plates were sent to the Chadderton factory for checks and replating. When re-assembled, all joints got cocooned.
To gain access to all root end joints to front and rear spars top and bottom, the following had to be removed or partially removed:-
Engines, jet pipes, intake skins and jet pipe tunnel skins. The outer top and bottom skins port and starboard of the centre section were peeled back sufficiently to gain access to the root end joints.
Extensive drill and reamer kits were required, complete with pilot and slip bushes, plus ‘Delapina’ honing equipment.
The holes were to Newall Standard ‘A’ fit with a honed and polished finish – hole sizes were 5/8 inches to 1 1/2 inches in diameter.
Hardened steel reinforcing plates were fitted both sides of the booms and produced a sandwich of hardened steel – light alloy – hardened steel. Great care was needed when honing, not to produce a barrel shaped hole. The equipment used for checking were internal micrometers and dial test indicator.
The transport rib bottom boom had to be cut back to allow the removal of the old forging. This was replaced by steel shackles, when fitting the replacement.
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Although the main bolts through shackles, reinforcing plates and booms were relatively easy to remove, special extractors were required for the removal of the remaining bolts holding the forgings to the aircraft.
Due to the hight tolerances on these holes, temperatures could and did affect fitment of bolts.
We carried out these modifications at RAF stations Waddington, Coningsby and Finningley.
Vulcan B.Mk.1 XA911 at RAF Waddington:
During a flight over the North Sea, Vulcan B.Mk1 XA911 suffered a bird strike in one of the port engines, which ingested the birds, coughed and blew up. The debris from this was sucked into the adjoining air intake, causing the second engine to go the same way.
One turbine disc smashed through the engine casing, cutting two engine access doors in half.
The inboard engine rib 63.5 was damaged. The centre engine rib 113.5 was sliced in two.
The outboard engine rib 162.5 was extensively damaged and required special drawings for the repair, also special equipment for blending out and polishing of the bottom boom, which took many hours of tedious work before the repair could commence.
Turbine blades had been flying around like shrapnel, some going right through the port wing fuel tanks. One piece went through to the outboard tank and then through the mainplane front spar web.
Repairs were carried out to most port mainplane ribs and the recuperator bay. A number of intake skins, expansion joints and jet pipe tunnel skins had to be replaced.
Bird strikes have caused similar damage to other Vulcan’s, but not quite so severe.
A modification was introduced much later – the fitment on titanium shields to protect the engine ribs.
Vulcan ‘butchery’ at RAF St Athan (1970):
Design and Stress Departments asked for a perfectly serviceable Vulcan aircraft to be taken out of service for research purposes, before agreeing to extend the life of the fleet. A drawing was produced, indicating how the aircraft should be cut up.
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Ken Smith, the Vulcan Project Designer, arranged a meeting at the Woodford factory to discuss the requirements with personnel from an RAF maintenance unit who were going to take on the task. I was also asked to attend this meeting.
However, after studying the drawings, the RAF representatives requested the company to do the work, and so it was given to me to do!
The Vulcan selected for this ‘butchery’ was the first B.2 production aircraft, XH533.
Phantoms:
When Vulcans moved from RAF Coningsby, they were replaced by the Phantoms. The predominant work involved modifications, although the working party was involved with a couple of ‘Category 3’ repairs were also carried out at HMS Heron at Yeovilton, and HMS Daedalus at Gosport.
Nimrods:
The major work at Kinloss and RAF St Mawgan included modifications, corrosion problems and occasional ‘Category 3’ repairs.
At RAF Wyton there was a modification programme only.
Ghana Airways 748 Aircraft at Accra Airport (May 1971):
Ghana Airways personnel were manoeuvring the aircraft from the hangar when the damage occurred. The hangar door grazed the aircraft in the area of the pressure head and static plate.
We carried out a small skin insertion repair and replaced both the static plate and pressure head.
Dan Air 748 Aircraft repaired in the Concorde Aircraft Hangar:
At Charles de Gaulle Airport a Dan Air 748 aircraft made a bad landing. The nose landing gear was torn from the nose wheel bay structure. During preparation for the repair, corrosion was found at Former 252F, and further aft. It was obvious a galley had been fitted in this area, but the floorboards had not been properly sealed to prevent spillage seeping through and collecting in the fuselage bottom structure, which caused the corrosion.
Avro York at Staverton Airport:
The curator of ‘Skyframe Museum’ obtained an Avro York aircraft that originally belonged to ‘Skyways of London’. He requested Avro’s, Hawker Siddeley Aviation and Titanine (the paint manufacturer) to respray the aircraft gratuitously, and to make it look like Churchill’s aircraft (LV633 ‘Ascalon’)
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Titanine agreed to supply the paint and Hawker Siddeley Aviation agreed to supply the labour. We had a drawing of Churchill’s aircraft showing the square windows. So by masking the round windows, and by careful spraying, we achieved the desired effect.
Varig 748 at Porto Alegre – Brazil (March 1972):
At the request of Varig Airlines, Peter Grimley and myself flew to Porto Alegre in Brazil to carry out a survey on a badly damaged 748 aircraft. A pilot under instruction was doing an asymmetric take-off, and to correct a fault, power was applied – but to the wrong engine – and the aircraft dropped one hundred feet and pancaked! I would like to have repaired it, but after a meeting with the engineering director in Rio it was decided to write it off.
In appreciation for our services a conducted tour of Rio was laid on, including a hotel adjacent to the Copacabana Beach!
The President of Ecuador’s 748 at Guayaquil, Ecuador (October 1972:)
The President’s VIP 748 Series 2A (FAE 001) was severely damaged by an ‘Andes Airline’ DC-6 aircraft that was being taxied by their Chief Engineer. He was immediately arrested and imprisoned for sabotage, however, several weeks later he was cleared of the charge and subsequently released.
Jim Hayworth, the Assistant Chief Stressman, and myself travelled to Guayaquil to assess the damage, and after a meeting with the Fuerza Aerea Ecuatoriana (FAE) it was decided to produce a section of the starboard wing in the jig at Chadderton, which we then spliced to the existing undamaged part of the aircraft.
Colombian Air Force (FAC 1103) at Bahia Solano (July 1973):
My first visit to Bahia Solano almost ended in disaster when we developed engine trouble during our flight in a DC-3 aircraft flying from Bogota. The aircraft lost height rapidly over the mountainous jungle of Choco. Thankfully we just made the airstrip.
A radio fault on board prevented communication with Satena Airline’s headquarters, so on landing, Bahia Solano’s short wave radio was used to contact them. The call sign was ‘ALCATRAZ’! Four hours had elapsed before contact was made, and by then Solana assumed we had crashed, so they instigated a search, using five aircraft.
The spares required for the engine did not arrive until the following day, so we had to stay overnight at the shanty Hotel Bahia. That evening we sat down for dinner on benches at tables that did not look particularly clean. When the first course arrived it was ‘Fish Head Soup’. I realised then I would have to get food and water flown to us weekly from Bogota, and also obtain a cook!
That evening I met Michael G A Hill, a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow – (Becado) 1972. He was carrying out a typographical study of Colombia’s Pacific Mountain coast. During our conversation, the subject of communications came
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[Photographs of a damaged aircraft with men inspecting damage] The President of Ecuador’s Avro 748 before repair.
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up and it was then he advised me to use the Morse facility, even though Satena and Company agent, Robert McAllister disagreed. Michael’s advice was to ‘print all messages clearly, do not write’. This turned out to be good advice, as the operator could not read the message but understood the letters.
The compressor unit supplied was unserviceable, so Satena sent a replacement. It ended up with both units being strapped together so the engine on one unit drove the good compressor on the other. Our troubles were not over. Within a few days, the unit’s petrol tank disintegrated, and we had to improvise, using a bucket and plastic tubing. The next things to go wrong were the units engine bearers. The only material on site was light alloy extrusion, so I used that, but made two sets of bearers which allowed us to complete the task.
The damage to the 748 was extensive, the undercarriage struts, beams and brackets broke through the mainplane top skin and also through the shroud and jet pipe.
Twelve months after repairing FAC 1103 at Bahia Solana, I received a newspaper cutting from an employee of Satena Airlines, showing a 748 crash in the Columbian jungle. It was FAC1103 again! Only this time it was terminal – the 748 had taken off from Bahia Solano again, and hit a nearby mountain top, killing all 32 passengers and crew on board!
The crash was found to be due to pilot error. To clear the mountain the procedure was to do a circuit of the airfield to gain height. However, the pilot was in a hurry to get back to base to clear outstanding paperwork, so on take-off, he sat the aircraft on its tail and opened up the engines thinking he could clear the mountain and save time. As you can see, he failed!”
Len Binding was at Woodford with ex-Chief Test Pilot Jimmy Harrison (by now Product Support Manager) at the time the news of the Columbian 748 crash came through. Jimmy said there had been a flash in the sky before the crash, and Len remembered that Satena often carried aviation fuel about in drums, to replenish the local supplies at the remote airstrips. Len had noticed once that a can had been leaking on board one his [sic] flights in Columbia, and the passengers sometimes smoked near them! He wondered if this might have been a cause in this case.
“The President’s Aircraft (FAE 684) Severely damaged at Cuenca, Ecuador:
As the President’s aircraft was approaching Cuenca, ground control advised the pilot not to land due to the atrocious weather conditions. The captain decided to land, however, and on touch-down, the aircraft aquaplaned and was heading for a sheer drop at the end of the runway. He managed to slew the aircraft around and into a ditch.
Jim Haworth and myself flew to Ecuador to assess the damage. From the photographs I took we could establish what materials and spares were required, as well as tools, drawings and ground equipment.
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[Photograph of an aircraft being repaired] The Avro 748 of Lineas Aereas del Caribe being repaired at Merida, Mexico.
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Leeward Islands Air Transport (LIAT) 748 Aircraft:
Jim Haworth and myself travelled to St Vincent in June 1977 to survey a damaged aircraft (VP-LIW) which turned out to be the old Channel Airways aircraft (G-ATEH) that I repaired at Portsmouth Airport. On completion of the survey, I received a telex to travel to Bogota to meet ‘Airclaims’.
At Antigua in November 1979, I carried out a modification programme which included ‘Ground Proximity Warning’ and Direct Measuring Equipment (DME).
Satena 748 Series 2A (FAC 1101):
On arrival at Bogota in June 1977, I made contact with ‘Airclaims’ who asked me to do a survey on a Satena 748 (FAC 1101) at Arauca Airport.
The damage was mainly confined to the nose-wheel bay structure, skins, equipment and nose-wheel undercarriage. There was also some damage to nacelle fairings and main undercarriage doors.
748 (VP-LIW) at St Vincent:
I returned to St Vincent to repair the above aircraft (ex-G-ATEH of Channel Airways) which was extensively damaged. The undercarriage struts, side load beams, downlock beams, brackets and undercarriage pivot members were forced into the wing. A lot of debris went through the mainplane top skin and through the shroud and jet pipe. The only parts serviceable of the inboard and outboard engine ribs were the top beams. Which gave added problems with alignment. The centre engine rib was scrap.
Incidentally, Johnny Briggs, an Avro Engineer, married Jan, an Air Stewardess with ‘Leeward Islands Air Transport’. Her father, Frank Delisle, owned the airline at the time.
748 Aircraft at Georgetown – Guyana (November 1977):
Problems existed with the flying controls and control locks on the aircraft. It only took a few days to rectify, thank goodness. (The climate there took some getting used to.)
748 Aircraft at Longue Pointe de-Mingan (April 1978):
Mingan is situated on the northern bank of the St Lawrence River in Canada and when I arrived there the settlement was snow bound. The pilot of Northern Wings (Les Ailes Du Nord Ltee) had a ‘white-out’ on landing the aircraft. The crash had extensively damaged the fuselage and had also damaged the nose-wheel bay. We built a wood and glass greenhouse building over the entire nose of the 748 amongst the deep snow drifts, and worked under cover.
Bundesanstalt für Flugsicherung at Frankfurt Airport:
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[Photograph of an aircraft being worked on under a shade] Repairing an Avro 748 of Philippine Airlines at San Fernando Airport. The children are having a Christmas Party!
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We were allocated a fabulous unused hangar at Frankfurt Airport, which not only had overhead lighting, but also strip lights along the sides. The hangar doors were power operated. For the company who eventually purchased or leased the hangar there were other facilities that included a large built-in restaurant, kitchen and showers. We appreciated the showers [inserted] – [/inserted] after all, we were not used to such luxury!
We carried out a large modification programme on two of their seven aircraft (all used for radio calibration work).”
This is the end of Len Binding’s list of ‘Outworking’ jobs that he was concerned with, but other Bracebridge teams naturally worked on many other accident repairs during these years, at sites all over the world.
Assistance with test-flying
‘Jock’ Donaghy was the name of the pilot who lived at Waddington, and helped Peter Field-Richards out in test-flying the Ansons rebuilt at Bracebridge after ‘Cat B’ repairs.
He is believed to have been in the RAF and flown Sunderlands during the War. When the war was over, he obviously had difficulty getting a job at first and joined Avros at Bracebridge Heath as a fitter. Ron Morley, an Inspector there, recalls how ‘Jock’ carried a tool box around with him with only two items in it – a large spanner that was useless (as it had a broken end) and a hammer whose pane had also broken! Perhaps it was more of a gesture!
Later on, when numerous Ansons were being rebuilt, Jock’s flying experience was approved by Peter Field-Richards and he was allowed to test fly most of them from Waddington.
Jock was obviously used to over-water navigation – he apparently left it to the Flight Engineer to let him know where he was during the local test flights from Waddington. Ron Morley remembers that Jock always seemed rather remote – a bit of a day dreamer – and every Thursday and Friday he would head for the local fish and chip shop in Bracebridge village. On one notable occasion, when Jock started his car to get back to the works, his steering jammed and he couldn’t turn the car to the right. So he managed to get back by always turning left – sometimes more than a complete circle!
When the Anson testing was finished, Jock kept his hand in at flying, in various other jobs. He was tragically killed some years later, while reportedly flying an ex-WWII German aircraft back to the UK, when the aircraft ditched in the sea, killing his second wife (who was acting as navigator). He left a son.
Out-of-hours activities
Some of the Bracebridge Heath veterans began to engage in their own aviation activities as a hobby, out of work time.
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Thus, the Chief Inspector, Bill Sturrock (who was killed years later in a motor car accident while on holiday in South Africa) had a pilot’s licence, as did Jeff Cox and Jack Robie.
Lee Binding was also a member of the group and they used to repair and maintain light aircraft and crop dusters, Austers, etc, at several sites around Lincoln/Leicester, including a hangar at Wellingore, another at Grantham and another on the A46 north east of Lincoln. Bill Sturrock (who had learned to fly in Canada in the RAF) flew the aircraft after they were repaired. After Bracebridge, Bill Sturrock went to Avro in Manchester to become Customer Service Manager, after a spell in Mexico for HSA as a Sales/Service Representative.
The Avro 504
May Chambers from the Wing Dept remembers the time that she worked hard to re-cover and dope the wings and fuselage of a veteran Avro 504N biplane at Bracebridge sometime in the 1953-56 era. This 504N (D7560) had been shot down in the Great War and repaired and put on show in Hull Museum. It was a genuine A V Roe built machine, and in WWII German raids on Hull had damaged it again. Hence Avro agreed to restore it once more, and when completely renovated it was sent down to the Science Museum in South Kensington.
In the photograph (taken by the ‘Lincolnshire Echo’) May Chambers and the head of the Wing Dept, Arthur Wood, are seen with some of the staff who so beautifully restored the 504N.
The ‘Dambusters’ film
When the famous film was made about the ‘Dambusters’ raid by 617 Squadron, featuring Richard Todd as Wing Commander Guy Gibson, VC, DSO & Bar, DFC [deleted] and [/deleted] & Bar, the Avro staff at Bracebridge Heath were given the task of building the ‘bouncing bombs’ for the filming.
John Woods and another ‘chippie’ there remember making these, and fitting them to the surviving Lancasters at ARF Scampton. (At that time, the bombs were still on the Secret List, and those built by Avros were of a spherical shape – not cylindrical, like rather large depth charges, which later turned out to be the correct wartime shape.)
John also helped to renovate the interior of the Avro company ‘hack’ Anson (G-AGPG) which had a VIP interior for flying Directors and customers about. John and the other ‘chippies’ French-polished the interior mahogany fittings and renovated all the wood work.
Bracebridge in later days
After the repair and rebuilding of whole aircraft ceased in 1958, Bracebridge Heath occupied a site of approximately 9 1/2 acres, and remained the Headquarters for the Manchester Division Repair Organisation, with a labour force not down to 223. It
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[Photograph of a group of people standing in front of a biplane] The Avro 504N renovated at Bracebridge Heath for the Science Museum.
[Photograph of three men and an aircraft being towed on a road] The Avro 707A being towed to Waddington.
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embraced the Ministry of Defence CRSP store (Contractors Repair Supply Procedure), the British Aerospace Standard Part Store, and a Design Department, but still retained the facility for the repair and overhaul of some aircraft parts.
Stores Organisation
The Stores Organisation included the largest airframe Ministry of Defence CRSP Stores in the United Kingdom, having a floor area of some 67,449 square feet, a British Aerospace Standard Parts investment Stores occupying more than 9000 square feet, and a General and Tool Stores occupying almost 4000 feet.
With some justification Bracebridge claimed that the Stores Organisation was one of the most efficient in the British Aerospace Aircraft Group.
Military Spares
The buying and supply of military spares (CRSP) meant placing orders through and on behalf of the Ministry of Defence for the repair and major refurbishing of main components for aircraft produced by all factories within the British Aerospace Aircraft Group. Such spares were also made available to a number of outside companies recognised as approved sub-contractors.
BBH also assisted the Royal Air Force in maintaining their operational requirements and the factory’s Contractor’s Working Parties continued to undertake major repairs in the field.
Investment and General Stores
The purpose of the British Aerospace Standard Parts Investment Stores was to hold all surplus stock items which had been bought commercially, or manufactured in economical quantities and were surplus to immediate contract requirements. All factories within the British Aerospace Group drew holdings, where available, from Bracebridge which were held for immediate issue on request, obviating the problem of ordering excessive build-up of stock within group factories.
The visual display unit located in Stores Records, supplied up-to-date information on the Company outstanding orders and stock – also items on Ministry of Defence orders. The progress of these items being manufactured on the shop floor were able to be monitored, enabling promises to be obtained from Production Control by Progress Department. This ensured an efficient turnround of spares. Issue of available spares on priority requests were invariable [sic] completed between 12-24 hours and ordinary issues between 24-48 hours (as transport permitted).
The General and Tool Store supported working parties (CWPs) operating in the United Kingdom and overseas – also the bay servicing and repair unit at the depot.
Bracebridge carried out these vital functions for Avro (later British Aerospace) for the next 24 years after 1958, finally closing down completely at the end of September 1982.
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The old No. 1 Hangar built for the RFC is now owned by a haulage firm, and the walls still seem in good condition, although the roof and wooden doors are looking dilapidated and the building stays empty. No. 2 Hangar and the Stores building are occupied by the Dalgety Group, and are well maintained. No evidence remains of the heroic work that went on here in WWII to keep badly damaged Lancasters flying, nor of the decades of post-war achievements in repairing all kinds of Avro aircraft.
May Chambers, who worked there from 1941 to 1968 and claimed the customary gold watch for 25 years dedication and service, still says that people seemed so much kinder to each other in those days and everybody cared so much more than they do now – and they were the happiest days in her life! You can’t get a much better epitaph than that, for a remarkable company!
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APPENDIX 1
A V ROE & CO LTD – ‘BRACEBRIDGE HEATH WORLD SERVICE ORGANISATION (previously the ‘Avro Repair Organisation’)
PRINCIPAL PERSONNEL AND DEPARTMENTS
I) In mid-1950s:-
a) ← [Underlined] HQ at Bracebridge Heath, Lincoln [/underlined] ) Caps
[Underlined] Chief Superintendents (in sequence): [/underlined]
1. → C (‘Charlie’) L Hatton
2. → F (‘Snowy’) Langton
[Underlined] Financial: [/underlined]
Mr Dowell
[Underlined] Chief Inspector: [/underlined]
‘Bill’ Sturrock
b) ← [Underlined] Repair Depot at Langar, Notts: [/underlined] ) Caps.
[Underlined] Superintendents (in sequence):- [/underlined]
1. → Robert Ingrid
2. → ‘Phil’ Lightfoot, and his Asst Supt W.G. Cooke
3. → C Oatway
4. → ‘Johnny’ Smallwood
[Underlined] Secretary to above: [/underlined]
Indent all names etc. → Mrs Forster
[Underlined] Sheds 1 & 2 – Senior Foreman [/underlined]
→ Ron Eaton
[Underlined] Sheds 3 – Senior Foreman [/underlined]
→ Ernie Beatles
[Underlined] Sheds 5 & 6 Senior Foreman [/underlined]
→ ‘Dad’ Harold Walker
[Underlined] Shed 7 – Senior Foreman [/underlined]
→ Harry Houghton
[Underlined] Flight Shed – Senior Forem [deleted] a [/deleted] en Flight Test Engineer (in sequence) [/underlined]
1. → George Arthur Norman
2. →’Paddy’ Armstrong
3. → Roy Browne
[Underlined] Other Personnel: [/underlined]
Indent → [Underlined] Senior Foreman – [/underlined]
[Page break]
Shed 6 (Spray Bay) – Ernie Cooke
Shed 5 (Detail Section) – Sam Wilcox
← [Underlined] Departmental Foremen – [/underlined]
Engineering – ‘Doug’ Fletcher
Instruments – J Nightingale
[Deleted] Instrument] [/deleted] ‘Nobby’ Clarke
Heavy Gang – T Shepp[deleted] a [/deleted] erd
Crane Drivers – Mr Clarke
← [Underlined] Other Staff [/underlined]
Tank Shop – L Needham
Shed 5 – (Hydraulics) F Abthorpe
[Deleted] - (Hydraulics) [/deleted] C Kelly
- (Internals) B Brewer
- (Electrics) Bill Brumby
[Deleted] – (Electrics) [/deleted] Ted Prior
[Deleted] – (Electrics) [/deleted] J Johnson
Shed 6 – (signwriter) Mr Mapletoft
Shed 7 – (Fuel & Oil Bowsers) A Kirk
[Deleted] –(Fuel & Oil Bowsers) [/deleted] H Prigeon
Control Tower – (Electrics/Radio) T Corfield
Main Stores
- (Drawing) Miss E Bint
- (Tool) Miss N Cowlishaw
Canteen
- (Manager [deleted] s [/deleted] ess) 1. Miss Piddington
2. Mrs Gri [deleted] m [/deleted] nnals
- (Cashier) Miss E Spencer
[Deleted] - (Cashier) Miss E Spencer [/deleted]
Works Engineer
- (Maintenance) Stan Rogers
- (Electrical) Jack Calver
Site – (Transport) Paddy Ryan
- (Fire Tender) A Moor
- (First Aid) Nurse Smart
- (Security) J Spencer
- (Gardner) Eli Tucker
[Page break]
← [Underlined] Aeronautical Inspect [deleted] or [/deleted] ion Dept (AID):- [/underlined]
Mr Barr
C Collins
Alec Messenger
‘Taff’ Davis
Mr ‘Dickie’ Bird
Victor Savory (R101 Survivor)
← [Underlined] Avro Inspection Dept:- [/underlined]
Chief Inspector – J Yarwood
Asst Chief Inspector – J McCirdy
Inspectors –
‘Johnny’ Smallwood Les Willis A Sills
D Fairhome B Finlay ‘Tiny’ Wright
A Dale S Walker W Pride
‘Jock’ Cameron P Haynes ‘Bud’ Abbott
D Allen Ken Allen ‘Dixie’ Deene
G Smith ‘Ted’ Robinson B Radcliffe
‘Bill’ Williams ‘Sid’ Dawes E Hopkinson
T Keene J F [deleted] o [/deleted] irth D Warren
E Sheppard ‘Paddy’ Russell J Wor [deleted] i [/deleted] mhall
T Jenkins H Fletcher S College
D Roberts C Smalley J Farmer
A Powell L King C Perkins
‘Bob’ Graham Mr Pritchet ‘Johnny’ Bull
H Platt ‘Don’ Grieves Doug Culley
Tommy Liffe
Planning Dept
- Mr Moorhouse
- ‘Pete’ Hughes
Drawing Office – Mr Flannery
Time Keeper – H Beard
Police Supt – Joe Spencer
II) [Underlined] Changes in above by 1967: [/underlined]
Johnny Smallwood became Works Superintendent (from Avro Inspection Dept)
Ted Andrews became his Asst Works Supt
Doug Fletcher became Senior Foreman – Shed 2 (from Foreman – Engineering)
Muriel Brown became Canteen Manageress
Neil Cunning [deleted] ham [/deleted] ton bec [deleted] o [/deleted] ame [deleted] s [/deleted] Works Engineer
Jack Wright became Asst Works Engineer
Alec Farmer became Police Supt
George Norman became Senior Foreman – Trials Installation (TI) Hangar.
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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The Avro Repair Organisation. Bracebridge Heath
Description
An account of the resource
A history of the Avro Repair Organisation at Bracebridge Heath. Aircraft with Category B damage were disassembled and taken to Bracebridge for repair. Contractor’s Working Parties repaired Category A damaged aircraft on their station using spares requisitioned from Avro.
On the picture of the Avro 707 being towed along the A15 towards Waddington, the men on the Clarktor 6 towing tractor are, from left to right: David Coney, J.H. 'Bert' Thomason and 'Ted' Andrews. The truck driver, mostly hidden is Ron Dickens. Following the aircraft is an Austin Somerset Avro company car.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Peter V Clegg
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Anne-Marie Watson
Richard Coney
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.
Format
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46 typewritten sheets with annotations
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Text. Personal research
Photograph
Identifier
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MCleggPV[DoB]-150701-01
Coverage
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Civilian
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Nottinghamshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1939
1940
1941
1943
1945
1946
1949
1950
207 Squadron
Anson
Lancaster
Lancastrian
Lincoln
Manchester
RAF Langar
RAF Waddington
service vehicle
Shackleton
tractor
York
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/743/20144/MCleggPV[DoB]-150701-02.pdf
cc959d27492067f7304ce163479ecd13
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
Clegg, Peter Vernon
P V Clegg
Description
An account of the resource
Eight items and five sub-collections. Main collection contains a log of Pathfinder operations from RAF Wyton 1943 -1944, histories of the Avro repair facility at Bracebridge Heath, and Langar, a biography of Squadron Leader David James Baikie Wilson, biography of Squadron Leader Lighton Verdon-Roe, a book - Test Pilots of A.V. Roe & Co Ltd - S.A. 'Bill' Thorn, and two volumes of book - Roy Chadwick - no finer aircraft designer, Sub-collections contain a total of 29 items concerning the Aldborough Dairy and Cafe as well as biographical material, including log books for Alan Gibson, Peter Isaacson, Alistair Lang and Charles Martin. <br /><br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/1772">Aldborough Dairy and Cafe</a><br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/1768">Gibson, Alan</a><br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/1769">Isaacson, Peter</a><br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/1770">Lang, Alastair</a><br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/1771">Martin, Charles</a><br /><br /><br />The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Peter Clegg and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-07-02
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. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
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Clegg, PV
Transcribed document
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
[Underlined] THE AVRO
REPAIR
ORGANISATION [/underlined]
II) LANGAR
[Page break]
[Underlined] Peter. V. Clegg [/underlined]
PART II
THE LANGAR-CUM-BAR [/deleted] I [/deleted] NSTONE WORKS
The first sheds of A V Roe and Co Ltd’s new Repair Works at Langar airfield were constructed through the summer of 1942, as the bomber airfield itself was finished off and made ready for occupation.
The Avro works (see diagram attached drawn by Ken Allen) was constructed on the west side of the narrow Langar to Harby country road, effectively outside the security fence around the airfield (which lay on the East side of this lane).
The No. 1 Hangar (or ‘Shed’ – as it was called by the factory workers) was the first to be completed and No. 2 and No. 4 (with the office accommodation) were being finished off in August 1942 when the first employees started work under Mr Ingrid, the Works Superintendent.
(Ingrid was later succeeded by ‘Phil’ Lightfoot, C Oatway, and last of all before Langar closed in 1968, Johnny Smallwood.)
Nos. 3, 5 and 6 Hangars were finished off during the next few months, and No. 7 Hangar – extra large in size, to take the new Avro Lincoln bomber – was finished in 1944.
The large Dispersal Area (No. 17 on the diagram) was also complete and as all the Avro site at this time was across the road from the airfield (with its heavily guarded perimeter fencing) special gates had to be opened and closed when aircraft taxied between the dispersal and the airfield – or, vice versa. Sentries would be in attendance and the Langar road traffic would be held up while this was in progress.
Stripping down and rebuilding
William Arthur Hubbard, who joined Avros at Langar as one of the first apprentices when it opened in August 1942, remembers the various Category ‘B’ sections of Lancasters all used to arrive on RAF ‘Queen Mary’ trailers from the crash site.
(All the Lancasters rebuilt at Langar had been declared Category ‘B’ wrecks in the first instance. Category ‘B’ was defined as: “Repair on site not possible. Aircraft must be dismantled and sent to a repair facility”.)
His first job was to record all the serial numbers from the rear fuselage assemblies, collect the aircraft log books, and hold them in the office, while the various aircraft sections were repaired and put together again. If some sections were too badly damaged to use again, replacement sections from the Manchester factories, other repair depots, or from subsequent crashed Lancasters – would be used on the earliest arrivals, to put them back in the air again. Sometimes Squadrons would insist that their particular Lancaster must be rebuilt from all its own broken down assembles, for sentiment’s sake (usually when
1.
[Page break]
[Underlined] Location of Langar. [/underlined]
[Hand drawn map indicating the position of Langar in relation to Nottingham, Newark and Grantham]
[Page break]
[Aerial photograph of Langar repair facility] AVRO’S REPAIR DEPOT AT LANGAR AIRFIELD IN WWII, SHOWING THE CAMOUFLAGED HANGARS, WITH A YORK AND LANCASTER BEING REPAIRED.
[Page break]
[Map of Langar airfield showing the AVRO hangars]
[Page break]
that particular Lancaster had a high total of bombing raids to its credit, bore a charmed life, or had been crewed by a famous pilot, etc.
Arthur Hubbard remembers that as the number of Lancasters being repaired increased dramatically, repaired sections started to arrive from Bracebridge Heath, Brush Electrical at Loughborough (wings) and the LMS Railway works in Derby (fuselages), in addition to all the various assemblies of Lancasters being re-worked at Langar itself. At an early stage, he remembers working on the two Rolls-Royce Vulture engines on the one and only Manchester bomber that Langar dealt with (R5777 in May 1943).
Test-flying the repaired Lancasters
For the period October 1st 1942 to November 23rd 1943, whilst 207 Squadron was based at Langar and equipped with Lancasters, any newly repaired Lancasters out of the Avro works were test-flown by pilots from the bomber squadron.
The repaired aircraft needed at least one test-flight apiece to clear them, so that pilots from the Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA) could then deliver them to the necessary Maintenance Unit (MU) – or occasionally direct to a Squadron – where the armament could be re-fitted again. More often than not, two or three test-flights were needed and in exceptional cases six or seven might be flown. One Lancaster B Mk I W4899, which had had an action-packed operational career with 61 Squadron up to its final trip, needed eight flights to clear it after being repaired, and after having all the latest modifications to bring it up to the latest state of readiness. Another Lancaster B Mk I R5734, had to have 12 test-flights in all. This came from a Conversion Unit and was then issued to 61 Squadron when cleared by Avros.
Altogether, during this period of a year while 207 Squadron was at Langar, 32 of their pilots helped at various times to clear a total of 51 newly repaired Lancasters from the Avro works, making a total of 129 test-flights altogether. Amongst these pilots were ‘regulars’ like Flt. Lt. Huntly-Wood (who became a Squadron Leader whilst still testing), Sgt. Baker, Warrant Officer King (who was promoted to Pilot Officer whilst still test-flying), Flying Officer Sambridge (to Flt. Lt.), Sgt Cosens (to Pilot Officer), Sq [inserted] d [/inserted]. Ldr. Balme and Sqd. Ldr. Bamber. The promotions in rank illustrate how quickly the pilots were being lost on operations, and their replacements had to be moved up into their shoes all the time. In fact, during this year of Avro’s output from Langar, of the 32 pilots who test-flew their Lancasters, no less than six of these perished while still based at Langar, including Sqd Ldr Huntly-Wood, who died on one of 207’s last operations from Langar, a raid on Berlin on September 3rd 1943, with the Station Commander, Gp. Capt. Austin McKenna on board as Second Pilot that night.
Permanent Avro test-pilot appointed
When 207 Squadron moved out of Langar in November 1943, and across to Spilsby for the rest of the war, A V Roe & Co Ltd needed somebody to carry on test-flying the repaired Lancasters.
2.
[Page break]
It was to satisfy this requirement that Sqd. Ldr. Peter Field-Richards was now posted to Avros, from the RAF’s 41 Group Production Test-Pilots Emergency Pool. Peter had spent a lot of the war flying all the bombers taken onto RAF strength (USA types included) and helping to write up the Pilot’s Flying Notes for all of them in turn. Thus, his experience now more than qualified him for test-flying the repaired Lancasters at Langar.
Avro’s output of Lancasters now slowly increased from six a month when Peter first arrived in November 1943, to a peak of 14 monthly in June 1944, and after a bit of a dip, up again to 16 a month by March 1945. When the war in Europe ended in May 1945, Peter had cleared some 162 Lancasters in all (which, with 207 Squadron’s 51 plus one Manchester, totalled 214 for the war months at Avro’s Langar works).
Arthur Hubbard remembers three incidents to the Lancasters during his time at Langar. Two were identical – the ‘Jury Strut’ that was placed in the undercarriage when the Lancaster was parked in order to prevent it being inadvertently retracted, was left in on two occasions on take-off. The ground drill should have included the ‘Jury Strut’ being taken out and held up to show the pilot in the cockpit, before ‘chocks away’. The first time it happened, a Rolls-Royce representative was on board together with Peter Field-Richards and the Flight Engineer. Once airborne, when Peter realised what was happening and feared that the undercarriage had jammed irrevocably, the control tower suggested they fly over the sea and bale out! Peter said that was no good, as they hadn’t any parachutes on board So they flew over Scampton to have the undercarriage checked by their tower and as it looked as though it was properly down, Peter went ahead and Landed at Langar without incident, luckily. He did the same the second time it happened.
The third incident involved Peter becoming airborne in a Lancaster one day, and on turning slowly to port, when he came to level up and turn the opposite way, he found the ailerons had jammed! It turned out that some screws had been put into the wrong linkages – but Peter again managed to land safely. In fact during the whole time that Avro’s Langar works was in existence, there were no flying accidents or crash-landings to any of the 1,185 aircraft repaired there in total -a superlative achievement! And Peter Field-Richards skill saved a number of these from occurring.
First Flight Engineer
George Arthur Norman joined Avros at Langar in 1943 and from January 1944 he became Peter Field-Richards permanent Flight Test Engineer, flying with Peter on most of his test flights over the next three and a quarter years. Arthur (as he liked to be called) had his first flight with Peter in Lancaster Mk. I R5625 on January 21st 1944 a veteran of many raids over Germany with 83 Squadron, which would have become a very ‘high-time’ aircraft had it not gone missing in July 1944, after delivery from Langar to 622 Squadron.
Arthur remembered how Peter often brought his little bull-terrier to work with him, and on these occasions if there was any test-flying to do, would take the dog up in the
3.
[Page break]
[Photograph of two men underneath an aircraft] Sqd. Ldr Peter Field-Richards (right), talking to his Flt. Engineer, ‘Paddy’ Armstrong.
[Photograph of a row of aircraft] Lincolns for Argentina.
[Page break]
Lancaster with him! The dog would sit obediently behind the Flight Engineer’s position in eager anticipation of the roar of the four Merlins and the ‘G’ forces Peter used to impose on them all, when he beat up the airfield on his return to Langar!
Arthur also recalled how Peter was a ‘larger than life’ figure, always full of fun and a real gentleman, who later in life acquired a taxi and drove this around, more as a hobby than a business.
Occasionally Arthur would go by car with Peter to an RAF airfield, when an Avro Outworking Party from Bracebridge Heath had repaired a Lancaster which needed a factory pilot to clear it for service again. On May 23rd 1944 for instance, they went to Waddington to clear the Lancaster Mk. I W4884 of 61 Squadron and on June 3rd to Fiskerton to clear Lancaster Mk.III ME781 of 460 (Australian) Squadron.
Peacetime and site layout
At the end of WWII the activities conducted in each of the Avro Hangars (or ‘Sheds’) are noted below, against the legend to the site diagram drawn by Ken Allen:
Item on Diagram Description of activity
1. Shed 1. Cleaning, inspection of components, metal repairs and mods to wings, control surfaces and systems. Wheels and tyres, engine subframes, etc.
2. Shed 2. Instrument section, Oxygen, Nitrogen, Blind Flying panels, Auto Pilot, Hydraulic and Pneumatic systems, etc.
1. & 2. Sheds 1 and 2. Inspectors reports (from which replacement and u/s items are ordered and marshalled for assembly ‘down the line’).
3. Shed 3. Inspection and rectification of Fuselages (completed here for transfer to Shed 5).
4.A Main Stores
4.B Office Block. Upper floor – Superintendents office, General Office, Accounts and Drawing Office.
Lower floor – Chief Inspector’s Office., Tool Stores, Time Office and Drawing Stores.
5. Shed 5. Assembly of complete aircraft (fitting of wings, control surfaces, all systems, function of hydraulics). Internal fittings section (fitting of seating, soundproofing, installation and function of electrical equipment and wiring).
6.A Shed 6A. As for Shed 5.
6B. Shed 6B. Spray Bay. Complete preparation and respray of aircraft. Finishing of items (internal and external). Part-sprayed down line. All exterior markings, roundels, safety warnings, taping of joints, cleaning of windows.
7. Shed 7. Erected for large aircraft (Tudor, etc). Used mainly for work on complete aircraft, this shed could hold three Yorks or Lincoln’s or a Vulcan plus one York. Long term contracts and or major inspections.
4.
[Page break]
8. Canteen.
9. Boiler House.
10. Site Maintenance.
11. Tank Shop. (Aircraft tank repairs and testing. Fuel Oil, Methanol, Hydraulic tanks.)
12. Underground fuel installation and pump house.
13. Security Gate House (Main Entrance)
14. Ambulance room
15. Aeronautical Inspection Dept ([deleted] MO [/deleted] AID)
16. Auxiliary Sections. Battery stores, charging starter trolley maintenance.
17. Original dispersal hardstanding (later transferred to Flight Shed).
18. Memorial to No. 207 Squadron (recently dedicated).
19. Flight Shed. Dismantling and labelling of sections, piping and components for transfer to main factory.
Preparation of aircraft for initial ground test of engines ie fuel filling, flow testing, calibration of fuel gauges, leak testing and correct function of fuel system.
Installation of engines and airframe electrics, instruments and radio.
Swinging and adjustment of compasses for test flight.
Rectification of test flight ‘Snags’.
On completion passed to Hangar 6B, for:
i) Final Inspection for ‘Delivery’.
II. Submitting to AID for inspection and clearance for dispatch.
20. Control Tower (under Avro control after WWII when the airfield was leased to them).
21. Harby Hangar. Rolls-Royce Outworking Party, engine inspections and modifications. Power plants stored and ready for line installation. Also used for strip down of aircraft on major work contracts.
22. Compass swinging area.
23. Aircraft crossing.
24. Aircraft crossing.
25. Originally Avro VLR site. Aircraft from service arrived by ‘Queen Mary’ road transport for long term repair and rebuild.
(This section became a Staging Post Store for the RCAF, receiving stores from Canada by Argonaut, and shipping on to BAOR by Bristol Freighters.)
During the War, the labour force at Langar at its peak reached around 584 on day-shift and 250 on nightshift – or a total of some 834, not including those manning the stores there.
Unlike the workforce at Bracebridge Heath, however, where it declined steeply after the War was over, at Langar the amount of work remained fairly constant up to 1956. Although the numbers of aircraft then declined to some 20 Shackletons annually through the late 1950’s and 60’s, these large aircraft needed a great deal of work on them, and the
5
[Page break]
[Hand drawn diagram of the Langar works] AVRO WORKS SITE (Not to Scale) Ken Allen
AVRO Factory Units at RAF Langar (above road until end of WWII; and below as well after WWII).
[Avro Logo]
AVRO & CO LTD
REPAIR DEPOT
LANGAR-CUM-BARNSTONE
NOTTINGHAMSHIRE
[Page break]
[Photograph of Langar from the air] Flight Shed (after WWII) Aerial photograph taken after Avro closed down.
[Page break]
labour force was held fairly constant at some third of the WWII level, right up to the closure in 1968.
The names of the principal heads of the various Departments at Langar just after WWII and later in the 60’s are shown [deleted] in Appendix 1 [/deleted] overleaf. Langar was completely controlled by Bracebridge Heath and the latter in turn reported to A V Roe’s Chadderton works in Manchester. Ken Allen and Neil Cunningham have provided these names from memory. Ken joined Langar in 1947 after being demobbed from the RAF. He had spent the War firstly as an airframe and engine fitter in a Whitley bomber squadron, then trained to become an aircrew member and finished up as a Flight Lieutenant flying as a Flight Engineer on Halifax bombers from bases in North Yorkshire (Wing Cmdr, later Gp Capt Leonard Cheshire VC. OM. DSO and two Bars, DFC & Bar, was CO of one of the units he served in).
Ken served as a Senior Inspector at Langar between 1947 and 1961, and remembers the very stringent regulations in force in those days at Avros and the tight budgets each Dept worked under. If they needed even the most mundane of items – such as pencils and stationery – they had to be requested from Bracebridge (and in turn from Chadderton), and if they used up their allocation before the end of the month there was nothing else until the next month (even if they ran out of toilet paper!). By such tight budgeting did Roy Dobson, the Managing Director of Avros, ensure the company was always one of the most profitable in the business!
Peacetime Contracts: total aircraft repaired
The kind of contracts undertaken after the war at the Avro works at Langar are summarised by Ken Allen thus:
1. Ministry of Aircraft Production/Ministry of Defence Contracts:
Awarded annually (post Budget) covering all RAF aircraft on active service and periodic servicing and modification of aircraft held on ‘Alert storage’ at RAF and Civilian Maintenance Units. Aircraft flown in for servicing. Crashed and damaged aircraft sent in by road.
These RAF aircraft included all production Marks of Lancaster, York, Lancastrian, Lincoln, Meteor, Vulcan and Shackleton.
2. Civilian Contracts:
State airlines, Skyways, etc. for major inspection and Certificate of Airworthiness. Ex-Ministry aircraft were purchased by the company, re-registered by the Air Registration Board, flown in to Langar and re-built to the contract requirements of the customer authority. Sold to:-
Argentina – Lancastrians, Yorks, Lincolns (bombers), Lancasters (Bombers), Lincolnian.
Egypt – Lancasters (bombers)
France – Lancasters (Maritime/Air Sea Rescue, with life-boat dropping facility, etc)
(All aircraft exported as ‘Civilian Aircraft’.)
6.
[Page break]
[Tree representing A V Roe personnel hierarchy]
[Underlined] A. V. ROE REPAIR ORGANIZATION [/underlined]
Manager
Mr Charles Hatton
Under Manager
Mr T C Langton
LANGAR
Works Superindendent
Mr Robert Ingrid
HANGAR 1 AND 2
Mr Christopher Oatway
Senior Foreman
HANGAR 3
Mr Robert Brown
Senior Foreman
ENGINES
Mr Douglas Fletcher
Foreman
HYDRAULICS
Mr Harry Houghton
Senior Foreman
AIRFRAME
Mr Victor Ramsdale
Foreman
Mr Harold Walker
Foreman
ELECTRICAL
Mr William Brumby
Foreman
MODIFICATIONS
Mr Ernest Brumby
Foreman
FLIGHT
Mr George Norman
Foreman
PAINTSHOP
Mr Ernest Cook
Foreman
INTERNAL FITTINGS
Mr William Brewer
Foreman
WORKS INSPECTION
Mr Yarwood
Chief Inspector
STORES
Mr Fed Spur
Foreman
[Page break]
[Photograph of buildings and hangars] Modern day picture of old Avro hangars.
[Page break]
Note:
‘Servicing’ is a very loose term and covers whatever requirements are laid down by MAP/MoD at the time of contracting. In wartime, contractors worked on a ‘Costs Plus’ basis. In the post-war years and when the RAF was on ‘Standby’, payments were based on Man Hours and hardware used, to fulfil the terms of the contract. As world tensions eased, contracts started to ease down and ‘Planned Inspections’ were introduced to both the RAF and civilian contractors.
‘Planned Inspections’ covered a long period in Langar’s operation. Monies for this type of work were strictly controlled. After all trades had completed their inspection to a fixed check list and time table, the Aeronautical Inspection Dept, who were permanently staffed on site, reviewed the inspection results and gave the Ministry’s approval for repairs and rectifications to be carried out. This could and did mean in the case of costly, over-budget repairs or replacements, the aircraft could be scrapped.
The individual totals of each type of aircraft repaired at Langar are shown in Appendix 2, and these show that after the 320 Lancasters in all, next in descending numerical order came 284 Gloster Meteors [deleted] I [/deleted] of all Marks, 236 Avro Lincolns, and 230 Avro Shackletons. Of course, some aircraft re-appeared at Langar several times, for different modifications (or ‘Phase’ refits). The annual output of aircraft types at Langar between 1942 and 1968 is shown in Appendix 3 in detail.
Getting to work
Ernest Dolby joined Avros at the end of the War, when he was demobilised in 1945. He was an engine fitter and had spent 3 1/2 years in the Middle East with an RAF Transport Squadron before the war, then the war years in the UK with bomber squadrons.
He lived in Melton Mowbray and had to use a motor cycle to get to work at Langar – a distance of some 16 miles from home. The winter of 1947/8 was a terribly cold one and the roads were so badly frozen over between January and April, he remembers he had to use the local buses that ran past Langar from all the major surrounding towns (to bring the workers not just to Avros, but the aerodrome in general). In fact many of Avro’s workers began to use motor cycles, bicycles and small cars, to get to Langar after the War finished, and the narrow country roads past the airfield began to get quite crowded at clocking-on and clocking-off times. As the years went by, there were a number of nasty traffic accidents outside the works, and a few fatalities too.
The road outside the works had to be blocked off whenever an aircraft from the Avro Hangars was being towed – or taxied to their dispersal ‘pan’, to let the aircraft across from the factory side, to the aerodrome (or vice versa).
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Avro York Transports
These aircraft were from RAF Transport Command or Civil Airlines, and included VIP Specials, Troop carriers and freighters off the Berlin Airlift. Work done included major engine and airframe inspections, rebuilds and conversions to VIP aircraft. (Some Yorks were used by the RAF VIP and the King’s Flights, and by Commonwealth Governor-Generals etc.) Most conversions were done at Langar.
The first Yorks did not arrive until after the war was over, and MWIII was repaired as a ‘Cat A(c)’ case, and delivered from Langar again on July 25th 1945. It was followed by MW110 and 120, and then the Prime Minister (Sir Winston Churchill’s) LV633 ’Ascalon’, and MW101 (all ‘Cat B’ cases) before the end of the year.
After this, there was a steady trickle of Yorks through Langar up to the beginning of 1951, when it finally ran out, with the exception of two ‘special’ Yorks. (MW132 and 179) that were modified by Langar in March-April 1953 and fitted with ‘Parachute Pylons’ for testing at Abingdon and Boscombe Down.
The annual number of Yorks repaired at Langar was as follows:-
1945 – 6
1946 – 15
1847 [sic] – 13
1948 – 22
1949 – 24
1950 – 17
1951 – 3
1953 – 2
Total [underlined] 102 [/underlined]
The higher annual totals in 1948 and 1949 were for Yorks off the Berlin Airlift operations, at the conclusion of the world’s greatest-ever air supply operation.
Avro Lincoln bombers
The Lincoln bomber was a development of the famous Lancaster and built to a specification with more powerful Rolls-Royce Merlin 68a engines, semi automatic fuel system, greater payload and range. The Lincoln came into service too late for the European War, but went into RAF service in the UK and overseas. It also became the main standby aircraft of the RAF and remained in storage readiness for several years until the ‘V’ bomber was established. The Handley Page Halifax Mk. III was also manufactured to the same specification. During this period Avro Langar had contracts for the repair and periodic servicing of many Lincolns.
The Lincolns started to arrive at Langar for repair at the end of 1945 and the first, a B.Mk 2, RE404, of a final total of 236 was cleared by Avros for delivery back to RAF Marham in February 1946. After this they arrived in a steady trickle for modifications to be made
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and later on, for those that had been in storage since the War to be refurbished and prepared for storage again at Maintenance Units. Special storage oils and lubricants were applied and most of the instruments taken out and stored separately.
Lincoln RE364 was ‘cleared’ out of Langar on February 20 1947,, names ‘Aries II’ to be used by the Empire Air Navigation School at Shawbury in place of their older Aries I (a Lancaster Mk I). Like Aries I the Lincoln had been fitted with a streamlined Lancastrian nose and tail and much special radio/radar equipment.
Another Lincoln B.Mk. 2, RE414 was also given special equipment for use by the Empire Radio School, and called Mercury II (to replace Mercury I, a Halifax Mk VI).
Argentine Lincolns
Then came the renovation of ex-RAF Lincolns at Langar for the Argentine Air Force. A total of 12 B.Mk 2s were prepared at Langar, numbered B-001 to B-012. B-001 was ready to hand over on September 17th 1947 and the last of the dozen (B-003) was handed over on February 24th 1949.
This was because the AAF decided to have B-003 (which had been cleared for acceptance at Langar on May 19th 1948 by Peter Field-Richards) converted to a ‘very long range’ version for trans-South Polar flying. Thus it went back into the works for fitting extra fuel tanks (to take a total of 5,010 gallons) and Peter cleared it again on July 16th 1948. Then it was also decided to fit a good deal of extra radio equipment and it was finally handed over in February 1949 to the AAF.
Later, B-003 was returned to Langar in 1953 to be fitted with streamlined nose and tail cones. It was delivered back to the AAF again on May 2nd 1953 as LV-ZEI.
Thus, this Lincoln, B-003, became the first true ‘Lincolnian’ to be sold.
More special Lincolns
A great deal of crew training was involved during the intervening months at Langar, some of the Argentine Lincolns being kept back for this purpose. Lincolns continued to arrive from the RAF and storage at MUs, up to the end of 1957. Following the Argentine Air Force contract, another order arrived from Paraguay for the conversion of 3 Lincolns into meat-carrying freighters to ply between Paraguay and Peru and Chile, over the Andes mountain chain.
Neil Cunningham remembers some of these contracts.
“I started my apprenticeship with A V Roe in late 1954 and worked on Lincolns, Meteors, Shackletons and Vulcans. I also worked at Bracebridge Heath, RAF Waddington, Scampton and Finningley on Vulcans. I then went back to Langar and finished my apprenticeship as a Millwright in the maintenance department. After that I worked on maintenance, becoming the Works Engineer, until closure in 1968.
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[Photograph of two Lincoln aircraft] Lincolns for Argentina.
[Photograph of large group of men beneath a Lincoln aircraft with a number of signatures at the bottom of the page]
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When I started at Langar the Lincolns were being disarmed and a few prepared to be used on air-to-ground missile ranges in Australia. They were parked on the dispersal points round the airfield ready for collection, but the contract was cancelled and they remained parked for some considerable time before being scrapped. I can remember twenty or more of these Lincolns parked around the airfield and having to be turned according to the wind direction. Three of these were bought in 1956/57 by a South American air charter firm that was awarded a contract by the Peruvian government to fly 84 tons of fresh meat a week from Asuncion, Paraguay, to Lima in Peru, a distance of 1350 miles over mountainous central America, because of a shortage of meat in Peru (whose people were unwilling to accept frozen meat). Field Aircraft at Tollerton was awarded the contract to convert these three Lincolns to meat freighters, therefore it was necessary to fly them from Langar to Tollerton, approximately five miles. As these aircraft had been static and open to the elements for so long, their condition was questionable. Fortunately the engines were found to be in good condition due to being inhibited. Eventually an air-worthy certificate was granted only for that distance and they were flown to Tollerton by Cliff Rogers and Cliff Holehouse, Rolls-Royce Hucknall test pilots, and Freddie Cook, Field’s test pilot, and they were paid £5 each! These three aircraft were locally called ‘Faith, Hope and Charity’. The number of the first aircraft to be converted was RE376. It had been flown by 61, 617, 57 and 100 Squadrons and the cost of conversion was £12,000. A V Roe would not grant a stress certificate for this aircraft and the other two were never converted. Eventually, on the 14th September 1959 these aircraft were sold for scrap to International Alloys of Aylesbury, the scrap value being £1,950 for the unconverted aircraft, and £1,025 for the converted.”
Another small batch of Lincolns was to be sent to Langar for a very secret conversion – to unmanned flight, controlled by radio (for use at Woomera). A test Lincoln had already been converted by Flight Refuelling Ltd, but had run into difficulties. Avros at Langar had to fit special pods to the wing-tips, encasing cameras and recording devices, but it was found that the flexing of the wingtips in flight upset the telemetry and Langar was told to cancel the project after some work had been carried out on RF395 and RE366.
Ken Allen remembers:
“This was a very ‘hush hush’ contract. I was allocated to the project and can recall being summoned to the Chief Inspector’s office, where the three inspectors (engine, airframe and electrical) were read the ‘Riot Act’ on strict secrecy, and no person not involved with the project was to be allowed to look at the drawings.”
The annual number of Lincolns repaired at Langar after the war totalled:
1946 – 56
1947 – 24
1948 – 34
1949 – 13
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1950 – 9
1951 – 42 (Korean War preparation)
1952 – 28
1953 – 18 (including 1 Lincolnian)
1954 – 6
1955 – 3
1956 – 2
1957 – 1
Total [underlined] 236 [/underlined]
Argentine Lancasters
Argentina had already taken delivery of 5 Yorks and 3 Lancastrians (three of these Yorks and one Lancastrian were reconditioned at Waddington/Bracebridge Heath Langar refurbished the other two Lancastrians and the two remaining Yorks were overhauled at Woodford). Argentina also now bought the 12 ex-RAF Lincolns from Langar (plus a further 18 newly-built- ones by Sir W G Armstrong Whitworth Aircraft). But this was not the end of its orders – a total of 15 ex-RAF Lancasters were now ordered and Langar was to refurbish them. They were numbered B-031 to B-045 following on from the Lincolns (numbered B-001 to B-030).
Now all these Lancasters were Mk Is and had been standing outside in open storage at RAF MUs since the end of WWII, so picking out the best preserved ones was tricky. One particular Argentine Air Force officer was designated to make a check, one day, on the external and internal condition of the Lancasters before overhaul began at Langar, and Ken Allen (a Senior Inspector) and Phil Lightfoot (the overall Works Superintendent) took him over to the latest Lancaster to arrive there. They removed the engine cowlings and were horrified at the dirt and oil over the Rolls-Royce Merlins.
The Argentine officer refused to accept the Lancaster and became a little over-excited exclaiming “Zese aircraft must be NEW ones – not dirt old ones…!”
Ken looked at Phil who put on his best Yorkshire man act, rubbed his chin slowly and eventually said: “Leave it to me, Lad – we’ll sort it out!”
Out of earshot of the Argentine officer, Phil whispered urgently to Ken: “What do you suggest…?” and Ken said he’d have a go at cleaning one Merlin up – if he could get a tin of black gloss paint, a tin of silver dope, masking tape and lots of brown paper. He got what he wanted, worked all day and by evening had cleaned and resprayed the R-R engine completely.
Phil was so impressed that he told Ken to borrow some more Inspectors and do the other three. A few days later the Argentine Air Force man was invited back to see: “Ze four NEW engines” and was duly impressed, authorising the complete Lancaster to be refurbished there. (He never did know the real truth!)
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The first of these 15 Lancasters (B-031) was delivered from Langar on May 11th 1948 and the last one (B-041) was delivered on January 4th 1949,
French and other Lancasters
Following this, Langar refitted another Lancaster Mk I for the Swedish Air Force (80001) which was delivered to AST at Hamble on June 22nd 1950, to be fitted out for testing a single Swedish jet engine under its bomb bay. Then came nine Lancasters for the Egyptian Air Force (1801-1809) and a contract for 54 Lancasters for the French Aéronavale Squadrons, 16 of which were refitted at Langar and the balance at Woodford. The last Egyptian Lancaster was delivered on November 20th 1950, and the first and last of the French Aéronavale Lancasters on March 12th, and October 28th 1952 respectively.
A further five Lancaster MkVIIs were then supplied to the French Air Force (FCL-01 to -05), the last leaving Langar on April 30th 1954, and the next Lancaster, RF322 for the RAF’s School of Maritime Reconnaissance was the last of all the 320 Lancasters to be overhauled at Langar in the 12 year period 1942-1954.
The Lancaster totals refitted at Langar per annum were:
1942 – 4
1943 – 48
1944 – 89
1945 – 99
1946 – 12
1947 - -
1948 – 14
1949 – 14
1950 – 11
1951 – 2
1952 – 16
1953 – 4
1954 – 7
Total [underlined] 320 [/underlined]
One additional Lancaster to the above was supplied to the French Aéronavale for ground training for the crews who were to maintain the 54 Lancasters for their Western Union contract.
Ken Allen remembers being asked at short notice to go to Cosford, where Avros had purchased a Lancaster being stored there but about to be scrapped (believed to be NX743). Ken was told to inspect the aircraft and make a ‘Shortage List’ of all the items necessary to enable the Lancaster to make one last flight direct to France. This was quite a task, as all kinds of items had [inserted] already [/inserted] been carefully [inserted] and clandestinely [/inserted] removed from the Lancaster to enable certain people to complete their DIY tasks at home (eg cables – to repair motor cycle brakes, etc!).
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[Photograph of Lancaster RE222] RAF Coastal Command Lancaster about to be converted for French Aeronavale.
[Photograph of a Lancaster] Lancaster converted for French Aeronavale use.
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When the items had been restored to the Lancaster (temporarily registered F-YBCA), Ken crewed it as Flight Engineer with Peter Field-Richards and saw everyone at Cosford turn out to line the runway on June 6th 1951 – quite convinced the Lancaster would never leave the ground! However, it did, but they only flew it to Langar, where it was renovated but afterwards sent by ground transport to France!
Ken remembers one other unique flight in a Lancaster. This was on July 17th 1951, when he went with Peter Field-Richards to the MU at Llandow in South Wales, to fly TW655 into Hendon for the special Daily Express ’50 Years of Flight’ exhibition and display that year. Hendon only had a short runway and after being invited to send in a Lancaster for the 7-day event Avros was suddenly told at the last minute that permission for the Lancaster had been withdrawn for safety reasons. There was a last minute flurry of telephone calls between Sir Roy Dobson of Avros, the Air Ministry, even Government departments – then it was ‘on’ again, and Peter and Ken flew it in. Ken remembers handing some charts to Peter during the flight – but Peter just flung them over his shoulder, saying “I don’t need them – I know every aerodrome in this country by heart…!” Ken looked down as they flew over London, descending over the buildings of Harrow School, then as they crossed over the roof of the last hut on the edge of Hendon, Peter told him to ‘cut’ the throttles – and they actually stopped before the intersection of the runways!
At the end of the week, Peter flew TW655 out again on July 24th, straight to Langar where it became WU-17 eventually for the French Aéonavale contract.
Flight Engineer from the ‘Dambusters’
When Arthur Norman retired from being Peter Field-Richard’s Flight Test Engineer in 1946, a certain Edward Wilson Armstrong – recently demobbed from the RAF as a Warrant Officer Flight Engineer in 617 (The Dambusters) Squadron – promptly applied for and was given the job as his successor.
‘Paddy’ – so called because his family came from Donaghadee in Northern Ireland – had joined the RAF in 1940 on his 18th birthday, after serving as an apprentice at Shorts in Belfast. He eventually qualified as a Flight Engineer and completed a tour of 30 operations with 90 Squadron on Short Stirlings. Then, after the customary rest from operations as an instructor in 1661 Conversion Unit, he managed (after a great deal of trying) to get posted back on ‘ops’, this time as a Warrant Officer in the famous 617 Squadron at Woodhall Spa.
Paddy flew another 14 operations with 617 up to the end of the War in Europe, and stayed with the squadron until December 20th 1945. His job with Avros at Langar began on August 14th 1946 and he remained there until June 1st 1968, three months before the works finally closed down.
He flew as Peter Field-Richards ‘crew’ (there were normally only the two of them
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concerned with test-flying the aircraft at Langar) from September 5th 1946 up to Peter’s retirement from flying on August 11th 1954, and continued to act as Flight Test Engineer for the Avro pilots from Woodford after that – notably Sqd Ldr Jack Wales. After Wales was killed in the first production Shackleton MR3 in December 1956, Paddy handed over most of the flying to his assistant in Flight Testing, Roy Browne. But Paddy went on flying when necessary – if Roy was ill, or on holiday, etc and Paddy’s last test flight at Langar was actually on November 26th 1965, with Peter Varley in the Shackleton MR”, WR960.
Between leaving the RAF and joining Avros, Paddy had first gone along to Trent Bridge Power Station for an engineer’s job. But he could not stand heights and was turned down for the job. Then he tried a local coal mine, seeking to become one of the new ‘Bevan Boys’. He went for this interview in his best suit collar and tie, and this was probably not very conducive to getting a job down the pits!
He was turned away from this, too and so he had ended up as a Junior Foreman in the Langar Flight Test Department, with a flying job again.
Paddy had a lot of happy hours flying in his beloved Lancasters at Langar – and he was particularly commended by Sir Roy Dobson – Avro’s Managing Director – for his work in training the Argentine flight crews (including their pilots). Sir Roy awarded Paddy an ex gratia payment of £25!
A number of incidents
The flights Paddy made were not without incident but Peter Field-Richards was such a superlative pilot that they all ended favourably. Thus, on November 19th 1946 Paddy was in the York ME 300 on a local test flight when Peter discovered suddenly that their aileron control had jammed solid. With great expertise, Peter managed to fly slowly across to Waddington, and by dint of some very precise flying with rudder and engine controls alone they landed safely on the long runway there. The York stayed there for six days while the controls were checked and the fault rectified, then they flew it back to Langar and one engine failed on take-off!
On July 5th 1948, while heavily engaged in training the Argentine crews on their Lancasters, Paddy was flying with Peter in the Lancaster B-040 when a hydraulic pipe burst in the cockpit. Both of them and the cockpit were covered in oil, and again they had to make an emergency landing at Waddington – “well-oiled…” as Paddy said! In fact it took no less than 10 test-flights to clear it for the Argentine crew.
On May 13th 1949, Paddy was up with Peter in the Lincoln test-bed for the new Bristol Theseus engines, RE418. (This was the second such Lincoln and was to be used by RAF Transport shortly on regular runs between Lyneham and the Middle East.) But on this test flight they couldn’t lower the undercarriage on returning to Langar. Paddy used the emergency compressed air and the control tower told them the wheels seemed to be locked down, when they flew very low, over it. The flaps didn’t work, however, and
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[Photograph of an aircraft] The Lancastrian conversion “Aries II” for the RAF.
[Photograph of an aircraft]
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so Peter made a low, flapless approach and landing on the long North/South runway, fortunately without incident.
By 1951, a lot of Lincoln B.2s had been delivered to Langar for various inspections/modification/updates/overhauls to be carried out, and a not inconsiderable number were parked around the airfield on various dispersal areas. On April 10th, Paddy helped Peter conduct what must have been rather risky 10-minute test flights on a pair of these that had already become ’time-expired’. These were RF532 and RE294 and immediately after, they were flown away to MUs at Hullavington and Kemble respectively.
Paddy also helped fly the Lancaster F-YBCA from Cosford to Langar on June 6th 1951 – the one-time trip (again on a time-expired aircraft) to have the Lancaster made into a ground instruction machine at Langar for the French Aéronavale.
On July 19th 1954, Paddy flew as a ‘passenger’ with Peter Field-Richards on the latter’s one and only test flight in a Meteor T.7, and after Peter retired that August, Paddy accompanied Sqd Ldr Jack Wales as an ‘observer’ on several further flights in Meteor T.7s.
The Shackletons had started to appear now and Paddy found himself flying at Langar with Jack Wales until the latter was tragically killed when the first Shackleton MR3 crashed in Derbyshire in December 1956. Johnny Baker then took over Shackleton, Meteor and Lincoln tests at Langar and he was succeeded by the New Zealand wartime fighter pilot ‘Ossie’ Hawkins in 1958, when Johnny left Woodford for Australia.
Paddy had handed over most of his test-flying duties at Langar to Roy Browne from January 1957 but he did fly quite regularly after that – on all the different models of Shackleton. The other Woodford pilots he flew with included Tony Blackman, Dickie Martin and finally Peter Varley.
After Avro Langar closed down in 1968, Paddy found a job at Schipol Airport at Amsterdam for a time, then managed to find a position with Rolls-Royce back at Hucknall, Derby. By now he had a large family – seven sons (the last two being twins) and one daughter – and the R-R job gave him a chance to keep them all together in Nottingham. Later he took a contract with BAC (later BAe) to live in Saudi Arabia for 7-8 years working on the English Electric Lightning project with the Saudi Air Force, and his wife and family (such as were still at home) moved out there for the last 4 1/2 years.
When Paddy finally retired, he did so back to Rivergreen near Nottingham, and to keep busy at something, he even opened a ‘take-away’ sandwich bar at Hockley! When he finally passed away in 1995, Paddy’s wish was to be cremated and his ashes scattered over Langar airfield. Not only was his wish carried out by the BN Islander aircraft of the Sky-Diving Club there, but when his ashes had been scattered, the Battle of Britain Flight
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DATE 1956
FLIGHTSHED
LINCOLNS
BILL WILLIAMS
METEOR FUEL TANKS
HERBERT CHADDERTON
SHED 3 TANK SHOP
SHED 1
DON HERROD
LEN NEEDHAM FOREMAN
MMY LEVERLAN
TANK SHOP NOSEWHEEL SECTION.
T.I. MK SHACKLETON CONVERSION TO MK 4 FLYING CLASSROOM
METEOR NOSEWHEELS
SHED 5 P.I. SECTION
[Underlined] Persons in pictures overleaf: [/underlined]
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[Photographs of various parts of hangars] Langar scenes.
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flew across the airfield, the Lancaster flanked by the Spitfire and Hurricane – a fitting tribute to one of Avro’s greatest.
The Meteor Contracts
With the end of major servicing on Avro Yorks not long after the Berlin Airlift ceased in 1949, and the rundown in refurbishing Lincolns once the Korean War began to subside at the start of the 1950s, it was obvious to the Hawker Siddeley Aviation Management that some urgent contracts were needed to sustain Langar in business. Thus it was decided to send Meteor night-fighters direct to Langar from Armstrong Whitworth at Coventry for final fitment of various items in the radio and radar field.
The first Meteor NF.14 to be produced at Baginton (WS722) had its first flight there on October 23rd 1953. ‘Bill’ Else initialled it, flying it across to Bitteswell aerodrome, where all Armstrong Whitworth’s test-flying operations had been located since October 5th. Then another pilot flew it across to Langar for fitment of the necessary equipment, and on November 19th it was rolled out again and given its clearance flight back to Bitteswell.
Meanwhile one of the last batches of Meteor NF.12s (WS718) was also sent to Langar for equipment to be installed, and this was cleared back to Bitteswell eight days later on November 27th 1953. Armstrong Whitworth approved the Langar installations, and after this, the first batch (39) of Meteor NF.14s and the initial aircraft of the second batch all went through Langar in quick succession – a total of 40 NF.14s altogether. Interspersed with these came a total on 99 of the 100 Meteor NF.12s produced (the exception being WS635).
As these Meteors were test-flown and cleared at Langar, the NF.14s were mostly delivered to 15 MU at Wroughton and the NF.12s to 8MU at Little Rissington or 38 MU at Llandow.
Further contracts now followed for refurbishing Meteor F.8s (the RAF’s latest fighter version) straight from RAF Auxiliary Squadrons. Eventually 58 F.8s were treated at Langar and re-delivered to RAF bases.
The Meteor T.7 trainer version was also refurbished at Langar, where 85 were treated the same way as the F.8s, and the whole of the Meteor programme finished with two FR.9s also being overhauled.
Ken Allen remembers:
“All Meteors came to Langar from RAF Squadrons when their engine and airframe hours expired, for major inspection, repairs and modifications and updating any outstanding tech instructions. Meteors were stripped of their matt paint and given a High Gloss finish and new markings. This was a new technique for Avro’s spray shop, as all bomber aircraft were matt finished. However, several squadron commanders later
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wrote saying they were impressed by the increase in top speed achieved with this new finish!”
Altogether between November 1953 and January 1957 Langar received a total of 284 Meteors to refit, which helped keep their employment intact before the next – and last- major contract to arrive, overhauling the Avro Shackleton fleet.
Peter Field-Richards retired from test-flying at Langar in July 1955, at the height of the Meteor programme and a few months after the first Shackleton – a Mk IA, WB826 – was given some modification after suffering a wheels-up landing at a Conversion Unit and cleared at Langar on February 16th.
From here on, Avro test-pilots based at Woodford would drive or fly down to Langar to clear each Shackleton or Vulcan as it became ready for test-flying again after its repair/modification/servicing work was complete.
The Meteors were all test-flown by Avro or Armstrong Whitworth pilots (Sqd Ldr Jack Wales alone flying some 129).
Avro Shackleton T4 Trainers
The first few Shackletons appeared at Langar for regular servicing or modifying up to current manufacturer’s standards – usually after a major incident at the Squadron rendered repairs imperative. Thus, after WB826 (see above) came a string of MR2s from Squadrons – WL785, WL796, WL798, etc – with the first production Shackleton MR1, VP254, to have IFF Mk10 and SARAH fitted at Langar early in 1956, prior to flight trials at Boscombe Down in May 1956. Another early Shackleton, VP258, also appeared at Langar at the end of 1956 for the trial installation of the new ASV Mk21 Blue Silk search radar.
Then they came in ‘thick and fast’ to Langar. WB819, an MR1A was cleared at Langar on June 13th 1957 after being converted there to a T4 standard. The T4 was a trainer version, replacing the Lancasters equipping the School of Maritime Reconnaissance. After VP258 was converted at Woodford to be the prototype of this new version, a total of 10 MR1 or 1A aircraft were sent to Langar for the refit. This involved removing the dorsal turret and rest bunks and installing ASV Mk13 training equipment, and extra Sonobouy Mk1 equipment, for instructors and pupils to sit side by side, as well as the necessary additional power pack.
These 10 Shackleton MRIs or IAs were converted at Langar and delivered back to units between May 27th 1957 and March 17th 1958 (see Appendix No…). Later, a further six Shackleton IAs were sent to Langar and converted and delivered back between September 7th and December 28th 1961.
The last Flight Engineer
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Now that Langar’s resident Flight Test Engineer Paddy Armstrong had retired from flying, he left the test-flying at Langar to his successor Roy Browne. Roy had joined Avros at Langar in 1946 and when Paddy signed the front of Roy’s new log book: “Happy Landings. E.W. Armstrong. 14th January 1957”, he turned over the test-flying engineer’s job to him until Langar finally closed in 1968.
Roy henceforth made almost all the test-flights on Avro’s aircraft at Langar, with whichever pilot flew down from Woodford for the purpose. But in addition, he also made many test-flights on Shackletons and Vulcans from Bitteswell (which gradually took over the tasks of the Langar works). [Deleted] Hawarden (the old De Havilland which gradually took over the tasks of the Langar works), [/deleted] Hawarden (the old De Havilland works at Chester), and even Woodford (Avro’s home base), as well as accompanying Woodford crews on tests at Boscombe Down, etc. In all Roy notched up 1,209 hours 35 minutes test-flying with Avros – a very respectable total and one that put him in the forefront of Shackleton testing for A V Roe & Co Ltd.
When Roy finished at Langar, he was great friends with Bill Else, Dickie Martin and Peter Varley (the ex-Armstrong Whitworth and Gloster aircraft test-pilots taken on by Woodford after their own companies closed down) and he left Avros to join Court Line Aviation when they did too, starting another career in civil aviation.
Roy lived at Harby when he worked at Langar and knew Peter Field-Richards very well – though not flying with him officially before he retired. Peter was then ‘Mine Host’ of the Nags Head and Star in Harby. But Roy knew enough of Peter to call him “One hell of a pilot”.
In his early days of test-flying at Langar, Roy went up to Woodford one day to the Flight Test Dept there, while the Chief Test-Pilot (Jimmy Harrison) was away somewhere. Jimmy – Roy notes – had a ‘beautiful secretary’ and Roy was holding the post for her temporarily in her office when the ‘phone rang. Roy decided to be a little flippant with his answer and as he lifted the receiver he said “Hallo. It’s the Kremlin here…!”
The resultant response at the other end indicated the caller was certainly not amused … it was Jimmy Harrison himself!
Roy remembers two occasions involving slow rolls during test-flying at Langar. On one occasion Langar had just installed new, more powerful Bristol Olympus engines in a Vulcan. Tony Blackman came down to test-fly it when it was ready, and just after take off was so impressed by the increase in thrust that he promptly barrel-rolled it while still climbing out in sight of all the workers and spectators!
The other occasion could have been more dangerou8s – it had claimed the life of Jack Wales and his crew in the prototype Shackleton MR3 in December 1956. On this flight from Langar, Roy was flying with Ossie Hawkins in a Shackleton and they were making still turns at 4-5,000 ft or so. Roy was not strapped in the Flt. Engineer’s seat and the
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stall turns were getting tighter. Suddenly the Shackleton dropped a wing and went into a vicious roll onto its back. Roy flew between the two pilots seats, and Ossie somehow got the aircraft out of the roll by completing it down at 1,000 ft! That was a close shave.
Phase I and II modifications to Avro Shackletons
After the T4 refits, came the ‘Phase I’ conversions to Shackleton MR2s, and then Phase II conversions to MR2s, MR3s and T4s.
The Shackletons concerned in these refits at Langar can be seen in Appendix … (showing the dates of delivery back to their units after clearance at Langar). A Summary Table in Appendix … is also shown.
Basically, the Phase I refit at Langar (1958-60) on MR2s consisted of fitting:
- ASV Mk21 radar
- Blue Silk doppler
- A Tactical Table
Soon after the programme had started at Langar (Woodford, and Avro Outworking Parties at 49 MU were also involved), the MR2s had been grounded on June 19, 1959 due to fatigue in the centre section wing spars being discovered. Thus, additional modifications were then added to the Phase I refits, as parts of a crash programme on MR2s.
Phase II refits at Langar (1961-3) to both MR2s and MR3s involved new radio and radar equipment:
- Sonobuoy MkIC (replacing Mk I)
- Violet Picture UHF (replacing Green Salad VHF)
- New Intercom system
- UHF/RT
- Tacan
- Sonobuoy Homer
- Orange Harvest ECM
- Improved Radio Compass (with recessed aerial behind cockpit roof and ‘sensing’ aerial on starboard bomb – door.
- HF Radio aerial support posts moved back in front of ECM Plinth
- Long MR3 Type engine tail-pipe exhausts
- Bomb carriage modification to allow carriage of 2xMk30, and 3 x Mk36 or Mk44 Homing Torpedoes.
Phase III, Viper and T2 modifications to Shackletons
The Phase III modifications made later in 1964-5 (to MR3s), and in 1965-7 (to MR2s), involved fitting:
19
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- Strengthened spars and re-skinned wings
- Increased fuel capacity
- Redesigned Heater system
- New navigation and compass systems
- Revised Tactical Station
- Four tube flare discharger
- New toilet/washing facilities
- Thicker soundproofing
- Rewiring to carry Mk 10 Lulu Nuclear depth bombs) [sic]
- R-R Griffon 58 engines (with strengthened gear boxes for higher electrical generation outputs), larger generators and inverters.
- Stronger undercarriage
- Positions to carry 11 passengers (or troops) in addition to crew of 10.
Once the Shackleton MR2s had been converted to Phase III standard, they were known as the MR2A version.
The MR3s had not seen the last of Langar with the Phase III additions, as it was decided to fit most MR3s with Bristol Siddeley Viper Mk11 gas turbines in the rear of the outer engine nacelles, to boost the max weight take off performance at 105,000 lbs. This was called the ‘Viper Fit’ and carried out at Langar and Woodford.
The last version seen at Langar was the T2 Trainer. This was the MR2A given two ASV trainee positions (in place of the rest bunks), extra consoles and an instructor (Navigator) position.
Altogether, Langar handled a total of:
15 T4 conversions from Shackleton MR1As
2 T4 conversions to Phase II standard
38 Phase I conversions of Shackleton MR2s
36 Phase II conversions of Shackleton MR2s
30 Phase III conversions of Shackleton MR2s
10 T2 conversions of Shackleton MR2As
11 Phase III conversions of Shackleton MR3s
19 Viper fits to Shackleton MR3s
[Underlined] 181 [/underlined] Total
All this amounted to a vast number of man-hours worked at Langar on the Shackleton aircraft, the only major version not dealt with there being the last one – the AEW2 version that was carried out at Bitteswell in the 1972-3 period after Langar had closed.
In fact. Langar closed down because it was decided within the Hawker-Siddeley Aviation Group that Bitteswell (originally an Armstrong Whitworth company airfield near
20.
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Coventry was more suited to taking the Vulcan aircraft for refits, as it had better runways, engine test facilities and general Hangar accommodation. It was all part of the inevitable rationalisation process still affecting British Aviation even today.
The Foreman’s mistake
Neil Cunnin [inserted] g [/inserted] ton worked on the aircraft at Langar in the 1950s, then with Outworking Parties at Scampton, Waddington and Finningley on Vulcans, before returning to Langar to work on the factory maintenance side up to its closure in 1968. He remembers several amusing incidents, [deleted] the first [/deleted] one being the arrival at Langar of the first Avro Vulcan to be sent there for an upgraded engine fitment.
The Vulcan (VX770, the first prototype) flew around the works and airfield several times, to the delight of the watching workers, and then made its approach and landing, streaming its braking parachute in the process, and then leaving it on the runway. As it taxied in to the Hangar, one of the senior foremen watching it remarked to all and sundry: “I’ll go out on my bike and bring in the parachute!”
He duly cycled out, and a long time later returned very red-faced. He hadn’t appreciated the fact that the Vulcan’s tail-chute weighs some two tons, with its massive nylon cords, etc! It was quite impossible for him to lift it, let alone tow it on his bike!
The ‘Jonah’
Neil also remembers a particular Shackleton MR3 – or ‘Jonah’ as they referred to it at Langar (for all its constant problems). This MR3, WR971, first appeared at Langar to have a very large aerial fitted to its fuselage top, as a Trial Installation of some special radio equipment. While it was on test later, it returned to Langar after one flight, minus its aerial – which was later found in a field in the Vale of Belvoir!
On another occasion it was in the large Hangar No 7 at Langar, for some work to be done on it. Now in the centre of the floor, there was a large 10ft deep access pit for the Shackleton MR2s to be able to extend their telescopic ventral radomes for checking the mechanism, etc. The pit was covered with heavy baulks of timber to withstand the weight of the nose-wheels, but on this occasion, someone managed to manoeuvre ‘Jonah’ so that one of its main gear passed over the pit. The timber collapsed, the main gear disappeared into the well and the wing and engines dropped right onto the top of the workmen’s benches. Luckily it was the lunch break, and so no one was killed or injured!
Finally ‘Jonah’ was the Shackleton in which Harry Fisher and Roy Browne were to have the undercarriage collapse on take-off, on February 7th 1967. Neil Cunnington remembers just going home past the Harby end of the runway, and watching it preparing to take-off, when the starboard undercarriage gracefully folded up and the next minute, chunks of concrete were flying past Neil’s head as the propellers struck the runway and bent backwards like split banana skins.
The Hangar 7 fire
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On the night of December 22nd 1955 – a Saturday – there were three Shackleton MR2s in Hangar 7 undergoing fuel tank filling tests. Suddenly there was a spark caused by static electricity, and the aircraft were engulfed in flames! The Senior Foreman there, Harry Houghton and the men on duty tried desperately to limit the fire by pulling drums of fuel away from the Shackletons, and using fire extinguishers, but to no avail!
The Royal Canadian Air Force scrambled its Fire Tenders from their site on the North side of the airfield, and they were soon on the scene – albeit by now the Hangar itself was on fire, and a pillar of flame and smoke rose high into the sky from the Hangar roof. As Neil Cunnington remembers: “It was the only time in my life when I have ever seen concrete actually melt!”
One Shackleton (WL799) was totally destroyed, as was the hangar, and two others damaged, but with all the work on hand, Hangar 7 was hurriedly rebuilt in more modern post-war style, and was in use again by mid-1956!
Vulcan contracts
Langar only hosted four different Vulcan aircraft – all arriving and departing in 1957-8.
Ken Allen remembers:
“The first prototype (VX770) which had completed its evaluation and test flying was placed on embodiment loan to Rolls-Royce Experimental Establishment, Hucknall, Nottingham, as a flying test bed for the first of the family of ‘By-pass’ engines – ie the Conway. The airframe had extensive modification at Langar to comply with current regulations. This work took some twelve months to complete. I had the privilege of being Senior Inspector throughout the whole of this project and co-signed the daily inspection for the first flight. The whole of Langar came out to view the take off on August 9th 1957. It was a very memorable sight, deafening, but quite unforgettable! I was also relived Vulcan VX770 never returned to Langar and was delivered direct to Hucknall. I did later meet up with the Vulcan at Rolls-Royce Hucknall, to advise on repairs to the airframe.
Next came XA903, an early B.Mk1 version, to be fitted at Langar with a special bomb release, and tracking telemetry for the airborne release of the Blue Steel ‘stand-off’ bomb. This was completed and flew on January 27th 1958.
Then came XA901 and lastly XA891, to be fitted with the more powerful uprated Bristol Olympus engines of 16,000 lb st each. These Mk200 Olympus engines were fitted in time for the SBAC show in 1958, and the Vulcans were completed on May 22nd and June 10th 1958, respectively”.
More hangars acquired
Neil Cunnington remembers the RCAF’s occupation of Langar:
22
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[Underlined] Peter Norman [/underlined]
[Photograph of an aircraft flying past a control tower] The last Shackleton modified at Langar flies around the Control Tower (now the HQ building of the Brit. Para chute School)
[Underlined] SEPT 1968 [/underlined]
Sep 4th WL798 Shack II last at Langer (next ones at Bitteswell) Harry Fisher is the Pilot.
[Page break]
[Photograph of three men outside a NAAFI hut] Retirement: Sqd Ldr Peter Field-Richards (Centre), and Ken Cook (right) meet again at Langar. Both great Test-Pilots.
[Page break]
“The Royal Canadian Air Force occupied the airfield and the North side from 1951 to 1963. When they eventually vacated the site, A V Roe/Hawker Siddeley Aviation took over part of it, which included two T2 Type Hangars and other buildings. One of the hangars became a Flight Shed, and the other became the Trials Installation (TI) Section. As this site was some distance from the factory, there was a bus service between the two, which consisted of an ex-City of Coventry double decker bus and a mini-bus.”
The Flight Shed provided much needed extra space for the Shackletons and the TI hangar enabled the relevant Shackletons sent over from Woodford to be fitted out with the new equipment to be tested from Langar or Boscombe Down, and proved, before adopting it as standard in the future Phase refits given to all the Shackletons.
The closure of Langar
With the refitting of all the necessary RAF Shackletons now accomplished, and the emphasis on Vulcan refits now appearing, Hawker Siddeley Aviation decided to close Langar at the end of 1968, and transfer all refitting facilities to Bitteswell – a little further south, close to Coventry.
It was a sad day when the closure approached for the team of workers who had, over a period of 26 years, carried out such excellent refitting and modification to over 1,185 aircraft in all (see Appendix 2).
The last aircraft to be refurbished at Langar was the Shackleton WL798, and this was rolled out for engine runs, at the end of August 1968. The date for its final handover to the RAF again was set for September 4th, and on that day the workers at Langar turned out to see the test-pilot from Woodford, Harry Fisher, with Roy Browne from Langar as his Flight Engineer and Dave Pearson from Woodford as his other crew.
As well as the Avro employees, Peter Field-Richards, the previous (and only) locally employed Avro test-pilot, and Arthur Norman, the company’s first Flight Engineer, were also on hand to witness the last flyby. Ken Cook also flew over from Woodford for the occasion – he had helped Peter Field-Richards out on occasions with flight-testing at Langar and Waddington, and after retiring at Woodford as one of Avro’s greatest test-pilots, had become Air Traffic Control Officer there, with responsibility for the operation of Langar’s Control tower too.
They all waved to the crew, and the ‘Mighty Hunter’ (the Shackleton) as it majestically gathered speed down the runway and then flew round the works and control tower several times before ‘beating-up’ the airfield for the last time, and landing. An RAF crew took it over on September 16th, and then flew it back to its base (205 Squadron, at Changi, Singapore).
And so, as the workers were now gradually paid off (some had already gone in the last few months) the works gradually emptied of jigs and tools, spare parts and anything that
23
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[Photograph of a group of people underneath the nose of a Shackleton] FIRST ON RIGHT
GEORGE ARTHUR NORMAN (ex Flt. Engineer)
PICTURE TAKEN SEPT 1968
The last Shackleton about to be flown away from Langar Sep 4th 1968.
Harry Fisher Pearson From Woodford Peter F-R Norman
[Page break]
could be used elsewhere in HSA, and the Hangar doors closed in turn, never to re-open for some time.
Some of the workers were re-deployed to HSA airfields like Bitteswell, Woodford, etc, or to Outworking Parties at Bracebridge Heath. But many looked for jobs at Rolls-Royce at Derby and Hucknall, or in engineering concerns in Nottingham, Derby, Leicester and Loughborough.
When British Aerospace was formed in 1977, some gravitated to their other plants at Warton, Bristol, etc, and a few managed to be employed later on the Saudi Arabian contracts for operating the Lightning fighters, etc.
They disappeared from Langar and were diffused across the aviation spectrum as years went by. But they never lost their pride in what they had done for Avros at Langar and to this day, the dwindling band of experts meet in little groups in Lincoln every month and less regularly around Nottingham. They remember the ‘good old days’, the times when the ‘boss’ – Charlie Hatton, who used to rule them all with a rod of iron – would suddenly appear in the works on his constant inspections – and they would all ‘dive for cover’ as his entourage approached! They remember the accolades that Sir Roy Dobson occasionally paid them, with feeling, for their immense efforts. And above all, they can still dwell on their superb achievements over the 26 years of Langar’s existence.
24.
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[Photograph of a public house] Sqd Ldr Peter Field-Richards became “Mine Host” here for some years.
[Page break]
[Underlined] Appendix 1 [/underlined]
[Underlined] Summary
Aircraft repaired/rebuilt/converted at Langar [/underlined]
Avro Manchester 1
Avro Lancaster 320
Avro Anson 5
Avro York 102
Avro Lincoln 235
Avro Lincolnian 1
Avro Shackleton 230
Avro Lancastrian 3
Avro Vulcan 4
Gloster Meteor 284
[Underlined] 1,185 [/underlined]
[Page break]
[Underlined] Date: Serial: Aircraft: Delivered to/at: [/underlined]
1 5.10.42 R5667 LANCASTER MK.I 1665 CON. UNIT HOLME.
2. 9.11.42 R5447 LANCASTER MK.I 1654 CON. UNIT WIGSLEY
3. 9.12.42 R5686 LANCASTER MK.I 38 M.U. LLANDOW
4. 30.12.42. R5672 LANCASTER MK.I 39 M.U. COLERNE
5. 20.1.43 W4140 LANCASTER MK.I 38 M.U. LLANDOW
6 11.2.45 R5688 LANCASTER MK.I 46 MU LOSSIEMOUTH
7 25.2.43 W4766 LANCASTER MK.I 20 M.U. ASTON DOWN
8 6.3.43 W4778 LANCASTER MK.I 38 M.U. LLANDOW
9 12.3.43 R5901 LANCASTER MK.I 39 M.U. COLERNE.
10 24.3.43 R5634 LANCASTER MK.I 38 M.U LLANDOW
11 6.4.43 W4762 LANCASTER MK.I 20 M.U. ASTON DOWN
12 12.4.43 R5745 LANCASTER MK.I 46 M.U. LOSSIEMOUTH
13 23.4.43 ED412 LANCASTER MK.I 39 M.U. COLERNE.
14 30.4.43. W4301 LANCASTER MK.I 39 M.U. COLERNE
15 15.5.43 ED392 5 M.U. KEMBLE.
16 16.5.43 R5700 LANCASTER MK.I 5 M.U. KEMBLE
17 19.5.43 [deleted] “MANCHESTER” [/deleted] R5777 MANCHESTER MK.I. 39 M.U. COLERNE.
18 20.5.43. W4193 LANCASTER MK.I 20 M.U. ASTON DOWN
19 29.5.43 W4119 LANCASTER MK.I 20 M.U. ASTON DOWN
20 2.6.48. W4248 LANCASTER MK.I 46 M.U. LOSSIEMOUTH.
21 16.8.43 ED442 LANCASTER MK.III 5 M.U. KEMBLE.
22 20.6.43 R5756 LANCASTER MK.I 46 M.U. LOSSIEMOUTH
23 22.6.43 W4132 LANCASTER MK.I 5 M.U. KEMBLE.
24 27.6.43 W4197 LANCASTER MK.I 5 M.U. KEMBLE.
25 1.7.43 R5504 (FLOWN TRAINER) LANCASTER MK.I (Became3881M) 4 S.T.T. ST. ATHAN.
26 2.7.43 L7577 (STATIC TRAINER) LANCASTER MK.I 9Became 3610M) 11 S.T.T. ST. ATHAN.
27 3.7.43. W4128 STATIC TRAINER LANCASTER MK.I (Became 3699M) 10 S.T.T.ST. ATHAN.
28. 9.7.43. W4376 LANCASTER MK.I 38 M.U. LLANDOW
29 9.7.43 L7574 LANCASTER MK.I 20 M.U. ASTON DOWN
30 14.7.43 L7576 LANCASTER MK.I 46 M.U. LOSSIEMOUTH.
31 17.7.43 W4158 LANCASTER MK.I 46 M.U. LOSSIEMOUTH
32 3.8.43 ED348 LANCASTER MK.I 5 M.U. KEMBLE.
33 9.8.43 R5895 LANCASTER MK.I 38 M.U. LLANDOW
34 10.8.43 ED763 LANCASTER MK.I 4 S.T.T. ST. ATHAN
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35 26.8.43 W4276 LANCASTER MK-I. 5 M.U. KEMBLE.
36 24.8.43 ED658 LANCASTER MK-III 38 M.U. LLANDOW
37 29.8.43 R5865 LANCASTER MK-I 46 M.U. LOSSIEMOUTH
38 31 8.43 ED 310 LANCASTER MK-I 38 M.U. LLANDOW
39 5.9.43 ED 366 LANCASTER MK-I 46 M.U. LOSSIEMOUTH
40 11.9.43 W4852 LANCASTER MK-I 28 M.U. LLANDOW
41 17.9.43 ED445 LANCASTER MK III 46 M.U. LOSSIEMOUTH
42 21.9.43 LM310 LANCASTER MK-I 5 M.U. KEMBLE
43 18.10.43 R5552 LANCASTER MK-I 20 M.U. ASTON DOWN
44 18.10.43 W4899 LANCASTER MK-I 38 M.U. LLANDOW
45 21.10.43 ED623 LANCASTER MK-III 46 M.U. LOSSIEMOUTH
46 30.10.43 W4941 LANCASTER MK-I 38 M.U. LLANDOW
47 15.11.43 L7579 LANCASTER MK-I 20 M.U. ASTON DOWN
48 22.11.43 W5006 LANCASTER MK-III 38 M.U. LLANDOW
49 23.11.43 ED411 LANCASTER MK-I 46 M.U. LOSSIEMOUTH
50 26.11.43 R5734 LANCASTER MK-I 20 M.U. ASTON DOWN
51 30.11.43 R5862 LANCASTER MK-I 46 M.U. LOSSIEMOUTH
52 30.11.43 W4380 LANCASTER MK-I 20 M.U. ASTON DOWN
53 20.12.43 W4127 LANCASTER MK-I 46 M.U. LOSSIEMOUTH
54 14.1.44 ED430 LANCASTER MK-I 46 M.U. LOSSIEMOUTH
55 21.1.44 L7541 LANCASTER MK0I 46 M.U. LOSSIEMOUTH.
56 27.1.44 EE148 LANCASTER MK III 20 M.U. ASTON DOWN
57 30.1.44 L7527 LANCASTER MK.I 20 M.U. ASTON DOWN.
58 7.2.44 EE174 LANCASTER MK.III 38 M.U. LLANDOW
59 5.2.44 ED395 LANCASTER MK.III 46 M.U. LOSSIEMOUTH
60 15.9.44 JA695 LANCASTER MK.III 5 M.U. KEMBLE
61 20.2.44 W4158 LANCASTER MK.I 20 M.U. ASTON DOWN
62 2.3.44 R5625 LANCASTER MK.I 38 M.U. LLANDOW
63 15.3.44 R5845 LANCASTER MK.I 46 M.U. LOSSIEMOUTH
64 17.3.44 ED802 LANCASTER MK.III 38 M.U. LLANDOW
65 25.3.44 JB125 LANCASTER MK.III 5 M.U. KEMBLE
66 26.3.44 DV175 MK.III 5 M.U. KEMBLE
67 3.4.44. W4891 LANCASTER MK-I 5 M.U. KEMBLE
68 5.4.44 W 4249 LANCASTER MK-I 38 M.U. LLANDOW.
[Page break]
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69 9.4.44 R 5733 LANCASTER MK-I 5 M.U. KEMBLE
70 15.4.44 R 5609 LANCASTER MK-I 38 M.U. LLANDOW
71 22.4.44 LM368 LANCASTER MK-III 46 M.U. LOSSIEMOUTH
72 26.4.44 EE 124 LANCASTER MK-III 5 M.U. KEMBLE
73 27.4.44 ED 382 LANCASTER MK I 5 MU.U. KEMBLE
74 30.4.44 DV286 LANCASTER MK III 38 M.U. LLANDOW
75 9.5.44 DV 310 LANCASTER MK I 38 M.U. LLANDOW
76 9.5.44 W4900 LANCASTER MK I 38 M.U. LLANDOW
77 16.5.44 R5693 LANCASTER MK I 46 M.U. LOSSIEMOUTH
78 17.5.44 JB 351 LANCASTER MK III 5 M.U. KEMBLE
79 19.5.44 ED 324 LANCASTER MK I 5 M.U. KEMBLE
80 20.5.44 DV200 LANCASTER MK III 38 M.U. LLANDOW
81 27.5.44 W4883 LANCASTER MK I 38 M.U. LLANDOW
82 27.5.44 ED 602 LANCASTER MK III 38 M.U. LLANDOW
83 27.5.44 DV161 LANCASTER MK III 38 M.U. LLANDOW
84 31.5.44 JB116 LANCASTER MK III 46 M.U. LOSSIEMOUTH
85 7.6.44 R5505 LANCASTER MK-I 38 M.U. LLANDOW
86 8.6.44 LM375 LANCASTER MK III 5 M.U. KEMBLE
87 12.6.44 JB561 LANCASTER MK III 5 M.U. KEMBLE
88 13.6.44 JB475 LANCASTER MK III 5 M.U. KEMBLE
89 16.6.44 DV335 LANCASTER MK I 46 M.U LOSSIEMOUTH
90 18.6.44 W4993 LANCASTER MK III 38 M.U LLANDOW
91 27.6.44 JA684 LANCASTER MK III 38 M.U. LLANDOW
92 29.6.44 DV171 LANCASTER MK III 46 M.U LOSSIEMOUTH
93 29.6.44 ME584 LANCASTER MK.I 46 M.U. LOSSIEMOUTH
94 5.7.44 DS 792 LANCASTER MK.II 46 M.U. LOSSIEMOUTH
95 7.7.44 LM391 LANCASTER MK III 38 M.U. LLANDOW
96 9.7.44 LL 786 LANCASTER MK I 5 M.U. KEMBLE
97 12.7.44 DS605 LANCASTER MK.II 38 M.U. LLANDOW
98 14.7.44 DV176 LANCASTER MK III 5 M.U. KEMBLE
99 23.7.44 JB374 LANCASTER MK III 46 M.U. LOSSIEMOUTH
100 23.4.44 DS 714 LANCASTER MK.II 5 M.U. KEMBLE
101 26.7.44 ED 940 LANCASTER MK III 38 M.U. LLANDOW
102 27.7.44 JA 876 LANCASTER MK III 46 M.U. LOSSIEMOUTH
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103 31.7.44 LM [deleted 348 [/deleted] 438 LANCASTER MK-III 46 M.U. LOSSIEMOUTH
104 31.7.44 JA908 LANCASTER MK-III 5 M.U. KEMBLE
105 3.8.44 JB718 LANCASTER MK-III 5 M.U. KEMBLE
106 5.8.44 LL742 LANCASTER MK-I 38 M.U. LLANDOW
107 6.8.44 R5658 LANCASTER MK-I 38 M.U. LLANDOW
108 8.8.44 LL 626 LANCASTER MK.II. 5 M.U. KEMBLE
109 14.8.44 W 4197 LANCASTER MK.I 46 M.U LOSSIEMOUTH
110 17.8.44 R 5508 LANCASTER MK.I 46 M.U. LOSSIEMOUTH
111 18.8.44 ED631 LANCASTER MK.I 38 M.U. LLANDOW
112 24.8.44 R 5503 LANCASTER MK.I 38 M.U. LLANDOW
113 27.8.44 JB410 LANCASTER MK-III 46 M.U. LOSSIEMOUTH
114 31.8.44 DS783 LANCASTER MK-II 5 M.U. KEMBLE.
115 31.8.44 ND623 LANCASTER MK-III FLIGHT REFUELLING STAVERTON.
116 8.9.44 ND572 LANCASTER MK-III 38 M.U. LLANDOW
117 9.9.44 JB 185 LANCASTER MK-III 46 M.U. LOSSIEMOUTH
118 16.9.44 ND 793 LANCASTER MK-III FLIGHT REFUELLING STAVERTON
119 21.9.44 JB 699 LANCASTER MK-III 5 M.U. KEMBLE
120 24.9.44 LL 865 LANCASTER MK-III 38 M.U. LLANDOW
121 12.9.44 JB613 LANCASTER MK-III 38 M.U. LLANDOW
122 14.9.44 ND385 LANCASTER MK-III 38 M.U. LLANDOW
123 27.9.44 ME 644 LANCASTER MK-I 38 M.U. LLANDOW
124 7.10.44 PB 118 LANCASTER MK III 46 M.U. LOSSIEMOUTH
125 7.10.44 LM 639 LANCASTER MK III FLIGHT REFUELLING - STAVERTON
126 14.10.44 ND 442 LANCASTER MK III 5 M.U. KEMBLE
127 14.10.44 ND 656 LANCASTER MK III 38 M.U. LLANDOW
128 17.10.44 LL 646 LANCASTER MK-II 46 M.U. LOSSIEMOUTH
129 27.10.44 ME 719 LANCASTER MK I 5 M.U. KEMBLE
130 27.10.44 LL907 LANCASTER MK I 38 M.U. LLANDOW
131 2.11.44 LM460 LANCASTER MK.III 38 M.U. LLANDOW
132 2.11.44 R5733 LANCASTER MK.I 46 M.U. LOSSIEMOUTH
133 6.11.44 LM 192 LANCASTER MK.I 46 M.U. LOSSIEMOUTH
134 6.11.44 ND 909 LANCASTER MK III 38 M.U. LLANDOW
135 10.11.44 ND965 LANCASTER MK III 46 M.U. LOSSIEMOUTH
136 15.11.44 W 4821 LANCASTER MK I 38 M.U. LLANDOW
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137 20.11.44 ME759 LANCASTER MK-I. 46 M.U. LOSSIEMOUTH
138 17.12.44 DS 711 LANCASTER MK-II. 38 M.U. LLANDOW
139 3.12.44 R5868 (S FOR “SUGAR”) LANCASTER MK I. 467 SQDN WADDINGTON.
140 8.12.44 LM590 LANCASTER MK-III 1669 CON. UNIT. LANGAR
141 17.12.44 LM 680 LANCASTER MK-III 38 M.U. LLANDOW
142 20.12.44 DV 246 LANCASTER MK-III 46 M.U. LOSSIEMOUTH
143 3.1.45 PD 218 LANCASTER MK.I 46 M.U. LOSSIEMOUTH
144 7.1.45 ME 847 LANCASTER MK.I 46 M.U. LOSSIEMOUTH
145 7.1.45 PD 209 LANCASTER MK.I 38 M.U. LLANDOW
146 14.1.45 LM 591 LANCASTER MK-III E.C.D. UNIT. WESTCOTT.
147 14.1.45 R5507 LANCASTER MK-I 38 M.U. LLANDOW
148 27.1.45 HK 607 LANCASTER MK-I 1654 CON. UNIT. WIGSLEY.
149 27.1.45 JB 319 LANCASTER MK-III 1654 CON. UNIT. WIGSLEY
150 28.1.45 PD 219 LANCASTER MK-I 1654 CON. UNIT. WIGSLEY
151 28.1.45 PD 291 LANCASTER MK-I 1660 CON. UNIT. SWINDERBY.
152 1.2.45 LL 795 LANCASTER MK-I 1660 CON. UNIT. SWINDERBY
153 1.2.45 NN 713 LANCASTER MK-I 1660 CON. UNIT. SWINDERBY
154 1.2.45 ND 991 LANCASTER MK-III FLIGHT REFUELLING STAVERTON
155 10.2.45 PB 481 LANCASTER MK-III 5 L.F.S. SYERSTON
156 12.2.45 PB 420 LANCASTER MK-III 1660 CON. UNIT. SWINDERBY
157 19.2.45 PB 248 LANCASTER MK-III 5 L.F.S. SYERSTON.
158 19.2.45 LM 748 LANCASTER MK-III 1654 CON. UNIT. WIGSLEY
159 20.2.45 LM 681 LANCASTER MK-III FLIGHT REFUELLING. STAVERTON
160 20.2.45 L 7580 LANCASTER MK I 1668 CON. UNIT. BOTTESFORD.
161 22.2.45 PB 307 LANCASTER MK III 1667 CON. UNIT. SANDTOFT
162 28.2.45 ME 848 LANCASTER MK.I 103 SQDN ELSHAM WOLDS.
163 28.2.45 PB 424 LANCASTER MK III 15 SQDN. MILDENHALL.
164 2.3.45 LM 160 LANCASTER MK.I 300 SQDN. FALDINGWORTH
165 8.3.45 W4231 LANCASTER MK.I 1651 CON. UNIT. WOOLFOX LODGE
166 9.3.45 L 7582 LANCASTER MK.I 1651 CON. UNIT. WOOLFOX LODGE
167 10.3.45 LM288 LANCASTER MK.I B.C.I.S. FINNINGLEY
168 16.3.45 ND 992 LANCASTER MK III 227 SQDN BALDERTON
169 19.3.45 ND 509 LANCASTER MK III 61 SQDN SKELLINGTHORPE
170 18.3.45 PD 285 LANCASTER MK.I. 50 SQDN SKELLINGTHORPE.
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171 22.3.45 PD343 LANCASTER MK I. 166 SQDN KIRMINGTON
172 26.3.45 LM 689 LANCASTER MK.III 166 SQDN KIRMINGTON
173 27.3.45 ND 521 LANCASTER MK.III 460 SQDN BINBROOK
174 27.3.45 LM 678 LANCASTER MK.III 227 SQDN BALDERTON.
175 27.3.45 LM 721 LANCASTER MK.III 150 SQDN HEMSWELL
176 28.3.45 PB 360 LANCASTER MK.III 57 SQDN EAST KIRKBY
177 30.3.45 PB 532 LANCASTER MK.III 550 SQDN NORTH KILLINGHOLME
178 7.4.45 NN 748 LANCASTER MK.I 625 SQDN KELSTERN
179 7.4.45 PD 198 LANCASTER MK.I 103 SQDN ELSHAM WOLDS
180 9.4.45 LM 651 LANCASTER MK.III 427 SQDN LEEMING BAR.
181 11.4.45 W4154 LANCASTER MK.I 46 M.U. LOSSIEMOUTH
182 11.4.45 LM727 LANCASTER MK.III 550 SQDN NORTH KILLINGHOLME.
183 15.4.45 PD 324 LANCASTER MK.I 427 SQDN LEEMING BAR
184 19.4.45 PB 615 LANCASTER MK.III 46 M.U. LOSSIEMOUTH
185 20.4.45 HK 657 LANCASTER MK.I 46 M.U. LOSSIEMOUTH
186 21.4.45 PB 454 LANCASTER MK.III 46 M.U. LOSSIEMOUTH
187 25.4.45 ED 767 LANCASTER MK.III 46 M.U. LOSSIEMOUTH
188 30.4.45 HK 614 LANCASTER MK.I 46 M.U. LOSSIEMOUTH
189 1.5.45 JB646 LANCASTER MK.III 46 M.U. LOSSIEMOUTH
190 3.5.45 NG 366 LANCASTER MK.I 46 M.U. LOSSIEMOUTH.
191 4.5.45 PD 281 LANCASTER MK.I 46 M.U. LOSSIEMOUTH
192 10.5.45 PD 348 LANCASTER MK.I 46 M.U. LOSSIEMOUTH
193 10.5.45 W4263 LANCASTER MK.I 46 M.U. LOSSIEMOUTH
194 11.5.45 ND 855 MK.III 46 M.U. LOSSIEMOUTH
195 12.5.45 JA 868 LANCASTER MK.III 46 M.U. LOSSIEMOUTH
196 16.5.45 NG 124 LANCASTER MK.I 46 M.U. LOSSIEMOUTH
197 24.5.45 NG 195 LANCASTER MK.I 46 M.U. LOSSIEMOUTH
198 29.5.45 NG 288 LANCASTER MK.I 46 M.U. LOSSIEMOUTH
199 29.5.45 NG 490 LANCASTER MK.I 46 M.U. LOSSIEMOUTH
200 29.5.45 PB 847 LANCASTER MK.I 38 M.U. LLANDOW
201 31.5.45 PD 362 LANCASTER MK.I 38 M.U. LLANDOW
202 1.6.45 HK 709 LANCASTER MK.I 38 M.U. LLANDOW
203 4.6.45 PD 384 LANCASTER MK.I 5 M.U. KEMBLE
204 7.6.45 PB 464 LANCASTER MK III 5 M.U. KEMBLE
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205 13.6.45 JB 718 LANCASTER MK.III 38 M.U. LLANDOW
206 15.6.45 ME 378 LANCASTER MK.III 38 M.U. LLANDOW
207 15.6.45 PB 679 LANCASTER MK.III 10 M.U. HULLAVINGTON
208 19.6.45 R 5730 LANCASTER MK-I 10 M.U. HULLAVINGTON.
209 23.6.45 NG 359 LANCASTER MK-I 20 M.U. ASTON DOWN.
210 26.6.45 NF 910 LANCASTER MK.I 15 M.U. WROUGHTON
211 26.6.45 PD 323 LANCASTER MK-I 38 M.U. LLANDOW
212 2.7.45 LM224 LANCASTER MK-I EANS. SHAWBURY
213 3.7.45 PB 760 LANCASTER MK-I 10 M.U. HULLAVINGTON
214 9.7.45 W 4980 LANCASTER MK-I 20 M.U. ASTON DOWN
215 12.7.45 PB 758 LANCASTER MK-III C.R.D. WEST FREUGH.
216 13.7.45 NG 278 LANCASTER MK-I 20 M.U. ASTON DOWN
217 13.7.45 ED 611 LANCASTER MK-III CRD WEST FREUGH.
218 20.7.45 JA 962 LANCASTER MK-III 10 M.U. HULLAVINGTON.
219 23.7.45 HK 755 LANCASTER MK I. 10 M.U. HULLAVINGTON.
220 25.7.45 MW111 YORK C.MK.I. 511 SQDN LYNEHAM
221 27.7.45 PB420 LANCASTER MK.III C.R.D. WEST FREUGH.
222 8.8.45 RA 507 LANCASTER MK.I 10 M.U. HULLAVINGTON
223 14.8.45 PD 349 LANCASTER MK.I 38 M.U. LLANDOW
224 14.8.45 SW 243 LANCASTER MK.I 38 M.U. LLANDOW
225 27.8.45 PP 692 LANCASTER MK.I 5 M.U. KEMBLE
226 27.8.45 NX 548 LANCASTER MK.I 5 M.U. KEMBLE
227 21.8.45 PD401 LANCASTER MK.I 20 M.U. ASTON DOWN.
228 31.8.45 NN769 LANCASTER MK.I 20 M.U. ASTON DOWN
229 6.9.45 NG 245 LANCASTER MK.I 15 M.U. WROUGHTON
230 9.9.45 MW 110 YORK C.MK.I 511 SQDN. LYNEHAM.
231 13.9.45 NG 293 LANCASTER MK I 46 M.U. LOSSIEMOUTH
232 17.9.45 W 4995 LANCASTER MK I 5 M.U. KEMBLE
233 25.9.45 HK702 LANCASTER MK I 46 M.U. LOSSIEMOUTH
234 3.10.45 LM266 LANCASTER MK I 46 M.U. LOSSIEMOUTH
235 13.10.45 NG 196 LANCASTER MK I 46 M.U. LOSSIEMOUTH
236 18.10.45 MW 120 YORK C.MK.I. 511 SQDN. LYNEHAM.
237 19.10.45 W4115 LANCASTER MK-I 46 M.U. LOSSIEMOUTH
238 19.10.45 RF210 LANCASTER MK III 38 M.U. LLANDOW.
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239 22.10.45 LV 633 YORK. 3rd [circled] P [/circled] “Ascalon” 511 SQDN LYNEHAM
240 13.11.45 JA 922 LANCASTER MK.III 38 M.U. LLANDOW
241 13.11.45 NG 397 LANCASTER MK I 39 M.U. COLERNE.
242 16.11.45 PA 288 LANCASTER MK I 5 M.U. KEMBLE.
243 13.12.45 ED 623 LANCASTER MK III 39 M.U. COLERNE
244 13.12.45 W 4950 LANCASTER MK I. 5 M.U. KEMBLE
245 13.12.45 PB752 LANCASTER MK I C.R.D. BRACEBRIDGE HEATH
246 17.12.45 MW101 YORK C.MK.I. 511 SQDN LYNEHAM.
247 27.12.45 MW128 YORK C.MK.I. 511 SQDN LYNEHAM
248 4.1.46 ME537 LANCASTER MK-III 38 M.U. LLANDOW
249 8.1.46 PA232 LANCASTER MK-I R.W.E. WATTON
250 10.1.46 ME760 LANCASTER MK-I 39 M.U. COLERNE
251 17.1.46 ND 929 LANCASTER MK-III 39 M.U. COLERNE.
252 28.1.46 MW100 YORK C.MK.I. (1st Prod) 511 SQDN LYNEHAM
253 29.1.46 PD381 LANCASTER MK I R.W.E. WATTON
254 7.2.46 ED 607 LANCASTER MK III R.W.E. WATTON
255 7.2.45 ND979 LANCASTER MK III 22 M.U. SILLOTH
256 9.2.46 MW 125 YORK C.MK.I 218 M.U. COLERNE
257 9.2.46 RE 137 LANCASTER MK.III C.R.D.-A.S.T. HAMBLE
258 21.2.46 PB 596 LANCASTER MK.III C.R.D. WEST FREUGH.
259 28.2.46 ME429 LANCASTER MK.III 22 M.U. SILLOTH
260 25.2.46 RE404 LINCOLN B.MK.2 RAF MARHAM
261 7.3.46 ME 374 LANCASTER MK I R.I.V.E. WATTON
262 20.3.46 RE378 LINCOLN B.MK.2. R.A.F. DEFFORD
263 20.3.46 RE 380 LINCOLN B.MK.2 ENGLISH ELECTRIC PRESTON
264 26.3.46 RE 379 LINCOLN B.MK.2 E.E.
265 26.3.46 MW 127 YORK C.MK.I. 218 MU COLERNE.
266 26.3.46 LM681 LANCASTER MK III CRD STAVERTON
267 11.4.46 RE 377 LINCOLN B.MK.2 E.E.
268 18.4.46 MW139 YORK C.MK.I 218 M.U. COLERNE
269 23.4.46 RE375 LINCOLN B.MK.2 5 M.U KEMBLE
270 23.4.46 RE376 LINCOLN B.MK.2 5 M.U. KEMBLE
271 1.5.46 MW123 WORK C.MK.I 218 M.U. COLERNE
272 2.5.46 RE374 LINCOLN B.MK.2. E.E.
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273 10.5.46 RE 373 LINCOLN B.MK.2 ENGLISH ELECTRIC.
274 16.5.46 RE 289 LINCOLN B.MK.2 E.E.
275 22.5.46 RE 307 LINCOLN B.MK.2 E.E.
276 23.5.46 RE 372 LINCOLN B.MK.2 E.E.
277 23.5.46 MW 104 YORK C.MK.I 218 M.U. COLERNE
278 28.5.46 RE 370 LINCOLN B.MK2. E.E.
279 31.5.46 RE 371 LINCOLN B.MK.2. E.E.
280 5.6.46 RE 369 LINCOLN B.MK.2. E.E.
281 5.6.46 RE 302 LINCOLN B.MK.2. E.E.
282 6.6.46 RE 312 LINCOLN B.MK.2. E.E.
283 12.6.46 MW 138 YORK C.MK I 218 M.U. COLERNE
284 14.6.46 RE 305 LINCOLN B.MK.2. E.E.
285 21.6.46 MW 122 YORK C.MK.I 22 M.U. SILLOTH
286 24.6.46 RE 317 LINCOLN B.MK.2. E.E.
287 26.6.46 RE 313 LINCOLN B.MK.2. E.E.
288 1.7.46 RE 315 LINCOLN B.MK.2. E.E.
289 12.7.46 RE 417 LINCOLN B.MK.2. E.E.
290 15.7.46 RE 394 LINCOLN B.MK.2. E.E.
291 16.7.46 RE 338 LINCOLN B.MK.2. E.E.
292 16.7.46 RE 393 LINCIOLN B.MK.2. E.E.
293 19.7.46 RE 395 LINCOLN B.MK.2. E.E.
294 19.7.46 RE 396 LINCOLN B.MK.2. E.E.
295 23.7.46 RE 339 LINCOLN B.MK.2. E.E.
296 25.7.46 RE 415 LINCOLN B.MK.2. E.E.
297 25.7.46 RE 416 LINCOLN B.MK.2. E.E.
298 25.7.46 RE 418 LINCOLN B.MK.2. E.E.
299 25.7.46 MW 167 YORK.MK.I 22 M.U. SILLOTH
300 26.7.46 RE 340 LINCOLN B.MK.2 E.E.
301 26.7.46 RE 341 LINCOLN B.MK.2 E.E.
302 8.8.46 RE 419 LINCOLN B.MK.2 E.E.
303 20.8.46 RE 420 LINCOLN B.MK.2 E.E.
304 20.8.46 RE 421 LINCOLN B.MK.2 E.E.
305 23.8.46 RE 367 LINCOLN B.MK.2 E.E.
306 26.8.46 RE 368 LINCOLN B.MK.2 E.E.
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307 28.8.46 RE 365 LINCOLN B.MK.2 ENGLISH ELECTRIC
308 30.8.46 RE 294 LINCOLN B.MK.2 E.E.
309 9.9.46 RE 366 LINCOLN B.MK.2 E.E.
310 12.9.46 RE 364 LINCOLN B.MK.2. E.E.
311 16.9.46 RE 414 LINCOLN B.MK.2 E.E.
312 17.9.46 MW 142 YORK C.MK.I 22 M.U. SILLOTH.
313 19.9.46 RE 422 LINCOLN B.MK.2 E.E.
314 19.9.46 RE 295 LINCOLN B.MK.2 E.E.
315 23.9.46 RE423 LINCOLN B.MK.2 E.E.
316 2.10.46 RE 296 LINCOLN B.MK.2 E.E.
317 4.10.46 RE 360 LINCOLN B.MK.2 E.E.
318 11.10.46 MW102 YORK C.MK I R.A.F. BASSINGBOURNE.
319 16.10.46 RE 424 LINCOLN B.MK.2 37 M.U. BURTONWOOD
320 18.10.46 RE 297 LINCOLN B.MK.2 E.E.
321 22.10.46 MW137 YORK C.MK-1 C.R.D. WOODFORD
322 23.10.46 MW106 YORK C.MK-1 22 M.U. SILLOTH
323 23.10.46 RE 299 LINCOLN B.MK.2 37 M.U. BURTONWOOD
324 25.10.46 RE 301 LINCOLN B.MK.2 37 M.U. BURTONWOOD
325 8.11.46 RE 361 LINCOLN B.MK.2 37 M.U. BURTONWOOD
326 8.11.46 RE 399 LINCOLN B.MK.2 37 M.U. BURTONWOOD
327 8.11.46 RE 397 LINCOLN B.MK.2 37 M.U. BURTONWOOD
328 8.11.46 MW181 YORK C.MK-I 22 M.U. SILLOTH
329 4.12.46 RE 300 LINCOLN B.MK.2 37 M.U. BURTONWOOD
330 18.12.46 MW 325 YORK C.MK.I RAF BASSINGBOURNE.
331 16.1.47 RE 359 LINCOLN B.MK.2 15 M.U. WROUGHTON
332 16.1.47 RE 413 LINCOLN B.MK.2 15 M.U. WROUGHTON
333 23.1.47 MW 130 YORK C.MK.I. 22 M.U. SILLOTH
334 23.1.47 RE 400 LINCOLN B.MK.2 15 M.U. WROUGHTON
335 20.2.47 RE 364 LINCOLN B.MK.2 (Aries II) E.A.N.S. SHAWBURY
336 20.3.47 RE 362 LINCOLN B.MK.2 15 M.U. WROUGHTON.
337 20.3.47 RE 363 LINCOLN B.MK.2 15 M.U. WROUGHTON
338 10.4.47 RE 398 LINCOLN B.MK.2 37 M.U. BURTONWOOD
339 11.4.47 RE 411 LINCOLN B.MK.2 37 M.U. BURTONWOOD
340 11.4.47 MW135 YORK C.MK.I 22 M.U. SILLOTH
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341 15.4.47 RE345 LINCOLN B.MK.2 ENGLISH ELECTRIC.
342 18.4.47 LV-ACV. LANCASTRIAN C.MK.4 F.A.M.A. ARGENTINE.
343 23.4.47 LV-ACU LANCASTRIAN C.MK.4 F.A.M.A. ARGENTINE.
344 26.4.47 MW 169 YORK C.MK.I. ORLY (DE-GAULLE)
345 29.4.47 RE 358 LINCON B.MK.2 EE.
346 29.4.47 RE 412 LINCOLN B.MK.2 E.E.
347 6.5.47 RE414 LINCOLN B.MK.2 (Mercury II) E.R.S. DEBDEN.
348 19.5.47 MW173 YORK C.MK.I AST HAMBLE
349 28.5.47 RE 342 LINCOLN B.MK.2 38 M.U. LLANDOW
350 28.5.47 RE 344 LINCOLN B.MK.2 38 M.U. LLANDOW
351 28.5.47 RE 357 LINCOLN B.MK.2 38 M.U. LLANDOW
352 3.6.47 MW 105 YORK C.MK.I A.S.T. HAMBLE
353 3.6.47 MW 200 YORK C.MK.I A.S.T. HAMBLE
354 19.6.47 G-AHEI YORK C.MK.I SKYWAYS DUNSFOLD.
355 20.6.47 MW 144 YORK C.MK.I. A.S.T. HAMBLE
356 21.7.47 MW 146 YORK C.MK.I. A.S.T. HAMBLE
357 15.8.47 G-AHLV YORK C.MK.I. SKYWAYS DUNSFOLD.
358 8.9.47 MW 171 YORK C.MK.I A.S.T. HAMBLE
359 17.9.47 B-001 (RE 343) LINCOLN B.MK.2 ARGENTINE.
360 9.10.47 RE 348 LINCOLN B.MK.2 E.E.
361 15.10.47 MW109 YORK C.MK.I. 22 M.U. SILLOTH.
362 23.10.47 RE 347 LINCOLN B.MK.2 E.E.
363 31.10.47 MW174 YORK C.MK.I 511 SQDN LYNEHAM.
364 24.11.47 B-004 (RE351) LINCOLN B.MK.2 ARGENTINE.
365 24.11.47 B-009 (RE 356) LINCOLN B.MK.2 ARGENTINE.
366 25.11.47 B-010 (RE408) LINCOLN B.MK.2 ARGENTINE.
367 25.11.47 B-012 (RE410) LINCOLN B.MK.2 ARGENTINE
368 9.12.47 B-002 (RE349) LINCOLN B.MK.2 ARGENTINE.
369 14.12.47 B-011 (RE409) LINCOLN B.MK.2 ARGENTINE.
370 5.1.48 MW 145 YORK C.MK.I. RAF HONINGTON.
371 5.1.48 MW 165 YORK C.MK.I. RAF HONINGTON
372 6.1.48 MW 140 YORK C.MK.I. 24 SQDN. BASSINGBOURN
373 8.1.48 RE407 LINCOLN B.MK.2 E.E.
374 20.1.48 RE406 LINCOLN B.MK.2 E.E.
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375 4.2.48 RE 322 LINCOLN B.MK.2 E.E.
376 4.2.48 RE 325 LINCOLN B.MK.2 E.E.
377 5.2.48 RE 346 LINCOLN B.MK.2 E.E.
378 12.2.48 MW 141 YORK C.MK.I AST HAMBLE
379 12.2.48 MW 186 YORK C.MK.I R.A.F. HONINGTON
380 13.2.48 B-007 (RE354) LINCOLN B.MK.2 ARGENTINE.
381 13.2.48 B-005 (RE352) LINCOLN B.MK.2 ARGENTINE
382 13.2.48 B-008 (RE355) LINCOLN B.MK.2 ARGENTINE
383 25.2.48 RE 324 LINCOLN B.MK.2 E.E.
384 27.2.48 B-006 (RE353) LINCOLN B.MK.2 ARGENTINE
385 8.3.48 RE405 LINCOLN B.MK.2 E.E.
386 8.3.48 RE298 LINCOLN B.MK.2 E.E.
387 9.3.48 MW185 YORK C.MK.1 R.A.F. HONINGTON
388 10.3.48 RE 323 LINCOLN B.MK2 E.E.
389 22.3.48 RE402 LINCOLN B.MK.2 E.E.
390 30.3.48 RE401 LINCOLN B.MK.2 E.E.
391 1.4.48 RE 403 LINCOLN B.MK.2 E.E.
392 1.4.48 RE 321 LINCOLN B.MK.2 E.E.
393 5.4.48 RE 319 LINCOLN B.MK.2 E.E.
394 9.4.48 MW183 YORK C.MK.I 22 M.U. SILLOTH
395 14.4.48 MW 112 YORK C.MK.1 ROLLS ROYCE HUCKNALL.
396 23.4.48 RE 320 LINCOLN B.MK.2 E.E.
397 4.5.48 RE 316 LINCOLN B.MK.2 E.E.
398 5.5.48 MW 246 YORK C.MK.I 22 M.U. SILLOTH.
399 6.5.48 RE 318 LINCOLN B.MK.2 E.E.
400 11.5.48 RE 311 LINCOLN B.MK.2 E.E.
401 11.5.48 B-031 (PA 375) LANCASTER MK.I. ARGENTINE
402 28.5.48 RE314 LINCOLN B.MK.2 E.E.
403 3.6.48 RE 309 LINCOLN B.MK.2 E.E.
404 4.6.48 RE 306 LINCOLN B.MK.2 E.E.
405 7.6.48 MW 177 YORK C.MK.I. 22 M.U. SILLOTH
406 11.6.48 MW100 YORK C.MK.I (1st Prod) R.A.F. BASSINGBOURNE.
407 1.7.48 RE308 LINCOLN B.MK.2. E.E.
408 2.7.48 MW163 YORK C.MK.I. 22 M.U. SILLOTH
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409 15.7.48 RE303 LINCOLN B.MK.2 E.E.
410 12.8.48 MW101 YORK C.MK.I 24 SQDN. BASSINGBOURNE
411 7.9.48 MW195 YORK C.MK.I RAF ABINGDON
412 22.9.48 RE292 LINCOLN B.MK.2. E.E.
413 24.9.48 MW 132 YORK C.MK.I. R.A.F. ABINGDON
414 29.9.48 RE 310 LINCOLN B.MK.2 E.E.
415 29.9.48 RE 293 LINCOLN B.MK.2 E.E.
416 1.10.48 MW 187 YORK C.MK.I R.A.F LYNEHAM.
417 1.10.48 RE 367 LINCOLN B.MK.2 32 M.U. ST. ATHAN
418 12.10.48 RE 304 LINCOLN B.MK.2 E.E.
419 13.10.48 MW 128 YORK C.MK.I R.A.F. LYNEHAM.
420 13.10.48 MW 110 YORK C.MK.I R.A.F. ABINGDON.
421 5.11.48 B-033 LANCASTER MK.I ARGENTINE.
422 5.11.48 B-044 LANCASTER MK.I. ARGENTINE.
423 12.11.48 B-043 LANCASTER MK.I ARGENTINE.
424 12.11.48 B-032 LANCASTER MK.I. ARGENTINE
425 18..11.48 RE 291 LINCOLN B.MK.2 E.E.
426 18.11.48 SS 715 LINCOLN B.MK.2 E.E.
427 19.11.48 B-038 LANCASTER MK.I ARGENTINE
428 20.11.48 B-035 LANCASTER MK.I ARGENTINE
429 2.11.48 B-045 LANCASTER MK.I ARGENTINE
430 4.12.48 B-042 LANCASTER MK.I ARGENTINE.
431 11.12.48 B-039 LANCASTER MK.I ARGENTINE
432 3.12.48 MW 178 YORK C.MK.I. R.A.F. LYNEHAM
433 3.12.48 MW 188 YORK C.MK.I RAF LYNEHAM
434 12.12.48 B-040 LANCASTER MK.I ARGENTINE
435 13.12.48 MW140 YORK MK.I R.A.F. BASSINGBOURNE
436 16.12.48 B-036 LANCASTER MK.I ARGENTINE.
437 17.12.48 B-034 LANCASTER MK.I ARGENTINE.
438 20.12.48 MW 143 YORK C.MK.I. R.A.F. ABINGDON
439 23.12.48 B-037 LANCASTER MK.I ARGENTINE.
440 4.1.49 B-041 LANCASTER MK.I ARGENTINE.
441 6.1.49 SS717 LINCOLN B.MK.2 E.E.
442 2.2.49 MW 193 YORK C.MK.I. R.A.F. ABINGDON
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443 24.2.49 B-003 LINCOLN B.MK.2 ARGENTINE.
444 25.2.49 MW 194 YORK C.MK.I. R.A.F. DISHFORTH
445 28.2.49 SS716 LINCOLN B.MK.2 E.E.
446 8.3.49 NX781 LANCASTER MK.I RAF SHAWBURY
447 9.3.49 LV 633 YORK MK I (3rd Proto) ”Ascalon” 22 M.U. SILLOTH
448 10.3.49 MW 239 YORK C.MK.I RA.F. DISHFORTH
449 24.3.49 MW 149 YORK C.MK.I R.A.F. LYNEHAM
450 24.3.49 MW 287 YORK C.MK.I RAF LYNEHAM
451 1.4.49 RT 684 LANCASTER MK.VII. RAF SHAWBURY
452 4.4.49 NX737 LANCASTER MK.I RAF LITTLE RISSINGTON
453 5.4.49 MW 255 YORK C.MK.1 RAF ABINGDON
454 14.4.49 MW 139 YORK C.MK.I R.A.F. BOSCOMBE DOWN
455 20.4.49 SS718 LINCOLN B.MK.2 E.E.
456 20.4.49 MW 206 YORK C.MK.I RAF ABINGDON
457 22.4.49 RF 318 LANCASTER MK.III 45 M.U. KINLOSS.
458 3.5.49 RT 689 LANCASTER MK VII R.A.F. (E.A.N.S) SHAWBURY
459 9.5.49 MW 164 YORK C.MK.I RAF DISHFORTH.
460 19.5.49 RE418 LINCOLN B.MK.2 (Theseus test-bed) RAF. LYNEHAM
461 31.5.49 MW226 YORK C.MK.I RAF ABINGDON
462 1.6.49 MW 196 YORK C.MK.I RAF ABINGDON
463 14.6.49 MW 227 YORK C.MK.I RAF LYNEHAM
464 8.7.49 MW 243 YORK C.MK.I 22 M.U. SILLOTH
465 22.7.49 NX 715 LANCASTER MK.VII RAF (E.A.N.S) SHAWBURY.
466 5.8.49 MW 291 YORK C.MK.I 22 MU SILLOTH
467 19.8.49 NX 749 LANCASTER MK.VII RAF SHAWBURY
468 19.8.49 RF503 LINCOLN B.MK.2 R.A.F. (PATHFINDERS) WYTON
469 30.8.49 MW294 YORK C.MK.I 22 M.U. SILLOTH
470 2.9.49 RF370 LINCOLN B.MK.2 R.A.F. (PATHFINDERS) WYTON.
471 5.9.49 MW 237 YORK C.MK.I 22 M.U. SILLOTH.
472 6.9.49 RF 504 LINCOLN B.MK.2 R.A.F. HEMSWELL.
473 1.9.49 RT693 LANCASTER MK VII RAF SHAWBURY
474 7.9.49 RF 398 LINCOLN B.MK.2 RA.F. WADDINGTON.
475 9.9.49 RF 396 LINCOLN B.MK.2 RAF WADDINGTON
476 13.9.49 RF506 LINCOLN B.MK.2 RAF SCAMPTON.
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477 13.9.49 RT681 LANCASTER MK VII RAF SHAWBURY
478 20.9.49 G-AHFE YORK C.MK.I. BSAA LANGLEY
479 3.10.49 NX716 LANCASTER MK.VII RAF SHAWBURY
480 10.10.49 MW236 YORK C.MK.I 22 M.U. SILLOTH
481 12.10.49 MW 167 YORK C.MK.I 22 M.U. SILLOTH.
482 12.10.49 SW 373 LANCASTER MK.I RAF (CC) ST. EVAL.
483 26.10.49 RF 307 LANCASTER MK.III RAF (CC) ST. EVAL.
484 28.10.49 MW321 YORK C.MK.I. 22 M.U- SILLOTH
485 1.11.49 RF 416 LINCOLN B.MK.2. WOODFORD
486 10.11.49 MW102 YORK C.MK.I 22 M.U. SILLOTH
487 28.11.49 RE 211 LANCASTER MK.III 45 MU. KINLOSS
488 8.12.49 MW 265 YORK C.MKI 22 M.U. SILLOTH
489 15.12.49 RF401 LINCOLN B.MK.2. 38 M.U. LLANDOW
490 15.12.49 MW 199 YORK C.MK.I R.AF. WATERBEACH.
491 22.12..49 VM701 LANCASTRIAN C.MK.2 20 M.U. ASTON DOWN
492 12.1.50 RF399 LINCOLN B.MK.2 WOODFORD
493 24.1.50 NX754 LANCASTER MK VII RAF LITTLE RISSINGTON
494 24.1.50 MW135 YORK C.MK.I 22 M.U. SILLOTH
495 10.2.50 RE 339 LINCOLN B.MK.2 B.A.C. FILTON
496 14.2.50 MW181 YORK C.MK.I 12 M.U. KIRKBRIDE
497 14.2.50 MW254 YORK C.MK.I 12 M.U. KIRKBRIDE
498 17.2.50 RE375 LINCOLN B.MK.2 RAF WADDINGTON
499 21.2.50 MW253 YORK C.MK.I 12 M.U. KIRKBRIDE
500 31.3.50 RE281 LINCOLN B.MK.2 RAF GOSPORT.
501 3.4.50 MW233 YORK C.MK.I 22 M.U. SILLOTH.
502 5.4.50 MW 162 YORK C.MK.I 22 M.U. SILLOTH.
503 31.5.50 MW 147 YORK C.MK.I 12 M.U. KIRKBRIDE
504 31.5.50 MW 232 YORK C.MK.I 15 M.U. WROUGHTON.
505 1.6.50 RF405 LINCOLN B.MK.2 R.A.F. MANBY.
506 1.6.50 RF 358 LINCOLN B.MK.2 R.A.F. MANBY.
507 6.6.50 MW203 YORK C.MK.I 22 M.U. SILLOTH.
508 15.6.50 1801 LANCASTER MK I EGYPT. VIA DUNSFOLD
509 22.6.50 80001 (G-11-29) LANCASTER MK.I SWEDEN VIA A.S.T. HAMBLE
510 30.6.50 MW144 YORK C.MK.I. 22 M.U. SILLOTH.
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511 6.7.50 1802 LANCASTER MK.I EGYPT Via DUNSFOLD
512 24.7.50 1803 LANCASTER MK.I EGYPT Via DUNSFOLD
513 24.7.50 MW286 YORK C.MK.I RAF BASSINGBOURNE
514 28.7.50 RE 380 LINCOLN B.MK 2 RAF MANBY.
515 16.8.50 1804 LANCASTER MK.I EGYPT.
516 29.8.50 1805 LANCASTER MK.I EGYPT.
517 7.9.50 MW 133 YORK C.MK.I 22 M.U. SILLOTH
518 19.9.50 1806 LANCASTER MK.I EGYPT
519 26.9.50 MW234 YORK C.MK.I 22 M.U. SILLOTH
520 3.10.50 MW136 YORK C.MK.I 22 M.U. SILLOTH
521 5.10.50 1807 LANCASTER MK.I EGYPT
522 13.10.50 RF384 LINCOLN B.MK.2 23 M.U. ALDERGROVE.
523 30.10.50 1808 LANCASTER MK.I EGYPT
524 8.11.50 MW327 YORK C.MK.I 22 M.U. SILLOTH.
525 20.11.50 1809 LANCASTER MK.I EGYPT
526 28.12.50 MW210 YORK C.MK.I 22 M.U. SILLOTH
527 28.12.50 RF411 LINCOLN B.MK.2 5 M.U. KEMBLE
528 29.12.50 MW179 YORK C.MK.I 22 M.U. SILLOTH
529 12.1.51 NX689 LANCASTER MK VII 15 M.U. WROUGHTON
530 18.1.51 MW295 YORK C.MK.I. 22 M.U. SILLOTH
531 20.2.51 MW258 YORK C.MK.I. 12 M.U. KIRKBRIDE
532 15.3.51 MW231 YORK C.MK.I. 12 M.U. KIRKBRIDE
533 13.4.51 RE294 LINCOLN B.MK.2 5 M.U. KEMBLE.
534 13.4.51 RE417 LINCOLN B.MK.2 20 M.U. ASTON DOWN
535 13.4.51 RF532 LINCOLN B.MK.2 10 MU HULLAVINGTON
536 24.4.51 RF503 LINCOLN B.MK.2 5 M.U. KEMBLE.
537 7.5.51 RF 392 LINCOLN B.MK.2 38 M.U. LLANDOW
538 8.5.51 RF481 LINCOLN B.MK.2 15 M.U. WROUGHTON
539 8.5.51 RE 365 LINCOLN B.MK.2 10 M.U. HULLAVINGTON
540 29.5.51 RE419 LINCOLN B.MK.2 5 M.U. KEMBLE
541 31.5.51 RF 422 LINCOLN B.MK.2 5 M.U. KEMBLE
542 31.5.51 RF322 LINCOLN B.MK.2 RAF ST. EVAL
543 4.6.51 RF410 LINCOLN B.MK.2 20 M.U. ASTON DOWN
544 25.6.51 RF 395 LINCOLN B.MK.2 20 M.U. ASTON DOWN.
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545 27.6.51 RF 516 LINCOLN B.MK.2 5 M.U. KEMBLE
546 27.6.51 RF423 LINCOLN B.MK.2 20 M.U. ASTON DOWN
547 4.7.51 RF 458 LINCOLN B.MK.2 15 M.U. WROUGHTON
548 10.7.51 RE 341 LINCOLN B.MK.2 20 M.U. ASTON DOWN
549 23.7.51 RE 222 LANCASTER A.S.R. III R.A.F. ST. MAWGAN
550 23.7.51 RF 418 LINCOLN B.MK.2 5 M.U. KEMBLE
551 25.7.51 RF 400 LINCOLN B.MK.2 15 M.U. WROUGHTON
552 27.7.51 RF 514 LINCOLN B.MK.2 15 M.U. WROUGHTON
553 27.7.51 RF 427 LINCOLN B.MK.2 15 M.U. WROUGHTON
554 27.7.51 RF 529 LINCOLN B.MK.2 5 M.U. KEMBLE.
555 15.8.51 RE 366 LINCOLN B.MK.2 38 M.U. LLANDOW
556 20.8.51 RE 369 LINCOLN B.MK.2 39 M.U. COLERNE.
557 23.8.51 RE 396 LINCOLN B.MK.2 45 M.U. KINLOSS
558 3.9.51 RF520 LINCOLN B.MK.2 15 M.U. WROUGHTON
559 19.9.51 RF 515 LINCOLN B.MK.2 5 M.U. KEMBLE.
560 19.9.51 RF 394 LINCOLN B.MK.2 20 M.U. ASTON DOWN
561 27.9.51 RF 570 LINCOLN B.MK.2 45 M.U. KINLOSS.
562 3.10.51 RF456 LINCOLN B.MK.2 20 M.U. ASTON DOWN
563 3.10.51 RF406 LINCOLN B.MK.2 5 M.U. KEMBLE.
564 10.10.51 RF464 LINCILN B.MK.2 39 M.U. COLERNE.
565 12.10.51 RF 506 LINCOLN B.MK.2 39 M.U. COLERNE.
566 18.10.51 RF 413 LINCOLN B.MK.2 10 M.U. HULLAVINGTON
567 19.11.51 RE 379 LINCOLN B.MK.2 10 M.U. HULLAVINGTON.
568 26.11.51 RF478 LINCOLN B.MK.2 38 M.U. COLERNE.
569 26.11.51 RF361 LINCOLN B.MK.2 38 M.U. LLANDOW
570 26.11.51 RE 368 LINCOLN B.MK.2 10 M.U. HULLAVINGTON
571 27.11 51 RE 376 LINCOLN B.MK.2 58 M.U. HONINGTON
572 6.12.51 RF499 LINCOLN B.MK.2 20 M.U. ASTON DOWN
573 20.12.51 RF404 LINCOLN B.MK.2 20 M.U. ASTON DOWN
574 20.12.51 RF507 LINCOLN B.MK.2 20 M.U. ASTON DOWN
575 28.12.51 RF473 LINCOLN B.MK.2 10 M.U. HULLAVINGTON
576 2.1.52 RF498 LINCOLN B.MK.2 5 M.U. KEMBLE
577 8.1.52 RF370 LINCOLN B.MK.2 38 M.U. LLANDOW
578 14.1.52 RE 305 LINCOLN B.MK.2 39 M.U. COLERNE
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579 31.1.52 RF524 LINCOLN B.MK.2 5 M.U. KEMBLE
580 11.1.52 RE289 LINCOLN B.MK.2 5 M.U. KEMBLE
581 18.1.52 RF513 LINCOLN B.MK.2 38 M.U. LLANDOW
582 18.2.52 RF502 LINCOLN B.MK.2 20 M.U. ASTON DOWN
583 22.2.52 RF 367 LINCOLN B.MK.2 20 M.U. ASTON DOWN
584 22.2.52 RF357 LINCOLN B.MK.2 20 M.U. ASTON DOWN
585 3.3.52 RF480 LINCOLN B.MK.2 15 M.U. WROUGHTON
586 4.3.52 RE 393 LINCOLN B.MK.2 10 M.U. HULLAVINGTON
587 12.3.52 W.U.17 (TW655) LANCASTER MK.I VILLA COUBLAY
588 19.3.52 RF477 LINCOLN B.MK.2 38 M.U. LLANDOW
589 5.4.52 W.U.24 (PA389) LANCASTER MK.I VILLA COUBLAY
590 9.4.52 RF5405 LINCOLN B.MK.2 38 M.U. LLANDOW
591 9.4.52 RF390 LINCOLN B.MK.2 38 M.U. LLANDOW
592 18.4.52 RF358 LINCOLN B.MK.2 20 M.U. ASTON DOWN
593 29.4.52 RA721 LINCOLN B.MK.2 20 M.U. ASTON DOWN
594 29.4.52 RE 380 LINCOLN B.MK.2 38 M.U. LLANDOW
595 2.5.52 W.U.25 (P.A.387) LANCASTER MK.I VILLA COUBLAY
596 15.5.52 RF482 LINCOLN B.MK.2 39 M.U. COLERNE
597 19.5.52 RF 362 LINCOLN B.MK.2 20 M.U. ASTON DOWN
598 28.5.52 W.U.32 (PA395) LANCASTER MK.I LAN BIHOUE
599 6.6.52 W.U.40 (PA432) LANCASTER MK.I VILLA COUBLAY
600 18.6.52 W.U.33 (PA477) LANCASTER MK.I LAN BIHOUE
601 2.7.52 RE315 LINCOLN B.MK.2 5 M.U. KEMBLE
602 2.7.52 W.U.34 (PA426) LANCASTER MK.I VILLA COUBLAY
603 8.7.52 WU52 (RA800) LANCASTER MK.I VILLA COUBLAY
604 10.7.52 RF397 LINCOLN B.MK.2 38 M.U. LLANDOW
605 18.7.52 W.U.42 (TW815) LANCASTER MK.I VILLA COUBLAY
606 24.7.52 RE 307 LINCOLN B.MK.2 5 M.U. KEMBLE
607 25.7.52 W.U.41 (TW928) LANCASTER MK.I VILLA COUBLAY
608 27.8.52 RE421 LINCOLN B.MK.2 20 M.U. ASTON DOWN
609 4.9.52 W.U.49 (RA627) LANCASTER MK.I VILLA COUBLAY.
610 4.9.52 W.U.53 (TW927) LANCASTER MK.I VILLA COUBLAY
611 17.9.52 W.U.43 (PA431) LANCASTER MK.I VILLA COUBLAY
612 3.10.52 W.U.51 (RA796) LANCASTER MK.I VILLA COUBLAY
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613 8.10.52 W.U. (RA [missing number] ) LANCASTER MK.I VILLA COUBLAY
614 9.10.52 SX935 LINCOLN B.MK.2 RAF MANBY
615 23.10.52 SX946 LINCOLN B.MK.2 RAF MANBY
616 28.10.52 WU.54 (NX668) LANCASTER MK,I VILLA COUBLAY.
617 25.11.52 RF463 LINCOLN B.MK.2 45 M.U. KINLOSS
618 18.12.52 WD 132 LINCOLN B.MK.2 5 M.U. KEMBLE.
619 31.12.52 SX955 LINCOLN B.MK.2 RAF MANBY
620 16.1.53 RE221 LANCASTER G.R.III 22 M.U. SILLOTH.
621 22.1.53 RF426 LINCOLN B.MK.2 20 M.U. ASTON DOWN
622 22.1.53 RE 395 LINCOLN B.MK.2. 15 M.U. WROUGHTON
623 27.1.53 RF364 LINCOLN B.MK.2 10 M.U. HULLAVINGTON
624 24.2.53 RF523 LINCOLN B.MK.2 20 M.U. ASTON DOWN
625 25.2.53 RF 525 LINCOLN B.MK.2 20 M.U. ASTON DOWN
626 7.3.53 SX938 LINCON B.MK.2 R.A.F. MANBY.
627 9.4.53 RE 115 LANCASTER G.R.III 20 M.U. ASTON DOWN
628 10.4.53 RF 483 LINCOLN B.MK.2 5 M.U. KEMBLE.
629 13.4.53 MW179* YORK C.MK.I. RAF BOSCOMBE DOWN
630 16.4.53 RF 517 LINCOLN B.MK.2 20 MU ASTON DOWN
631 28.4.53 MW132* YORK C.MK.I RAF ABINGDON
632 2.5.53 (LV-ZEI) (RE350) B-003 2. LINCOLNIAN Cruz del Sud ARGENTINE
633 8.5.53 RF505 LINCOLN B.MK.2 20 M.U. ASTON DOWN
634 18.5.53 RF521 LINCOLN B.MK.2 20 .M.U. ASTON DOWN
635 6.7.53 RF476 LINCOLN B.MK.2 15 M.U WROUGHTON
636 9.7.53 SW 365 LINCOLN B.MK.2 38 M.U. LLANDOW
637 23.7.53 SW 283 LANCASTER G.R.III 38 M.U. LLANDOW
638 23.7.53 RF 396 LINCOLN B.MK.2 15 M.U. WROUGHTON
639 25.8.53 RE 371 LINCOLN B.MK.2 20 M.U. ASTON DOWN
640 23.9.53 RF465 LINCOLN B.MK.2 45 M.U. KINLOSS
641 8.10.53 RF501 LINCOLN B.MK.2 20 M.U. ASTON DOWN
642 6.11.53 RF 558 LINCOLN B.MK.2 45 M.U. KINLOSS
643 19.11.53 WS 722 METEOR N.F.14. RAF. BITTESWELL.
644 27.11.53 WS718 METEOR N.F.12. RAF BITTESWELL.
645 12.11.53 FCL-01 (RT693) LANCASTER MK VII ORLY PARIS
646 29.12.53 WS717 METEOR N.F.12. 8 M.U. LITTLE RISSINGTON
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647 29.12.53 WS718 METEOR N.F.12 RAF. LITTLE RISSINGTON
648 29.12.53 WS721 METEOR N.F.12 RAF. LITTLE RISSINGTON
649 29.12.53 WS 720 METEOR N.F.12 RAF LITTLE RISSINGTON
650 8.1.54 FCL-02 (NX738) LANCASTER MK.VII ORLY PARIS
651 11.1.54 RF290 LANCASTER G.R.III 38 M.U. LLANDOW
652 11.1.54 WS723 METEOR N.F.14 15 M.U. WROUGHTON
653 11.1.54 WS730 METEOR N.F.14 15 M.U. WROUGHTON
654 11.1.54 WS 694 METEOR N.F.12 RAF LITTLE RISSINGTON
655 11.1.54 WS 698 METEOR N.F.12 15 M.U. WROUGHTON
656 11.1.54 WS 613 METEOR N.F.12 15 MU WROUGHTON
657 11.1.54 WS 716 METEOR N.F.12 15 M.U. WROUGHTON
658 11.1.54 WS 695 METEOR N.F.12 RAF LITTLE RISSINGTON
659 11.1.54 WS 697 METEOR N.F.12 RAF LITTLE RISSINGTON
660 14.1.54 WS 612 METEOR M.F.12 15 M.U. WROUGHTON
661 14.1.54 WS 736 METEOR NF.14 15 M.U. WROUGHTON
662 19.1.54 WS 622 METEOR NF 12 R.A.F. LITTLE RISSINGTON.
663 19.1.54 WS 728 METEOR NF.14 15 M.U. WROUGHTON.
664 19.1.54 WS 728 METEOR NF.14 15 M.U. WROUGHTON
665 19.1.54 WS 733 METEOR NF.14 15 M.U. WROUGHTON.
666 19.1.54 WS 734 METEOR NF.14 15 M.U. WROUGHTON.
667 19.1.54 WD 123 LINCOLN B.MK.2 RAF BOSCOME DOWN
668 27.1.54 WS 724 METEOR NF.14. RAF MANBY
669 27.1.54 RE 186 LANCASTER G.R.III RAF ST. MAWGAN
670 26.1.54 FCL-03 (RT 689) LANCASTER MK.VII ORLY PARIS
671 5.2.54 WS 727 METEOR NF.14 15 M.U, WROUGHTON
672 5.2.54 WS 725 METEOR NF.14 15 M.U. WROUGHTON
673 5.2.54 WS 602 METEOR NF.12 15 M.U. WROUGHTON
674 22.2.54 WS 696 METEOR NF.12. RAF LITTLE RISSINGTON
675 22.2.54 WS 729 METEOR NF 14 15 M.U. WROUGHTON
676 22.2.54 WS 732 METEOR NF 14 RAF LITTLE RISSINGTON
677 22.2.54 WS 737 METEOR NF 14 RAF LITTLE RISSINGTON
678 22.2.54 WS 741 METEOR NF 14 RAF LITTLE RISSINGTON
679 22.2.54 WS 746 METEOR NF 14 RAF LITTLE RISSINGTON
680 22.2.54 WS 738 METEOR NF 14 RAF LITTLE RISSINGTON
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681 22.2.54 WS 740 METEOR N.F.14 RAF LITTLE RISSINGTON
682 22.2.54 WS 743 METEOR N.F.14 RAF LITTLE RISSINGTON
683 22.2.54 WS 739 METEOR N.F.14 RAF LITTLE RISSINGTON
684 22.2.54 WS 744 METEOR N.F.14 RAF LITTLE RISSINGTON
685 22.2.54 WS 752 METEOR N.F.14 RAF LITTLE RISSINGTON
686 22.2.54 WS 699 METEOR N.F.12 RAF LITTLE RISSINGTON
687 22.2.54 WS 608 METEOR N.F.12 15 M.U. WROUGHTON
688 22.2.54 WS 678 METEOR N.F.12 15 M.U. WROUGHTON
689 22.2.54 WS 600 METEOR N.F.12 15 M.U. WROUGHTON
690 22.2.54 WS 748 METEOR NF.14 15 M.U. WROUGHTON
691 22.2.54 WS 750 METEOR N.F.14 15 M.U. WROUGHTON
692 24.2.54 WS 680 METEOR NF-12 RAF LITTLE RISSINGTON
693 5.3.54 WS 591 METEOR NF-12 RAF LITTLE RISSINGTON.
694 5.3.54 WS 598 METEOR NF-12 RAF LITTLE RISSINGTON.
695 5.3.54 WS 700 METEOR NF-12 RAF LITTLE RISSINGTON.
696 5.3.54 WS 604 METEOR NF-12 RAF LITTLE RISSINGTON.
697 5.3.54 WS 753 METEOR NF 14 RAF LITTLE RISSINGTON.
698 5.3.54 WS 751 METEOR NF 14 RAF LITTLE RISSINGTON.
699 5.3.54 WS 795 METEOR NF 14 RAF LITTLE RISSINGTON.
700 5.3.54 WS 749 METEOR NF 14 15 MU WROUGHTON
701 8.3.54 WS 603 METEOR NF.12 15 MU WROUGHTON
702 8.3.54 WS 758 METEOR NF.14 15 MU WROUGHTON
703 8.3.54 WS 754 METEOR NF.14 RAF LITTLE RISSINGTON
704 8.3.54 WS 755 METEOR NF.14 RAF LITTLE RISSINGTON
705 17.3.54 RF 568 LINCOLN B.MK.2. 38 MU LLANDOW
706 17.3.54 FCL-04 (RT673) LANCASTER MK.VII ORLY PARIS
707 17.3.54 WS 735 METEOR NF.14 RAF LITTLE RISSINGTON
708 17.3.54 WS 774 METEOR NF.14 RAF LITTLE RISSINGTON
709 23.3.54 WS 756 METEOR NF.14 15 MU WROUGHTON
710 23.3.54 WS 760 METEOR NF.14 15 M.U. WROUGHTON
711 25.3.54 WS 747 METEOR NF.14 15 M.U. WROUGHTON
712 25.3.54 WS 742 METEOR NF.14 R.A.F LITTLE RISSINGTON
713 26.3.54 WS 610 METEOR NF 12 15 MU WROUGHTON
714 26.3.54 WS 759 METEOR NF 14 15 MU WROUGHTON
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715 26.3.54 WS 593 METEOR NF.12 15 M.U. WROUGHTON
716 30.3.54 WS 757 METEOR NF 14 RAF LITTLE RISSINGTON
717 31.3.54 WS 605 METEOR NF 12 RAF LITTLE RISSINGTON.
718 31.3.54 WS 592 METEOR NF 12 RAF LITTLE RISSINGTON.
719 31.3.54 WS 636 METEOR NF 12 15 M.U. WROUGHTON
720 31.3.54 WS 667 METEOR NF 12 15 MU WROUGHTON
721 31.3.54 WS 688 METEOR NF 12 12 M.U. WROUGHTON
722 6.4.54 WS 627 METEOR NF 12 15 R.A.F. LITTLE RISSINGTON
723 6.4.54 WS 639 METEOR NF 12 M.U. WROUGHTON
724 6.4.54 WS 688 METEOR NF 12 15 M.U. WROUGHTON
725 9.4.54 WS 675 METEOR NF 12 RAF LITTLE RISSINGTON
726 8.4.54 WS 674 METEOR NF 12 RAF LITTLE RISSINGTON
727 9.4.54 WS 662 METEOR NF 12 15 M.U. WROUGHTON
728 21.4.54 WS 629 METEOR NF 12 RAF LITTLE RISSINGTON
729 21.4.54 WS 665 METEOR NF 12 15 MU WROUGHTON
730 21.4.54 WS 681 METEOR NF 12 RAF LITTLE RISSINGTON
731 29.4.54 WS 686 METEOR NF.12 15 MU WROUGHTON
732 29.4.54 WS 673 METEOR NF 12 15 M.U. WROUGHTON
733 29.4.54 WS 672 METEOR NF 12 38 M.U. LLANDOW
734 30.4.54 WS 599 METEOR NF 12 RAF LITTLE RISSINGTON
735 30.4.54 FCL-05 LANCASTER MK,VII ORLY PARIS
736 6.5.54 WS 690 METEOR NF 12 38 M.U. LLANDOW
737 10.5.54 RA 675 LINCOLN B.MK.2 20 M.U. ASTON DOWN
738 6.5.54 WS 691 METEOR NF.12 38 M.U. LLANDOW
739 11.5.54 WD 143 LINCOLN B.MK.2 38 M.U. LLANDOW
740 6.5.54 WS 601 METEOR NF 12 38 M.U. LLANDOW
741 11.5.54 WS 609 METEOR NF 12 38 M.U. LLANDOW
742 11.5.54 WS 607 METEOR NF 12 38 M.U. LLANDOW
743 11.5.54 WS 670 METEOR NF 12 38 M.U. LLANDOW
744 11.5.54 WS 679 METEOR NF 12 38 MU. LLANDOW
745 18.5.54 WS 684 METEOR NF 12 38 MU LLANDOW
746 18.5.54 WS 623 METEOR NF 12 38 MU LLANDOW
747 18.5.54 WS 625 METEOR NF 12 38 M.U. LLANDOW
748 18.5.54 WS 611 METEOR NF 12 38 M.U. LLANDOW
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749 18.5.54 WS 676 METEOR NF.12. 38 MU. LLANDOW
750 21.5.54 WS 692 METEOR NF.12. 38 MU LLANDOW
751 27.5.54 WS 685 METEOR NF.12. 38 MU LLANDOW
752 27.5.54 WS 606 METEOR NF.12. 38 M.U. LLANDOW
753 27.5.54 WS 666 METEOR NF.12. 38 MU LLANDOW
754 27.5.54 WS 633 METEOR NF.12. 38 MU LLANDOW
755 27.5.54 WS 615 METEOR NF.12. 38 MU. LLANDOW
756 28.5.54 WS 632 METEOR NF.12. 38 M.U. LLANDOW
757 1.6.54 WS 637 METEOR NF.12. 38 M.U. LLANDOW
758 4.6.54 WD 148 LINCOLN B.MK.2 45 M.U. KINLOSS
759 4.6.54 WS 596 METEOR NF 12 38 MU LLANDOW
760 4.6.54 WS 682 METEOR NF 12 38 MU LLANDOW
761 4.6.54 WS 597 METEOR NF 12 38 M.U. LLANDOW
762 4.6.54 WS 619 METEOR NF 12 38 M.U. LLANDOW
763 17.6.54 WS 683 METEOR NF 12 38 M.U. LLANDOW
764 17.6.54 WS 614 METEOR NF 12 38 MU LLANDOW
765 23.6.54 WS 616 METEOR NF 12 38 MU. LLANDOW
766 25.6.54 WS 621 METEOR NF 12 38 MU. LLANDOW
767 25.6.54 WS 628 METEOR NF 12 38 MU LLANDOW
768 25.6.54 WS 687 METEOR NF 12 38 MU LLANDOW
769 29.6.54 WS 638 METEOR NF 12 38 M.U. LLANDOW
770 29.6.54 WS 590 METEOR NF 12 38 MU LLANDOW
771 29.6.54 WS 617 METEOR NF 12 38 MU LLANDOW
772 29.6.54 WS 624 METEOR NF 12 38 MU LLANDOW
773 2.7.54 WS 630 METEOR NF 12 38 MU LLANDOW
774 2.7.54 WS 620 METEOR NF 12 38 M.U. LLANDOW
775 2.7.54 WS 626 METEOR NF 12 38 M.U. LLANDOW
776 2.7.54 WS 663 METEOR NF 12 38 MU LLANDOW
777 2.7.54 WS 693 METEOR NF 12 38 MU LLANDOW
778 2.7.54 WS 631 METOER NF 12 38 MU LLANDOW
779 5.7.54 WS 661 METOER NF 12 38 MU LLANDOW
780 5.7.54 WE 857 METEOR F:8 RAF CHURCH FENTON
781 12.7.54 WF 689 METEOR F:8 RAF WATERBEACH
782 12.7.54 WS 671 METEOR NF 12 38 M.U. LLANDOW.
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783 12.7.54 WS 689 METEOR NF.12 38 M.U. LLANDOW
784 12.7.54 WS 715 METEOR NF.12 38 M.U. LLANDOW
785 12.7.54 WS 595 METEOR NF.12 38 M.U. LLANDOW
786 21.7.54 WS 669 METEOR NF.12 38 M.U. LLANDOW
787 21.7.54 WS 618 METEOR NF.12 38 MU LLANDOW
788 21.7.54 WS 660 METEOR NF.12 38 M.U. LLANDOW
789 22.7.54 RF 322 LANCASTER G.R.III S. OF M.R. ST. MAWGAN
790 22.7.54 METEOR N.F.12 38 MU LLANDOW
791 22.7.54 WS 634 METEOR N.F. 12 38 M.U. LLANDOW
792 22.7.54 WS 664 METEOR N.F. 12 38 M.U. LLANDOW
793 22.7.54 WS 659 METEOR N.F 12 38 M.U. LLANDOW
[Circled] 793A [circled] 23.7.54 RE417 LINCOLN B.MK.2 20 M.U. ASTON DOWN
←Re-number from here on.
794 23.7.54 WF 703 METEOR F.8. RAF NORTH WEALD.
795 13.8.54 WA 763 METEOR F.8. RAF NORTH WEALD
796 1.9.54 VZ 544 METEOR F.8. R.A.F. HORSHAM.
797 6.9.54 WS 677 METEOR NF 12 38 MU LLANDOW
798 6.9.54 WS 658 METEOR NF 12 38 M.U. LLANDOW
799 9.9.54 WA 727 METEOR T.7.RAF. LITTLE RISSINGTON
800 17.9.54 WH 192 METEOR T.7. RAF LITTLE RISSINGTON
801 21.9.54 WF 651 METEOR F.8. R.A.F. HORSHAM
802 7.10.54 VZ 444 METEOR F.8. RAF BIGGIN HILL
803 11.10.54 WS 731 METEOR NF.14. 15 MU WROUGHTON
804 12.10.54 WH 118 METEOR T.7. R.A.F. DRIFFIELD
805 14.10.54 VZ 635 METEOR T.7. R.A.F. WESTON ZOYLAND
806 21.10.54 WF 649 METEOR F.8. RAF HOOTON PARK.
807 30.10.54 VW428 METEOR T.7. RAF BIGGIN HILL
808 3.11.54 WA906 METEOR F.8. RAF CHURCH FENTON
809 3.11.54 WG938 METEOR T.7 RAF NORTH WEALD
810 22.11.54 WA733 METEOR T.7 RAF WEST MALLING
811 24.11.54 VZ559 METEOR F.8. RAF HORSHAM
812 25.11.54 WA855 METEOR F.8. RAF BIGGIN HILL
813 3.12.54 WE 975 METEOR F.8. RAF BIGGIN HILL
814 3.12.54 WL460 METEOR T.7 RAF DRIFFIELD
815 6.12.54 WH453 METEOR F,8, RAF CHURCH FENTON
816 6.12.54 WH122 METEOR T.7. RAF WESTON ZOYLAND
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817 17.12 54 WB105 METEOR F.8 RAF CHURCH FENTON
818 23.12.54 WA698 METEOR F.8 RAF DRIFFIELD
819 31.12.54 WA844 METEOR F.8 RAF HOOTON PARK
820 3.1.55 WH121 METEOR T.7. RAF DRIFFIELD
821 3.1.55 WA766 METEOR F.8. RAF BIGGIN HILL
822 11.1.55 VW459 METEOR T.7. RAF DRIFFIELD
823 1.2.55 VZ524 METEOR F.8. RAF. HORSHAM
824 1.2.55 WH170 T.7. RAF. DRIFFIELD
825 9.2.55 WA986 METEOR F.8. RAF LECONFIELD
826 11.2.55 WA 670 METEOR T.7. RAF NORTH WEALD
827 16.2.55 WB 826 SHACKLETON M.R.1A. 38 M.U. LLANDOW
828 16.2.55 WF794 METEOR T.7 RAF WORKSOP
829 28.2.55 VZ545 METEOR F.8. RAF WEST MALLING
830 1.3.55 WL 339 METEOR T.7. RAF WORKSOP
831 9.3.55 WL453 METOER T.7 RAF WORKSOP
832 10.3.55 RF395 LINCOLN B.MK.2. FLIGHT REFUELLING-TARRANT RUSHTON
833 25.3.55 WE 863 METEOR F.8. RAF. TANGMERE
834 18.3.55 WE878 METEOR F.8. RAF. WATERBEACH
835 4.3.55 WE853 METEOR F.8. RAF BIGGIN HILL
836 28.3.55 WH112 METEOR T.7 RAF WESTON ZOYLAND
837 28.3.55 WH164 METEOR T.7 RAF WESTON ZOYLAND
838 31.3.55 VZ452 METEOR F.8. RAF TANGMERE
839 31.3.55 VZ514 METEOR F.8. RAF TANGMERE
840 6.4.55 WG 999 METEOR T.7. RAF DRIFFIELD
841 6.4.55 WF881 METEOR T.7. RAF DRIFFIELD
842 7.4.55 WK911 METEOR F.8. RAF TANGMERE
843 13.4.55 WA794 METEOR F.8. RAF CHURCH FENTON
844 21.4.55 WA 625 METEOR T.7. RAF WORKSOP
845 25.4.55 WL 344 METOER T.7. RAF WORKSOP
846 4.5.55 WE921 METEOR F.8. RAF BOVINGDON
847 9.5.55 WA737 METEOR T.7. RAF MANBY
848 18.5.55 VZ458 METEOR F.8. RAF TANGMERE
849 27.5.55 WK736 METEOR F.8. RAF CHURCH FENTON
850 27.5.55 RE366 LINCOLN B.MK.2. F.R. TARRANT RUSHTON
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851 Renumbers from here:
[Deleted] 850 [/deleted] 3.6.55 WG946 METEOR T.7 RAF. NORTH LUFFENHAM
85 [deleted] 1 [/deleted] 2 10.6.55 WK 985 METEOR F.8. RAF. ACKLINGTON
852 13.6.55 WH 315 METEOR F.8. RAF. ACKLINGTON
853 21.6.55 WA 991 METEOR F.8. RAF NEWTON
854 23.6.55 WF 768 METEOR T-7 RAF. NORTH LUFFENHAM
855 30.6.55 WK 799 METEOR F.8. RAF NORTH LUFFENHAM
856 5.7.55 WA 664 METEOR T.7 RAF. WORKSOP
857 6.7.55 WA 969 METEOR F.8 RAF. CHURCH FENTON
858 7.7.55 WA 903 METEOR F.8 RAF. WATERBEACH
859 7.7.55 WE 743 METEOR F.8 RAF. CHURCH FENTON
860 11.7.55 VZ 521 METEOR F.8 RAF WEST MALLING
861 19.7.55 WL 785 SJACKLETON M.R.2 LUQA MALTA
862 21.7.55 WH 542 METEOR F.R.9 WAHN GERMANY
863 11.8.55 WH 129 METWOR T-7 RAF WORKSOP
864 16.8.55 WL 481 METEOR T-7 RAF MANBY.
865 19.8.55 WK 921 METEOR F.8 RAF NORTH LUFFENHAM
866 22.8.55 WA929 METEOR F.8 RAF HONILY.
867 24.8.55 WA837 METEOR F.8 RAF HONILY.
868 26.8.55 WK 663 METEOR F.8 RAF LECONFIELD.
869 1.9.55 WK 664 MEETEOR F.8 RAF LECONFIELD
870 9.9.55 W [deleted E [/deleted] A 852 METEOR F.8 RAF LECONFIELD
871 20.9.55 WH 119 METEOR T.7. RAF LITTLE RISSINGTON
872 22.9.55 WA 931 METEOR F.8 RAF STRADISHALL
873 22.9.55 WH 273 METEOR F.8 RAF STRADISHALL
874 23.9.55 WH 402 METEOR F.8. RAF STRADISHALL.
875 27.9.55 WK666 METEOR F.8. RAF STRADISHALL.
876 4.10.55 WH305 METEOR F.8 RAF STRADISHALL.
877 8.10.55 WH500 METEOR F.8. RAF WYMESWOLD.
878 11.10.55 VZ 606 METEOR F.R.9 RAF HIGH ERCAL.
[sic] 880 17.10.55 RF564 LINCOLN B.MK.2. C.S.A. BOSCOMBE DOWN
881 17.10.55 WL 796 SHACKLETON M.R.2. LUQA MALTA.
882 21.10.55 WH421 METEOR F.8 RAF HOOTON PARK.
883 28.10.55 WK892 METEOR F.8 RAF STRADISHALL
884 2.11.55 VZ 496 METEOR F.8. RAF DRIFFIELD
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885 14.11.55 VZ467 METEOR F.8 RAF CHIVENER
886 14.11.55 WE925 METEOR F.8 RAF CHIVENER
887 18.11.55 WK753 METEOR F.8 RAF ACKLINGTON
888 12.12.55 WA741 METEOR T.7. RAF MANBY
889 13.12.55 WG968 METEOR T.7. RAF MANBY.
890 15.12.55 VW 482 METEOR T.7. NICOSIA CYPRUS.
891 16.12.55 VZ 505 METEOR F.8. RAF BIGGIN HILL
892 16.12.55 WA815 METEOR F.8. RAF CHURCH FENTON
893 3.1.56 WF 851 METEOR T.7 RAF LITTLE RISSINGTON
894 12.1.56 WF 769 METEOR T.7 RAF LINTON-ON-OUSE
895 12.1.56 WF 778 METEOR T.7 RAF RINGWAY
896 17.1.56 WG 979 METEOR T.7 RAF DUXFORD
897 19.1.56 WL 371 METEOR T.7 RAF MANBY
898 19.1.56 WG 981 METEOR T.7 RAF LITTLE RISSINGTON
899 6.2.56 VP254 SHACKLETON M.R.1. (1st Prod) CSA. BOSCOMBE DOWN
900 6.2.56 WA 663 METEOR T.7 RAF LITTLE RISSINGTON
901 6.2.56 WH172 METEOR T.7. RAF LITTLE RISSINGTON
902 6.2.56 WA658 METEOR T.7. RAF LECONFIELD
903 13.2.56 WN 316 METEOR T.7. RAF MANBY
904 13.2.56 WH 201 METOER T.7. RAF MANBY
905 13.2.56 WL 361 METEOR T.7 RAF MANBY
906 24.2.56 VZ 640 METEOR T.7. RAF LECONFIELD
907 28.2.56 WA 671 METEOR T.7. RAF LINTON-ON-OUSE.
908 1.3.56 VW477 METEOR T.7. RAF LITTLE RISSINGTON.
909 2.3.56 WH 178 METEOR T.7. RAF LITTLE RISSINGTON.
910 8.3.56 WA 688 METEOR T.7 RAF LITTLE RISSINGTON.
911 8.3.56 WA 742 METEOR T.7. RAF WATTISHAM
912 15.3.56 WH 187 METEOR T.7 RAF LITTLE RISSINGTON
913 21.3.56 WG 993 METEOR T.7 RAF LITTLE RISSINGTON
914 26.3.56 WH 219 METEOR T.7 RAF LITTLE RISSINGTON
915 28.3.56 WL 798 SHACKLETON M.R.2 LUQA MALTA
916 4.4.56 WA 740 METEOR T.7. RAF WEST RAYNHAM.
917 5.4.56 WH 184 METEOR T.7 RAF LITTLE RISSINGTON
918 16.4.56 VW 421 METEOR T.7 RAF LITTLE RISSINGTON.
[Page break]
(28)
919 24.4.56 RF505 LINCOLN B.MK.2 RAF DEFFORD
920 26.4.56 VW426 METEOR T-7 20 M.U. ASTON DOWN
921 26.4.56 WL413 METEOR T-7 20 M.U. ASTON DOWN
922 1.5.56 VP254 SHACKLETON M.R.1 (1st Prod) CRD WOODFORD
923 2.5.56 SX930 LINCOLN B.MK.2. CRD WEST FREUGH
924 3.5.56 WL 345 METEOR T-7 RAF WEST RAYNHAM
925 10.5.56 WF 791 METEOR T-7 RAF LITTLE RISSINGTON
926 10.5.56 WA 601 METEOR T-7 RAF CHURCH FENTON
927 14.5.56 VW 457 METEOR T-7 RAF FILTON
928 16.5.56 WL 460 METEOR T-7 RAF LITTLE RISSINGTON
929 8.6.56 VW 415 METEOR T-7 38 M.U LLANDOW
930 12.6.56 WA602 METEOR T-7 RAF PEMBREY.
931 12.6.56 WF795 METEOR T-7 12 M.U. KIRKBRIDE.
932 4.7.56 WA669 METEOR T-7 12 MU KIRKBRIDE
933 4.7.56 WA 597 METEOR T-7 12 MU KIRKBRIDE
934 4.7.56 WF 847 METEOR T-7 38 M.U. LLANDOW
935 19.7.56 WA 672 METEOR T-7 RAF CHURCH FENTON
936 6.7.56 VW 451 METEOR T-7 38 M.U. LLANDOW
937 25.7.56 WG 949 METEOR T-7 12 M.U. KIRKBRIDE
938 26.7.56 WA 591 METEOR T-7 12 M.U. KIRKBRIDE
939 30.8.56 WL 403 METEOR T-7 12 M.U. KIRKBRIDE
940 4.9.56 WH 182 METEOR T-7 12 MU KIRKBRIDE
941 13.9.56 VW 480 METEOR T-7 20 MU ASTON DOWN
942 13.9.56 WH 175 METEOR T-7 20 M.U. ASTON DOWN
943 26.9.56 WL 358 METEOR T-7 12 M.U. KIRKBRIDE
944 3.10.56 WH 191 METEOR T-7 12 M.U. KIRKBRIDE
945 8.10.56 WH 166 METEOR T-7 12 MU. KIRKBRIDE
946 6.11.56 WL 800 SHACKLETON M.R.2 LUQA MALTA
947 14.11.56 WG985 METEOR T.7. 20 M.U. ASTON DOWN
948 14.11.56 WA 657 METEOR T.7. 12 M.U. KIRKBRIDE
949 13.12.56 WA 598 METEOR T.7. 15 M.U. KIRKBRIDE
950 3.1.57 WA 661 METEOR T.7. 15 M.U. KIRKBRIDE
951 3.1.57 WF 853 METEOR T.7. 15 MU KIRKBRIDE.
952 10.1.57 VP258 SHACKLETON M.R.1. CSA BOSCOMBE DOWN
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(29)
953 18.2.57 WR954 SHACKLETON M.R.2 RAF LUQA MALTA
954 13.6.57 WB819 SHACKLETON [deleted] MR.1A [/deleted] T.4 Conversion 23 M.U. ALDERGROVE.
955 20.6.57 VP 259 SHACKLETON M.R.1. 23 M.U. ALDERGROVE.
956 5.7.57 WR973 SHACKLETON M.R.3. C.S.A. BOSCOMBE DOWN
957 1.8.57 WB837 SHACKLETON [deleted] M.R.1A [/deleted] T.4. Conversion 23 M.U. ALDERGROVE.
958 9.8.57 VX770 AVRO VULCAN (1st Proto) ROLLS ROYCE HUCKNALL.
959 9.8.57 WL 787 SHACKLETON M.R.2. RAF LUQA MALTA
960 7.8.57 WG511 SHACKLETON [deleted] M.R.1A [/deleted] T.4. Conversion 23 M.U. ALDERGROVE
961 28.10.57 WB831 SHACKLETON T.4. Conversion 23 MU ALDERGROVE
962 4.11.57 RF564 LINCOLN B.MK.2. 10 MU HULLAVINGTON
963 19.11.57 WL787 SHACKLETON M.R.2 RAF LUQA MALTA
964 26.11.57 WG527 SHACKLETON [deleted] M.R.1A [/deleted] T.4. Conversion 23 M.U. ALDERGROVE
965 3.12.57 WB 844 SHACKLETON T.4 Conversion 23 MU ALDERGROVE
966 27.1.58 XA903 VULCAN B.MK 1. CRD WOODFORD
967 13.2.58 SHACKLETON [deleted] M.R.1A [/deleted] T.4. Conversion 23 M.U. ALDERGROVE
968 21.2.58 WB 833 SHACKLETON MR2 (Prototype) CSA BOSCOMBE DOWN
969 6.3.58 VP254 SHACKLETON M.R.1. (1st Prod) 23 MU ALDERGROVE
970 11.3.58 WB 832 SHACKLETON [deleted] M.R.1A [/deleted] T.4. Conversion 23 M.U. ALDERGROVE
971 3.4.58 VP293 SHACKLETON [deleted] M.R.1A [/deleted] T.4. Conversion 23 M.U. ALDERGROVE
972 8.5.58 WB827 SHACKLETON M.R.1A. 23 MU ALDERGROVE
973 22.5.58 XA901 VILCAN B.MK.1. RAF WADDINGTON
974 9.6.58 WB854 SHACKLETON M.R.1A 23 MU ALDERGROVE.
975 20.6.58 XA 891 VULCAN B.MK.1. CRD WOODFORD
976 18.7.58 WB836 SHACKELTON MR.1A. 23 M.U. ALDERGROVE
977 30.7.58 WG525 SHACKLETON T.4 Conversion 23 M.U. ALDERGROVE
978 1.9.58 WR972 SHCACKLETON M.R.3. CSA BOSCOMBE DOWN
979 8.9.58 VP291 SHACKLETON MR.1. 23 M.U. ALDERGROVE
980 12.9.58 VP258 SHACKLETON M.R.1. CSA BOSCOMBE DOWN
[Deleted] 981 23.7.54 SEE 793A RE417 LINCOLN B.MK.2 20 M.U. ASTON DOWN [/deleted] Re-number from here
982 3.10.58 WB825 SHACKLETON M.R.1A. 23 M.U. ALDERGROVE
983 7.11.58 WB818 SHACKLETON M.R.1A. 23 M.U. ALDERGROVE
984 20.10.58 WB829 SHACKLETON M.R.1A. 23 M.U. ALDERGROVE
985 21.11.58 VP288 SHACKLETON MR.1. 23 M.U. ALDERGROVE
986 22.12.58 VP 292 SHACKLETON MR.1. 23 M.U. ALDERGROVE
[Page break]
(30)
987 28.1.59 WB834 SHACKLETON M.R.1A. 23 M.U. ALDERGROVE.
988 10.2.59 WL755 SHACKLETON MR.2. MALTA * 1ST 1 RECON
989 11.2.59 WB821 SHACKLETON MR.1A. 23 M.U. ALDERGROVE.
990 11.3.59 WG554 SHACKLETON M.R.2 GIBRALTAR.
991 17.3.59 WG 526 SHACKLETON M.R.1A ALDERGROVE.
992 6.4.59 WG555 SHACKLETON M.R.2 RAF BALLYKELLY.
993 24.4.59 WL 786 SHACKLETON M.R.2 MALTA.
994 5.5.59 WR 952 SHACKLETON M.R.2 ST. MAWGAN.
995 28.5.59 WL 801 SHACKLETON M.R.2 MALTA.
996 5.6.59 WL785 SHACKLETON M.R.2 ST. MAWGAN.
987 21.7.59 WL 793 SHACKLETON M.R.2 BALLYKELLY.
998 22.7.59 VP293 SHACKLETON [deleted] M.R.1A [/deleted] T.4. Conversion BOSCOMBE DOWN
999 23.7.59 WL745 SHACKLETON MR.2. BALLYKELLY.
1000 28.8.59 WG558 SHACKLETON M R.2. ST. MAWGAN.
1001 8.9.59 WL800 SHACKLETON M R.2. ST. MAWGAN.
1002 22.9.59 WB833 SHACKLETON MR2 BOSCOMBE DOWN. C.S.A.
1003 2.10.59 WL 747 SHACKLETON M.R.2 BALLYKELLY.
1004 9.10.59 WL 788 SHACKLETON M.R.2 MALTA (VIA ST MAWGAN)
1005 10.11.59 WL 758 SHACKLETON M.R.2 MALTA VIA ST. MAWGAN
1006 29.10.59 WL 757 SHACKLETON M.R.2 BALLYKELLY
1007 4.12.59 WL 741 SHACKLETON M.R.2 ST MAWGAN
1008 15.12.59 WR 951 SHACKLETON M.R.2 BALLYKELLY
1009 15.1.60 WL751 SHACKLETON M.R.2 BALLYKELLY.
1010 20.1.60 WR957 SHACKLETON M.R.2 BALLYKELLY.
1011 22.2.60 WR 963 SHACKLETON M.R.2 BALLYKELLY.
1012 29.2.60 WG 533 SHACKLETON M.R.2 MALTA (VIA ST MAWGAN)
1013 22.3.60 WL 738 SHACKLETON M.R.2 ADEN (VIA ST. MAWGAN)
1014 23.3.60 WR 972 SHACKLETON M.R.3. BOSCOMBE C.S.R.
1015 31.3.60 WR 965 SHACKLETON MR. 2 GIBRALTAR
1016 14.4.60 WL 750 SHACKLETON MR.2 GIBRALTAR.
1017 29.4.60 WL 742 SHACKLETON MR.2 GIBRALTAR
1018 23.5.60 WL 752 SHACKLETON MR.2 ADEN H.Q.B.F.A.P.
1019 31.5.60 WL 753 SHACKLETON MR.2 ADEN
1020 23.6.60 WR 954 SHACKLETON MR.2 BALLYKELLY.
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1021 12.7.60 WG 556 SHACKLETON M.R.2 GIBRALTAR
1022 29.7.60 WR 959 SHACKLETON M.R.2 ADEN. VIA ST. MAWGAN.
1023 4.8.60 WR 960 SHACKLETON M.R.2 COLERNE.
1024 15.9.60 WR 754 SHACKLETON M.R.2 ST. MAWGAN.
1025 27.9.60 WB 854 SHACKLETON MR. 1A. SINGAPORE VIA ST. MAWGAN
1026 7.10.60 WL 737 SHACKLETON M.R.2 ST. MAWGAN. (42 SQN)
1027 27.10.60 WR 958 SHACKLETON M.R.2 ST. MAWGAN. (42 SQN)
1028 15.11.60 WR955 SHACKLETON M.R.2 ST. MAWGAN.
1029 10.12.60 VP 291 SHACKLETON MR 1. SINGAPORE.
1030 12.12.60 WL 795 SHACKLETON MR. 2. MALTA.
1031 19.12.60 WG525 SHACKLETON MR 1A. SINGAPORE.
1032 10.1.61 WL748 SHACKLETON MR.2. BALLYKELLY.
1033 31.1.61 WR972 SHACKLETON MR.3. BOSCOMBE DOWN.
1034 3.2.61 WL787 SHACKLETON MR 1 BALLYKELLY (210 SQN)
1035 22.2.61 WL 791 SHACKLETON MR 2 BALLYKELLY.
1036 2.3.61 NG 554 SHACKLETON MR 2 BALLYKELLY.
1037 10.2.61 WL 740 SHACKLETON MR 2 MALTA.
1038 6.4.61 WR 956 SHACKLETON MR 2 MALTA.
1039 18.4.61 WL 739 SHACKLETON MR 2 BALLYKELLY.
1040 3.5.61 WL 798 SHACKLETON MR 2 MALTA.
1041 24.5.61 WR 961 SHACKLETON MR 2 MALTA.
1042 2.6.61 WR969 SHACKLETON MR 2 BALLYKELLY.
1043 27.6.61 WR967 SHACKLETON MR 2 MALTA.
1044 1.8.61 WG532 SHACKLETON MR 2 GIBRALTAR.
1045 30.8.61 WL 755 SHACKLETON MR 2 GIBRALTAR.
1046 4.8.61 WG558 SHACKLETON MR 2 BOSCOMBE DOWN.
1047 14.9.61 VP 255 SHACKLETON MR 1. BOSCOMBE DOWN.
1048 20.9.61 WB826. SHACKLETON [deleted] M.R.1A [/deleted] T.4. Conversion KINLOSS.
1049 29.9.61 WB 849 SHACKLETON T.4. Conversion KINLOSS
*1049A 18.10.61 WR953 SHACKLETON MR.2 BOSCOMBE. MOD 988. ← Renum from h
1050 27.10.61 WL 747 SHACKLETON MR.2. ADEN.
1051 3.11.61 WB 820 SHACKLETON [deleted] M.R.1A [/deleted] T.4. Conversion KINLOSS.
1052 27.11.61 WB822 SHACKLETON T.4 Conversion KINLOSS
1053 28.12.61 WL758 SHACKLETON MR.2. MALTA.
1054 30.1.62 WB 845 SHACKLETON [deleted] M.R.1A [/deleted] T.4. Conversion KINLOSS
[Page break]
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1055 1-2-62 WL789 SHACKLETON MR.2. GIBRALTAR.
1056 1-2-62 WL 744 SHACKLETON MR.2. ADEN.
1057 27.2.62 WL 793 SHACKLETON MR.2. BALLYKELLY.
1058 7.3.62. WR 962 SHACKLETON MR.2. ADEN
1059 8.3.62 [deleted] [underlined] ANSON [/underlined] [/deleted] VM 394 ANSON C.MK 19. Sr2. BOVINGDON.
1060 21.3.62. WL 786 SHACKLETON M.R.2. CHANGI (FEAF.)
1061 28.3.62. WL 751 SHACKLETON M.R.2. BALLYKELLY.
1062 17.4.62 [deleted] [underlined] ANSON [/underlined] [/deleted] TX 229 ANSON C.MK 19. Sr1. BOVINGDON
1063 4.5.62 WL756 SHACKLETON MR.2. CHANGI F.E.A.F.
1064 8.5.62 WG 553 SHACKLETON MR.2. CHANGI F.E.A.F.
1065 11.5.62 [deleted] [underlined] ANSON [/underlined] [/deleted] VP519 ANSON C.MK 19. Sr2. BOVINGDON.
1066 18.5.62 XF701 SHACKLETON MR.3. BOSCOMBE DOWN SHACK 3. C.S.A.
1067 23.5.62 [deleted] [underlined] ANSON [/underlined] [/deleted] VM 394 ANSON C.MK 19. Sr2. BOVINGDON.
1068 29.5.62 WL 790 SHACKLETON MR 2 H.Q. F.E.A.F.
1069 29.5.62. WL 762 SHACKLETON MR 2 BALLYKELLY.
1070 14.6.62 [deleted] [underlined] ANSON [/underlined] [/deleted] VM 324 ANSON C.MK 19. Sr2. WYTON.
1071 22.6.62 WL 750 SHACKLETON MR.2. BALLYKELLY.
1072 27.6.62 WR954 SHACKLETON MR.2. CHANGI F.E.A.F.
1073 24.7.62 WB858 [deleted] M.R.1A [/deleted] T.4. Conversion BOSCOMBE A.R.A.E.E.
1074 1.8.62 WG 530 SHACKLETON MR.2. CHANGI F.E.A.F.
1075 17.8.62 WG 558 SHACKELTON MR.2. BALLYKELLY.
1076 29.8.62 XF 701 SHACKLETON MK.3 BOSCOMBE DOWN
1077 3.10.62 WB 819 [deleted] M.R.1A [/deleted] T.4. Phase II Conversion KINLOSS.
1078 19.9.62 [deleted] C.S.A. [/deleted] WG556 SHACKLETON MR.2 LANGAR C.S.A. PHASE 3
1079 17.10.62 [deleted] C.S.A. [/deleted] WR 960 SHACKLETON MR.2. LANGAR C.S.A. PHASE 3
1080 18.10.61 WR953 SHACKELTON MR.2. BOSCOMBE C.S.A.
1081 28.1.63 [deleted] MK3 [/deleted] WR 979 SHACKLETON MR.3. ST. MAWGAN.
1082 30.1.63 WL 759 SHACKLETON M.R.2. LANGAR C.S.A.
1083 8.2.63 [deleted] C.S.A. [/deleted] WL 737 SHACKLETON M.R.2. WOODFORD C.S.A.
1084 18.2.63 VP 293 SHACKLETON [deleted] M.R.1A [/deleted] T.4. ALDERGROVE.
1085 12.3.63 WR 980 SHACKLETON MR.3. ST. MAWGAN.
1086 8.4.63 WR 953 SHACKLETON MR.2 GIBRALTAR 224 SQDN.
1087 9.4.63 WR 977 SHACKLETON MR.3. ST. MAWGAN
1088 3.5.63 VP258 SHCAKLETON MR 1. ALDERGROVE 23 M.U.
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1089 13.5.63. WR983 SHACKLETON MR.3. ST. MAWGAN
[Deleted] √ +2 [/deleted]
1090 22.5.63 WL 759 SHACKLETON MR.2 BOSCOMBE DOWN
1091 17.6.63 WR 978 SHACKLETON MR.3 ST. MAWGAN.
1092 2.7.63 XF 707 SHACKLETON MR.3 ST. MAWGAN
1093 9.7.63 WR 976 SHACKLETON MR.3 BOSCOMBE PROP T.I. CSA
1094 8.8.63 XF 708 SHACKLETON MR.3 KINLOSS
1095 18.9.63 WR 986 SHACKLETON MR.3 KINLOSS
1096 11.10.63 WR 959 SHACKLETON MR.2. BALLYKELLY
1097 16.10.63 XF 709 SHACKLETON MR.3. KINLOSS
1098 6.11.63 XF 710 SHACKLETON MR.3 KINLOSS.
1099 13.12.63 XF 730 SHACKLETON MR.2. KINLOSS
1100 19.2.64 WR953 SHACKLETON MR.2 ST. MAWGAN.
1101 20.2.64 WL797 SHACKLETON MR.2 ST MAWGAN.
Renumber from → here
110 [deleted] 3 [/deleted] 2 14.4.64 WR982 SHACKLETON MR.3 BOSCOMBE C.S.A.
110 [deleted] 4 [/deleted]3 6.7.64 XF 702 SHACKLETON MR.3 FARNBOROUGH. C.S.A.
1105 7.9.64 WR 974 SHACKLETON MR.3. BOSCOMBE DOWN C.S.A.
1106 23.11.64 [deleted] PHASE 3 [/deleted] XF 702 SHACKLETON MR.3. ST.MAWGAN (Phase 3)
1107 3.12.64 [deleted] PHASE 3 [/deleted] XF 703 SHACKLETON MR.3. ST.MAWGAN (Phase 3)
1108 26.1.65 [deleted] PHASE 3 [/deleted] XF 702 SHACKLETON MR.3. ST.MAWGAN (Phase 3)
1109 29.1.65. WR 973 [deleted] PHASE 3 & VIP [/deleted] XF 702 SHACKLETON MR.3. WOODFORD (Phase 3 & V.I.P.)
1110 2.2.65 WR 985 [deleted] PHASE 3 [/deleted] XF 702 SHACKLETON MR.3. ST.MAWGAN (Phase 3)
1111 2.2.65 XF 703 SHACKLETON MR.3. RE-DELIVERED – ST MAWGAN
1112 16.3.65 XF 700 SHACKLETON MR.3. ST. MAWGAN.
1113 1-4-65 WR 976 SHACKLETON MR.3. ST MAWGAN.
1114 23.4.65 WR971 SHACKLETON MR.3. ST. MAWGAN.
1115 7.5.65 XF 704 SHACKLETON MR.3. ST MAWGAN.
1116 28.5.65 WR990 SHACKLETON MR.3. KINLOSS
1117 21.6.65 WR974 SHACKLETON MR.3. BOSCOMBE (TROPICAL TRIALS)
1118 24.6.65 WR989 SHCAKLETON MR.3. KINLOSS
1119 13.7.65 WR981 SHACKLETON MR.3. KINLOSS.
1120 23.7.65 WB 831 SHACKLETON MR.1A. T.4. ST. MAWGAN.
1121 6.9.65 WR984 SHACKLETON MR.3. KINLOSS.
1122 14.9.65 WG556 SHACKLETON MR 2 BOSCOMBE DOWN.
1122 [deleted] 5 [/deleted] 2 24.9.65 WB847 SHACKLETON MR 1A ST MAWGAN
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(34)
1124 5.10.65 WR979 SHACKLETON MR.3. KINLOSS.
1125 29.10.65 WR983 SHACKELTON MR.3. KINLOSS.
1126 12.11.65 WR982 SHACKLETON MR.3. KINLOSS
1127 26.11.65 WR978 SHACKLETON MR.3. ST. MAWGAN.
1128 23.12.65 XF 706 SHACKELTON MR.3. ST. MAWGAN.
1129 15.12.65 WR 960 SHACKLETON MR.2. BOSCOMBE. D.
1130 3.1.66 XF 707 SHACKLETON MR.3 ST. MAWGAN.
1131 9.3.66 XF 705 SHACKLETON MR.3 KINLOSS.
1132 30.3.66 WR980 SHACKLETON MR.3 KINLOSS
1133 26.4.66 XF 701 SHACKLETON MR.3 KINLOSS
1134 3.5.66 WR977 SHACKLETON MR.3 ST. MAWGAN.
1135 12.5.66 WG556 SHACKLETON MR.2. FARNBOROUGH.
1136 25.5.66 WR793 SHACKLETON MR.3 KINLOSS
1137 27.5.66 XF730 SHACKLETON MR.3 ST. MAWGAN.
1138 27.6.66 WR988 SHACKLETON MR.3 BALLYKELLY
1139 29.7.66 WL801 SHACKLETON MR.2. BALLYKELLY. MK2.P
1140 1.8.66. XF 709 SHACKLETON MR.3 BALLYKELLY.
1141 1.8.66. WR982 SHACKLETON MR.3 KINLOSS.
1142 8.9.66 WL747 SHACKLETON MR.2. BALLYKELLY MK.2.P.
1143 30.9.66 WR990 SHACKLETON MR 3 KINLOSS
1144 30.9.66 WR 986 SHACKLETON MR 3 BALLYKELLY
1145 24.10.66 WR976 SHACKLETON MR 3 KINLOSS.
1146 -/10/66 WB833 SHACKLETON MR 1A. LANGAR T.I.
1147 -/10/66 XF708 SHACKLETON MR.3. LANGAR T.I.
1148 30.11.66 WL738 SHACKLETON MR.2. BALLYKELLY.
1149 16.12.66 WB833 SHACKLETON MR.1A. BALLYKELLY.
1150 20.12.66 WR987 SHACKLETON MR.3. BALLYKELLY.
1151 11.1.67 WL 793 SHACKLETON MR 2 BALLYKELLY.
1152 26.1.67 WL 785 SHACKLETON MR 2 BALLYKELLY.
1153 [deleted] XF 708 [/deleted] 6.2.67 XF 708 SHACKLETON MR 3. BALLYKELLY.
1154 28.2.67 WG555 SHACKLETON MR 2. BALLYKELLY.
1155 10.2.67 WL745 SHACKLETON MR 2. BALLYKELLY.
1156 26.3.67 WR955 SHACKLETON MR 2. BALLYKELLY
1157 5.4.67 WL800 SHACKLETON MR 2. BALLYKELLY
[Page break]
(35)
115 [deleted] 8 [/deleted] 7 6.4.67 WL755 SHACKLETON MR.2 BALLYKELLY.
1159 25.5.67 WL751 SHACKLETON MR.2 BALLYKELLY.
1160 26.5.67 WR965 SHACKLETON MR.2 BALLYKELLY.
1161 2.6.67 WL787 SHACKLETON MR.2 ST. MAWGAN.
1162 15.6.67 WR954 SHACKLETON MR.2 ST. MAWGAN.
1163 3.7.67 WL748 SHACKLETON MR.2 R.R.E. PERSHORE
1164 17.7.67 WL795 SHACKLETON MR.2 ST. MAWGAN.
1165 30.7.67 WR963 SHACKLETON MR.2 ST. MAWGAN.
1166 24.8.67 WL786 SHACKLETON MR.2 ST. MAWGAN
1167 4.9.67 WL790 SHACKLETON MR.2 ST. MAWGAN
1168 26.9.67 WL741 SHACKLETON MR.2 ST. MAWGAN
1169 4.10.67 WR961 SHACKLETON MR.2 ST MAWGAN
1170 30.10.67 WL756 SHACKLETON MR.2 BALLYKELLY
1171 17.11.67 WL758 SHACKLETON MR.2 BALLYKELLY.
1172 [deleted] WL739 [/deleted] 4.1.68 WL739 SHACKLETON MR.2 ST. MAWGAN (1ST. TRAINER.)
1173 12.1.68 WR956 SHACKLETON MR.2 BALLYKELLY
1174 7.2.68 WR960 SHACKLETON MR.2 ST. MAWGAN
1175 16.2.68 WR952 SHACKLETON MR.2 ST. MAWGAN
1176 26.2.68 WG558 SHACKLETON MR.2 ST. MAWGAN
1177 7.3.68 WL787 SHACKLETON MR.2 ST. MAWGAN
1178 5.4.68 WL750 SHACKLETON MR.2 ST. MAWGAN.
1179 24.4.68 WG554 SHACKLETON MR.2 BITTESWELL
1180 26.4.68 WR966 SHACKLETON MR.2
1181 15.5.68 WR964 SHACKLETON MR.2
1182 26.6.68 WR969 SHACKLETON MR.2
1183 15.7.68 WG533 SHACKLETON MR.2
1184 30.8.68 WR967 SHACKLETON MR.2
118 [deleted] 5 [/deleted] 4 4.9.68 WL798 SHACKLETON MR.2
(Last flight from Avro Langar)
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
The Avro Repair Organisation. Langar
Description
An account of the resource
A history of the Avro repair organisation at RAF Langar and a record of the aircraft that passed through it between 1942 and 1968.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Peter V Clegg
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
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Anne-Marie Watson
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.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
78 typewritten sheets with annotations
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Personal research
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MCleggPV[DoB]-150701-02
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Nottinghamshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1944
1945
1946
1947
1948
1949
1950
1951
1952
1953
1954
1956
1957
1958
1959
1960
1961
1962
1963
1964
1965
1966
1967
1968
Anson
control tower
Lancaster
Lancaster Mk 1
Lancaster Mk 2
Lancaster Mk 3
Lancastrian
Lincoln
Manchester
Meteor
RAF Langar
Shackleton
York
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2197/39109/PDydeFW17010006.2.jpg
a5c87b9a56985c338c651aad82cf0cfb
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
Dyde, Frederick William. Photo Album
Description
An account of the resource
The album contains documents and photographs.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-09-24
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Dyde, FW
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
Two Telegrams to Fred Dyde's Father
Description
An account of the resource
The first telegram advises that his son, Fred, has been lost in an accident.
The second advises that Fred can be buried at Bottesford or in the RAF regional [message incomplete].
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
RAF Langar
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1943-10-04
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Nottinghamshire
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. Correspondence
Format
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Two handwritten sheets on an album page
Identifier
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PDydeFW17010006
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending text-based transcription
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-10-02
aircrew
killed in action
RAF Bottesford
RAF Langar
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2197/39114/PDydeFW17010012.1.jpg
7512c48b4d1feb7b3d51293d31151c6b
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
Dyde, Frederick William. Photo Album
Description
An account of the resource
The album contains documents and photographs.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-09-24
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
Dyde, FW
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Letter to Fred Dyde's Parents from his Squadron Commander
Description
An account of the resource
The letter expresses regret that, due to illness, he was unable to meet them. He complements Fred for being one of their best and most popular crew members.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
RAF Langar
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1943-10-08
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Worcestershire
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Civilian
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Correspondence
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One typewritten sheet
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PDydeFW17010012
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-10-08
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending text-based transcription
air gunner
aircrew
killed in action
RAF Langar
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1526/29793/BMilesRJMilesRJv1.1.pdf
9c4ecee51db3f431f91201332344b0c2
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
Miles, Reg
Reginald J Miles
R J Miles
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
2016-07-26
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
Miles, RJ
Description
An account of the resource
102 items. The collection concerns Reg Miles (1923 - 2022) and contains his audio memoir, log book, photographs and documents. He flew 36 operations with 432 and 420 Squadrons.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by R Miles and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
Biography of Reg Miles
Ex Apprentice No 1 S. of T.T., R.A.F., Halton 39th Entry 34 – 67 M.U.s – 27 A/S Bloemspruit South Africa – Lympe Kent, Flight Engineer 432 – 420 Squadrons RCAF, 6 Group Bomber Command, Eastmoor, Tholthorpe, Yorkshire / 242 – 245 – 511
Squadrons Transport Command Lyneham, RAF
Chapter 1
Ex Apprentice No 1 S. of T.T., R.A.F.
The summer job had ended and there was a few months to go before I would leave for Halton, must get a job Mum said, so I got a job as a paper boy with Smith’s Book Shop in Westgate, delivering the morning papers to all the grand houses in the area and woe betide you if you got the houses wrong, no scandal sheets there all Times, Telegraph, Financial Review, and sometimes the Daily Express but certainly no Mirror. A friend worked for the same place and we both rode the Smith’s bikes, very distinctive they were, painted dark red with a large panel under the cross bar with the company logo on it and either side of the back wheel large canvas bags to hold the newspapers. Riding towards home together one day we came across a coal ship hight and dry on the Nayland rocks, which jutted out into the Margate harbour entrance, the skipper had missed the turn and when the tide went out there he was stuck, the crew were busy shovelling the coal over the side onto the rocks so that the ship could get off on the next tide. Too much of a temptation for two young boys, onto the rocks we went with the bikes and filled up the bags at the back with coal and home to the thanks of a family with a little more fuel for the winter. How the mighty are fallen, as we turned up for work the next morning at the crack of dawn, we were greeted by the manager with the words ‘you two are sacked here are your wages now clear’, when we asked why we were shown the front page of just about every newspaper with pictures of us and Smith’s bikes filling the bags with coal, and head office in London were not at all pleased, silly buggers very cheap advertising for them, so ended my last job before entering The Royal Air Force.
On January 24th 1939 I arrived at Wendover Railway Station in Buckingham Shire on a special train from Paddington with about one thousand other new boys, we were all shapes and sizes, colours, and aged between fifteen and eighteen. Halton at that time was the Apprentice Training Establishment for The Royal Air Force in the various aviation trades which included Engine Fitter, Airframe Fitter and other trades that were just starting to be developed. Prior to this most work on aeroplanes was done by the same people., but aircraft were becoming more complicated
[page break]
and needed specialists for just about every part, guns, radio, electric’s and so on. RAF Halton still is a training station for the engine, airframe, and all other bits and pieces of the aircraft. (I was recently told that a cook school was now in operation!!). The bits all have different names now. When I joined in January 1939 there were four wings each one had about 1000 boys in it under training, the course was three years, two entries each year , entry by competitive written examination of many subjects including, Math, English, and a number of science subjects which at my age when I took the exam at 14 made me struggle a bit but I got in! Massive workshops, an airfield and each wing was self-contained with proper three storey brick buildings housing the sleeping accommodation, each wing also had its own parade ground, gymnasium, cookhouse, band and all other facilities, different coloured hat bands were worn by each wing.
Apprentices were known as Brats and when you had passed out from Halton after a three year course you were an Ex Brat and a very close bondship with others who had been through Halton existed. Now March 15 1998!! I seem to have been very busy with all sorts of projects and still have some in the pipe line either incomplete or not even started yet but will endeavour to type a little more to keep this going. The first thing that happened to all us new boys was a medical to see if we were fit enough for service in the R.A.F. The first complete check up for most of us,the M.O. told me I had flat feet, said I did a lot of cross country running perhaps that was the cause!! Strange to say it was recently found that people with high arches were not able to stand the stress of marching and battle fatigue, flat was better. Next was fitting for a uniform, no I did not take size nine boots that Mum had said I would grow into but eight and a half and that still left room for thick socks.
Once all into our uniforms we paraded in sections for the swearing in for which we received an extra shilling (the Kings shilling) Most of us suffered with those boots made from leather so they said, more like sheets of armour plate, toes and ankle bones were rubbed sore after the first few hours, the corporal in charge of our section told us to fill the boots with water, pee was best, and stand them by our beds over night, empty them out and put them on straight away they would never hurt again, he was right but most mothers would have had a fit to see their little darlings squelching about in wet feet all day. I was allocated to four wing and told I would be trained as a Fitter 2E which meant I would become an aero engine fitter, others became Fitters 2A airframe, and others would become instrument, radio, and armament specialists. There were also boys who had joined the Royal Navy and would be trained in the same trades for the Fleet Air Arm, they were known as artificers, tiffys to the rest of us. Our uniform was the same as the regular service with proper trousers instead of a kind of jodhpurs with puttees that were wound around the lower leg, these were still worn by “Boy Entrants”
[page break]
who were trained in similar trades elsewhere but would end up as mechanics after a much shorter course, I think they were boys who were keen to get into the R.A.F but had not been able to pass the entry examination for apprentices. To distinguish four wing from the other three we had a bright orange-yellow hat band not too sure what the other were, seem to remember red and also black and red squares, we also had on our arm a brass badge that was a wheel with crossed propeller blades inside, and wore small rank badges the same as the adult services if promoted. All of the boys in the new entry were taken in group to the airfield and given a short flight in De Haviland Tiger Moth, gave us some idea how big Halton was and in most cases the first taste of airsickness, never had any trouble with this problem when I was flying as crew, but even a short flight at times as a passenger made me hang on to my seat and swallow heavily!! I joined the cross country team of four wing, and completed in many events during my period at Halton, won medals for this event and passed them on to Gillian for safe keeping. I was promoted to leading apprentice and made responsible for one of the rooms which held about thirty boys, one of them called Shaw I will never forget, a good looking boy but had a way of life completely strange to me and I suspect to most of the boys of my age.
This first came to light one night when he returned from a weekend pass with a full suit case full of cigarettes, where they came from we didn’t ask but we all got some free samples my share being double. He then told me he had a flat in London and a girl friend he kept there and paid for, how this was possible on three shillings a week I just could not understand, but it all came out later on. Because I was responsible for seeing that everyone in my room was present at “lights out” each night and weekend passes were only allowed very rare, Jonny Shaw asked me to sign him in nearly every weekend so he could go to London, didn’t worry me to do this, hadn’t asked to be a leading apprentice, was just given the job and I was never short of a packet of “fags”. One night late Johny turned up with another suit case, after climbing through a hole in the fence near our room, instead of cigarettes it contained woman’s clothing that he had picked up on the train from London, because it was there! Told him in no uncertain manner that if he didn’t do something about returning it to the owner it was the last time I covered for him. He packed up the case and took it out of the room and I expected he would leave it close to the guard room so that it would be found early in the morning and sent on it’s way to a very worried female. That was not Johny’s way, when I took a detail of boys out at the crack of dawn to make sure there was no rubbish about the place, every post, lamp standard, sign board and railing was draped with all of the contents of the case, we found the case and quickly packed the items back in and I took it to the guard room and stated that it has been found some way away from our room, it was opened by the police and an address found inside and was I presumed sent on to it’s owner, but I was very mad a Johny Shaw and never covered for him again,
[page break]
didn’t stop him from going out when he wanted to. Some months later he was found to have been forging instructors signatures on chits to book out micrometer and vernier gauges from the stores and was no doubt selling these in London and perhaps committing other crimes we knew nothing of, he was discharged from the R.A.F and as the second world war started soon after probably had a prosperous war and even ended up rich and famous, may be knighted for his efforts, while the rest of us fought and died! I have recently been contacted as a result of this webpage by Peter Long, another one of our fellows who knew Johny. He did become very rich eventually, Rolls Royce, Two ‘Planes of his own etc.!
R.A.F Halton was at one time a county residence owned by the Rothchild family whether they gave it to the R.A.F I don’t know but the “house” was used for the officer’s mess and the stables were allocated to the apprentices for a “hobby shop”. The stables were a magnificent set of buildings with curved brick walls and big enough to house a dozen families in great comfort. Many of the boys at Halton came from very wealthy families, some sons of aircraft manufacturers because it was recognised that an apprenticeship at Halton was the finest training anywhere in the world in Aircraft engineering. One father had given his son a new Ford car, he was probably in his last year of the three year course, we all helped him to take it completely to pieces and each part was reassembled with great care so that every part was a perfect fit, ran like a sewing machine the quietest Ford I have ever known.
There were even sons of Indian Princes, in fact it seemed as if every nation was represented there, many of the boys when they had finished their apprenticeship were “bought out” by their parents and returned to their own country or in some cases the firm that their parents owned in Britain, can’t remember the cost but did hear at the time it would have bought a row of houses in any town in England! The railway station we all arrived at was Wendover and the nearest large one was Alyesbury, (famous for ducks!) county seat for Buckinghamshire. Halton was set just below a ridge of hills and covered many square miles of country, the workshops were massive, covering all trades that operated in the Royal Air Force, an airfield with a grass runway complete with hangers and numerous aircraft that were used for hands on work and proper lecture halls where we were brought up to date on current affairs, and scientific laboratories with the latest equipment used in the testing of materials. The idea was to give not only complete technical training but a good all round knowledge much like a private college, apart from training in military matters and of course plenty of sporting activities. We were paid 5 shillings a week, four of which was saved for us, to be given when we went on leave, breakages which were deducted for individual items broken or worn out before a replacement was normally issued, boys can be hard on clothes! We were issued with a complete kit of
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clothes which included just about every thing required, but out of our weekly shilling we had to purchase things like metal and boot polish, once a week we had kit and barrack inspections when everything has to be spit and polish and all kit in good order, when the war started in September 1939 things change very rapidly, our three year course was cut down to just over two by stopping all holidays and we worked from dawn to dusk on our training, the subjects did not get shortened just longer days and no holidays or week ends, and we had to do anti invasion patrols and ride around the hills on our bicycles in the evenings to check for land mines that may have been dropped to blow the place up. At this time my father and mother had rented a house at High Wycombe which was not too far away from Halton, Dad was in charge of all military and naval buildings and repairs caused by shelling and bombing in Dover, so Mum lived at High Wycombe and Dad came up when he could, he had an old car and special petrol rations because of his work. I managed to get a weekend pass and went to get my bicycle from where it had been requisitioned for us in land mine patrols, the sergeant in charge said I couldn’t have mine but let me have grotty old service bike, think he was using it himself as it was new and my pride and joy, set out to visit Mum and Dad and coming round a corner met a flock of sheep all over the road, no where to go so crashed into the bank and bent the frame so that I could only steer one way, took me ages to get to High Wycombe and could not get anyone to mend it so Dad put it on the roof of his car and took me back to camp, left Halton soon after and took my bike with me.
The entry ages for Halton were 15 to 18, and we signed on for 12 years of service from the age of 18. As I was almost the minimum age, I was 15 in November 1938 and joined in January 1939, I would have been 18 when I finished the apprenticeship, but due to the war and cutting out holidays etc, I was only 17, I therefore was still classed as a boy when I left Halton and was not informed what rank I had passed my final examinations, so when I arrived at my first operational posting was paid the princely sum of ten shillings a week (about one dollar a week), yet was the only qualified member of the gang and had to tell men much older than myself sometimes the right way to do things.
– Reg Miles
Those items listed below can be found on the web at
http://members.aol.com/famjustin/Milesbio.html
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[underlined] Biography of Phyllis Miles (formerly Phyllis Dike), [/underlined] LACW, WAAF
[underlined] Collected Poetry of Reg Miles, [/underlined] Flight Engineer, No1SoTT Halton/ MUs/ Snowy Owls, 420 Sqdn RCAF, 6 Group Bomber Command, Tholthorpe, Yorkshire / 511 Transport Command, RAF
[underlined] Miss Phyllis Miles nee Dike, [/underlined] Photo, LACW, WAAF
[underlined] Group Photo, [/underlined] 432 Squadron RCAF, 6 Group Bomber Command, Eastmoor, Yorkshire
[underlined] 420 Squadron Badge, [/underlined] Photo, 6 Group Bomber Command, Tholthorpe Yorkshire, RCAF
[underlined] Barrington-Kennett Trophy Winners, [/underlined] 1939/40, Photo, Reg Miles, RAF Halton, RAF
[underlined] FIDO, [/underlined] Anecdote, Reg Miles, Flight Engineer, RAF
[underlined] Flight Engineer Reg Miles, [/underlined] Photo of Reg Miles, Flight Engineer, 432 Sqdn RCAF, 6 Group Bomber Command, RAF
[underlined] Flight Log 1664 HCU page one, page two, 432 Squadron page 1, 2, 3, 4, 420 Squadron page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 1332 H.C.U. Page 1, Certificates of Competency, 242 Squadron, Page 1, Page 2, Page 3, 246 Squadron, Page 1, Page 2, 511 Squadron, Page 1, Page 2, Page 3, Page 4, Page 5, Page 6, Page 7, Page 8, Reg Miles, [/underlined] Flight Engineer, No1SoTT Halton/ MUs/ Snowy Owls, 420 Sqdn RCAF, 6 Group Bomber Command, Tholthorpe, Yorkshire / 511 Transport Command, RAF
[underlined] Halifax, E Easy and Crew, [/underlined] Photo of Reg Miles, Flight Engineer, 420 Sqdn RCAF, 6 Group Bomber Command, RAF
[underlined] Mail Plane, [/underlined] RAF Joke, Reg Miles, Flight Engineer, RAF
[underlined] Missing in Action Telegram, [/underlined] Reg Miles, 432 Squadron RCAF, 6 Group Bomber Command, Eastmoor, Yorkshire
[underlined] PLUTO, [/underlined] Anecdote, Reg Miles, Flight Engineer, RAF
[underlined] Queen Mary, [/underlined] Photo, Reg Miles, 67 M.U.s, RAF
[underlined] Salvaging a Bristol Beaufort, [/underlined] Photo, Reg Miles, 67 M.U.s, RAF
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[underlined] Tholthorpe Control Tower, [/underlined] from Jim Tease, Pilot, Reg Miles, Flight Engineer, 420 Sqdn RCAF, 6 Group Bomber Command, RAF
[underlined] Wedding Photo, [/underlined] Photo of Reg Miles, Flight Engineer, No1SoTT Halton/ MUs/ Bomber Command/ 511 Transport Command, RAF
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Biography of Reg Miles
Ex Apprentice No 1 S.of T.T., R.A.F., Halton 39th Entry 34 – 67 M.U,s – 27 A/S Bloemspruit South Africa – Lympe Kent, Flight Engineer 432 – 420 Squadrons RCAF, 6 Group Bomber Command, Eastmoor, Tholthorpe, Yorkshire / 242 – 246 – 511 Squadrons Transport Command Lyneham, RAF
Chapter 2
Ex Apprentice, 34 – 67 M.U.s, R.A.F.
I was posted to 34 Maintenance Unit Shrewsbury in Shropshire 5-10-1940, this unit was housed in sheds on the out-skirts of Shrewsbury and was responsible for the repair on site of crashed aircraft and the recovery of crashed aircraft that could not be flown away, this included both British, German, Italian, and later on American. The Flight Sergeant in charge of the crew of about six airmen was about sixty, was an optician in civvy street, had been a driver in the 1914-18 war so had no knowledge of aircraft, the rest of the gang were ex-garage workers only about one had any experience with spanners so it was finding out the hard way how ‘planes came to bites! We also had a driver for our Chevy truck and could call on “Queen Mary” low loaders and Coles cranes to lift things, but many times we were unable to get cranes or trucks to the site and it was sheer legs and muscle that were used.
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[italics] Photo of a crane of the type we used to salvage aircraft during my time with 34 & 67 MUs in 40-41. On show as an Amazon Crane but the same as a Coles one, so have altered it’s title. It is on show at the Yorkshire Air Museum based at Elvington airfield a WW2 bomber station flying the dear old Halifax of 77 Squadron RAF and two Free French squadrons 346 Guyenne and 347 Tunisie [/italics]
The only time I tried to drive a Coles Crane I made a complete mess of it and sheared the drive shaft!! The two Polish operators were not well pleased, but as the could not speak English and I not able to understand a single word of their long and arm waving complaint, it was left to our Flight Sergeant to ball me out, and as he was a geriatric (well must have been all of 50) little notice was taken of it all. The Poles got underneath and removed the bit, replaced it and were operational in a few hours, I was not allowed anywhere near it after!!
The lowloader, Queen Mary, was a specially made semi trailer body, very low platform with wheels exterior, from memory would think the platform about 12 inches from ground, also very long able to take most aircraft fuselages and wings. Extending side rails were fitted that could be locked up so that wings could be stood on their leading edges, one on either side (on sand bags to prevent damage) and strapped to these side rails, the rails were also covered in felt to prevent damage, and strapped to these side rails, the rails were also covered in felt to prevent damage, this left the centre of the trailer free to fit the fuselage on trestles, with propellor removed but engine still in place, some aircraft with long bodies could extend over the tail board if put on trestles to clear, open body to the trailer so that there was no height restriction, only the height of bridges and power cables, standard 1939-40 prime mover, 6 cylinder Perkins or Ford, nothing like the monsters on todays roads. It was called “Queen Mary” because they were so long that the only thing to compare them with was the ship of the same name.
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photo from David Searle-Baker Queen Mary
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Recovering Hawker Tempest Mk. V Wreck
My first job with them was at an aerodrome called Shawbury that was used to train pilots and Navigators, a Spitfire pilot had been shot in a fight with a German fighter and had lost a lot of blood before crash landing beside the main runway and the aircraft had tipped onto it’s back as he had not been able to lower the underbridge. The first job was to make the guns safe and remove any bombs before starting to dismantle the ‘plane, the next job was always to remove instruments that were either secret or likely to be stolen, this in a Spitfire was the gunsight, compass and a clock it fitted, as the new boy I got the job of crawling into the upside down cockpit to remove these items while the rest of the gang removed the wing fairings and bolts to waggle the wings off. I had to get on hands a [sic] knees to get the items off as they were almost on the ground, felt something wet on my head and back as I worked, found when I crawled out that a large pad of congealed blood had come adrift from the floor and I was a right mess, no water anywhere near as we were miles from any building, the crew washed me off with the 100 octane petrol we drained from the ‘plane, but as we sat and ate our lunch of sandwiches couldn’t help keep looking at the blood still under my finger nails. As we sat and ate we saw a training Miles Master coming in to land with the cockpit hood open and the horn blaring loudly to warn the pilot that his under carriage was not down, we all stood up and waved like mad, the pilot, probably doing his first solo landing, waved back with a big smile on his face and crashed, we now had another ‘plane to remove!
I don’t know how the trainee pilot got on, we helped him out and he had no damage but whether he was “scrubbed” or not have no idea (scrubbed thrown off the pilot’s course through some error).
The Spitfire being monococ [sic] construction in aluminium alloys was a very easy aircraft to dismantle and transport, the main wing spar consisted of a series of square tubes fitted inside each other, gradually tapering towards the wing tip, the mating tubes for these being very close to the fuselage, with the propeller removed the body fitted easily into a low loader and the wings were slid in either side being supported on sand bags to prevent damage and strapped to the extendable rails fitted to the sides of the low loader, the guns, ammunition, and propeller being stowed in any suitable position. The Miles Master being of wooden construction was an entirely different proposition, the wing roots were attached about one and a half metres either side of the fuselage making this “centre section” which was not removable about three and a half to four and a half metres wide, when placed on the sides of the low loader these projected out each side a considerable amount and because they were very low often jammed on road side obstructions, this was particularly a problem on the windy narrow country roads with many “hump
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Back” bridges, we were caught only one when the centre section rode up onto the walls of a hump back bridge and very nearly caused the injury to one of the crew riding in the back of the low loader, three or four sleepers lashed to the side rails lifted this aircraft high enough to clear any road side obstacles. We never had enough red flags to fix to the overhangs so it was almost a game to ride in the back of the low loader and lean over as we motored along and steal the flags placed in empty paint cans by the road gangs, as we used the same route frequently from training airfields to our depot I guess the road workers got fed up with us and one day as one of the gang grabbed a flag found himself flying through the air to land in the road, the rotters had concreted all the flags in and they were very heavy, no damage done just a few bruises and wounded pride. Coming back from the same airfield one day we were held up by a new gang with a Miles Master stuck on the hump back bridge walls, to add to their problems their Coles crane was in front of the low loader so couldn’t get to the plane to lift it up, we managed to get our crane in place and help them out, they hadn’t read standing orders! Called to the same airfield with instruction to remove some twenty Avro Ansons from a hanger we through they were being transferred to another airfield, when we got there found the whole lot burnt out in the hanger, looked like an elephant’s grave yard with just the steel tubing frames and melting engines and propellers lined up in two long rows. When we asked what had happened were told that during the night an airman on guard duty saw a low flying airplane crossing the field and identified it as a German one so fired his rifle at it, the plane dropped it’s bomb which landed on the concrete outside the hanger, bounced over the bomb proof doors, bounced on the hanger floor and just missed going clean out the other end but hit a girder and went off. The airman had been put on a charge for firing at an unidentified aircraft!
I was going on my first leave after being posted to an RAF squadron as an aero engine fitter, and at only 17 in 1940 felt a big wheel, My folks lived in Dover and my brother of 9 years would need something from my war, grabbed a handful of .303” ammunition from a crashed training Hurricane, pulled out the bullets and emptied out the charge, would put the cases in a fire when I got home to get rid of the caps and put the bullets back, would impress my small brother. Put the cases in a fire out in the yard and got a most awful telling off from Mum, they were having more than their share of bangs. Next day was about to leave the house to look up at the “dogfights” going on above, Mother said you’ll get killed by falling shrapnel stay indoors, but out I went, and in I went after a few seconds as redhot bits of metal fell around me, I might be in the RAF but my folks and young brother were seeing more of the war than I was, my few bullets were nothing compared to his collection of shrapnel, from both our guns and those firing 12inch shells from France, he has seen more action that I had!!
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We had arrived at a very posh looking house set up on a rise with a well maintained garden with small bushes lining the curving path to the front door and a perfect green lawn. I suppose we did look a sorry bunch with our usual costume of rolled down gum boots, white socks turned over the top and greasy overalls that were well over due for a wash, no hats and most with a few days of beard, long uncombed hair in fact even the ‘chiefy’ could have passed for the robber leader, we had been out on the road for about a week and were tired and hungry when we got yet another job before returning to base for a rest. Chiefy went up to the front door and was answered by a smart looking man who took the Flight Sergeant round the back of the house through a very ornate garden arch way, he soon came back and called us to follow him. The sight that met the eyes was one to make us all laugh, a learner pilot has got into trouble and seeing what looked like a nice open field came into land, too late he found it was a chicken farm with lots of tall wire fences to separate the various chickens, his ‘plane had become wrapped up like a parcel as he ploughed through the lot, but to make matters even worse as his ‘plane neared the back of the house his engine fell off and landed into a rather nice goldfish pond, this cracked the concrete and all the water ran out stranding the fish. The owner was not a very happy man and refused most emphatically to allow us to clear a wide path way back through the mess so we could get a crane in to lift the whole lot out by a back way, no it all had to go round the side of the house and no damage must be done. What a hope he had the radial engine was levered out of the pond and rolled with great difficulty through the side gate, a few bits came off both as we struggled to hold the engine upright but when we got to the front of the house it just seemed to get a life of it’s own and rolled across the lawn leaving giant size foot prints and demolished hedges and flower beds on it’s way. The rest of the aircraft was sawn into bits and man handled the same way, miserable sod never even gave us a cup of tea when we had finished, just growled he would report us for damage we had caused, we all hoped his chickens never laid another egg.
As to the Learner who crashed, he was long gone before we got there. This was not always the case as we did come across the odd bits and bobs and even complete bodies at times, not all RAF either.
For about three months we worked all over the north part of England and Wales, even had to close The Mersey Tunnel one time to tow an American light bomber through from Speke don’t know why or where we took it. We were then transferred to 67M.U. bases in Taunton the county seat of Somerset. The depot was in a large garage on the main road south of the city, has it’s own sports field out the back which we used for general storage during transit, all the low loaders, lorries, and cranes were parked in various streets which had to have guards circulating during the night, our five rounds of ammunition and World War 1 rifle must not be lost or even used,
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it was all we had, another job for the technical people, office and stores people never got this job, perhaps because they made out the lists, one time when we were back at base had to spend the day shovelling coal at the railway station to fuel the fires for the office staff, couldn’t let them get dirty, wonder if Churchill knew that his trained people were waiting on the lazy sods in the office.
This was early in 1941 with the threat of invasion by the German army still a possibility, the sports field was surrounded with a high spiked railing fence. The fence was six feet high made of steel spikes about 3 quarters of an inch in diameter, spaced about six inches apart fitted through holes at top and bottom of steel plates which were made of 2 inch by 1/4 inch steel. I’m sure you must have some around houses or playing fields where you live. The spikes were held in swaged nibs pressed into the spikes when the sections of fence were made this held the spikes in place. We were given the job of filing off the nibs that held alternate spikes in place. We had to file these nibs off alternate spikes so the fence did not collapse, but the “doctored” spikes could be removed. Each one of these then had a number pained on it, all airmen were allocated a spike and on the call to arms would rush to get out their spike, if they could, and fend off the invading hordes of Germans with their Tiger tanks, machines guns and other lethal weapons, no doubt we should have had a major victory as the German troops fell about laughing!!
The C.O. held a dummy run which became a real pantomime as men fought for a spike having forgotten their number and short people couldn’t reach high enough to pull them out of the top rail. Nobody got stabbed but it was a close run thing. We all treated the whole thing as a joke, it is easy when you have your back firmly against the wall to consider defeat impossible, and so many of the daft ideas did work, FIDO, PLUTO, to name just two. This one was one of those that just was stupid!!
The same wally of a C.O. who gave us the spikes decided to make me up to a Corporal, told him he couldn’t because I still didn’t know what rank I had passed out from Halton, and in any case being technical trade had to pass a trade board before I could be promoted. Threatened to put me on a charge if I didn’t put up my stripes straight away to be officially second in charge of the gang, just ignored him and was called up before him a couple of days later to be told he couldn’t promote me for the reasons I had given him, but told me I had passed out from Halton as a Fitter 2 Engine with the rank of Aircraftman First class and my pay would start right away because of the work I was doing, so I did get some thing out of it all. Following on this I was given the job as Station Armourer, responsible for sorting and packing for dispatch all bombs, cannons, machines guns and ammunition brought in from crashes. I was given the relevant Air Ministry orders to tell
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me what to do because lets face it I was not even 18 and trained as an engine fitter, but perhaps the only real airman on the place, I was given the away team half of the sports changing room, the Station Warrant Officer had the other half, a retread from 14-18 war and responsible for station discipline.
One of the jobs I had to do was strip all guns of any bullets “up the spout” as many had major damage and bent barrels, this was never easy, the breach blocks had to be taken out and packed in separate boxes, with a bullet jammed in, the only way to release the blocks was to fire the gun which sent the bullet up the bent barrel and this released the breach blocks, S.W.O. came in one day when I had a pile of Browning Machine guns on the bench all with bent barrels and was firing them one at a time to get the breach blocks out, nearly wet himself, and then a few days later I was burning all the Very pistol cartridges. These were all different colours and were used to signal and identify aircraft. Usually they just burnt with lots of bright colours but this lot started flying all over the place just as he marched out of his office with his cane under his arm, moved pretty quick for an oldy and got back inside his office, seemed to think I did it on purpose!!
Does seem a bit mad perhaps now to do what I did as an “armourer”. But times were a bit desperate you know and everything was in very short supply so if it could be repaired and returned into service we might just survive.
The first 20m/m cannon I dismantled was a problem, had never seen one before had no books on it and had to get the breach block out, barrel was straight and nothing up it, the cannon was about two and a half metres long and the only nut I could see was on the “blunt” end, a large hexagonal nut with a locking tab on it, so behind it must be the return spring and hopefully the breach block, with the “blunt” end sticking out the open door I got to work and the nut kept turning and seemed to have lots of thread, with a bang the last turn flew off and what seemed like yards of spring flew out of the door, and guess who was just leaving the office? The other problems with the 20m/m cannon was the round cartridge drum that fitted on the breach, these always arrived to me battered and bent and the only way to get the shells out was to cut a slot in the case and prise or shake the shells out, I was sitting on the bench with an ammunition box on the floor shaking a drum to get the shells out when the door burst open and a strange sergeant charged in, “Call yourself an armourer” he shouted, “Stop that before you kill us both”. When I told him who and what I was he said that he had never seen a cannon gun in fact he didn’t know much at all as he had spent the last few years at a place called Shaibah in the Gulf and had only worked on Vickers water cooled guns while there, but he did know the coding for the shells I was dropping into a box and some were of a very delicate contact type to explode on contact with the thin aluminium skin of a ‘plane! I filled him in
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with all I knew and what had to be done with each type of weapon and worked with him for a week or so until I managed to get back with my old gang.
Shortly after we were sent on detachment to an airfield in Cornwall called St. Eval, at which were based Bristol Beaufort Torpedo Bombers, they were sent out after German ships and dock installations and had received very heavy casualties.
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Men of 67 MU at Bristol Beaufort Recovery Reg 2nd from left back row
We were housed in one of the Nissen huts and started work right away as there was a Spitfire sitting on top of a dry stone wall at the edge of the airfield, the pilots had overshot, bounced and come to a halt perfectly balanced on the wall, pained on the side was the pilots name and the legend “Sempre in Excreta” (Latin is not my strong point!) Always in the shit! At the end of the runway was a stone quarry and a Beaufort had crashed into it on take off loaded with torpedoes, these had detonated so there was little to move mainly the two large radial engines, one was in the middle of the quarry and our crane soon lifted that into a lorry, the other was partly buried under stone and against the quarry wall so we had to move it out with brute force to get it into a position that the crane could reach, It was hard hot work and we were having trouble keeping our footing because of all the oil that had spilt out when it had hit the wall, except it wasn’t oil but half a man buried under the engine, not a pretty sight but a nurse who just happened to be looking on helped us to put the remains in sacks so that they could be buried properly with the rest of the poor devil. We very rarely had a problem with bodies or parts there of, because the bodies were taken away before we arrived on the scene.
We did have one occasion when we were sent onto the moors to remove a Hawker Hurricane, but it was the wring number and found the pilot still in it, we reported this and found our one a mile or so away. The Hawker Hurricane was a very different type of construction from the Spitfire,
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basically a steel tubular frame around which were fitted wooden formers and these were joined together by wooden strips along the length of the fuselage, the wings were very similar and all surfaces were covered with doped fabric, this was very time consuming to make and repair, much like a model aeroplane in appearance. A fitter from Hawker’s had almost finished this repair to a Hurricane when German bombers gave us a visit to pay back for what the Beauforts were doing in France, a bomb dropped outside the bomb proof door, blew them in and flattened the poor Hurricane! We got bombed out that night so drove a few miles away to a friendly looking field and slept all in a row under a tarp for a few nights until we were given an empty holiday beach house at Trearnon Bay which became our base for a few weeks, when we were not out on a job. Visited St. Eval in the 1980s and they were only just starting to remove the remains of that hanger blown up in early 1941.
During the next few weeks we were constantly on the move all over Cornwall, from Penzance across to Predanack, which is on the other leg at the base of Cornwall. Working on a Whirlwind, twin engined fighter-bomber which had nose dived straight into the ground, on a desolate part of the moors, all that showed was the edges of sheets of aluminium in the ground and lying a few feet away, a hand complete with a ring on, we could not salvage the plane and pilot’s body without large earth moving gear and instructions were received to pull out what we could and fill the hole in, as we worked we heard the sound of aircraft high up and turned to watch a flight of the same ‘planes go by, as we watched one pealed off and dived into the ground a few miles away, heard later that the tail planes of this aircraft were a bit suspect. We always had billets in the nearest place to where we worked, sometimes this was an Army Camp or a pub and in this case we were living in a cafe at Predanack, after a wash we all trooped into the dining room for our first meal and on came a Cornish pastie, about a foot long and looked delicious but didn’t think it was a lot for six or seven hungry blokes to share, but then in came the rest and we had one each!
Once we had to go to a Fleet Air Arm station to dismantle an aircraft, it was in a hanger and we were dressed in our usual scruffy outfits, all these Naval types marching about at the double, and the public address system nearly drove us mad, never seemed to stop with lots of whistles and incomprehensible bellowing, asked one of the sailors what it all meant his answer left us just as ignorant as before. We were in one of the huts and left our truck at the hanger to walk to the mess hall to get some lunch, as we strolled by a hut the window flew open and a loud voice wanted to know what we were doing walking on the Quarter deck and tried to make us run across, not in gum boots we couldn’t and didn’t try. That night being near a town, after 50 years have no idea which one, we all thought a night on the town would be a good change, so managed to tidy ours [sic] selves up and found
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out when the bus left and got to the guard room at the main gate just as a sailor closed and locked it, outside was the queue for the bus which had yet to arrive. “Open” we all said, can’t was the reply because the liberty boat has gone, what a load of rubbish, if you were on a ship you could understand it, if the Navy still do things that way it’s about time they changed from the days of Rum, bum and Nelson!! Soon got away from that stupid place probably didn’t know there was a war on we certainly did and spent all our days clearing away the rubbish caused by it. Often we had to remove crashed German aircraft that had been shot down, most were just a heap of burnt wreckage with often the remains of the crew inside, not recognisable as such just bits of bone that had not been found for burial, at other times we would have a complete ‘plane with little or no damage, there we took to pieces if not able to fly out from where they were, went to a special place to be put together perhaps with parts from other ‘planes to make them airworthy, and test flown to find out more about that type. Once we were called to an aerodrome near the coast where, I think it was a J.U.88 had landed the pilot thinking he was over the channel in France, the duty officer seeing the plane land had driven out in a jeep and crashed into the tail to stop it taking off again, we had to get the bits from a depot that was full of the German ‘planes and replace the damaged parts. Some of the early R.A.F. bombers such as the twin engined Handley Page Hampden were fitted with special balloon cable cutters to the leading edge of the main wings, these in theory would be tripped as the cable slid into it’s jaws and an explosive charge would fire a razor sharp chisel cutting the cable allowing the plane to get free, after a number of M.U. airmen had lost fingers while man handling wings during salvage instructions were issue that these had to be tripped before any work was done on the aircraft, I tripped the only one I worked on and it chopped the end from my screwdriver! An American Flying Fortress had crashed somewhere in Devonshire, can’t remember where, and what it was doing in England I don’t know, though the Yanks came in much later, anyhow we were told to get it and it must be sent up to Liverpool. The biggest thing we had tackled, got the fuselage, wings and engines away alright but the centre section was very wide and when stood on it’s leading edge was exceptionally high.
The local police were always asked for advice on getting past low bridges and electricity wires, spent more than a week travelling a few miles only to find yet another low bridge in our way, chiefy was fed up and so were we camping along the road where ever we go stuck, most aircraft that we worked on had a fire axe stowed on board so we had a good selection of sharp ones we used for all sorts of jobs, we cut foot and hand holes in the centre section and cut off with the axes quite a few feet from the trailing edge which was now the top and were able to get back to the depot next day, thing was only worth scrap anyway. After about 5 months of this work which in most cases was just garbage collection, not what I had been trained
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at great expense to do, I saw a notice on orders calling for volunteers to go over seas. I put in my application and was accepted, given seven days posting leave and reported to the assembly camp called I think Paddington, hundreds or more like thousands of airmen of all trades were gathered there and we were all issued with both tropical and cold weather equipment, had two large kit bags of the stuff to lug about plus personal kit in a small bag. After about ten days of this which included a medical we were all paraded on the very large parade ground to get our instructions to more to lorries and get abroad a ship, suddenly a voice bellowed out “575931 Miles R.J. fall out and report to the parade adjutant” was that me? “yes” said a bloke next to me who had become a friend. So out I marched dragging bags in front of all these assembled airman, saluted after dropping the bags and reported my name and number, still not 18 I was told I was too young to go where these men were going and told to hand in my kit and report back to my unit, this lot went to Russia I found out later and many did not return, some drowned when their ship was sunk and others just died from the cold!
– Reg Miles
The URL of this page is
http://www.geocities.com/milbios/Milesbio2.html
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Biography of Reg Miles
Ex Apprentice No 1 S.of T.T., R.A.F., Halton 39th Entry 34 – 67 M.U.s – 27 A/S Bloemspruit South Africa – Lympe Kent, Flight Engineer 432 – 420 Squadrons RCAF, 6 Group Bomber Command, Eastmoor, Tholthorpe, Yorkshire / 242 – 246 – 511 Squadrons Transport Command Lyneham, RAF
Chapter 3
27 Air School, Bloemspruit South Africa,
B Squadron, Service Unit, R.A.F.
[missing photograph]
I didn’t spend long back at Taunton before the call came again to report for over seas posting, I’d had the special leave so on the train to Blackpool this time.
The Leaving of Liverpool “ring any bells” a film about children forcefully taken from England during and shortly after the war, the parents and children never told if the others were alive and the children taken to Church run HOMES in Australia and treated as slave labour, in fact in many cases the children built the homes (as in collective enclaves) As I said a very different life style, we were all led to believe that they (as in any one in authority even self proclaimed) knew best and slavishly carried out their instructions to the letter. Children were abused, physically, mentally and sexually, both boys and girls, how did it happen, only because authority was not questioned until recently and only now is the truth coming out of those children’s tragic lives.
Bearing all that in mind you may not be surprised to read that I like my peers did as I was told without question.
The journey out to South Africa started from the joys of Blackpool, a holiday resort in the north of England, no work, billeted in houses normally
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used to accommodate the vast numbers of “visitors” from the industrial towns of the north during their summer holidays. The local “landladies” welcomed us with open arms, we were a source of income to them, not that they opened too wide the food cupboards, but many daughters opened their hearts and arms to us, we were all young healthy and free. Had my first go on ice skates at the local rink and after a few falls soon mastered it and really enjoyed it. Soon became time to board ship S.S. Mooltan 20,000 tons of sheer misery at Liverpool and head out into the Atlantic that was waiting for us with all the dirty weather it could find. April 1941, could well have been April fools days for all I know.
By buses we arrived at grey Liverpool to stand for hours on a grey dockside in front of a grey wall that stretched to the sky and disappeared into the grey distance, only relieved by a black hole in it’s side through which countless airmen staggered carrying all their worldly goods contained in two kitbags and a small case. One of the kitbags contained our normal selection of issue clothing, the other, two complete outfits one of tropical shorts shirts etc, the other cold weather clothes suitable for Russia!! We had no idea where we were headed and it was hoped neither did the enemy! The kitbag not required was taken off us well into the voyage, the Russian one I am now very happy to say!!
The Mooltan 20,000 tons of aging ship, massive to us but now would only be classed as a small ship 100,000 tons seems to be the average, 250,000 tons on the large size!!
Our turn came at last and through the hole we trooped to find ourselves in a black cavern, directed through doors that were about a foot off the floor so that dragging kitbags jammed and brought forth words of complain not heard very frequently in church. Now completely lost and descending even deeper into the bowels of this black tank we were at last told that is where you stay until told to move and that heap there contain hammocks and those hooks there are where you swing them and those tables and benches are where you eat and some can sleep on them and the heads are there and don’t move!!
So we sat and surrounded with our bags wondered what we had done to deserve this, after all we had volunteered for overseas posting, but this?
A few thought to see what was through the next doorway but only more of the same lots of airmen sat sitting waiting to be told what to do. Ah a sergeant has arrived, ‘you and you come with me’, not me but a couple near who left their kit and followed as detailed, who return some time later with urns of tea, a scramble to find our own kitbag and delve into it’s contents to find our ‘mugs airmen’ hopefully still in one piece.
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These two had been delegated as our mess orderlies and would fetch our food at the times arranged, well at least we should be fed and the tea was hot strong and sweet, by this time it was getting late in the day not that we had any idea whether the sun was shining or it was raining, the urns were returned and the message came back to sling your hammocks and get in.
I was just about 18 from memory and certainly the youngest in our “room”, places on the benches and tables had already been taken by those in the know. The Mooltan was a slow old converted cargo ship. As such the accommodations were happenstance and crowded. The only hammock hook left was over the stairwell and passage way. This is where I had to sling my hammock, which was over the stair case leading to the lower toilets. I slung my hammock and endeavoured to climb in and found myself on the floor the opposite side, I had tied it too tight and had no head room so that as I climbed in I pushed myself out again, instructions from those near who were well bedded down soon got things “ship shape” and I crawled in to assume the shape of a banana, not at all comfortable and desperately aware that a trip to the heads should have been made before becoming cocooned like this.
Sleep came but was soon interrupted by the rustling noise as hammocks swayed and rubbed together, we were on the move but this soon stopped and dawn found us moored in mid river, we had been allowed on deck soon after stowing our hammocks and being fed, strict instructions being issued that not too many on one side as the ship could capsize!! A sea of men everywhere, no small piece of deck was vacant, and only the grey Mersey, grey sky, and crowds of grey clad men were in view.
There we stayed all day and other ships moored near, we were fed during the day and tried to wash with the salt water soap we were issue with, it didn’t foam and currently did not remove dirt, in fact it left a grey sort of coating on the hands which was difficult to remove, seems that life from now on going to contain logs of grey!!
And so to “bed” or do you say and so to hammock? only to be woken up feeling very sick and scrambled out of the hammock to find most others were doing the same and a rush to get on deck for some fresh air which may stop that horrible feeling. It was dawn a very grey dawn, and directly behind us was a very large grey ship, completely without modesty showing us her (it’s?) grey bottom as it lunged up and down, we likewise were playing silly buggers and this motion was no doubt the cause of our distress, in the distance could be seen other ships, some had things like broom sticks pointing about them and we presumed that they were to protect us, I like many other now wished that we could be torpedoed and sunk, they only relief in sight for that awful sinking feeling!
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That night, all the hammocks swung together as the ship rocked in the heavy seas and the rush by some people during the night to get to the “bogs” before they spewed up often ended just below me, perhaps it is no wonder that I spent as much time as I was allowed on deck away from the stench, but always got herded down when it got dark, the Atlantic was not a very pleasant place to be at that time apart from the gale that seemed to rage more each day, we were only too aware that U Boats would enjoy sinking a troop ship and the chances of being saved in that stormy water was about nil! It was cold and smelly in my hammock as we sailed out into the Atlantic Ocean.
The days passed and gradually we were able to take a small sip of tea a tiny crumb of bread without heaving it up straight away, as we and the other ships headed into the grey Atlantic, the clever ones amongst us saying that we were headed for America, others convinced we were going into the Med, and an even more knowledgeable bunch with a compass sure we were going south. The sea was empty but for our escort. Our convoy, being one with important cargo, a troop ship, was doubtless given a course away from the shorter more populated routes. We saw no planes escorting us or other ships other than our own convoy and escort. Some bits and bobs were sighted in the sea, just a few empty crates probably slung over board by any ship friend or foe going that way. Nothing else.
Funny things that stick in the memory after all these years, apart from the agony of sea-sickness which passed after about a week, was and still is the smell and taste of the bread loaves we were all given each day as part of our food ration. I had now recovered from sea sickness and was able to eat my share of the food on offer, what we were serves up I have no recollection apart from the small loaf of bread we were issued with each morning which had to do us for the rest of the day. Eat it when you like but you wont get any more until the next morning. It was the most enjoyable bread I have ever tasted, of course I had teeth then and was very hungry, as all young people are, but after so many years I can almost taste it in my memory!!
The grey has passed and the grey ships with guns, one of which was a battleship, left us as we entered Freetown, not the town you understand but the estuary leading to it. We called into Freetown after three weeks of utter misery. Freetown is on the west African coast, so it did look as if we might end up somewhere hot but where no one knew. Apart from one poor sod, one of our airmen though not from our mess, who had not stopped bringing up just bile for the last three weeks, no one from the troops got on shore. The lad who was taken ashore with seasickness that had lasted since leaving UK, was in a very bad way with dehydration.
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We moored away from the town itself and have no memory of other ships near us but guess they were there. We did not get ashore, not that it looked very inviting, mud huts and mud was all we could see moored out in the channel. After one day on a ship that actually stayed in one place horizontally we set sail again for parts unknown.
I developed a raging tooth ache and reported sick, the ships doctor showed me his equipment for treating tooth aches, it consisted of an armchair and a few rusty looking plier type instruments, said he hadn’t pulled out any teeth and which one hurt, showed him and tapped on the wrong one and told me to come back in the morning if it is still bothered me, funny thing the pain went away and only returned very many years later when all that was left was a hollow shell which crumbled to pieces when the dentist gripped it!!
Sailing away from Freetown the weather became much sunnier and it was now quite evident that south was the way we were going, the sea became less grey, but cannot remember the other ships, perhaps they no longer were showing their bottoms, flying fishes flew from our path dolphins rode our wash, and life became just about perfect, apart from the fact that the 10 shillings (about a dollar) I had boarded with was long gone (no pay until we arrived where ever we were going). I smoked a pipe but would smoke cigarettes as well and the only ones on offer free from my “room” mates were Springbok, a very strong South African fag oval in section and only given to me because those that had bought them felt sick after a few puffs. It is one of the other things that I remember after all these years, the horrible smell of the Springbok cigarettes, which was all I had to smoke the six weeks we were aboard. Perhaps in retrospect a good time to give up smoking you might say, but in those days they were issued free to some units and certainly the Salvo’s and other friends of the forces gave them out to all service men. The opiate of the masses it would appear!!
We got into smoother waters and the sun shone and most of the Navy escort left us, and there really is a sort of magic about the sea when you are far from land, suppose most of us got a good rest and were well fed for six weeks and enjoyed the days relaxing in the sun, watching the flying fish, dolphins and strange patches of seaweed, and of course we all had to be “welcomed” by King Neptune.
One thing about a troop ship there is no such thing as privacy, we slept close to one another, ate our food touching elbows, and washed and showered in sea water which does not get any dirty off only ingrains it further in the skin, even using the special soap that was provided. Toilets had to be increased and the solution on this ship was to construct on the top deck a trough about 30ft or 9 meters long and fix along this some 20 or so squares
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of wood with holes in, water was pumped in from the sea one end and ran over board out of the other, a very friendly loo indeed, the rocking of the ship was a worry some times when your next door neighbour’s evacuation born on a tidal wave came visiting!! To enliven an activity that was already fraught with some peril, people with a distorted sense of humour nailed a stub of candle to a piece of wood, lit the candle and then set it on its journey down stream to warm the posteriors and other appendages of the poor captive sufferers!!
We travelled south but then to confuse all and sundry we started to go north and with our very limited knowledge of where things were on the earth’s surface we were again lost, after six weeks of a war time sea cruise we entered the Port of Durban and once more were on dry land which to our consternation would not keep still and behaved much like the Mooltan had in Liverpool.
Perhaps it is not to be unexpected that most if not all were glad to get off the Mooltan after six weeks when she docked in Durban on the east coast of South Africa. The group I was with were taken from the ship to the rail and we began the last part of our journey to our final destination which was Bloemspruit R.A.F Pilot training station near Bloemfontein in the Orange Free State, where we were to keep the 104 Miles Master aircraft flying day and night. A much better job that I had been doing since leaving Halton.
The railway journey from Durban to Bloemfontein lasted one whole day but can’t say I remember anything at all about it, on arrival at 27 Air School about ten miles outside the city which is the capital of the Orange Free State we were shown to our barracks, decent brick buildings, single storey, with stable type spilt doors and the usual basic beds and lockers, but heaven after the ship. Food was so strange at first, lots of fruit most of which we had never seen or heard of and many different dishes made from maize, one like porridge called “mealie meal” served at breakfast I thought wasn’t too bad but soon learnt that the natives ate it so South African whites wouldn’t beneath their dignity. We had a lot to learn about the South African white way of life, to see the native workers on the flight line covered in oil and grease as they did the dirty jobs and then watch them fishing in the bins where we emptied the left overs from our plates, made us recent arrivals very angry, but we were told not to interfere, we were guests in the country and our ways were not the right way to treat these “savages”. If we offered them the “butts” left from our cigarettes they had to hold out both hands in case they had a knife in the other and would stab us, it did seem and still does to me that the white population went in fear of their lives and in many cases rightly so because they did treat the natives in a terrible way and at last the right thing has been done but the Dutch Boer has a lot to answer for. These Boers had an organisation based in the Orange Free State (think they
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now call it The Free State) that went about blowing up power lines and post offices and was very pro German know the name but my spelling of it will be far from correct (Osiver Brantvag) told you it was all wrong!! I made a number of friends while stationed at Bloemfontein, the Florie family for one, they picked me up at the bus stop when I had missed it one night and gave me a lift back to camp, he was an accountant and she was after a bit of ‘rough’ not 18 and dim as a Toch H lamp didn’t recognise the invitations handed out every time I stayed over night, frilly things always had been left on my bed by mistake, “I’ll just put them away, do you like them?” was only one of the things and her husband I’m sure thought I was giving her one, would have done if I hadn’t been so thick!! One night at their house they were having the usual meeting of the tennis club, very few blokes but lots of pretty young girls, suggested that they might like me to do some toast on the open fire for all of them, funny thing it wasn’t some thing they had ever done, so there I sat toasting slice after slice and spreading each with lots of butter, calls for more coming all the time, the family cat came to see what I was doing and I just spoke to it calling it “Pussy”, a deathly hush descended over the room and then a few stifled giggles and one of the chaps wanted to tell me some thing outside, pussy was the local name for that part of a girls body that men seem to want to get into so no more calling cats pussy.
Another person I got to know was Nabiha Masoud (think that’s how to spell it) she and her large family were all from Lebanon and would you believe classed as coloured, which is only one degree above black and not to be mixed with, the Florie family would have nothing to do with her even though she had her own ladies hairdressing business and good at it, tried to get me not to see her or her family, but apart from “Dad” the rest of her folks were very nice to me and always had a place at their table for me, Dad thought things were serious so didn’t want her getting involved with a Pom, we were in fact just good friends and perhaps I saw her just to say “up you” to the white population. There is a town called Margate down the coast from Durban and I did write to the Mayor who invited me to visit the town and be their guest, but never took up the offer. Dac Dacre was an ex Halton “Brat” like I was and we got on very well together, we arranged to take a leave together and as we could get a free railway pass decided to go to a place called Muizenburg this is a seaside holiday town on the shores of False Bay, we had booked into a YMCA hostel and spent our leave there but the train journey lasted all of two days and did get a bit boring after a while, miles and miles of very little followed but some more, had a look at Cape Town and little did we realise that not too many months would pass before we again found ourselves in the area, in fact in a transit camp between Muizenburg and Cape Town waiting to board ship back to England and flying over Germany as crews of bombers. My mother’s father had a brother who had moved to South Africa many years before and I managed to find them in a small town called Krugersdorp near Johannesburg, they invited
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me to stay with them on one of my leaves so I took the offer up and spent two weeks with them. Very interesting for me as my uncle had a building firm and I went about to see how things were done, one of the sons was an inspector of mines and arranged for me to go down a gold mine and also see all the processes of getting gold from the ore.
There are two reefs bearing gold in that area, called north and south, can’t remember which is which but one is very wide and is made up of very white quartz pebbles around which can be seen the glitter of gold flecks, the other reef is quite narrow and in places only inches wide but is very dark even black in colour and the gold can be seen quite easily as small nuggets. Both of these reefs go down into the ground at an angle so that new shafts are sunk to reach the reefs as they get deeper in the earth and further away from the original shaft, each new shaft being much deeper before it reaches the gold bearing ore. The very large heaps of brilliant white dust from the treatment plants can be seen for miles around Joh/burg and when the wind blows cause painful eyes and noses.
The mine I went down was very deep indeed and the lift travelled at such speed that one felt slightly air-borne as it descended the earth. The area at the bottom was huge and the passage ways leading off very large and well lit, as we moved away towards the mine face things got steadily hotter until we reached a place where a native was working a jack-hammer in a steeply sloping crack removing the small but very rich ore piece by piece, all jack-hammers also have a water pipe connected to prevent that miners curse of silicosis, so we had a very wet large black man working hard in a very narrow and hot space, he still was able to give me a big white toothy grin, but what he said I do not know, the noise of the hammer was terrible! After an hour or so of this we returned to the surface, glad of the fresh air and my shirt at least a chance to dry off from the high humidity underground. The first part we visited was the Stamp house, the noise here was unbelievable, row upon row of steel hammers pounding the ore as it slid beneath them washed down by streams of water, sheets of corduroy were used to catch any free gold after the stamps, these sheets were taken out periodically and burn to get the gold, the slurry then passed over copper sheets with mercury on them which also collected gold, not sure how or in which order this happened, it is a long time ago!! The slurry then entered very large tanks open at the top in which cyanide was dissolved in water (cyanide is a very deadly poison) the gold was dissolved by this mixture, this fluid was then pumped to a centrifuge where any remaining rock particles were extracted, the fluid which now looked like clean drinking water, but was far from it, was pumped again and ended up in mile long sheds which were full of troughs that contained hundreds of separate boxes filled with zinc shavings, as the liquid passed through the zinc the gold stuck to the zinc, and the next process melted the zinc shavings in a furnace which was then poured into an
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inverted cone shaped mold [sic], on cooling the cone was turned upside down, banged and out fell a very large cone of zinc with a small gold top, these gold knobs were cut off by hacksaw and tossed in one corner, when enough had been made, were themselves melted and poured into newspaper lined ingot moulds, lots of these bars of gold were stacked against the wall and I was invited to help myself if I could carry one away, tried but it flattened me to the floor and had to be lifted off me by the ever grinning black workers. The zinc was re-rolled into sheets and in one corner was being turned again into shavings on a very old lathe by the still grinning workers.
So far it would seem that all I did was visit and enjoy but this was a pilot training ‘drome, flying went on 24 hours a day and our days were spent servicing the 104 Miles Master ‘planes on the daily inspections. The Masters was made of wood and plywood, much like the Mosquito of later and much greater frame. The Miles Master was an advanced training aircraft that trained pilots in fast single engine ‘plane management before they became operational on Hurricanes or Spitfires. Mark 1 Masters were fitted with Rolls Royce Kestrel engines (fore runner of the Merlin) some of these were even equipped as fighters with four Browning guns during the panic of 1940, Mark 2 Masters had Pratt and Whitney Junior Twin Wasps.
[missing photograph]
Servicing Miles Master Trainers at 27 Air School
With the many hours they were flown each day, some very hard landings and the general wear and tear of pupil pilot use they were becoming very hard to keep airworthy, even had one do a forced landing at a place called
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Dewetsdorp which ended up on it’s back. As I had spent some time in England salvaging Miles Masters I was in the gang that went to collect it, still have some photos of the job.
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Miles Master Recovery
The salvage crew was led by Sergeant “Jock” Brown and was made up of members of the flight servicing crews at 27 A/S. A Queen Mary low loader was not available nor was a crane which made the task more difficult, sheer legs being used to lift, turn and load the ‘plane. As far as I know the pilot did not die but would have needed to “duck” a lot from the amount of cockpit damage. As bad as the airplane was, great care was taken to salvage the ‘plane without further doing further damage. This took a great deal of work, including some careful maneuvering [sic] over a narrow bridge on the way back.
104 American Harvards were flown in and my mate Dac and myself were given the job of checking these and making them airworthy for use, they had been shipped to Durban as deck cargo, and although sealed before loading, some had had their canopies opened by the ship’s crew, salt water had entered and causes much damage, not only to things that could be seen but many radios had been ruined and props had been turned so that ports had opened, we found many that had damaged pistons on the con rods due to salt water no wonder the delivery pilots had complained that some were gutless and rattled a lot. I joined the Camp Concert Party and band, played the fool on the camp and Bloemfontein stage and played the trumpet very badly at camp dances, practised like mad but still caused the lead trumpeter to shake his head in disgust.
Notices were on the boards for aircrew volunteers, Dac and I were a bit fed up with our treatment regarding promotion, we did the work and other got the credit, funny it’s still the same fifty years later!! We put our names in and after various interviews were sent to Cape Town to await shipment back to England.
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– Reg Miles
The URL Of This Webpage is
http://www.geocities.com/Pentagon/Bunker/7797/Milesbio3.html
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Biography of Reg Miles
Ex Apprentice No 1 S. of T. T., R.A.F., Halton 39th Entry 34 – 67 M.U.s – 27 A/S Bloemspruit South Africa – Lympe Kent, Flight Engineer 432 – 420 Squadrons RCAF, 6 Group Bomber Command, Eastmoor, Tholthorpe, Yorkshire / 242 – 246 – 511
Squadrons Transport Command Lyneham, RAF
Chapter 4
Lympe, Kent, Flight Engineer 432 – 420 Squadrons RCAF, 6 Group Bomber Command, Eastmoor, Tholthorpe, Yorkshire
Unescorted fast ship Mauritania II brought us home in just two weeks. This was more like a holiday cruise, she was a large new fast ship, not over crowded, weather sunny, no real worries about the enemy, just too ignorant to have a care. And good food, all very pleasant!!
We came into port during the night, I suggest for security reasons. We would be confined below decks after dark so that no lights would be shone and any portholes on our decks would be welded shut. As we had no idea where we were it was only at dawn that we found ourselves suddenly in harbour.
We returned to a cold and rationed England, which was a bit of a shock after the land of plenty that was South Africa. I got to spend some time at home. Home was River outside Dover where Dad was responsible for building work for all the various Navy, Army and Airforce units stationed in and around the port of Dover.
After a couple of weeks I was posted to Lympne RAF Base near Folkstone in Kent, not too far away from home. I could cycle home on the odd day off. I was at a servicing echelon on Typhoons there from August 1943, making myself useful until the Flight Engineer course came through.
I arrived at this very basic airfield, grass runway, no hanger that I can recall, road to the village went through the place and we were living in requisioned [sic] houses on the floor, the Guardhouse miles away so we never booked out or in, just went! There I was fit, brown, and fairly knowledgeable, and there they were the service crews, lilly white, half starved, most hadn’t a clue about the RAF. The CO wanted me to stay, rather than take the flight engineer course. He did everything to make me, even tried to bribe me with promotion and an instructors course, turned him down flat, not the best way to make friends!!
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A few days later I watched as the flight sergeant in charge of the service crew was trying to unlock a propellor, up on the steps with a very, very large lead hammer and a long spanner thumping away to release the lock, told him it was the wrong rotation, what would I know?, the engine shaft sheered [sic] off and prop and F/S landed on the ground, another job now to remove the whole Napier Sabre and fit a new one, suppose the F/S got promoted and probably blamed me!!
The Typhoons were very heavy fast fighters. They were fitted with Napier Sabre H section sleeve valved 24 cylinder engines, had 20m/m cannon and rocket rails, and were hell to fly and worse to service. The engines were proto-types and only could do 20 hours or so between engine changes, never saw even one do that much while I was there, the single prop was the biggest in service and only cleared the ground when in flying position by 4 inches, many were bent on take off, and many came back from ops with bullet holes in as the ‘plane went faster than the bullets in a dive and caught up with it’s own fire!!
When I was working on Typhoons heard many yarns, but all “driversairframe” are a bit like fisher men I think. While the story teller was giving the the [sic] usual flyers tale, with lots of arm waving indicating who did what, even the other pilots had a “I don’t believe him” smiles on their faces.
The Typh’s were used as tank and train busters and also for downing V-1 Bombs and did a mighty job. Despite their success, some of the Typhoon pilots were very keen to improve the speed of the Typhoon so they could catch the enemy, be it pilotless V-1 Bombs, or piloted fighters. They were always wanting a few more miles an hour of them and “if only the bloody thing went faster I would have shot down” probably the whole German Airforce!! Adjustments to the engines were very difficult because they were so complicated and really just prototypes still. So they spent many hours with car polish rubbing and polishing every bit to reduce drag. They got us to help also, big things Typh’s and we got very tired of it. Guess they were like me, young and keen and a bit stupid as well, you’d have to be to risk life and limb for peanuts!!
Of course battle was not the only thing the pilots were keen on. The Typhoons were flown from a small grass runway. A sergeant’s mess party was being held one evening when I was on duty crew, we had to see the “dusk” patrol in and prepare them the “dawn” patrol, check everything and rearm and refuel and make sure every thing was as it should be. The small ‘drome was crowded visitors ‘planes from surrounding units and many were parked at the ends of the runway, fog was closing in and the last few of the dusk patrol had been told to divert to Manston, which was a very large aerodrome fitted with FIDO, by air it was seconds away by road it was
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too far to get a lift and still get to the party. All their mates would be there plus many of the local girls and if you didn’t turn up some one else would try their luck with your girl!! All managed to get back in, just one left to land, and here he comes he’s too low can’t see the row of ‘planes at the end of the runaway.
Yes he has but too late the massive undergear crashes through about six aircraft of all types and sizes and comes to earth with one wing low, the prop touches, that one won’t be on dawn patrol, as it taxi to our flight position where we are standing with torches to direct the pilot and hook the ‘plane to our tractor and tow it into position for the morning, the pilot climbs out, says “shit” and heads off for a shower and no doubt a bullet from the CO and even grounding if senior officers have had their ‘plane destroyed. We check the undergear to make sure it wont collapse as we tow it and generally check the damage, this takes a while and as we are doing this we hear the bell of the “blood wagon” in the distance, but too late for any injuries we say so I lay on the ground with one leg in the air and groan as the medical orderly rushes over, but it’s not the usual medical orderly it’s the senior medical officer, who wants to make a name for himself as all the top brass are on the base for the party. Well we didn’t part as friends I must say, but he really enjoyed chewing me out so perhaps that made his day!!
Arriving back at camp after a day with my parents, we slept in empty houses really outside the camp boundaries so no booking in or out, supposed to but why go a long way to the guard room if nobody cared, any how it was early in the morning, near midnight, not late at night as it should have been as I cycled to my billet, as I got off my bike the sergeant of my ground crew called for me to get moving and handed me a bucket of white paint. Our flight line was very close to our billet, and I was told to start painting wide white stripes under the wings of the Typhoons, other bods had black paint. So I crawled under them with buckets of white paint late at night in my best uniform. No idea where the Typhoons were off to, but we were told it was for identification purposes for an operation, but which one? It might have been coastal or near to it, and in support of either Commando’s or Navy, both tended to fire at all aircraft without any idea who flew what!! But why do it in the middle of the night with far from clever painters with large distemper brushes and I’m sure it was water based paint? On 15 November 1943, 2nd Tactical Air Force is formed, perhaps the Squadron I was on was made part of this force and some “stay in bed get the boys out” prat thought it would be nice if the new force were correctly dressed for Dawn Patrol. Whatever the reason for the early morning paint job, my best uniform was never quite the same, every one else had on their overalls!
As it turns out this was the first time that this type of identification was used on allied aircraft, and I Did It!!! These black and white stripes were
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called invasion stripes by others much later. They were widely in use for the Normandy invasion. They were painted to clearly show our ground forces that they were friendly aircraft so we would not lose aircraft to our own flak. Only the Tactiful [sic] Air Force had the invasion stripes. Well before the invasion some aircraft were painted with the stripes to be used as Targets for spotters and Anti aircraft units and also for ground troops to get familiar with our own planes, as marked. Apparently this Typhoon squadron was one of those painted early to get our troops used to the stripes.
I was stationed at Lympne until the end of 1943 when my posting came through to report at St Athan in South Wales to start my Flight Engineers training. Because of my training at Halton and my service work on aircraft my training would be specific to the type of bomber I would be doing my operations on, that was the plan anyhow.
It might be best to spend a moment reviewing the various RAF bombers. First there were the Medium Bombers. The Hampden, outdated before the war started so not used much – bit of a death trap so not to be included.
Bristol Blenheim private design as all decent ones are, Beaufort a torpedo version did lots of damage and raids on shipping in French ports, made the Germans angry. Beaufighter very fast version called “Whispering Death” also used as a night fighter with radar, all types with twin radial aircooled engines also by Bristol.
De Haviland Mosquito, best all round fighter, bomber etc of the war, just look up it’s stats and learn! 4000 lb bomb load, faster than any thing until the jets arrived, 42600 ft ceiling, used by the Master Bombers, fitted with 4 cannon and even with a single 57 m/m cannon. Don’t know what a Master bomber is? They first used Lancasters, would circle the target at a low height during all of the raid, and direct the “Pathfinders” where to drop more target markers, all this done at night of course and we would be called up as “main force” and directed which colour markers to use as an aiming point, and woe betide you if you came in from the wrong direction or dropped anywhere but the correct place. we were usually at 18000 to 20000 ft and could see the Master Bomber back lit by the bursting bombs almost as ground level, a number of back ups would be at our height and when, not if the master bomber was either hit by flak, or by a fighter or as was most likely had a load of bombs dropped on him, saw a Lancaster one time when we had to land away from base that had had a load of incendiaries land on it, not a pretty sight!! Master bomber two would have his own call sign and often with an accent to prevent the Gardens from giving us the wrong information, cunning devils!!
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Heavy bomber Wellington made by Vickers designed by Barnes Wallis (swing wing F1111, Dam busters bomb, and even the Avro York made from parts of the Lancaster) Twin engine geodetical construction, (all little bits joined together to make a net like effect, very strong) covered with fabric, front and rear turrets, two .303 Brownings in each 4,500 lb bomb load 300mph main stay of bombing until the large 4 engined bombers came along, still going strong at the end of the war, called The Wimpey by every one. very many versions from sea search with a lifeboat slung under, to mobile radar and radio station and I remember seeing one flying very low along the coast line with a large ring the size of it’s wing span detecting and blowing up magnetic sea mines.
Short Stirling the first 4 engine one, slow. low and designed by the Air Ministry with short wings so that it would go into the standard hanger, typical stupid desk riders. My log book contains some hours spent as F/E on one, a pretty useless bomber and not to be in the same class as the Halifax and Lancaster.
The Manchester was first operational about the same time as the Halifax but as we all know was plague by engine problems and was a “dead duck” until fitted with four Merlins, the Halifax was also supposed to get RR Vultures but because a shortage was expected was designed for four RR.
Handley Page Halifax 4 engined similar to the Lancaster never gets a mention much like the Hurricane is over shadowed by the Spitfire, but many thousands of them were flying and bombing Germany, while the Manchester was falling out of the sky with failing engines. Rolls Royce produced a 24 cylinder engine really based on two Merlins joined at the sump one upside down, it was only when the Manchester was modified to take four standard Merlins that it became the great aircraft it eventually did become. Both The Halifax and Lancaster had versions with Merlins and Hercules engines, the Halifax with Hercules was much better than the version with Merlins and the Lancaster was the reverse better with Merlins, More versions of the Lancaster were developed during the war and it’s construction was easier than the Halifax, but the Halifax was much tougher and took more punishment before crashing, I trained on and flew them all as an F/E, just wanted to get down in one piece so all were good for me!! 6,176 Halifax were built, their first operational flight took place March 1941.
Both Lancaster and Halifax had 4 .303 Brownings in the rear power turret, mid upper had 2 but had a full 360 rotation and up and down. Some later versions of the Lancaster had twin .5 Brownings in the rear turret, both Halifax and Lancaster had versions with mid under turrets with twin Brownings.
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The Lancaster did eventually drop 22,000 lb grand Slam bombs, called by some earthquake bombs as they were made of high quality steel typical bomb shape and were used to bomb things like bridges which are very hard to destroy, need a direct hit, theses bombs penetrated deep into the earth and shattered the foundations so that the bridge or viaduct collapsed. 7,377 Lancasters were built, their first operational flight took place on 3/4 March 1942.
So I started my training on four engined Lancaster Mark 2 bombers which were in every respect the same as all Lancasters except for the engines which were Bristol Hercules 14 cylinder air cooled radial, all other Lancasters had four Rolls Royce 12 cylinder water cooled twin 6 cyl. vee Merlin engines. Lancasters were the outcome of a design called the Manchester which originally had twin Rolls Royce X engines 24 cylinder X, really two Merlins coupled at the sumps making a cross of four banks of six, these engines were a completed failure and before I went to South Africa in 1941 had worked on one of the Manchesters that had crash landed in a field due to engine failure. A.V Roe (Avro) knew they had a good aircraft and as The Royal Airforce refused to allow them any engines, so scrounged 4 Merlins from Rolls Royce on the “old pals network” and re worked the ‘plane from two engines to four and demonstrated to the top brass what a good all round bomber they had, and so it proved to be in service, carrying heavier bombs farther and higher than any other ‘plane at that time.
I studied the Lancaster and it’s systems including the Hercules engines until I knew every part, hydraulic, air, auto pilot, bomb release gear, undercarriage, you name it I knew and passed with ease my examinations, so much of what I had been studying was what I had been working on for a couple of years, different ‘planes but basically the same in principle. St Athan is a very old and well known R.A.F. Station the R 101 and R100 airships were built there and a “ring” of one of them is fitted to the wall of the huge hanger they were built in, which still stood when I was there, anyone interested in these airships should get “Slide Rule” written by Neville Shute and learn some very interesting facts about these two airships, Neville Shute was an aircraft engineer and any of his fiction books are a good read, perhaps his most well known book was the basis for the film “A Town Like Alice”.
After passing out from the F/E course I was given a short leave and in March 1944 told to report to 1664 Heavy Conversion Unit at Dishforth in Yorkshire and it was there that I joined up with the rest of the crew who had until that time been flying twin engined aircraft. What aircraft did I see on the runway when I got there? Halifax Mark 2s and 5s different ‘planes and different engines so I had to start all over again on systems and bits!!!
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11.3.44, I had to do some initial training to see if I could handle things actually in the air, so it was circuits and landings with a senior Flight Engineer to see how I went. Well we took off OK and did a circuit and came straight in land again, with me operating the various undercarriage and flaps etc as the pilot asked and all was going well round and round until the bumpy air and round and round got to me and I felt sick as a dog after about an hour and asked the F/E if we could pack it up. He looked at me and said if you give in now you are off the course and can go back to your unit, well funny thing I suddenly felt better and got on with the rest of the job for another hour, after that I was always too busy to feel sick.
I have a log book of my time flying, and I include here the information in it from the flights I made as crew member, rather than as a passenger. This began here, with the 1664 HCU, 1664 Heavy Conversion Unit, which means it was heavy conversion unit from 2 to 4 engine aircraft.
Some of the terms on the Log Book shall require explaining. The Lat and Long at the top I have added recently when I bought MS World Atlas and was able to pin point the airfield locations. You will note the first column is the date to help you follow the sequence. This log book records all my flying both training, operational and at Transport Command. C&Ls circuits and landings very boring and mainly for the pilot and engineer to frighten them as much as possible, D.C.O. duty carried out D.N.C.O Duty Not carried out. P.O Lauzon was my first operational pilot, others mentioned on this first page and perhaps elsewhere were senior pilots who had done at least one tour of operations and were being rested before doing another tour of at least 30, all were very much more frightened of the ‘sprog’ pilot than of anything the Boche could throw at them!! PO is Pilot Officer and is really a rank to ensure that the person will not put up any ‘blacks’ and behave like an officer and a gentlemen, probationary period usually 6 moths. FO is not Flight Officer which is a female rank in the WAAF but Flying Officer. 25th Feb 1:32 E Easy was the aircraft that we normally flew when I was with 420 Sqdn, V Victor was our designated ‘plane when with 432 Sqdn, but as we were very new got what was available due to serviceability problems. Will get to each one as I go through my log book, which will be about 30 pages.
Pilot Officer Lauzon asked if I would like to join his crew. The rest were already joined as a crew. I was the last one to join being an RAF Flight Engineer, they needed me to shovel in the coal and to keep the boiler streaming!! As I knew nobody on the course happily agreed, soon realised that all crews belonged to The Royal Canadian Airforce so I had joined a bunch of people who I had no idea of their country or life style, some thing else to study, I was going to be a busy boy! The rest had trained on twin engine aircraft of some sort in Canada and were now ready for the big time.
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We were all very young with different back grounds and likes and dislikes, remember I was with the Canadians who were used to a much higher living standard, more independent than us down trodden POMS (from the Australian prisoners of His Majesty, convicts) So where they had quite a lot of money we did not, all the same Yanky pay, and the food parcels poured in from their families in Canada, when we had leave they went to certain places arranged for them or hit the “big smoke” and found some one to enjoy their pay with, I went home to a shell and bombed Dover, first thing Mum wanted was my ration book so should could feed me, one of my father’s sub contractors always called at our house soon after I got home and from the inside of his very dirty overalls gave me a Black Market parcel of butter, cheese and bacon. My crew always made sure I had some of their surplus food to take home, sugar and jam etc. I could not invite them to stay at my house, one reason was there was no room and another was that I had to have a special pass to even leave the railway station near home even though the local cop on duty knew me. The whole south coast was a restricted area all roads in were manned and high fences were all around so no use trying the fields, took one of my girl friends once, was only allowed to stay 12 hours and had to either send her back to London or both go somewhere else, went somewhere else!! My parents not too pleased but I was on a promise and determined to find out if it was as good as everyone was telling me, yes it was!
After being introduced to the rest of the gang, I got down to serious study learning about fuel systems, tank positions and the fuel transfer arrangements that allowed one tank to supply all engines and many compilations of this, very necessary if flack makes a hole in a fuel tank, need to use that one up first and tanks have to be balanced for the same reason during operations, loose a full tank and you wont have enough fuel to get back home again!! Engine controls are important too, boost and rpm govern the fuel consumption, and which supercharger gear ratio being used is also very critical.
A very brief explanation of boost, revs and supercharger gearing. Boost is the measure of pressure, plus or minus of the air in the induction system of an engine. When a piston sucks in air it increase it’s speed and therefore lowers it’s pressure below atmospheric pressure at ground level (14Ibs per square inch roughly) The more weight of air that can be crammed into a cylinder before it is fired the move power is produced. Hence turbo chargers and super chargers, turbo’s are driven by the exhaust gases, superchargers by gearing direct from the engine, as the aircraft flies higher the air gets less dense, and the power from the engine becomes less, turbo’s and supers pump more air in so that power is maintained, use of ground level increases the power from a given capacity of engine cylinders, an engine without a charger would always show a minus reading on the boost pressure guage [sic].
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The setting of the throttle (accelerator) governs the boost pressure coupled with the turbo or super charger speed setting, the two work together and then setting is done by the pilot or engineer for the conditions at the time (climbing, cruising, etc) components that are a part of the system automatically retain this boost pressure until either a height is reached where the air is so thin that it cannot do so, or changes are made to flight conditions. Revs are the speed at which the propellors go round and relate somewhat to the gearbox of a car, selection of speed is made and automatically kept at that speed by a unit on the engine and one in the propellor itself, bit like an automatic gear box on a car, changing conditions of flight such as taking off and landing require different propellor speeds and reacation [sic] of the flight conditions, feathering which rotates the blades so that they do not “windmill” in the event of an engine failure are also incorporated. Guess it’s not so simple after all and I used to teach this but had the advantage of being able to flap my arms about!!
My first flight with P/O Lauzon was on March 16, 1944 and was Exercise 7&8 in my log book. Exercise 7&8 I have no idea but only took about one and a half hours so not very important I should say.
Our next exercise was the next day, the 17th, and was Local Bombing. This was a training exercise for the crew but mainly for the bomb aimer and pilot to get their co-ordination working together so that the target is hit. Small practice bombs used but sometimes larger ones full of concrete may be dropped.
The next night I was up with another pilot, Fry, for Circuits and Landing exercises again. More night training.
The next morning I was called to fly with yet another pilot, Vinish, for a Sea Search. VINISH is correct, think I wrote “finish” and got a sharp reminder! Sea Search was a very serious matter that was to see us spend all those hours searching a particular part of the ocean with other crews looking for a downed ‘plane, a hell of a strain on the eyes, the sun shining on the moving waves makes it very hard to see anything properly so things are reported that are not there and other things missed, and no we did not see anything.
You will note that I took off at 10:15 am flew for nearly six hours and then took off again the same day with a different pilot at 20:20 being tested on night C&Ls for about 4.30 hrs and that is only the time in the air, lots goes on before and after!!
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Then it was back to P/O Lauzon for two flights in one day, the 20th. Two and a half hours of Local Bombing in the morning then a six and a half hour Night Cross Country exercise.
Apart from actually flying and being checked by a senior Flight Engineer to find out if I could do my job properly, our navigator had to give me instruction on star charts, which star was where and how to use the sextant to take star shots while flying to help in navigation, the F/E position was beneath the astro-drome and it was another of his jobs to do star shots if and when the navigator needed them, the correct star had to be found and a timed shot taken to give an average reading, the wrong star could make life difficult and I can tell you the ‘plane bumping about, nasty people trying to shoot you down didn’t make finding the right star in amongst the millions out there easy.
During this course we also had to take instruction in escape technic’s [sic] both from the aircraft and the enemy, we went to a swimming pool and in full flying gear jumped in the water and tried to turn over an up turned dingy we managed, but could not see it being possible at night in a rough cold North Sea, we all treated it as a bit of a laugh, young and foolish in hind sight.
Our next flight, on the 24th March 1944 at 18:45, our crew did it’s first night operation over France as a diversionary raid to fool the Germans into sending fighters up to intercept what appeared a bomber force approaching targets in their country. This Bullseye Mission was a number of training aircraft that were sent in a direction different than the proper bombers, hoping this would direct enemy fighters away from the real bombers. This diversionary raid turned back before any target was reached and hopefully before any of the inexperienced crews were shot down!! The 1/3 shown on the log was a third of a point awarded towards the total of thirty points needed for a complete tour of operations. “Bullseyes” only counted as one third of an operation. The missions was six long hours wandering about over enemy territory before landing back at base with eyes very sore with looking for enemy fighters that never appeared.
Another course we had to attend was escape after being shot down, this was carried out by senior NCO’s of the Army at a special camp on the Yorkshire Moors, a cold and bleak place, with our instructors determined to show those “Brylcreem boys” what tough meant, we were marched and run about all day, all ranks, some quite senior officers going back on operations for their third tour, were made to wear overalls at all times with no badges of rank and shouted at as if we were new recruits in the Army. Escape training was carried out at night without any warning, doors were slammed no lights put on and we had to get into our overalls and get outside, loaded
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into trucks half asleep, and driven out on to the moors, dropped off in twos with a map, not told where we were and left to find our own way back to camp, the local police, army and the courses just finishing came out looking for us and if found we were arrested and help in jail until sent back to camp. The Canadians were very much anti authority, (much like the Australians I now live with) so nothing was sacred, buses were found in back yards and driven near to camp with lots of aircrew hidden under seats, some stayed out for days being fed and “watered” by lonely wives whose husbands were in the Forces, and said they have got lost and were tired and hungry, some did look as if they had been working very hard and needed a rest. This was our last training in the Heavy Conversion Course.
The fact that this was our last flight was a coincidence. Bulls Eye was not a graduation ceremony. If one was wanted by the higher ups and you had reached a level of training able to do it you went, the needs of the service were what governed what and where you went.
I had completed training and was graded on my performance in the course. Exam result is 73.5% That was based on my flying with instructors and theory of the aircraft systems at HCU 1664, not wonderful but remember I did do a theory and practicle [sic] course just prior to arriving at HCU on the Lancaster Mark II, different ‘plane with entirely different engines, so apart from crewing up with a bunch of wild Canadians, I had less than two weeks to learn all about a new ‘plane and it’s engines, not bad for yours truly. The results of my examination were signed officially by the Flight Engineer Flight Leader, a flight of men can be any number that can be controlled or over seen, a flight of aircraft also can be any number that is suitable for the type, 3 bombers being usual, more for fighters, a number of flight make a squadron, a number squadrons make a wing, a number of wings make a Group and a number of groups make a command as in Bomber Command. Got all that? So the Flight Leader responsible for a number of Flight Engineers under training, signed to say that I had reached a standard whereby I could be expected to do do [sic] my job properly. All trades of air crew had Flight Leaders, Navigator, Gunners, Wireless operator, Bomb aimer, and lets not forget the driver Leader for the Drivers airplane!!
This all ended in due course and our crew were given a posting to 432 Sqdn RCAF at Eastmoor who were equipped with Halifax Mark 3, same engines as Lancaster 2s and much better version of the Halifax’s at Dishforth, so all that study had paid off in the end!! My flying time with Squadron 432 are covered in those pages of my Log.
The RCAF was called 6 Group part of Bomber Command, most airfields had two Squadrons based on it, each was controlled by its own staff and did not always fly to the same targets nor even on the same days of nights.
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Usually the same nation were located at each base, so you had two Canadian Squadrons where I was, 420 and 425 at Tholthorpe as an example with my next unit. I just can’t remember which squadron was at Eastmoor with 432, the Lancaster book I mentioned before gives all the squadrons and I will just look to see which Squadron was at Eastmoor with 432 when they were with Lancasters. Doesn’t help, my book shows an HCU at the same base but that was to covert 432 from Wellingtons I think on to Lancaster II, they then changed to Halifax III just before I joined, need the same sort of book for the Halifax which I don’t have and maybe no one has! To continue both these squadrons, and 432 as well, were part of 6 Group. Each squadron was divided into flights the number I cannot remember nor can I recall how many ‘planes in each flight. I would recommend to you that you beg borrow, steal or even in extreme circumstances purchase a book called The Lancaster Story by Peter Jacobs it is distributed in the USA by Sterling Publishing CO Inc 387 Park Avenue South, New York it’s ISBN is 1 85409 288 8 it is a very fine book and gives much detail of the history and operational types of Lancasters I was given the book by one of Phyllis’s brothers and treasure it greatly.
We flew out of Eastmoor airfield. The airfields were just that, fields, hangers and other buildings had been erected, but I visited some many many years later and just the concrete runway was still there most had been removed for scrap and given back to the farmers, local drag car clubs still use some of them and guess those farmer with ‘planes of their own could land and take off on them. Although I do not recall the details of Eastmoor, I have read that the Standard Airfield design for heavy bombers was to have a main runway 2000 yds, and two secondary runways at about 60 degrees to one another of 1400 yds.
A fence had been errected [sic] around the perimeter and RAF Police patrolled this to keep strangers out, but guess if you really wanted in it would have been easy, gun positions were manned by RAF Regiment people with mainly light guns and fixed posts with bofors. The local towns were in the main villages, been there for centuries still using the roads that the Romans built, a village hall, for all the functions so a trip to one on a dance night would see all the lonely ladies out in force and us being the local best thing since sliced bread were over whelmed with attention, take your pick and hope her husband is not near!!!
Two crew slept in each nissen hut so no need to shout for quiet more like a moan about someones socks which were “humming”, don’t ever remember noise being a problem, none of us played craps or other gambling games like the Americans, guess compared to them our lives were a bit like “The vicar’s tea party”! There were no other ‘normal working hours’ type people in our huts so no problem.
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Life on the Bases 432 and 420 was the usual things. We played horse shoes, pool. I even had to have lessons from the wireless operator on the morse code and key. Buses were laid on to the local villages for the dances which were not all that popular, not too many lovely ladies there!! The odd trip into York but much the same old thing into the pub a few beers and away before the usual fights started between the armies of the Allies. Only those that had not fought anywhere had to prove how wonderful they were, just idiots, bit like the rubbish on earth today. nuf said!!
We didn’t have any “hours” as such when bomber crews, we were expected to be available 24 hours a day , but if “stood down” officially for a number of hours usually until next morning could go out of camp and be back in by 23.59, the usual time for late return from a night on the town.
Stations Order were posted on the various notice boards which would give times of lectures , and other places we had to be, one such was the visit to our camp by the Prime Minister of Canada, we had to line up to be inspected, not to bull parade more like a casual couple of lines of airmen of all ranks chatting away until he got near and spoke to some one, unfortunately the first three or four he spoke to and asked “Where are you from in Canada” were all RAF and not RCAF so when he got London, Yorkshire etc was a bit puzzled, one of the officers took him by the elbow and steered him in the right direction. We all wore RCAF brevets for our aircrew trade so not easy for him to know who was who, on my squadron only the Flight Engineers were RAF the rest all Canadians. The Canadians had a saying that I have just remembered, “Joe for King, home by Christmas” Joe was Stalin and King was the name of the Canadian Prime Minister.
So to recap, we were pretty free to do as we wished most of the time, and I like most others only read any notice board if we thought we were getting promoted, and left all that stuff to our pilot, who knew before we did when and where we were flying etc. That is why I got in such a muddle over my Officer’s interview, mentioned elsewhere I think you will find, just never bothered to read the notice boards!!!
Our missions were at first all night operations. As such I shall have to educate you about night and day in England, Winters starts about October/November and goes on until February/March, some visitors swear it never stops and is winter all year, but the important thing is that in these northern climes daylight ends very early and starts late so a man working a normal day starting at 8am and finishing 4-5 pm will always travel in pitch darkness to and from work. Taking off in darkness at 18.00 hours is no different from taking off even later. Darkness from say 7pm to 7am is 12 hours and we did not have bombers that could last that long and where would they have
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bombed anyhow? Hope that helps, just to take a random looking in the log book 6-10-44 15.45 take off to Dortmund all listed as night flying. Remember England is not too far from the Arctic Circle where 6 months of days and the 6 months of nights happens all the time!! At times we would land fairly early in the evening, but for another random look 15.9.44 22.00 to Keil 5.35 meant we got back to base about 3.30 am debriefing meal etc bed by about 5am, no early night that one.
If there had been a large night force out on a target say a 1000 bomber raid not every place was at the target at the same time, enough problems spread out, guess it would have been chaos otherwise so a raid would start soon after dark and continue until close on dawn when the day bombers took over.
April fools day found me acting as F/E to our Flight leader, Flight Lt. Cooper, doing circuits and landings at night for more than two hours to again check my skills, followed a few days later on the 4th with the whole crew doing the same thing. We passed this ok so now had to do a daylight cross-county to make sure we could go and come back!! The next day, the 8th, we did another “Bullseye”, this one 3 hours 35 minutes long, but were told they didn’t count towards points for a tour!
On the squadron you only got points for what you did operationally. While I am talking about a TOUR, it was a walk in the sun eyeing up the Canadian WAAFs, all who were very pretty and carried about a ton of makeup on their faces, my Canadian crew thought it wonderful, I thought they looked like a bunch of clowns Hey Ho. A TOUR was a certain number of operations 30 being the average but based on targets and what the service wanted so some did more and some did less I did 36, wanted to do more so that my crew could finish with the same F/E, as I had done some ops before joining them, I didn’t say anything to my Flight Engineer Leader but when he found out I had done more than I should have, he stopped me and sent me to get my new uniform as an officer!!! But that was yet to come of course.
On April 10th we flew our first operation, to Ghent, Belgium. The ops to Ghent was in all probability a German ammunition dump, a guess.
The raid is on so after a quick trip to the mess hall for a preflight meal it’s back to the barracks to put on my flight gear which is really only to dispense with the collar and tie, pull on the very large white woollen rollneck sweater under my normal working uniform top, pull on my flying boots and zip them up (keep hoping that the latest ones will be issued to us, these are impossible to walk in, made of foam and suede with long uppers lined inside with sheep skin, they certainly keep the feet and legs warn [sic] but after a few
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uses tend to lose their shape and “become down at heel” the latest ones are made from black leather as proper shoes and the leg portion can be removed by cutting the top off with the small knife hidden inside, more suitable for aircrew to walk away from the enemy after bailing out.
Down to the parachute section with the rest of the crew and draw my chest type chute and harness. On one operation we were told that ALL squadron parachutes had been repacked, a rumour had been circulating that a chute had had it’s rip cord pulled by mistake and all that fell out was an old blanket!! Parachute silk was much sought after during the war to make the “gift wrapping” that men looked for when their girls took their outer clothes off. We always poked a finger into the corner of the case to feel if there was silk (nylon?) inside.
Time to board the truck to take us out to the aircraft, as we called at each dispersal point calls of “race you back” and some not quite so pleasant were made to those climbing out, at last we were at our ‘plane, tumble out and grab our bits and bobs, I had in addition to my chute and harness a tool bag with a few spanners, pliers, bits of useful wire, string etc, other had large bags with the navigation and wireless bumf, and the tails gunner probably had a brick or lump of old iron.
We all climbed aboard to put our things in a position we could grab them if needed, my chute went on the floor in my position, as did my tool box, then I fitted my chute harness on making sure it was tight and properly fastened. down to the tail to remove the elevator lock and start doing my normal checks before we started the four engines, I had an aircraft log sheet to fill in, with what fuel was in which tank, and as soon as we started engines, all their details must be entered., by this time we had all settled in and a quick call was made to check that all intercom positions answered.
Halifax crew positions were spread throughout the aircraft. The bomb aimer’s position was in the nose where he map read if possible our mark of Halifax had no nose gun, it was found that fighters did not attack head on at night, various design changes took place during the war as needed so some had nose guns and some not. Then there was a blackout curtain, behind which was the navigator, then the wireless operator, all these at a lower level than the pilot, wop more or less under the pilot’s feet, up a bit the Pilot and behind him the Flight Engineer, who darted about as required. Then there was the mid upper turret and then tail turret. The Halifax had bomb bays in the fuselage behind the f/e position but beneath the floor but could be got at through panels if needed in the case of a hang up, also bomb bays were situated in the wings between the inboard engines and fuselage.
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In the cockpit where the pilot was were all the throttles, under carriage and flap controls, and the usual flying instruments. My position was also in the cockpit, where I would access the various contrls [sic] and dials needed to keep the plane flying properly. Only on very rare occasions did I have to help my pilots and that was if we had lost an engine and then only on landing. Once when a tyre burst as we touched down did he want a bit of muscle to keep it straight other than that managed without what seemed any effort. The Halifax position for the flight engineer was right behind the pilot, with my instruments, fuel, oil water pressures and temps etc on a rear partition, levers etc to change fuel tanks was either side behind the main wing spar. I had no resting place, no chair, so what I was only the engineer!! If a crash landing was going to be done all the crew expect the pilot could make themselves a safe spot by clinging together behind the main wing spar, so that was no worry, in a crash I would be as well off as the rest.
I was able to stand upright at my F/E position, and also when I assisted the pilot, think I could stand upright at the mid upper gunner’s position but needed to bend my back as I got near the tail, The inside was not pained as such, but from memory was a dark green in colour, probably the anti corrosion coating applied to Duralumin, Alclad and Aluminium sheets used to fabricate the ‘planes. The step up to my F/E position was about 9 inches, underneath was stored the oxygen supply for the whole aircraft, but I could still stand erect with my whole 68 and bit inches of height (the bit is much more important than the preceding 68 for those of us who are in a neat and compact package) I was able to turn round with relative ease, the space being sufficient for my needs, no windows of any kind apart from the roof astro-drome, the cockpit did have sliding windows both sides as well as a windscreen which was a great help to us, to see our way!!!, Both wireless operator and navigator had windows (non opening) complete with blinds for night work, there was also a large curtain between these positions and the bomb aimer nose, which was completely made of perspex in the Mark III version I flew in on operations, as far as I can remember we could all stand upright in the nose section where the nav and wop had seat with tables for their equipment. far from being cramped we all has as much room as we would require, not enough to hold a dance or even a large party but we could all move about with relative ease and reach anything needed to do our job. The fuselage looking back from my position which was just forward of the main spar, was really empty except for the mild upper gunner’s position, his lower body and feet only projected down about half way, with room to pass either side of him, we didn’t have the open side gun positions used in the forts.
During this time we had gradually crept up to the runway threshold and were now awaiting the green from the Aldis lamp, I had left my position to stand next to my pilot at the top of the steps landing down the wop,
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nav, and bomb positions, ready to hold the throttles open as we charged down the runway and to assist in any way wanted, I had already told the skipper that all engines were running Ok and so we set forth to battle.
The tail came up and we reached our “unstick speed” (whatever that was !!) the whole aircraft was shuddering with the effort of leaving the ground, a few skips off the concrete and we were airborne, time to take a breath, it had stopped completely as the trees bordering the ‘drome had got closer and closer, we once arrived back with bits of branches still caught in the undergear, and a failure of only one engine at that time with a full bomb and fuel load meant the end. Up with the undercarriage reduce the flap angle and set the throttles for climbing, synchronise the propellers, fill in the log book, reduce again the flap angle, check engine temps and pressures, change gills to get the temps right, stepping in and out and up to the pilot to do as he wanted, breathing heavily into the oxygen mask, which always smelt of rubber and rust and wet with condensation. I had to keep mine on to receive instructions from the skipper but most of the other crew could leave theirs unfastened until we climbed higher and went on to oxygen.
Back into my cubby hole, standing looking up out of the astro dome to see if we were in danger of climbing into some one else, all clear, down to the top of the steps to pile up the window and pamphlets that I would start to put down the chute later on, check all the engine details again, at every change of engine revs and at a regular period (think it was 15 minutes but not sure the log had to be filled in, a cardboard rotary calculator was used to work out what fuel had been used at certain revs and boost to check what fuel was left in each tank, the gauges were only a very rough guide!!
Not exactly a “Jack in the box” but I always took my job seriously and did all I could to ensure my side of things ran like clockwork, no guesses keep checking and worrying until home again safe and sound.
We had arrived at the altitude we were to fly at and engine revs and boost were reset, oxygen had been switched on at about the same time high speed had been selected on the supercharger for each engine, about 11,000 to 12,000 ft.
The navigator would tell the skipper at what time and which compass bearing he should be on to set course not for the target but the first of the course changes, and so with the constant roar of four engines, our little world of icy cold draughts, a lethal cargo, shuddering rocking in the streams of air from those in front, with many staring eyes looking for any others who might be near us in the black sky, seven young men went about their duty as they saw it.
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It was cold, it was apparently dangerous, if you worried about not getting back you probably wouldn’t, those that were frightened all the time were the real heroes, most of us just did it and were glad to be doing something to save our civilisation, not that we ever know just how bad things were or what a terrible bunch the leaders of the enemy were.
Yes I was a bit frightened on our first operation, but the ones that I always felt sorry for were the gunners. The pilot and engineer could see what was happening but were also very busy not only with flying the plane, but I had to record all the engine and fuel tank details plus other odds and sods. The navigator and wireless operator were shut up in their places with little to see from a small window and were themselves busy with their bits and bobs. The bomb aimer was in all probability stretched out full length looking at the sights below waiting to do his bit and telling us what he could see to help us avoid others and ensure we got where we were supposed to go. But the gunners isolated in their turrets had only themselves to talk to and fear can become a self promoting thing. Being busy kept me from being too frightened to do my job properly, and I can honestly say that I never really felt fear just a bit of apprehension on some operations, but more of that later.
There was no way to tell if we hit the target, not unless we were told so later. Most times, as here, we were not the first on target, it was all organised on “waves” so the thing was usually well alight or just a ploughed field by the time we got there. What we added to this was difficult to say or see from our altitude. The bomb aimer would see all the ground targets and perhaps what happened when the bombs landed. I was busy with my jobs and searching the sky above to help the gunners, didn’t really see a great deal. Sorry I am not able to give you a graffic [sic] picture of bombs falling and targets blowing up, Hollywood might but they live in a dream world anyhow!!
When we returned from our first operation, we were told the mission was only worth one third of a point!
We did not fly again for a week and then only flew a cross country exercise. On the 18th we flew an op to Paris. Ah Paris!!! Do you really think it was lit up??? All we saw were the flashes of bombs going off and the crash and flash of anti aircraft shells trying to get us. Every target we went to sent up flak, the Germans seemed to really hate us I wonder why? Until we started daylight operations we only saw what was lit up by our bombs and must say we didn’t hang about looking at the sights.
A five hour mission. How can it take five hours to fly to Paris you ask? The time taken to get to a target does not indicate how far it was, to confuse
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the enemy bomber tracks were deliberately set out as if a certain target were that night’s one when in actual fact we went elsewhere so the navigator did not have a period of nothing to do but was always calculating when and where to turn onto the next part of the course, gaining or losing time if necessary to arrive on target at the correct time, and checking on drift from winds not as per listed, and adding anything in his log that was of use to others, such as new flak sites. We never flew directly to any target nor flew home the same way, always many twists and turns to fool the enemy, those that chose the easy way home often didn’t get there, we followed the plan as set out by our squadron commanders, in our case it worked!!
Again, only one third of a point for some reason. Two nights later, on the 20th, we went to Lens, Belgium on an operation for which we were given one third of a point again!! I can’t seem to remember any reaction to this grudging point system, good boys did as we were told!! Funny thing is that most of us never really worried about reaching the end of a tour, the mateship of the crew was more important, ie just look at my and others search for old mates we flew with, can’t afford in most cases to get really together but nice to hold hands at a distance!!
On 22 April 1944 we went to the Ruhr Valley, known by all bomber crews as Happy Valley, solid flack from end to end.
Flak was present not just over the target of course. There were flak sites all about, and even flak ships. flak ships were in fact ships moored off the Enemy coast and were very bad medicine for anyone foolish enough to fly over them, guess being cooped up in a ship and see sick some of the time made the crew mad as they were very accurate and fast with reloading. Flak ships were well documented and only the crews with poor navigators or ‘planes in trouble ever went near then, we saw but kept well away!!
A slight shuffle off course, there were many flak towers of our own situated in the Thames estuary which were just as lethal as the ships, some years after the war and many years from now took one of my boys out to one in the first runabout I built, pretty massive things and I took a couple of photos to prove we had been there, our boating friends all turned back halfway and chickened out!!
Back to Happy Valley, the flak was heavy. Dusseldorf was a very serious affair, bits of red hot flak flew about inside the ‘plane as the shells burst, our navigator got hit but fortunately right on the torch in his May [sic] West (flotation vest), made him grunt a bit but he was Ok to get us home again. I had to check all manner of bits that got damaged, seem to remember the fuel control levers, about ten of them got damaged and it was a nightmare of a lottery which bit of frayed wire controlled which tank, but guess I must have
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done the right thing because we got home!! Just remember all this is being done in more or less pitch black darkness with the “driver” dodging flak burst and weaving about for the gunners, none of it calculated to appeal to the faint hearted!! But I wanted to get home as well and could have been on a promise from my latest girl friend, what more incentive could a guy have? Over Dusseldorf we were hit by flack. We returned safely. This was a full point towards our 30 needed.
On the 24th Karlsruhe was the target, and Essen on the 26th, back to France on the 27th to Montzen one whole point for this one, but on the 30th again over France to Somain and back to 1/3 point no idea why.
My log book for April lists 40.15 hrs operational, total 56.05. It is signed by Squadron Leader (rank about Flight Lieutenant shown as F/L and S/L) Officer Commanding (OC) “B” Flight This Officer was in overall control of all LEADERS for that flight of a number of aircraft and men to fly them, The ranks when I was in the RAF were Pilot officer, Flying Officer, Flight Lieutenant, Squadron Leader, Wing Commander, Group Captain, won’t bother with the rest, but the rank did not signal the position held visa vi aircraft operations as these ranks applied also to medical, religious, cook house and all other branches concerned with the RAF so a clerk could be a Squadron Leader if an officer, got it? BUT no non-flying type ever got to be incharge [sic] of operational people, want a riot do you? Unless you had pilot’s wings, very few other crew members ever made it to high rank, had to be a “driver” to get to the top. and so it should be I say!! Driver a term used by non drivers to put them in their place at times of getting about themselves, like chatting up your girl or not standing their round at the bar!!
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Underlined] F/E Reg Miles [/underlined]
May started with an air to air fighter affil. A Fighter Affil was us in a Halifax or Lancaster bombers in daylight practicing avoiding a fighter and a fighter doing the same to us, or should I say trying to us down (in
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theory we hope) camera guns used, good fun if you like sick making dives and climbs, as Flight Engineer the only one of the crew in constant free fall, all others belted in and the pilot having a real fun time as he tries to make the slow bomber do things never designed for it!! Hope that tells you what fighter affil was, never tried it at night guess not too many would land again in one piece, with 19-20 year old boys doing wheelies in the sky with permission of the 24-25 year old bosses!! But this one we didn’t finish due to the weather. Heavy cloud moved in and the exercise was D.N.C.O duty not carried out! My Log book will show by each notation D.C.O. or D.N.C.O. DCO is Duty Carried Out, DNCO has a not in it!!!
In fact May was a bad month only two ops. The first was to France at Le Clipon. I note that on the night of the 19.5.44 ops Le Clipon that there is a small red note 15x500 could be what bombs we took!! The second mission in May was to France as well, to Mont Couple for a grand total for the month of 2/3 of a point. Most of the time was spent night flying about England doing more training.
A recent TV show about drugs, reminds me of something during my service, which many people may not know happened. On at least two occasions we were drugged!! Not too sure which ones it was but, you see we weren’t ever told what was being planned or cancelled, just called up to do a raid. Once we were pulled out of bed to do a raid and given pills to keep us awake, the raid was then cancelled after we had climbed aboard out planes, we were then given more pills to make us sleep. No idea what the pills were or even if they worked!!!
The second of June started much as May with an op to Neufchatel in France for another one third point, and on the 12th six days after D Day, Les Lauzon and I were marshalling V Victor from our dispersal to the main runway, as I unlocked the elevators by pulling out the large pin something slipped and my hand was trapped and very badly cut, I had to be taken to the hospital, sewn up, bandaged and my arm put in a sling. No possibility of my going on the op so a spare F/E was called up in my place.
Later that night after some pain killers and a rest I heard the 432 ‘planes returning and went down to the Ops room where all returning crews had to call in and give our statement of events, what we saw, if we could give any details of aircraft shot down, and all the details that would help to decide if the target had been hit. When the Station Adjutant saw me he had a fit, my mother had just been sent a telegram to say I was missing on operations, my crew had been shot down and would not be returning.
This was a great shock to me. It would also be a shock to my parents. and as it was now just after 8 o/clock in the morning knew that my
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Dad would be at work in his office on the docks at Dover, gave the Adjutant the number and was put through in record time, told Dad I was ok and would explain the details when I saw him.
Each crew shared a nissen hut with another crew, not a happy situation when the other crew went missing, but the padre or one of his staff quickly gathered all the stuff up and it was sorted out by one of the squadron officers to send to the parents, anything not nice was removed. I was lucky my stuff was not sent before I managed to let them know I was still on camp!!
Nothing for me to do on the base so home I went on the next train from York to Dover. Trains, now that is something that you should all enjoy, no Air Raid Wardens, the guard just turned off all lights when an air raid warning was sounded, if a tunnel was near the train would go in there, but we are only talking about trains near the coastal regions, hit and run raids were the ones that tried to get trains, trucks etc but that soon stopped when the RAF squadrons became equipped with plenty of fighters to scare the low fliers away, happened to me a couple of times on my way to Dover on leave but really not a worry, worse things happen at sea we always said. Train travel was dirty, uncomfortable, long delays, overcrowded with troops and all there [sic] gear going about the country, only very rarely would a seat be available and soon given up to the lass with a baby on board or in arms, the corridors solid from end to end, tired people going back from leave and even more tired people going home for a spell away from war, but in some cases going into more war if their home was in the south, not that the north escaped bombing raids but it continued for longer in the south in fact almost to the day war ended, V1s and V2s almost to the end. After I was made an officer I travelled first class, now that was good if I had a travel warrant, not so hot if I had to pay for it, lot of rubbish I thought but must do as I am told like a good boy.
I arrived just after eight the next morning and phoned Dad from the Railway Station, he picked me up and took me home, Mum was at the local corner shop and post office, all the staff knew me and also knew about the telegram.
I did not notice a great deal about the Normandy build up, the landing happening on the 6th. We flew over the south of England on our night operations and sometimes were on our way home at dawn we would see the build up. As I usually spent time with my father in the Dover docks while on leave would have seen what was going on. But remember Dover was always very busy and some parts were off limits to every one, any double decker buses used on that part of the coast had all the top windows locked and pained on the outside black so no view of what was happening about the place.
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D Day itself, however, must have come and gone without me noticing it. A bit like V Day and J Day. I was in all probability flying somewhere, or coming from somewhere by car, train, boat, or foot, just never registered, but see years later the crowds in London celebrating, guess they were lucky to be there at that time.
Being home with a wound, I thought I would have some luck with the local girls if I spun the yarn that I had swum the English Channel with one hand, didn’t work out that way because a couple of days later I had a big lump behind my ear and a raging headache, high temperature and not a well boy at all. Dad took me to the closest Military Hospital which was in fact at Dover Castle (built by William the Conquer 1066), beneath which miles of tunnels had been cut and a large and modern hospital installed, I was told that I had an infected scalp, the poison was draining into a gland behind my ear and would take a while to heal, perhaps brought on by a combination of shock from my injured hand and the loss of my crew, a close bond exists when people depend on each other for their survival and air crew had a very close bond. I was taken by ambulance to an old country mansion up the valley a few miles inland from Dover, this was on or about the 10-12 June 1944, no medicine was available to treat my condition, just aspirin for the pain and high temperature, I lay in bed staring through the large windows hoping for sleep and return to health and wondering what had happened to my crew, night time was the worst, nursing staff all asleep upstairs and every one else snoring their heads off.
Then to make matters worse the Germans started sending over Flying Bombs on the night of the 13-14 June and every night and day after that, these pilot-less aircraft had a rocket type motor which had a pulse mechanism that gave them a strange but most recognisable noise, when the noise stopped they just fell out of the sky and the one ton of explosives made a nasty mess of anything underneath. They were programmed to fly up the valley where I was laying sick in bed and on the opposite hills from my bed were 20 and 40m/m quick firing guns, which of course fired at each and every one they saw or thought they did. I swear they were firing straight at me and thought it very unfair that after putting up with Jerry firing his guns at me now my own side were doing the same!
After the war there was a newspaper article showing the location of all Doodle Bug strikes in Kent. I still have a copy, and it is copied elswhere [sic] on this CD.
I was in that hospital for more than a week until one afternoon the doctor seemed to think I was ripe and cut into this lumps behind my ear and out popped a golf ball sized ball that looked like wound up white wool, all pain went and the wound soon healed up,.
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A few days at home to get my strength up and I was told to report to 420 Sqdn RCAF at Tholthorpe in Yorkshire, where I was crewed up with Jim Tease as pilot and the usual other members of E easy, they had lost their F/E somehow can’t remember now why, but they were a nice bunch and as I had done a few more trips than them, was an old hand!!
One such trip they made without me Jim has only recently told me of. On the 25th of July 44, Jim relates, we started for Stuttgard with over-load petrol tanks in the wing bomb bays, and the fuel lines were plugged so we could not get the fuel from them into the main tanks, so we had an early return. He then says “think you were the F/E but book says Naish”. His Book is correct.
The new crew to which I was assigned was as follows. Jim Tease Pilot, Bridgeman Bombardier, Nicklen Navigator and best man at my wedding!, Baker Wireless Operator, Vaughan Gunner, and Yack Gunner. Our ground crew were LACs Jones, Milne, Parker, Smith and Sgt Berry. All were RCAF.
When I was stationed with 420 Snowy Owl RCAF Squadron our motto was ‘pugnamus finitum’ which translated mean (so I’m told) ‘We fight to the finish’, now my long time RAF mate, (Halton, South Africa etc) arrived on the companion Squadron at Tholthorpe, good looking always got the pretty girl, 425 Alouette RCAF Squadron motto ‘Je te Plumerai’ “I shall pluck you” how appropriate for a French Canadian outfit, the re-write by all and sundry is painfully obvious, even more so for my mate Darce, got through the war OK but lost touch in 1947 and just hope he is still doing what he always did best!!
Our first op together was on the night of 28th July to Hamburg in Germany, the port inner lost all of it’s oil over the target, flack put a hole in a pipe so we returned on three engines and for some reason it wouldn’t feather so that was added drag but we made it back in one piece, and all felt good that one was over.
On the night of the 31st we were over Deuf-en-Ternois and had a slight argument with an ME109 we both tried to get into firing position and the Jerry pilot realised that he might come off worse if he didn’t go away which he suddenly did, we were happy to see him go!! We again had problems which meant we couldn’t return to base but had to land at Skipton an emergency aerodrome equipped with FIDO.
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Landing away from home usually would be on a FIDO drome. Once landed, our ‘plane would be towed clear of the runway and dumped for us to sort out in daylight, we would get our heads down wherever we could and as it was often nearly dawn by the time we had sorted out our problems we would get some more fuel get the fans fixed and fly back to base, where we would then be de-briefed have a meal and either get some kip or get ready for the next one.
August 3rd daylight to Foret-de-Nieppe in France target an ammunition dump. Flying at night we all went our way and took no notice of friend or foe unless forced to, by daylight the powers that be decided we should fly in, and practice formation, all very good for them that always get lost or need to hold hands, not us we know where to go and what time we should be there so get out of the way and follows us if you like!!!
Perhaps I should try to relive the first daylight raid I went on, that would have been 3:8:44 Foret-de-Nieppe. I mentioned before that as far as flak we never had a free ride, well the flak this first daylight one is well remembered.
It seemed all very strange at first to be able to see what we were doing, not having to squint with hardly any illumination to read gauges and find things by touch alone, so a bit like a holiday as we set “sail” to our target. All our friends around us, not I hasten to add in formation, but at time close enough to be able to recognise some and even give them a wave as we passed close. We of course were heading in the correct direction for the target, where some of the others were off to we did not know, kites flying off all over the place, and yet at night we all arrived where we should be, but how we missed one another in the dark is a mystery. Thinking about it, all the navigators were in their little cubicles without reference to what was happening outside and were working out their own headings taking into account the wind directions and the aircraft speed, so were doing their own plans to get to the target on time, bit like modern motorists taking different roads to get to their work places on time. Any how the skipper and I looked at the mess of planes going every which way and remarked that some of them must be mad, not us we knew where we we [sic] going. Gradually things sorted themselves out and a few of us were going in roughly the same direction, not all at the same height I might add but you can’t have everything can you? As the holiday spirit continued we saw some of our ‘planes cross our path and joined us, where they had been no one knew, but we had a gaggle of bombers heading towards the target. Crossed the coast of England and could see the French coast coming up, no need for the bomb aimer to tell the skipper and I but the navigator would welcome the information and the fact that we were not alone anymore!!
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“Ten minutes to target” came through the inter com from the navigator and as was usual a heading for the skipper to take as soon as we had dropped our bombs, often a lot of noise over the target so best to get our escape route sorted before going in.
And there was the target the first wave had been in and were on their way home again, but it was impossible to get to the target, one solid mass of bursting flak, not enough room between the bursts for even a small ‘plane let alone a bomber. The skipper and I stared through the windscreen, we did not say anything but guess he felt as I did that this was going to be one hell of a trip, the holiday was over that was for sure.!! The bomb aimer was crouched over the bomb sight giving directions, only the skipper and I could see what was in front of us but in we went and all was suddenly revealed to us what we could see were the shells that had burst, the ones to worry about were the ones that were on their way up, not quite back to the holiday spirit, but survival was now possible, the great puffs of stinking smoke were swept aside as we juddered from near misses and kept on course to our dropping point, a quick look around the sky showed our friends doing what we were doing and guess we weren’t the only ones to have had a bit of a fright at our first daylight op.
Daylight operations were less stressful then night missions I would say over all, though we didn’t know about stress then. We could see what we were doing as we took off and every one in the crew could do their job without trying to see with a very dim light, the wop and nav could even see outside through their windows, not having previosly [sic] seen the bursting flak, and burning ‘planes, the first time in daylight may have been rather a shock for them!!! For our pilot I’m sure it made life just a little easier, taking off in the dark with a full load, not able to see where you were on the runway or how close to the end and it’s obstructions you were, for me it was a strain but for him trying to physically lift the beast into the air must have been a constant worry, and landing back in the light at base where he could see all the other circling ‘planes, the runway not a shadow but there in all it’s concrete glory was much easier than trying to figure out where everything on the ground was and where he was in relation to other unseen aircraft. I suppose both kind of operations had their good and bad points, at night you crept into the target like a black cat in a black room, unseen you hoped but concerned with contact with both fighters and your own friends, navigation difficult because of lack of ground sighting, landing and taking off harder, even taxing to a dispersal difficult at times. In daylight everything could be seen even you over the target so no hiding in clouds, just fly in and drop the bombs and get out again, not sure which I preferred, if you survived all were good!!
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We had fighters flying with us to keep the enemy ones away, so just a little of the holiday spirit came back, but on future ones we had the sight of bombers falling to the flak, my most vivid one was seeing a Flying Fortress some miles away have a wing shot off and counting the parachutes that came out as the ‘plane tumbled over and over and eventually disappear through the clouds. But for this trip there was none of that, and later it was very nice to see all the other squadrons from the many ‘dromes in our part of the world circling their airfields to go into land, some had a few bits hanging off them, and I suppose some had injured aboard, but home was near at hand a mug of coffee well laced with rum and one more to enter in the log book as DCO.
August 4th daylight again to France a pilot less plane storage dump at Boiss-de-Cassair. These were the V-1 Rockets, or Doodle Bugs as they were called. All we could see of the target was really only a gap in the forest with the ramp for the doodle bug to be fired up for launching, and the rest of the site was hidden in the trees,. I guess the local French Resistance would have sent the information by wireless of the location. Afterwards, not much to see when a number of bombers have dropped a few tons of bombs on a target. We used 500lb and 1000lb bombs on these sort of targets. Not too sure what our maximum bomb load for the Halibag would be but must have been at least 6 ton, but please don’t quote me! The area looked like a very poorly ploughed field after we had gone.
Regarding Bomb Loads this what Jim Tease, our pilot, has in his log book and I feel he is correct in what states. “We made many trips with 16x 500lb bombs, others were 9x 1000lb + 4x500lb. only one trip with a 2000lb + incendiaries, no record of taking a 4000lb believe the bomb doors would not fully close on a Halifax if one was loaded, bombs and petrol load would depend on the target and it’s distance from base”.
August the 5th daylight yet again to France this time ammunition stored in caves at St-D’Esserent. As usual there was no way for us to know if our bombs hit the target, whether we exploded the ammo dumps inside their caves or not. The explosions caused by our bombs 500, 1000, 2000, 4000, bombs going off do tend to make a lot of smoke and fireworks so unless we were on the ground hard to tell our bombs exploding from the enemy ammo or target going up, we did sometimes get a report days later from our briefing officer to say “well done target gone”.
It is a bit hard for me to explain about what was saw on the ground both in England and over the enemy, you see when I was flying passengers in Avro Yorks, from UK to other parts of the world, one of the first things passengers used to say as well climbed up to 8000 ft our cruising height was “Oh look the sun is shining” they didn’t seem to understand that it always is!!
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The highest we ever bombed at was 24,500ft all crew members with paddles going like crazy!! But that is still well over the cloud layer. Because that part of the world is more often than not shrouded in cloud people forget that above the clouds there is always sunshine. So you see most times we were over cloud, never saw a completely cloud free sky.
August 7th night operation to bomb Tanks and artillery in the German line at La-Hougue. You will note that August was a very busy month, nearly every day we were out either day or night, can be a bit confusing to remember what and where we went, guess one target is much like another, lots of flak, bits of hot stuff flying about just ajumble in the memory, one thing that does stay vivid and I really can’t be sure just when it happened or which target it was, only know it was at night and could have been in August. I think it was this mission to La-Hougue.
We took off on a very dark and rainy night and were told that the cloud and rain would clear just as we got to the target, we seem to have started our night flights very late at that time. Well we climbed to our cruising height and were in thick storm clouds, listening hitting us and rain very heavy, the whole aircraft glowed with static electricity and large rain drop slid along the radio wires like illuminated ping pong balls, to burst as they hit the fins and rudders, the ride was very bumpy and the skipper and I tried going up or down to get clear of all this storm without any luck, just before the target was reached we flew into bright moonlight, bombed and returned within minutes into what looked like a solid black wall from ground to the sky and flew in this muck all the way home, I see we landed at Tilstock on Fido one night so perhaps that was the night, have a vague feeling that we were one of the very few who made it to the target that night.
August 8th Daylight to France to bomb oil storage dump at Foret-de-Chantilly. On the way home from this mission, or perhaps one of the other daylight missions, an enemy fighter came toward us. The Germans, however, seemed as cautious as my crew was. There were plenty of targets in the sky for the fighters so why risk getting shot at if you could creep up on a crew too lazy to do their job properly. So when this fighter approached us in daylight our gunners gave him a warning burst at a distance and he just turned away. However we watched as he dived straight on another ‘place about a couple of miles away and shot it down. That crew had not been alert and did not see him coming. We were all on our way home, but the time to relax was on the ground not in the sky.
August 9th night operation to Foret-de-Nieppe to bomb ammunition dumps. What does this mean, you might ask? Was it like they show in films? Like most people I often view WW2 films on the box and have
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always wondered which war the markers were intending to show, certainly not the one played a little part in. You see when a bomber is shown being attacked by fighters or anti aircraft fire there always seems a lot of shouting and the intercom is full of talk, not on any bomber I flew in, or passenger one either.
So let me go through what I and the crew did. On the ground we were the usual young, bugger about, chase the girls, have a drink etc boys, but once in the ‘plane that all changed and the pilot, skipper or skip as he was known was boss, not in any heavy handed way but no task was started without his ok and all functions were reported to him.
So he and I marshalled the aircraft in a position allocated to us for that night’s raid on the perimeter track leading to the runway in use, there we left it while a last meal was had, briefing concluded, and we as a completed crew were then taken by truck to our ‘plane. The Canadian Salvation Army called at each ‘plane as we waited to board, handing out cigarettes and chocolate, and a last fumble in the layers of clothes was made to get rid of any urine likely to cause pain, no toilets on our “kites”.
A green light was shone from the small caravan parked at the end of the runway to tell us it was time to climb abroad, this caravan was painted in large black and white squares, a Perspex roof blister was used to signal to the crews and need less to say it was towed away before we started to land back after our raid, with the way some of us landed it would not have lasted very long in one piece likewise the occupants!!
Each one of the crew settled into their place and checked that all was ok with their bits and bobs, the pilot would then call each position in turn (not by the persons name but what position they occupied, ie rear gunner, navigator, etc) and each crew member would reply along the lines of “OK SKIPPER” I was often left to last and was given the order to start engines when my turn came, after all we running satisfactory, I would log the start time and all pressures and temperatures etc, the navigator would no doubt make a note in his log of this time also, when our aircraft letter was flashed from the control caravan we would taxi onto the runway, I would select what angle of flaps the skipper wanted, set take off boost and hold the throttles behind his hand to ensure we stayed straight along the runway. As we climbed up I would only raise the undercarriage and flaps as he ordered, setting climbing revs and boost as he wanted, and would without any order synchronise the engine revs on each side so that the propeller blades did not rotate in respect to one another. If we were one of the first in our squadron to take off we would gradually climb to the operation height and circle the ‘drome until all our aircraft were present, not that we could see much on a dark night but we had a set time to “set course for the target”.
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During the climb and setting course for the target one very important job was the charging and locking of the Hydraulic accumulator, this was an emergency charge of hydraulic fluid which would be enough to lower the undergear and even the flaps if we were lucky, should damage to the engine which drove the pump or the system itself be damaged. Was just a large cylinder connected to the hydraulic system filled with air (what this was pressured to I have forgotten only 56 or so years ago so sue me for having a bad memory) fluid was let into this cylinder and charged to a certain pressure (sue me) and the cock turned off so the fluid was held under pressure by the air also in the cylinder, in an emergency the undercarriage would be set to ‘lower’ and this cock turned on and hopefully this stored fluid would lower the gear, Got all that? Phyll just read the first part I sent and was rather surprised that I could still know what to do but not sure if the RAF would still require my service!! Back to the plot!!
As we reached about 12000ft I would change the supercharger speed to high, make sure all the crew were on oxygen, and fill in all the details in my log these included petrol consumption and which tanks I was using, I always tried to have an equal amount of fuel in each tank by the time we reached our target so that should a tank be punctured we only lost a small amount of petrol, but each time I changed tanks permission was asked from the skipper and he was informed when I had done it.
There we are drifting along trying to make sure we didn’t bump into any of our own ‘planes in the dark sky, all lights were at dim, mine to fill in my log was at a glimmer when wanted, all the pilot’s instruments lights very low and the blackout curtain between the bomb aimer’s position and the navigator and WOP very tightly fastened, both working with minimum lights. And it got cold, the gunners and bomb aimer had heated suits but even they felt it, as for the navigator his hands were too cold at times to hold a pencil and asked the Skip if I could direct hot air down to his position, The skip and I already partly frozen but to get there and back we needed to know which way so hot air it was and some of our bits that might be wanted in more pleasant times went into cold storage.
There was no chatter between crew members, and if someone left their mic on by mistake he was soon reminded of the fact, young as we all were I am reminded of very professional we were, perhaps that is why we survived to tell our tales!
This professionalism was needed. One night we had a Halifax with a mid under turret, not a standard feature in earlier models, and a gunner was added to our crew to man it. The gunner we were landed with saw more enemy fighters in the 6 or so hours we were airborne than I think were
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available to the Germans at any time during the war. This excitability was not helpful. We go rid of the mid under and that gunner.
Why we survived and others didn’t was because we took notice of the experts (those pilots and crews who had done it lots of time) you don’t fly straight and level thinking of nothing much, but weave and bank slightly so that the gunners get an all round view of things, there is no blind spot under the tail if you stay awake. No need for a lower turret to fill that blind spot then.
I can only speak for myself but guess all the crew were feeling as I was, and that was that our navigator would take us there and back, our gunners would spot the attacking aircraft in time and either shoot it down or scare it off, our pilot was second to none and would steer us through whatever came our way, our radio operator would get a fix, receive a message, and let us know what was happening, our bomb aimer would always hit the target, and I would keep the old girl in the air until we got home safely again. So there was no need for lots of chatter we all did our jobs and depended on the others to do theirs.
The navigator would sometimes ask the skipper if I could do a star shot for him, over my position I had an astro dome, would unload the sextant from it’s case hang it from the hook, wind up the clockwork 2 minute time and after I had found whichever star was wanted tell the skipper and of course the navigator I was ready when they were, the navigator would tell me when to start and I would press the trigger and try to keep the star in the mirror., at the end of the two minutes a reading of the average of all my shots would come up on a panel which I would give to the navigator, on the ground I had been averaging 2 to 3 miles, not as good in flight but handy if other navigating items were not up to scratch.
The bomb aimer was in the nose during the flight and gave what information he could to the skipper but the navigator also heard it and it would be something like this “Coast coming up skip” “crossing the coast now”. Now we were over enemy territory.
Details of flack ships and sites seen in action would be reported much the same, no panic just facts. The gunners would report fighters positions and would not fire unless ordered to. We were told that on some nights our fighters would be in the “stream” so gunners watch out for them, and they would circle the German dromes to shoot down any fighters taking off or landing, the Germans did that to our bombers early in the war but as we got air superiority it was our turn to be the nasty ones. Still, Fighters of any type all were enemy until they proved otherwise. Very few of either nation came
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near us. In most cases the fighters saw we were a threat to them and went elsewhere.
Although there was sufficient ammunition for whatever may occur, our own use was very minimal and mainly used to test fire the guns soon after airborne, our job was to deliver bombs and drop them hopefully at the right place, which we seem to do most of the time.
One night standing in the astro dome doing my bit of searching the sky I looked up and saw a FW 190 almost within touching reach just above me, would not have been 10 feet away. I told the skipper and of course the gunners wanted to have a go, but as the skipper said we are supposed to be bombing and will just slide away but if we see one the way back shoot the bastard down. The FW covered the sky, was flying quite close and not much faster than we were, no doubt we could have given it a very sore bum. But the skipper rightly said no, could have all gone wrong anyway, maybe his mate was close at hand and while we blazed away at one, another could have had us who knows?
Remember that this is flying in darkness. We had radar, but not for seeing other planes. We used radar in a thing called H2S, shows as a small bulge under the fuselage of bombers, used to show a map of the ground and useful for bombing on nights with full cloud cover. Radar, good if you are a fighter but what good would it do us, never switch any radar on even H2S unless needed, gives out a signal for the enemy to follow and get you, switch it off and use the mark 1 eye balls.
There were very many different anti fighter systems used, these names are all either tail warning devices (which caused more trouble that they were worth) special aircraft with German speaking radio operators who would tune into the German fighter directors and give conflicting directions, The Germans would do as we did and use people with distinct dialects to stop this, microphones were installed in the engine bays and this sound would be sent out on the fighter wave lengths to stop the information from being received. Gee was a navigation aid using three or more radio beacons and a special receiver, window you know about but many different versions of Radar were used to block fighters, G-H, Oboe, Serrate, Monica, ABC, Corona, and many names I either never knew or have forgotten were all warning devices fitted near the tail to warn rear gunners of the approach of night fighters, I suppose some lives were saved until the Germans had a crashed ‘plane to work on and then it was just the reverse, switch it on and get caught! All of this electronics, if on board for this mission, would be in use or ready for use while we moved towards our target through the night sky.
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The navigator would also tell the pilot that it was time to start “window” and at what rate, another of my jobs, as was the dispatch of leaflets to inform the enemy that it was time to give in, why didn’t I ever keep some??? So you have a very noisy ‘plane with not much chatter going on all the crew going about their jobs quietly, checking with the skipper if required and all hearing what was being done to keep us safe.
The view from the cockpit at night was minimal, the occasional flare of a bursting shell which changed to continuos [sic] bursts as we got near the target or passed near flak sites, the halfseen shapes of other bombers or fighters with muffled flames from their exhausts, from the astro-drome on a clear night, the dark blue inverted bowl of the sky pierced with a multitude of twinkling lights, but these often shaded by the dark shadows of friend and foe as they passed by.
Dark nights and heavy clouds were the norm, rain and lightening greeted us most times, eyes strained to see what was not there, but ready to give a warning of any contacts either friend or foe.
A master radar controlled searchlight may catch us and very soon we were “coned” no panic, every one closed one eye to retain night vision, and either the bomb aimer or the rear gunner would give the pilot instructions about the best way to get out of it, usually to dive down the master one and do very sudden sharp turns to one side, always got out before any real damage was done, and never ever thought we wouldn’t!!
Now we were nearing the target and the ‘plane jumped about as we flew through the wake of our bombers ahead of us, on a thousand bomber raid at night over the one target things get a bit hairy. Some of the sudden jumps are not ‘plane wakes but the burst of anti aircraft shells trying to send us down, but at night you see the flash, hear the rattle of splinters, check that all is well with the crew and our ‘plane and just carry on. The navigator would tell the skipper than it was say 5 minutes to target, the bomb aimer would have set his bomb sight to drop the bombs in a certain pattern, we had wing and fuselage bomb bays, and with the right pattern the pilots had an easier task to control the ‘plane as it lost it’s load, a 2000Ib ‘cookie’ really gave us a quick lift when let go, I can imagine that some of the Lancasters that carried and dropped 12000Ib and larger “earthquake bombs” really hit the heights when relieved of their parcels!
Now all eyes were searching the sky even harder than they had been, searchlights were weaving their way across the sky, catching a plane which was lit up and looked just like a moth around a lamp, sometime they slid out of the light, some time they suddenly flashed into extinction, and some
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times the flashing of guns was seen as a fighter chanced his luck amongst the bursting anti aircraft and was answered by the bomber gunners.
The flashing of bursting bombs, rattle and crash of anti aircraft shells bursting, searchlights sweeping the sky and settling on some lone ‘plane to be followed by the stream of incendiary bullets, all make the hearts of the night bomber crews halt for just a fraction as they go about the job of beating the foe into submission. Hearts once young and tender soon become hardened to this show of defiance, but not to the sudden eruption of flames at their height as one of their own is hit and spirals to destruction, “bastards” comes through the intercom from all quarters and the empty bottles, bricks and old iron brought for this occasion are pushed out of gun turrets and down flare and ‘window’ chutes, the rage is personal you can’t do this to ours is the feeling.
All in all over the target it was quite a busy place to be and we still had to reach the aiming point drop our bombs and beat a hasty retreat. Each plane that was hit was reported and logged by the navigator, new anti aircraft gun sites logged, ‘window’ and leaflets pouring out the chute, bomb doors opened and from the bomb aimer ‘steady, left steady left steady hold it hold it and the magic BOMBS GONE, bomb door closed, new course from the navigator and turn for home, but still aware that his was perhaps the most dangerous time, many crews relaxed and never got home. So search the sky dodged the ack ack and searchlights, perhaps put on a bit of speed by dropping a few thousand feet, and again that most welcome call from the bomb aimer still in the nose ‘coast coming up, crossing the coast’ and now I could eat my bit of chocolate, and just ease a little.
The wireless operator would be giving weather and other information to both the skipper and the navigator, as the navigator and wop sat next to one another many messages were passed by notes to and fro, but one that sent shivers through us was
“Intruders reported over the ‘drome skip” not often but meant we could not relax even when we arrived back at base, never got caught, guess our night fighters got up and sorted things for us. So on a normal return to base we were greeted by the interlocking rings of lights from all the multitude of bomber bases in Yorkshire, and each one flashed it’s own recognition red light to welcome it’s pigeons home, no radio silence now as there was prior to take off, call in make our letter E EASY and given a height and position in the queue, and as we were called down and moved up in the queue sometimes had to loose our turn to one of ours with dead and wounded on board, or no fuel left or any one of the things that happen to planes that will go out searching for trouble, down we go and I stand by the pilot and do all the actions in reverse, undercarriage, flaps and so on, all the others are
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strapped in but not me I just stand next to our pilot and help him as and when wanted, down we go another perfect landing and taxi to our dispersal, the crew climb out to wet the grass again while the skipper and I switch off everything, lock the brakes and controls, and make our own way to a quick piss, climb in the waiting truck and head for debriefing.
Now we would give our version of events while we are handed a large mug of coffee liberally laced with rum. Here we report the sighting of the sudden eruption of flames at our height, which we knew to be one of our own being hit and destroyed – the sighting that sent us to throwing junk down at the enemy. But at de-briefing, we were told it was on a “Scarecrow” shot up by the enemy to make us afraid. But it didn’t, it made us mad and nothing the briefing officer could say convinced us that it wasn’t one of ours failing to their death. So was the whole thing counter-productive by both sides, we just got mad not scared, so the enemy lost that one and we never really knew if there were such things as “Scarecrows” just kept heaving out the junk.!!
After debriefing, we hand in our parachutes, and head for a meal and bed. Our ground crew would be busy checking E Easy for faults, some I will have reported on landing to them, the camera film will be taken from the bomb sight and on it’s way to processing, and a hush will settle on this and many airfields while the weary rest for the next effort, but usually woken up by the roar of engines being tested for the next one.
The next one was August 12th, a daylight run again to France. The target this time was Foret-de-Mont Richard, more ammunition dumps.
August 18th Night to France to bomb the Railway Marshalling Yards at Connatre. must again had a problem because we landed at Skellingthorpe, returning to base the next day.
August 27th daylight to France to bomb a construction site at Marquise – Minoyecques being built to launch flying bombs on London.
I must add details of my selection interview by a senior RAF officer for a commission, My Flight commander had asked me to put in for a commission and when I failed to do so, gave me a direct order, sat me down and made me fill in all the forms, I just forgot all about it and rather than play the usual games that Canadian Air Crew used to while away the hours between operations of horse shoes, billiards and pool, I managed to convince the Station Engineering Officer to supply me with a hut, tools, bench, and a worn out Hercules engine. This I proceeded to take to pieces and section so that every one who was interested could see the inside of a very complicated sleeve valve engine, and perhaps treat them with just a
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little more respect! I would check with my pilot each day if we were flying and if not cycle out to my hut which was away from the main area and certainly not in range of the public address speakers. So I happily worked on my own getting my clothes well covered in oil and the aluminium dust from the sawing and filing which clung to everything this mean that I had to wear really old uniforms when working and must say that after a few hours in my hut did not look too special! A breathless Flight Sergeant burst in through the door and shouted with the little breath he had left ”Your name Miles?” When I replied yes it was, told me that that public address (Tannoy) had been calling for me for some hours to report to Head Quarter for my interview with Air Commodore. Said I would go back to my barrack room to change “No you won’t, I’ve been looking for you all morning and you go there now” Didn’t want to be an officer anyhow so who cares, arrived at Head Quarters on my cycle to be met by yet another Flight Sergeant, if anything more angry than the first, “Don’t you read Daily order Miles” I walked into the waiting room to find all other applicants polished and shining in their best uniforms, sat in rows like birds on a fence, my own make said “Hard luck Reg” Before I could answer yet another Flight Sergeant with great glee said “Miles you’re next” So In I went to stand in front of the table behind which sat My Squadron Wing Commander, The Base Group Captain, My Flight Leader and the imposing figure of the Air Commodore. Their eyes were all focused on the notes they were making about the previous applicant as I saluted and stated my name rank and service number. Eyes were raised and a look of horror passed over the faces of each one as they looked at this dirty silver speckled scruffy airman. The Air Commodore asked why I had not appeared when called before and how had I got into this condition. It seemed to me that only the truth would do and so I related my story of the engine I was working on and said how sorry I was that I had caused so much trouble. The Air Commodore asked each of the other officers if they were aware of my efforts and no one did, “ring the Engineering Officer and check while we question Miles” he confirmed my story and said I was doing a good job and hoped it would be finished before I left the Squadron. While this was going on The Air Commodore and I were chatting away about my service history and how far I had got with the engine, finally he said “I shall be pleased to welcome you into the Officer’s Mess in a few weeks time, we need more people like you who just get on and do things” So I walked out head high through the waiting room and said to all and sundry “I’ve got mine good luck to you”
Quite a busy month trying to help our ground troops push their way through France. I have not mentioned the training flights also carried out between operations, so that apart from the odd break we were flying most days and nights. My crew and I must have had some leave during the first week of September because my flight record for that month is a training flight on the 9th and a note that I had had some more practise at flying a Halifax,
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we only had one pilot on board and that was Jim Tease so if he got injured or killed who would fly us home? That left only me who did at least know how things worked but as I had no flying training on small aircraft it was very difficult to manage something so big and slow to react to the controls, alter the angle of the control column and it seemed ages before anything happened so learners always over correct and you end up with a ride like a fair ground switch back, I practiced whenever I was able always in daylight and most time on the return flight from an operation, tried a few times landing on clouds, more forgiving than the ground, think I could have got back to England ok but landing without a crash I’m not so sure!!
Back to France in daylight to bomb a German strong point at Le Havre on September 10th. I seem to remember that we were one of the last on target and all that could be seen were bomb holes on top of bomb holes, The RAF and American Air Force had complete air superiority so we had only flack to contend with and that could be very accurate because the Germans use Radar tracking.
September 11th daylight to Germany, to the dreaded Ruhr Valley, to bomb a synthetic oil plant at Castro-Rauxel. Our height for this drop, based on the aiming point photo, was 16,500’, and our bomb load was 16 500lb bombs. We hit it smack on and our photo showed that, still have my copy given to us, and we were given a guided tour of 6 Group Bomber Command in recognition of our skill.
The tour we had of 6 Group Bomber command was more for the Canadian guys, so they could oggle the Canadian girls, told you before I was not impressed so just saw lots of lush offices and big boards with meaning less maps and figures on them. Waste of time I thought but the rest of the crew liked it so that was OK.
September 13th again to Germany in daylight to bomb the railway marshalling yards in Osnabruck, I have a note that it went well so presume the target was destroyed, daylight targets were a bit scary after night ones but soon got used to it and at least we could see what we were aiming at and whether we had been right on target.
September 15th A night raid on the shipping port of Keil in Germany, this was a 500 bomber operation, we were coned by about six radar controlled searchlights on the approach to Keil, with German night fighter hanging about out of the cones, all had to keep at least one eye closed as the light was very bright and if we managed to get out of them the fighters would pounce as we would all be blind, Jimmy Tease handled the bomber like a fighter diving and side slipping all over the place even at one time diving down one of the lights, and got us out, we were however hit by flack
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over the target and the perspex nose fell right off, Red Bridgeman the bomb aimer had to hold the black out curtains between his position and Nick Nicklen our navigator while I wired them together, Red had to stand with his feet over nothing all the way home to hold the curtain against the howling gale that came in, Nicks charts had all ended up down the fuselage mixed up with the bundles of window that I was pushing down the window chute.
These were sorted out and Nick went on with his job of guiding us home, from my notes looks as though we or some of our Squadron hit the target so a good prang was noted.
I do remember this next mission, a daylight raid on one of those massive guns built into the ground with a barrel hundreds of feet long pointed at London. This was September 17th. The target was in France at Boulogne, our height in my log is noted as 2000ft. 2000ft is very low for bombing could get damaged by the bombs in front of you going off especially in slow old things like Halis – Lancs. This was the only low level bombing I ever went on!!! Although we would bomb from 2,000 feet, we flew down from base in Yorkshire at about 8,000 feet. This was a good cruising height for our aircraft, as we passed over many cities, towns, airfields, hills, barrage balloons, tall chimneys, and other obstructions for low level craft.
When we got to the English coast lowered our undercarriage and flaps pulled back the throttles and dived down to 2,000 ft over the channel. The lowering of flaps, undergear and reducing engine revs helped us to quickly reduce our height, the channel is only a bit over 20 miles wide not a lot of distance to get a great old lumbering kite down low and level out and on course to give the bomb aimer a chance to fund the target.
The dive over the channel was to get us down to 2,000ft quickly, at the low height we were certain to hit the rather small target and not the surrounding empty fields or buildings. We also had to have time to make the approach without crowding other aircraft. We had to watch out for ‘planes all round us because, at this altitude, if we were too close to one in front we could get our ‘plane damaged by a bursting bomb from the plane in front. So not quite the “milk run” it would appear to be.
The flight down to the target on this trip must have been a change, able to see some of the country side. Although the whole operation only lasted 4 hours, and so not a lot of time for sight seeing, no doubt the gunners and bomb aimer had a nice view. The only time I had to look was when I took a moment as we flew over the village where my parents were living, but I did not see any street or bit that I could say, “that’s where I live”. It is surprising how difficult it is to recognise thing from the air that you haven’t seen a few
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times from the air. But the skipper and I as usual were busy making sure we got there OK. Sounds as if he and I were always busy doesn’t it? Well we were, bomber pilots had it tough, long hours at the “office” in all weather conditions, responsible for a number of other people’s lives, not forgetting their own. My job was to help him, so I did, as best as I was able. I also wanted to get home again!!!
Once we were down to 2,000 feet, we pulled all our hanging bits back on board opened the taps, then bombed this target with all we had, again being very careful not to get too close to the bomber in front. All I saw was a few acres of mud which kept leaping into the air and rearranging itself, guess another case of over kill!! After the target, we climbed again after bombing to 8,000ft for the return run over the afore mentioned obstructions to our flight path.
This target was noted in the log book as a “strong point” which we were told it was at the time, no one knew what it was so it was decided to destroy it. A ground investigation later on found the gun, much to every one’s surprise at it’s size and pointing straight at London, various TV programmes over the years have shown it and it’s concrete barrel rising from deep underground. Checking distances with my M.S World Atlas I found much to my surprise that Boulogne is the closest point in France to London, closer that Calais by about 10KM, so an obvious place to put a gun of this range and size.
September 19th we took our old ‘plane to the HCU at Dishforth she had done 56 trips and had been hard used many patches and repairs has been done so with all her proud bombing trips still painted on her nose she went to train more aircrew for the struggle still to come.
September 25th off again to France in daylight to bomb a German strong point at Calais another target gone, our new E easy going good!!
September 26th to France in daylight again to Calais bombed Gun positions and the docks in the harbour, noted as another good hit.
September 27th daylight to Germany Bottrop in the Ruhr, have note that we bombed a factory on visual which means some thing had gone u/s. My pilot, Jim Tease recently gave me some more information on this mission. “I had a friend now deceased who was a navigator on 428 Ghost Squadron. He wrote a book about Ghost Squadron & I compared his report of trips we were both on, and found we had different visions of what happened. On our 31 trip to Bottrop on Sept 27 I indicate there was 10/10 cloud for the whole trip, the Master of Ceremonies (Master Bomber) of the Path Finders lost his way and we bombed where (our navigator) said the target area was
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located. Ron’s book indicates the refinery was hit & smoke rose to 17000ft. So much for records!!”
My Log Book for that raid states “10/10 cloud Bombed Factory Visual M/C U/S” guess that all means we found a gap in the clouds and bombed the target but had solid cloud both there and back M/C U/S Master of Ceremonies out of order, unserviceable.
On one of these daylight raids we saw a V2 launched on one raid, didn’t know what it was just a streak in the sky. Looking out of the windscreen I saw a streak of smoke come through a layer of cloud and shoot up into the sky and disappear into the next lot of cloud, l know the skipper also saw it but who else I am not sure, lasted milli seconds. It was logged by the navigator and an estimation of where it had come from made by us. When and where seen etc was important, once a site was located it could be knocked out by bombing.
September 30th daylight again in Germany Sterkrade in the Ruhr saw one of our Sqdn go down and three of the seven get out on ‘chutes, we landed at a FIDO ‘drome at Cranesby, no brake pressure went off the end of a very long runway into a field of potatoes that had just been ridged up and we went across the ridges, a bit like roller skating on corrugated iron.
On the 4th of October we went to Bergen in Norway flying across the North Sea in daylight to bomb U/Boat pens and a large ammunition ship in the harbour. We flew across the sea both ways at 1000ft to be under German Radar, and climbed rapidly near the target to 12000ft, Mosquitos and Mustangs gave us fighter cover.
I still have an image in my mind of a semi-circular bay with a large ship moored more or less in the middle. As I remember it the country around Bergen is low lying, nothing at our height to give us cause for panic, but if the ship had blown up and we were down low could have cause major damage to one or more of our Halifaxs [sic].
The large ammunition ship blew up. The ship was still all in one piece when I last saw it and if our bombs had done the damage guess we would have been told. I think it was our rear gunner who told us via the intercom that it had blown up, and that is why we were there.
Our attack made the Bergan people even more anti British than they already were, Gillian visited there some years ago as the intended bride to the son of one of Bergen’s top families, the mother was a local member of parliament, they treated her most awfully which did not help when she casually mentioned that her Dad had bombed the place during the war,
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needless to say that romance soon died!!! The Norwegians still didn’t like us Brits, near enough to Germans and lots supported Hitler during the war, bit like the Swiss only interested in making money, the shits.
Of course, most ordinary Norwegian people hadn’t any view pro or anti regarding Germany and Britain, just wanted to get on with their lives as best they could. Those that were anti us had lots riding on our defeat, and were involved in either working for the Germans or making lots of money out of them by trading with them, those that helped us risked torture and death, and were really in more peril than we were, they were the real heroes. After the war and for many years, I never met anyone who speaking with what sounded like a German accent, was other than Swiss, even if they said their home town was in Germany!!!. I still find the Swiss attitude to money and it’s retention disgusting, particularly in the light of revelations of their trading with the Nazis in Gold and goods taken from innocent people. Guess ordinary people all over this world just want to eat and enjoy what little life they have, but greed gets in the way and those few who can claw their way up the ‘food’ chain and get much more than their fair share are the ones who I have no time for, being poor perhaps colours my out look!!!
So we come to the 6th of October and a night operation over Germany to Dortmund in the Ruhr Valley, this was a 500 bomber raid to the centre of the city, we again were hit by flack bits flying about all over the place and very red hot some hit the bomb door hydraulics which fell open and stay open and I’m sure that it was on this operation that a lump hit Nick Nicklen on his side making a very nasty bruise, fortunately it also hit the torch on his MAYWEST [sic] life jacket so didn’t kill him, he was in much pain but got us back to England ok, Nick was awarded the D.F.C. later and I am sure it was for this brave effort. Because of our damage we again had to land apart from our base and this time landed at Woodbridge and after some quick repairs we flew back to base the next day, where I was told that I had finished my tour of operations, had been granted a commission, given dockets and a leave pass to get my officers uniform and told to report back in seven days. A friend and I travelled to just about every city and large town in Yorkshire before we managed to get kitted up in Harrogate.
Before departing on leave and to await our next posting we had to hand in certain flying and escape items. There were mainly items of some value French and German money hidden in our clothes together with fine silk maps of France and Germany. Our flying boots which had a hidden knife in the sheep skin lining so that the long leg warmers could be cut off leaving what looked like ordinary shoes also were handed in, other items like compasses hidden under badges or in pencils, hacksaw blades concealed in the linings of clothes, a bag of oiled silk that could be used to hold water and a few other odds and ends we kept, these like so many things at that time
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had no value to us and no doubt went into the bin without much thought! Jim Tease and the rest of the crew still had a few operations to go but I was not allowed to finish with them told not to be so greedy, others wanted a go and as far as I was concerned they were welcome. So home on leave to await what the RAF had in store for me again. Cycling along the main road in Cliftonville what should I see but a bunch of very good looking WAAF’s (Woman’s Auxiliary Air Force, who did every job except fighting (which they sometimes had to do for their honour) from clerks to Radar operators, cooks to delivering aircraft from the factories, and with them a girl friend if but briefly from my school days, Phyllis Dike!! I made contact and started to see her and eventually proposed marriage to her, she wasn’t very keen but agreed in the end.
I was recalled to service and was posted to Heavy Conversion Unit 1332, Nutts Corner in Norther Ireland where I crewed up with F/lt Poore,a navigator and a wireless operator all of us being officers and had completed at least one tour on bombers, we were being trained to fly Avro Yorks on the main trunk routes from U.K to India and Ceylon now India, Pakistan and Shri Lanka [sic]. We started the flying part of the course on the 8th April 1945 and completed it on 17th of the same month. My flight log of my time in 1332 H.C.U. is presented later.
The Avro York interior lay out was much as the Lancaster. The pilot, F/E, Nav, Wop were together in a small group, the F/E acting as second pilot even if untrained. When spare pilots became available they took over the task of second pilot the f/e found himself a place amongst the mail bags to sleep and do his job as he could.
When a number of crews joined Transport Command after our course at Nutts Corner, we arrived at 242 Squadron in Stoney Cross. My log book details my flights with 242 Squadron.
Within a day or so we were all loaded onto an Avro York, flown I know not where and without any “by your leave” injected with multiple injections in both arms and I seem to remember elsewhere, we were told this was for protection against all the terrible deceases we could encounter in foreign lands, yellow fever was mentioned as one but there was a whole list of them. I know most of us were a bit under the weather for a few days, some even very sick. What sticks in the memory was that we weren’t asked or consulted just injected!!
I had already obtain permission to get married and given leave for that period, but the Wedding was on the 28th and I had to get home and do some organising, so used the “old boys” network and thumbed lifts to England and managed to get a train to get home in time. Don Nicklen my navigator
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from 420 sqdn came down from Yorkshire to be my best man, and I can’t say I saw much of him before it was away on a short honeymoon, and then back to camp for both of us!!
– Reg Miles
The URL of this page is
http://www.geocities.com/milbios/Milesbio4.html
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Biography of Reg Miles
Ex Apprentice No 1 S.of T.T., R.A.F., Halton 39th Entry 34 – 67 M.U.s – 27 A/S Bloemspruit South Africa – Lympe Kent, Flight Engineer 432 – 420 Squadrons RCAF, 6 Group Bomber Command, Eastmoor, Tholthorpe, Yorkshire / 242- 246 – 511 Squadrons Transport Command Lyneham, RAF
Chapter 5
242- 246 – 511 Squadrons, Transport Command, Lyneham, RAF
I started flying at 242 Sqdn on the 16th May again all training in passenger flying technique, rather different from press on bombing! We did a few cross countries and many three engined landing and the use of radio range flying. One exercise in the log book was Over Shoots and Landings. Overshoots and landings are practice in taking off again before you actually get the wheels on the ground, some clever dickies even run the wheels along the runway and open the throttles and take off again, alright for intrepid birdmen like fighter pilots but not recommended for serious passenger flying types. There are the odd occasions when the runway suddenly does not become clear for landing, animals, cars, fire engines, even other aircraft, so practice for these times (which may never happen) is necessary, these days a no risk practice can be made in the Flight Simulator, we had to do it the hard way with an instructor beside us and no knowledge of what we would be asked to do, he could shut down one engine and then another, drop the undercarriage, put on full flap, what ever his distorted mind felt like that day!! The pilots I flew with on Transport Command had all done at least one tour on bombers, some quite a number and were used to the enemy doing much the same to the aircraft, so no panic just the correct procedure and “What would you like next” often asked, with a wry grin. So the other to “overshoot” became automatic, with me acting on my pilot’s instructions about throttle, flaps and under gear, but I was always aware of what he wanted and would be “hands on” waiting, would have been a rather poor F/E if not ready when wanted!!
My crew went on leave after this training, so I was made a temporary Flight Engineer to the Squadron Leader, who took me on a test flight of my abilities to Cairo and back, left Stoney Cross on the 4th flew to Luqa in Malta.
Malta was still on a war footing. Luqa, on Malta, a dry and stony place all the airport buildings pained white but very small and certainly not like any airport you may have seen, a concrete slab to park on for refuelling, all
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of which had to be done through massive filters, with chamois leather inserts to catch any water and of course the ever present dust and sand. All the ground crew well tanned and going about their jobs with efficiency, being bombed continually taught them not to delay getting the fighters airborne, we were lucky that the fighters had gone before we started to use Luqa, the enemy ones!!
Malta is an island with a long history of invaders, us being the last, independence was granted some time after the war and I am sure the locals were glad to see all the foreign military go, wonderful harbour, well used by the Royal Navy during WW2, a street (very narrow and steep) in Valletta was lined with open fronted drinking bars, just really the front room of a house with easy entry for the soldiers and sailors to get drunk, think from memory it was called by the Navy “The Gut”, but could be thinking of somewhere else, for us, just a place to “slip” crews, water always very scarce, milk, butter and cheese from goats, think I have mentioned that before, as I have about collecting all the papers and books from the mess before leaving UK to leave both with the RAF and also some Navy types who crewed a fast MTB (motor torpedo boat) made a change for both crews to chat with some one other than their working mates.
The runway ended at a quarry, no sight for the faint hearted, as it was well stocked with aircraft that had not made it, guess the passengers just thought it was some where the RAF stored unwanted ‘planes. My first trip there was with a senior pilot to check me out so a quick run to Cairo and back, all 7,800 Km of it! My years in South Africa had made me used to hot weather shorts and open neck shirts so it was easy for me to climatise to the changed weather conditions. I now live in Mackay, Queensland and there is thriving community of Maltese people, many sugar cane farmers or the descendants of cane farmers, and NO they are not called Maltesers!!
On the 5th Malta to Cairo. Cairo, a large bustling over crowded city, full to bursting point with every shape, colour and size of humanity, and I am talking about 1945!! We had little to do with Cairo itself, as we either landed at Cairo West or at Almaza in Heliopolis, a suburb of Cairo, where we were put up in the largest hotel I have ever seen, not that I am into hotels as such, but as a young very green officer the Heliopolis Palace Hotel was mind blowing, acres of everything, not outside but inside, entry large enough to hold a soccer match, dining rooms that vanished into the blue and rooms so large that if they had been properly furnished a guide would have been required to see us to the door. Each crew had a room on arrival with number of beds scattered about and a couple of tables and chairs etc, guess the hotel had not been completed prior to WW2 and had been taken over by the British Forces, lots of “red tab” types swanning about, had a very hard war from the looks of things!! Food was good and served properly the same
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as our mess in UK, so no complaints there. About flying times etc you must remember that as we flew East the time got later and daylight ended sooner, ie Cairo – UK 2 hour difference, same as New Zealand – Australia.
We all took a trip to Giza and along the road to the Sphinx and the Pyramids, don’t know who built that lot but bet he over ran the budget, The one thing that still sticks in my mind is the overpowering smell of diesel oil on that road, not so much burnt oil but the same smell you get on a production oil field, the brown desert stretched to the horizon on either side of the road which was very black and shiny, perhaps that’s where the smell came from not bitumen but oiled sand!!! Now I’ll never know!!! Natural History Museum in Cairo a must if you visit, remember it as a highlight of my various times there and after these many years must be a wonder to visit now, didn’t go to the medical section if just before or after lunch, in fact might be a good idea to give that bit a miss!!
I wanted to buy Phyllis something special and found a market that specialised in perfumes. Channel number 5 or was it 7? was all the go, entered this so dark and gloomy looking shop, about the size of your average toilet, greeted with lots of bowing, and what sounded like praises for my everything, down some steep stairs to end up in yet another room the same size where there was a small table and two or three chairs, ‘would the effendi like some coffee’? (no idea how you spell effendi)’ well really wanted to buy some perfume’ lot more praised heaped on me but coffee came regardless, the cups must have been part of a doll house at some time and the coffee bitter and black, Now I had to sniff every smell known to man, ‘is this for your lovely wife’? what colour are her eyes etc and so on ‘does my lord have a mistress’?
By this time I was all sniffed out, couldn’t tell one heap of horse crap from another of cows, throat dry as dust from the coffee, and still I was given the full treatment until I made a purchase and bolted, can’t remember what scent I did buy but it was a big bottle!!!!
On the 6th Cairo to Malta, and on the 7th, Malta to Base. My flight log records of my time in 242 Squadron are listed later.
Two quick training flights with my real crew and then I was lent to F/o Good to go as F/E on a Short Stirling (never seen one close up before) that was to deliver supplies all over the world, why me I’ll never know, a very quick half hour lesson on where everything was, happily the engines were Hercules with which I had done all my operations, perhaps that’s why I was picked, only one on the squadron with that engine experience.
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The Short Stirling was just a bomber, not converted to anything, the fuselage was used to carry freight and we carted an exhibition of bombs etc all over the place, we also picked up and dropped off odds and sods as required, much like a “tramp steamer” at everyone beck and call!! The Stirling was the first of the four engined bombers for the RAF and suffered because of that, a bad spec. by the chairbound in the Ministry ended up with a well made but poor WW 2 bomber, they did get used for bombing, others as tugs and for training purposes, remember one of Nutts Corner left the end of the runway and landed in the mud, tipped up on it’s nose, the Station doctor rushed to the crews aid (they had all left some time ago) climbed up on the wing slipped and fell off and broke his ankle, mustn’t laugh!!!
The Stirling was slow had no great ceiling, noisy, draughty and I was a long way from home, my crew and a lovely Avro York, what else do you need to think a ‘plane was terrible?
So off we went in a lumbering noisy old Sterling, 15th June England to Castel Benito in North Africa 7 hours 20 of misery, Castel Benito was obviously a place named for the Italian Dictator, My only recollection of this place is sand more sand and then some more sand, the tents we slept in were filled with sand and the food was full of sand and even the ever present flies were full of sand, how the troops managed to service ‘planes and keep them flying is a wonder. I don’t remember if there was a concrete runway but if there was bet it was covered in sand, it blew everywhere, filled every orifice, eyes got sore even just during one night there, no thank you don’t want to remember that place!!
16th June Castel Benito to Lydda the airport for Tel Aviv in (Palestine) Israel 6 hours 45. Lydda, was Palestine. now Israel, was the main airport of Tel Aviv, guess the name has been changed so people like me have no idea where it is now, but was decent airport so probably just extended and has a new name. While at Lydda took the opportunity to visit Jerusalem, The Wailing Wall, Church of the Holy Sacrement [sic], built on the site of the cross and also Bethlehem. I don’t even recognise these places when shown on TV now, Wailing Wall about the same but more open when I was there, Bethlehem completely unspoilt, a crude stable as it always had been, no frills or religious artifice, The Church of the Holy Sacrament surrounded by squalor, beggars, the maimed, and only reached by a walk through narrow alleys, now seeing them on TV, must have had a bit of a clear out, but the Church full of the usual con men selling bees wax candles to see the sights, all they did is coat the hand with evil smelling grease no bee had ever seen, and the opulence inside made a mockery of “love thy neighbour” when related to the poverty outside. HOPE THIS DOES NOT UPSET YOU but just report as I saw many years ago!!! Guess I was full of brotherly love after a tour on bombers!!!
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18th June a night flight to Shaibah in Iraq 3 hours 45. Shaibah, now there is a place to bring back memories not for me but for the thousands of RAF blokes who served there, when I was an RAF Apprentice I heard more dirty poems about Shaibah and its population than anywhere else, some went on for pages and although not a collector of such memorabilia, remember one that had as it’s main item a wheel of very large proportions that continued to revolve against the odds. Another place of sand, from the air very little could be seen as most accommodation was built under ground or should I say the roof of concrete was just about ground level, ventilation was by open slots at ground level, bit like sleeping in a WW2 air raid shelter, situated in Iraq at Lat 30-2349N Long 47-3628 E at 2224ft, has taken me many years to find out just where it was/is, managed it by locating a web site all about the Gulf War, nothing more to say about another sand castle.
19th June Shaibah to Karachi in what is now Pakinstan [sic] 6 hours 15. After taking off from Shaibah we flew directly to the waters of the Gulf and flew all the way to Karachi as near as possible in the centre of the Gulf, many bad friend either side so instructions were to avoid problems, even did a bit of a “dog leg” at the Straits of Hormuz to stay away from any one’s territory. Was quite a peaceful looking scene in those days, lots of small ships ploughing their way along and across, probably smugglers and all manner of evil goings on if we did but know it!!
And so to Karachi itself, part of India then, but now Pakistan, thriving city of many thousands or millions, place that I bought many carpets to bring back to England to help cheer up a rather dark old house Phyll and I were renting.
There were very many carpet makers in the various streets working on looms made from everything imaginable, some used by young children making wonderful patterns with the dyed wool, both hands and feet being used at a rapid pace to insert the wool and move the shuttle. I would shop about for one we wanted to do a room, passage or a hallway, and athough [sic] most colours were somewhat bright and did clash with others we had, we were glad to be able to cover the floors with some thing soft and warm. Many of the carpets had long wool which made them bulky to carry especially some long ones for the stairs, but the carpet makes were only too pleased to wrap them in sacking for me. Most times the Customs at Lyneham let me through without any payment but on occasion I would be charged some small amount to keep them happy!! The chewing of beetle nut and the continual spitting out of it’s bright red juice made the pavement look as if a gang battle had taken place, many were the street side workshops, silver coins hammered thin, cut into strips and soldered into intricate shapes to make the lovely fret work for jewelry [sic], and delightful decorative items. In fact all streets in every Indian city of town I visited had it’s crafts men,
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woman and children, some carved ivory to make the famous balls within balls, time seemed to have no meaning to the carvers who I was told spent years on a single item, how they lived was a mystery. Apart from the clever ones there was also the cunning ones, just a few of the things they made were, cigarettes in a perfect copy of all English packets and tins which when lit popped and crackled as the dead bugs burst, Phyll was pregnant with our first son and suffered as so many woman do with terrible morning sickness, was told that Philips Milk of Magnesia would help, but none obtainable in England that would could find, bought the largest bottle I could find in India at the Officer’s Mess, Dark blue bottle and all the correct labels etc, Phyll took one dose and heaved it straight up, might have been the right bottle but the contents were foul and unknown, apparently it was quite a common practise to bore a hole in the bottom of bottles of all descriptions, whisky, gin, brandy etc the favourites, pour the contents out and fill with anything that looked right and seal the hole in the bottom, I was told that at time pattent [sic] laws in India were unknown. A shoe maker told me he could copy any size, style, colour, so with a pattern of Phyll’s shoe size ordered a pair of suede shoes as a surprise, was a surprise to us both, Minnie Mouse would have been proud to have worn them, not Phyll, yet without soap they could remove grease and stains from the dirtist [sic] of shorts and shirts, return them the next day looking like new, a large country with a great deal of talent in the common man!!!
20th June Karachi to Dum-Dum Calcutta in India 7 hours 05. I have been asked what this was like, flying out of a war zone and to these peaceful areas. But it was not like that at all. Most places we went were on a war footing. Also I don’t think that the local population welcomes us, our money yes, but us no thank you. India was in the throes of becoming independent after many years under the yoke of Britain, Pakistan and Ceylon were also stirring as was Egypt. We landed in Dum Dum (Calcuta) one time to be told that we could not go into town as some workers had had an argument with their foreman and had tossed him into the furnace and shut the door. Another time we received an invite to visit a local Big wig’s Palace, nearby got there when a crowd on a rampage filled the streets and our taxi did a U turn and took us back to camp, war in England was never like that!! Instead of landing back at home, each time we landed in enemy territory, well on most days!!
22nd June Dum Dum to Palam in India 4 hours 25. The old city of Delhi, like some so many cities in India, narrow streets, too many people and cows, but New Delhi a much cleaner place guess the name tells it all, many administrative departments built I would guess to house the government in a cleaner environment, may be just as crowded now as the old one was years ago, we used both names New Delhi and Palam as our stop off point for this place, not a major junction at that time and not on our normal route. Calcutta
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in the East of India was a large city, the RAF base of Dum Dum well known throughout the service, the dum dum bullet came from there, and from the tales I was told much more that was strange and a mystery to western eyes, saw the Indian rope trick once, yes the boy did vanish but always thought there was something a bit iffy about it, if you don’t believe it can’t happen I suppose. Again the streets red with beetle juice and lined with small workshops in some areas, wonderful brass work made by hand, beaten out of sheets of brass, bought a beautiful rose bowl there on one trip, stolen long after by a staff member of the roadhouse we had, really heavy brass with roses carved around the circumference, these were filled with glass and fired so the glass melted into the cuts and then ground until smooth, coated with silver and fitted with a silver mesh to hold the stems, bought a few different types but all long gone now, probably found a new home years ago with the craved wooden tray, crystal glasses, and they even stole the fez I brought back from Egypt!!!
23rd June Palam to Ratamalana in Ceylon, now Shri Lanka [sic], 8 hours. Ceylon, Sri Lanka, was a nice place, called at a number of ‘dromes there, Ratmalana, Negombo, a couple of them, our sleeping quarters were straw huts in amongst the coconut plantations, spoilt for me on one trip when I left my case on the bed and went for a shower, found when I returned that it had been stolen so no change of clothes until I could buy some more, found out when I asked the station police that it was quite normal for things to vanish, very light fingered some of them.
Great surf beaches there which we all found very welcome to cool off in the water, no hope of swimming as one minute the sand is dry and the next 10 feet of water, terrific undertow we were very luck [sic] we did not get swept out to sea, Africa the next stop!!
A rather nice hotel built on a promontory or maybe it was a linked island anyhow went there one night and had a game of snooker with the attendant, played quite well but was given a lesson on how to play the game, found out later that the attendant had been the “marker” for Horace Lyndrum, one time world Champion.
24th June Ratamalana to Karachi 8 hours, 25th June Karachi to Shaibah 6 hours 40, 25th June (YES THE SAME DAY). One of the things I did notice about India as we flew the length of it to Ceylon (Sri Lanka) from Karachi. That it was covered in trees and where the vast population lived I often wondered, certainly the street of towns and cities were full , covered in the red strains of beetle juice and cows.
Shaibah to Lydda a night flight of 4 hours 20. 26th June we had trouble with the electric’s of the flaps and undercarriage so missed a day!! 27th June
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Lydda to Castel Benito 6 hours 40. 28th June Castel Benito to Holmsley South 8 hours , and finally on the same day Holmsley South to base at Stoney Cross 15 minutes, all in an aircraft that I had had about ten minutes of this is this and that is that!!
We were now transferred as a crew to Holmsely [sic] South, with 246 Squadron, and I started flying again with a F/O Lunn on the 10th July doing 3 engined landings, another gap which could have been ground instruction or being a “dogs body” to my F/E Leader, or even a spot of leave and started flying with F/Lt Poore again on Yorks on the 22nd and again on the 28th doing various training flight, then it was off again on the 29th of July from Holmsley South to Malta, Cairo West, Shaibah, Mauripur (India) Dum Dum and so on back to UK on the 11th of August having flown on 29th and 30th July 1st 2nd 3rd 7th 8th 9th and twice on the 11th August. The reason was that there were so few trained crews and very few York aircraft, so we all had to do a great deal in fact far too much. The logbook of my time with 246 Squadron is presented later.
A York oversea flight was very different from Bomber operations, on bombers our cargo had no opinions of physical wants, just sad and waited to be jettisoned.
We carried mail as well, but our passengers were important, not in rank but in the interest of the service they were. So a completely different style of flying had to be undertaken, “press on regardless” the bomber style was no good for people. Safe and on time was the motto, no risks with bad weather, fly round it, we could not go over because there was no oxygen installed on the ‘plane.
From my point of view it was all very strange to start with, clothes for a couple of weeks was required but tropical ones were worn most of the time, so we got into a routine of flying out from UK in our normal uniforms, changed at Malta and left our “blues” there to be cleaned etc and changed back into them on our way home, leaving our tropical shorts shirts etc to washed, ironed and ready for us next time out. Food was another problem, Malta for example was still on very tight rations and my first taste of goat milk, butter and cheese still a rank memory!! The warning to be very careful what we ate, the sudden change in temperature and humidity took their toll of us all and from memory we are nothing at all out of our RAF Messes and very frugal in them. We were not able to drink much hard booze, mainly soft drinks and the occasional beer, the fruit was very welcome however and provided it was either skinned or peeled we could eat them, most of us took back to England some fruit each trip for our families, often when we landed back in UK, calls were out for certain fruit mainly bananas for sick children
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in London hospitals, something in banana which helped cure some illnesses, needless to say no one minded giving up whatever we had.
When you and I fly these days we bound the ‘plane and are quite confident we will arrive where we should, flying on operations we went and came back (hopefully) now we went and went and went and then turned round and came back but it was us doing the wenting and to places that we had never been before and had to land discharge our passengers, sort out the plane, refuel etc, find a bed and food and be ready for the next one in the following day, the first few time were difficult, strange places and people and equipment, and even a brand new crew, all who had done at least one tour but some had done a number, our navigator I remember wore “brothel creeper” suede boots in the topics, was to my eyes ancient and seemed to dissapear [sic] between flights into his room, never really got to know him!!!
I had to get out to the aircraft at least an hour before take off to check out things and run up the engines, you will note many 02, 03 04, 2359, times given as take off time so you can see I for one lost of lot of sleep, the rest of the crew were not in bed but sorting out all the charts, weather, flight plans etc, and we often flew twice in a day if needed so apart from the constant changes in climate as we flew hither and thither we were kept busy.
After take off and once we had reached about 8,000ft we could settle down to some hours of straight and level flight, passengers had to be checked, even in those days there were the terrified ones who could not look out of the window,
After a number of trips the whole thing became a boring job with very little excitement, great discomfort because of the climate, lack of food and the desire to get home to my growing family, I really loved the RAF but loved my wife more.
Among the sites seen during this flying over North Africa, ones that are stuck in the memory are the rusting tanks and other vehicles that littered the North African Desert as we flew in and out if Cairo, lots of miles of nothing then a heap of rust etc, all seen as we flew over at 8,000ft.
We as a crew were transferred yet again to the top Transport Command Squadron, 511 at Lyneham who still operate from there to this day. (August 1998). The logbook of my time with 511 Squadron is presented later.
The only highlight during October was the flight the skipper and I did on our own in Lancaster Bomber P 780 (it was used as the squadron spare parts transport) was to fly by my map reading to Prestwick near Liverpool to pick up a parcel and return, clocked up 3 hours 30 in a Lancaster. The York was a
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nice ‘plane to fly couldn’t go above 8000ft because we had no oxygen for the passengers and it was not pressurised, really a Lancaster with a different body to take freight or passengers, we even had a very good galley on board but until we were given an ex airgunner to act as steward was little used, don’t know what training our chap was given but on the first flight was told on the ground what and when we as the crew would like for our meal. He waited until we were well on our way before puncturing the tins and most of the contents ended in his face or on the ceiling, didn’t seem to know about changes of air pressure, but he soon learned!!
There is one trip to Langar mentioned in my log book where we picked up a York for a VIP Flight. We were in York MW100, which had been the first operational York delivered to the RAF. I have read that Langar was an AVRO refurbishment factory, where repairs etc were carried out, so it looks as though MW 100 was “tarted” up there for 24 Squadron VIP flight.
One of the more pleasant jobs we have, even if a bit sad really, was to fly back to England those British troops that had survived the death camps of the Japanese in Burma and else where. We used Freighter Yorks for this with mattresses spread on the floor and female nurses in attendance, the looks of thanks we all got from these sad men was soul touching, all crews involved would have happily got our old bombers out and bombed the bastards to kingdom come, I for one will never forgive them for their cruelty. Returning from one of the later trips we were met by the Squadron C.O. and told to move all our gear into the Waaf’s quarters (they had been moved out) get a decent room and then report to the main gate where transport had been laid on, the useless mob of non flying officers had crawled out from under the stones they had been hiding under, while we all risked life and limb, and were now insisting that we as crews were not allowed in the mess in flying kit, even though we had to breakfast at between 4-5am and then go straight out to fly, when we returned late night no food would be available after 6pm. Our C.O. wouldn’t stand for that, he had done at least 90 ops some with the Dam Busters, so we moved all the Squadron items from the mess to our new accommodation, which meant all the silver, billard [sic] tables most of the decent armchairs (we could never sit in one because these idle sods were always in them), all the liquor from the bar plus all the glasses and bits and bobs. We had all been paying mess bills but very rarely had been in England, so an even bigger shock was in store for them when they found their mess bills had sky rocketed.
The day after day of flying from cold damp England to steaming hot and humid India was very wearying and when at the end of February 1946 I was offered the chance to leave the RAF I took it, our son Tony had been born in April shortly before I left, I could have stayed on in The RAF, but long hours of flying and a new wife and baby were not the way to go if life was
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going to be at all normal, what I should do for a job I didn’t know, but time at home was what I really wanted, it had been a long hard war and I wanted a rest.!! I have been thinking about this part of my time with The Royal Air Force and it seems as if I should explain where possible the duties of the various aircrew members. Starting with the bomber crews, the pilot is the boss whatever his rank, some crews were formed with quite senior ranking officers as non pilot members, this was often caused by the need for senior officers to really find out what happened on operations, often this was of a temporary nature, but it was known for a senior officer to complete a tour with a N.C.O pilot. The pilot made all the decisions in the air and usually on the ground as well, he had to have the respect of his crew and a happy crew always had a father figure for their pilot even though he might not be the oldest member of the crew, fighter pilots could and possibly should be of a less serious nature, most times they only had to look after themselves.
The pilot must have some understanding of all the jobs that the crew carried out, not to any great detail but sufficient to understand when things went wrong, and in an emergency could make the correct decisions if that crew member was unable to do so, his training would take much longer and would start as a pupil pilot on small aircraft, when he got his wings and started his training on twin engine ‘planes he would be joined by his navigator and in some cases by the wireless operator, these two crew members would have been carrying out their training else where, and once passed as proficient would have been posted to the conversion unit to await joining a crew, it is possible at this stage that these three crew members could after completing their conversion course, be posted to a squadron flying twin engine aircraft, DC3’s. or twin engine light bombers or fighters such as Mosquito’s, Beaufighter’s, Blenheim’s there were many different RAF and USAF twin engined aircraft in service all over the world that this crew could have ended up flying, navigation and wireless equipment was all basically the same in the RAF and no doubt the same applied in the USAF. Assuming that this crew now carries on to four engine conversion, all of the previous training could have been carried out in Canada or South Africa some I understand also completed twin engine training in the USA. Crews formed of Canadian, South African and Australian nationals naturally liked to be all from the same country, I am not sure what happened in other countries but I joined a Canadian crew when they arrived in England because they had no Flight Engineers, I do know that other countries also had the same problem but just who and how much of a problem it was I do not know. So now we have the crew at a 4 engine conversion course some where in England, here the pilot must learn the tricks of flying and landing a large and most likely difficult bomber, having done some initial training with instructors he will now get his crew together and they will complete their training together, While he has been receiving instruction and doing take off’s and landings with an all instructor crew,
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usually only a pilot and F/E, if going on a cross country he would have both a navigator and wireless operator also from the instruction staff (all would be air crew who had completed at least one tour and told me that it was more scary instructing than doing ops!) the rest of the crew have been likewise receiving instruction. Navigators, wireless operators and flight engineers would be all flying both day and night being taught and checked for competence in their various jobs, and subject to being passed as suitable would then continue their training as a crew, any member that didn’t do their job properly was soon found out and a replacement soon found, our navigator had been passed as ok but on a cross country during our training got us hoplessly [sic] lost in the Welsh mountains and the pilot and I, map and beacon read our way home, needless to say he went! The pilot now has his crew and after arriving at a bomber squadron he and his crew are checked out again by the various section leaders, he will now go on two “second dickie” bombing trips to see just what it is all about, standing next to the pilot he will watch what happens all the way out and back, and have that little extra bit of knowledge that his crew hasn’t got.
So to complete this long story about the pilot he stands at the front of his crew and leads and guides them in the tasks ahead. He never shows fear nor does his voice ever tremble when in difficult situations, he may be trembling inside but no one would ever guess, a good bomber pilot was a hero unsung, I was lucky I flew with two on operations. The navigator must have an ability with numbers and calculations often carried out under very difficult conditions, many were remustered from pilot training having failed to reach the flying standard required, they made very good navigators because they understood the problems a pilot could have, and could be very quickly given what additional training was required for a navigator. His job simply described would be to get you there and back again, on time and on target, never as simple as that because the bombing routes were always being changed to dodge known hot spots of “flack” and lead the enemy into thinking you were going to one town and then suddenly turn and bomb some where else. His view of the target or for that matter anywhere we went was limited by his position below the pilot facing a blank wall, his instruments consisted of the usual pencils rulers etc. but also fitted were a repeater compass from the gyro-compass until in the tail, a Gee unit which had a screen and fixed radio stations in England broadcast signals that were projected as curved lines which could give him a fixed position, the gee signal did not reach far into the continent so was of limited use but did help the beginner out and home, H2S was also fitted in a belly blister underneath this was a very primitive form of radar and gave a misty picture of the earth below helpfull [sic] if bombing blind and could aid in locating a town and the trusty old sextant, much improved from the sailor’s version with a two minute clockwork motor that averaged out the readings over that period so was a bit more accurate, wouldn’t do on a yacht would rust up solid in no
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time, piles of maps, charts for everything. Not only did he have to keep up a proper running diary of events, such as aircraft seen to crash or explode any unusal [sic] sightings, we saw some of the early German rocket tests on one operation, we didn’t know what it was and said so and we weren’t told either, changes to targets would be passed to him by the w/op, wind drift had to be regularly checked and whether we had a tail or head wind could effect the time we got to the target, and when we got back home he had to hand in his charts for them to be checked just in case we hadn’t been where we were supposed to have been, a very busy member of the crew, perhaps managed to look out the nose on odd occasions but always working and figureing [sic] out the next course change. The wireless operator was probable a very frustrated man, he had all this high powered gear and could only use it to receive, except in an emergency which none of us wanted anyhow. Signals were being passed from group headquarters to the squadron in code and where they effected us were passed to those concerned, almost always to the navigator, these could be very sudden and high changes of wind direction as monitored by aircraft ahead of us, changes of routes to avoid a new “flack” post, recalls due to bad conditions over the target or fog closing in on our own ‘dromes.
Which meant we might not be able to land properly anywhere in England, 500 to 1000 bombers spread out all over England many crashed with crews killed was not a happy thought! So the w/op spent most of his time listening in, when we started using Master Bombers, (they flew round and round the target during the raid giving instructions to various crews where to bomb and telling those off who ignored him) the w/op got some extra work changing channels as briefed so that the German radio could not block transmissions. Our transmitted signals out were always brief until over friendly land and even then too much chatter from one ‘plane could cause trouble for those in real peril, ‘planes with injured on board or ‘planes so badly damaged that the sooner they could land the better got priority and all crews listened to see if one of their mates was in trouble often a few words of comfort from a friend helped no end, once we started doing daylight operations and could see many miles we could also warn others of enemy action such as flack and fighters, and when we given the job as “dive bombers” on a couple of raids warn other of bomb bursts and local guns that could be a danger. The Bomb Aimer’s (or as the USAF called him The Bombardier) job was to drop the bombs we had carted about the sky and drop them where they would do the most damage, his bomb sight of RAF planes was quite good, needed to be set accurately with wind speed and direction, had a set of switches that could be set so that various bomb bays on the ‘plane emptied first once all the settings were put in which also included things like height and temperature, could be others but it is a long time ago, then he directed the pilot to change course a degree or two either way until his sight was on the target and then he pressed the button and a
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sudden jolt told us we were a great deal lighter and could set course for home. The Master Bomber made a difference because he would tell us which coloured markers to bomb on and give us lots of warning as we came in towards the target. Pathfinder Force had arrived at the target with the Master Bomber before we got there, he told them where to drop their markers and which colour to use, they didn’t land on the ground but floated on parachutes so the Germans couldn’t put them out but they did light “spoof” ones which confused us until the Master Bomber started and then most bombs fell on the target. Some RAF and USAF bombers has a light machine gun in the front nose which the bomb aimer could use, don’t think is was much use, we never hand one. the only other job that the bomb aimer could do was help the navigator with map reading in daylight and he always called out when we crossed the coast both in and out of Europe and England, at night this showed up as a slightly different colour of grey. The USAF made a big fuss about how their Norden bomb sight was so good, reports I have read since the war seem to discount it’s accuracy, like most things, a good operator is good whatever rubbish he is given to use!!
Lets face it the Dam Buster’s used a sight made from a few sticks of wood and we know what they did. We now come to the Air Gunners we had two one as “tail end Charlie” in the rear turret, and another as the mid upper gunner, the rear gunner was considered the top man and he really had the worst position both for comfort and danger, both turrets were fitted with four Browning .303” aircooled machine guns, the turrets were power operated, and the rear gunner usually saw the fighters first particularly at night as they climbed up to get into position the Browning was no match for the fighter cannons so they could keep out of range and bang away until both gun positions were destroyed, then we were sitting ducks. We had two good gunners and just a couple of rounds fired at a distant fighter was enough for him to go else where and find a crew half asleep, we saw this a few times when on daylight raids and cursed them for not attending to their job of survival for the whole crew, some squadrons has much larger losses than others, we reckoned it was not luck but bad training and stupid people who once their bombs had gone thought they were home and dry. Another problem the gunners had and this also effected the bomb aimer was cold they all had electrically heated suits but it could get very cold at night and it made it just that much harder for the gunners to stay awake. On one trip they took our H2S blister out and fitted a mid-under turret, not like the USAF ball turret but more like a small bath tub with a gun mounting, didn’t look very comfortable and gave us a gunner we had never met. What a dissaster [sic] he never stopped seeing fighters from the time we left the ground until we got back, poor chap was probably “flack Happy” That bit of useless gear came out and never went back what they did with the poor gunner I don’t know. but he should not have been given a mid-under job a midupper would have kept him in contact with the rest of the crew and perhaps settled
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him down, who know what terrible tales he had to tell, but we didn’t want him!! The Flight Engineer usually came from the ground staff, had worked on engines, prefferably [sic] those fitted in aircraft, many were recruited like I was having been trained by The RAF at Halton Number 1 School of Technical Training, after passing out I had served two or three years on the flight line servicing a large number of different areo-engines so my F/E training could be specific to the engines fitted in the aircraft I should fly in, the course at St Athan in Wales was quite short, and like all the ex-brats found it no problem, my duties were to control the engines all the required speed the pilot decided and adjust boose and RPM so that they were all syncronised [sic] and did not “hunt”, raising and lowering undercarriage, flaps and bomb doors also were my job, on take off I had to help the pilot hold the throttles open and assist in correcting any swing which could happen with a cross wind and a full bomb load. Every other crew member was strapped in but the F/E had to stand beside the pilot to carry out his job, once off the ground U/G up and flaps retracted, climbing boose and revs set, temperatures checked and on radial engines gills opened or closed to keep the engines at the right temperature.
On water cooled the radiator flaps had to be adjusted for the same reason, a log had to be kept from the moment the engines were started so that a running total of fuel used to could be calculated, every change of boost, revs ,height and which gear the super charger was in affected fuel consumption. There reading were very important also which fuel tanks were in use so that all tanks could end up over the target holding the same amount of fuel, a full tank with a hole could mean no return to base. As an F/E I never really had enough time for all the jobs, the navigator called on me at times to do star shots with the sextant which I could hang on a hook in the astro-drome above my bank of engine and fuel instruments, there was always some thing that needed a tweek or a piece of wire to keep it going, and over the target apart from all my usual jobs I had to feed the “window” out of the special chute, some time there were large bundles of leaflets to send down, to let [sic] the Germans they had no chance or the invaded ones that thing would get better. Before and after a trip I had to check things, although the ground staff never missed a thing perhaps we survived because they were as fussy as we were. My log had to be handed in and any odd things explained so that they could be fixed before we went out again. When ever I had time or if fighter activity was great I would stand in the astro-dome and do my own bit of searching, one night to my amazement within almost arms-reach was a F/W 190 night fighter, I pointed this out to all of the crew and the skipper slowly dropped us a few feet until he was out of sight, the gunners wanted to have a go at him, but the skipper said you can’t be sure you will win and we are here to drop bombs!!! The different in the training for the carrying of passengers by those members of the flying crew that transfered [sic] from bombers to transport was not so very different except that the “press on
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Spirit” of bombers was now changed to safety and arrival at the destination on time. Pilots were trained to fly with the comfort of the passengers as of major concern, Navigators now had some visual land marks to help on long flights and with the help of the wireless operator many “fixes” obtained by cross bearings from two or more radio beacons. The war in Europe and with Japan was still on so many of the peace time facilities were still not available but most of southern Europe was conflict free so that flight were in themselves safe from enemy fire. The flight engineer’s duties still contained those element of engine, fuel, and general aircraft overseeing that were needed in bombers, in the early days he was the only member of the crew free to move about during the flight no cabin crew were employed, so the was the only contact that the passengers had with the flight crew, and many times his duties required him to reassure passengers who had not flown before, although he also acted as a second pilot, on long flights, ground prepared sandwiches and thermos filled with hot or cold drinks were given to the passengers by the F/E. On freighter aircraft another new duty the F/E had to perform was the checking of the centre of gravity of the load this had to be within very strict limits, because of safety considerations, each item of the load had to have it’s centre of gravity worked out and then it’s position in the aircraft designated to ensure that the centre of lift and centre of gravity were within limits.
All RAF Yorks of Transport Command were also Royal Mail carriers so that large bags of mail on both freighter and passenger ‘planes were carried, there was also a small compartment that could only be entered from the outside situated on the port side near the tail, this was for high security items and was usually filled and emptied by a person from the Consulate, who would also lock it.
Without checking with Phyll, or for that matter anyone else, I applied for release from the Royal Air Force, because I had been commissioned I was able to leave the RAF even though I had signed on as an apprentice for 18 years after the age of 18. Phyll was shocked when I turned up at the home she had started to make for us and told her what I had done, what was I going to do for a job?, how would I earn a living,? none of these things had really mattered to me, I just wanted to be with her and our new baby Tony. My Commanding Officer wanted me to stay in and said I could return at any time before my demobilisation leave ended, on the 27th of April 1946 (the day before our first wedding anniversary) I was given a demob suit, some food and clothing coupons and cleared from the RAF, my leave would finish on the 9th of July 1946 so I had a couple of months to decide what to do with my life and that of my family. Phyllis and I were married on the 28th April 1945, she was released from the WAAFs in November of 1945 and managed after a lot of form filling and chasing up the local council to get a requisitioned house, which she moved into in the early part of 1946. These
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houses had been empty for many years were of low standard compared to today’s, but ours was a solidly build three bedroom, two rooms and a kitchen down stairs but had only one cold tap in the house, gas lighting and an outside flushing toilet of the design known by young and old as the Thunderbox. I was still frying to India and Ceylon and only managed to get home for the odd night very seldom, so Phyll all on her own with no help from anyone sought out second hand furniture and managed to provide the basic things needed to make a home, Tony arrived on the 13th of April while I was on leave but I had to return to 511 Squadron as soon as all was well with Phyll and Tony, but was home again on the 27th of April for good.
– Reg Miles
The URL of this page is
http://www.geocities.com/jkjustin/Milesbio5.html
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Biography of Reg Miles
Ex Apprentice No 1 S. of T. T., R.A.F., Halton 39th Entry 34 – 67 M.U.s – 27 A/S Bloemspruit South Africa – Lympe Kent, Flight Engineer 432 – 420 Squadrons RCAF, 6 Group Bomber Command, Eastmoor, Tholthorpe, Yorkshire / 242 – 246 – 511 Squadrons Transport Command Lyneham, RAF
Chapter 6
Post RAF
My parents called round to this very old, dirty, requisitioned house and found me in my battle dress trousers and very large white flying rollnecked sweater sitting on the floor smoking a “Churchill” cigar (very large and the last of my Indian purchases) cleaning and stopping up holes in the wall of what would be our dining and living room. To say that they were horrified would be putting it mildly, where was their son of whom they were proud? The Flying Officer in the RAF who had been on bombers and regularly flew to India and other foreign parts, gave all that up to do what? I couldn’t tell them because I didn’t know, just wanted peace and my own family and no more racing about the world. Something would come along I said, my parents were not impressed they had battled for years to get a little bit out of the working class rut, still only out a little way and here was Reg on his way up and just throwing it all away to be at home cleaning up the dirt of years of neglect. After our marriage on each trip to India I bought carpets and other items that would help to furnish a home, after the floors walls and ceilings were washed the carpets gave a nice touch of luxury to the place. In the kitchen was a brick built “copper” this was filled with water, a fire lit under and when hot this water was used for cleaning the house, washing clothes, and once a week for Phyll and I to have a bath, the babies of course got at least one day. Friday evening was usually “bath night”, Phyll had managed to buy an adult size “tin bath” which spent most of it’s time handing on a nail in the back yard, with a fire going well in the back room downstairs, the bath was placed in front and buckets of cold and hot water carried in from the kitchen. Ladies first was always the rule so Phyll could have hers in comfort, when she got out I go in and removed my dirt, now came the reverse trip with the buckets of water, each one tipped outside to run into the drain by the back door, once tried to empty the bath by lifting it up to the window sill and sliding it out, not much luck with that just a lot more water to wipe up. I did eventually install a proper full size bath in the kitchen with the drain passing through the wall and hot water fed from a gas heater and cold from the one cold tap. The whole thing was boxed in with a hinged cover which gave Phyll a decent size work surface when cooking, and fun for the boys to hide in when not in use for either of it’s purposes. I
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thought I might like to work as a mechanic in a garage, just shows you what an innocent I was, spoke to a garage owner who had looked after Dad’s car before the war and asked if I could work there without pay for a couple of weeks to see what it was like. Started a few days later and after a day or so he wanted to pay me, worked there for a few weeks, can’t say I thought much of the job or the owner, gave me some wooden boxes with parts of a lorry engine in it and told me to build it up, no instruction manuals so took me a while to sort out what went where and he was not impressed, went out on welding jobs to hotels whose heating boilers had frozen up and cracked, nothing went right and as I unloaded the gear from the truck he threw a heavy spanner at me which just missed, I threw it back and nearly hit him, so he said I was not suitable for his job, not a very good start to civilian life! Next I called in at the Labour Exchange and it was suggested that I should go on a course to become a commercial artist, couldn’t draw to save my life so that was out, they had a vacancy for a Trainee Manager for a laundry would I like to try that. Why not I thought, so turned up for an interview by the boss lady and started next day, must learn all the processes she said and put me on a Hoffman Press doing fancy pillow slips, kept coming by every so often and throwing all I had done in the “do it again” bin, all females working there and most old enough to be my mother, put me on the calendar, long steam heated rollers that were used to iron sheets and other large items, I was at the back on my own taking things off while two or three woman fed them in, or course I got in a muddle and another job hit the dust!! So it was back home and helping Phyll with house cleaning, my father was not impressed and said I must have a job what ever it was and suggested that he could get me a job with the large building firm of which he was a very senior employee. When it came, it was as a painter’s labourer (the lowest for life in the building industry) but I just took it to save any arguments and did my turn of holding the bottom of ladders while the painter did the clever stuff, while doing this in the middle of the local shopping street two RAF officers much junior to me on my old squadron couldn’t believe their eyes, told them that good jobs like this were going fast so they’d better get in quick. I had bought a new bicycle, the one that I had bought with the money from my photo job before going into the RAF had been completely destroyed when my uncle Jack was killed on it by a German shell outside Dover. I cycled about Margate going from one painting job to another, the one I most remember was the one at the local brewery, being the lowest on the totem pole I had the job of lighting a fire with wood scraps and making the tea at mid morning and afternoon breaks, got things going just waiting to see how many to make and no one turned up, and went out side into the yard and there all the workers were, both brewery and building, lining up for tankards of beer. Told to come and get mine but just did not fancy cold beer for a drink, went in a had my cup of tea, we were there for some time and eventually I was persuaded to give the beer a
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try, never tasted anything like it, smooth and warming and just perfect, asked where I could buy some of it, told not be so silly, this was a special brew made by the brewer for the staff and not on sale anywhere!! I had not taken up the offer by my CO to go back into the RAF, guess time just went by and didn’t given it much thought, from a salary of 20 pounds a week I was now earning about 3 (took me about 14 years to get up to that again and it wasn’t worth as much when I did) we managed, or at least Phyll did, both of us took extra jobs she did cleaning for the local library and tourist department and also worked in the evenings as a cashier at a large seaside restaurant, later on Phyll worked at a couple of hospitals in the Margate area, I carried out maintenance at the same restaurant and also had a teaching job for the local technical college. My father was talking to the company manager who asked how his son the RAF officer was doing, when told that he was working for the firm as painter’s labourer suggested that there was a need for a fitter to take control of the depot used to store all the machinery used in the company and also large stocks of materials surplus from contracts would I like it? Would I just, right up my alley so after a couple of days I started work at this depot which was on ground adjacent to Manston RAF Base, and in fact my yard was next to the station bomb dump that my father had built just before the war. When I eventually found the yard it looked like a rubbish tip, met by an old man who said he was in charge and who was I. Explained what my job was and found out that he had been there for some time just to help unload and load up the odd lorries that came in from building sites, asked why things were scattered all over the place and he said that he just put things where there was a space, and certainly didn’t do any clearing up or sorting out. A number of sheds had been erected and were all full of a jumble of building materials returned from sites, he didn’t know what was in any of them and had no intention of finding out, bricks of every shape and colour were stacked in heaps without any order and large stacks of roofing tiles had collapsed, spreading out like the tide to cover other items, with weeds and flowers poking their heads between. Loaded lorries had driven over what looked to the driver empty areas, but were in fact filled with sheets of glass, tins of paint, sanitary fittings, and various strange items returned from sites as not required or perhaps in many cases wrongly ordered, so that a sticky mess of dried paint, broken glass, and unknown fragments covered some areas resembling the appearance of a hastily cleared bomb site. This would not do for me, dotted about amongst this bleak landscape were concrete mixers of all shapes and sizes, and many other rusting hulks that I had no idea what they were, order what was wanted and somewhere to work and store tools in safety. I found a shed that looked as if it might keep out the rain and with the old man’s help cleared some space for a bench which was among the multitude of items scattered about the site. One water tap was near the front entrance, I say entrance more like the gates of hell or a test of driver’s skill to weave
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through the junk piled just where it fell, and without me asking a cup of tea was soon offered, that at least had received top priority. I spent the following week looking at machines, to in the first case find out what they were and to check if they could be made to work, that would be my first job, to get the plant needed on building sites in a fit condition for work. To make matters worse there was no electricity or ‘phone connected to the site and very little in the way of anything to help me lift and replace things that were broken, I needed to get things sorted with the boss, calling into head office for my pay on Friday I asked to see him and told him what I needed and was given permission to book anything I wanted with their local supplier and arrange for power and telephone to be connected, the old man would return to his normal work of bricklayer’s labourer and I could engage a young man to take his place. So the clean up started, I concentrating on checking and repairing machines and my new helper re-stacking fallen heaps, wheeling away to a corner all the rubbish he found during his efforts, which would eventually be used to fill in some large holes uncovered during this clear up. The first shed I had used was emptied of all the rubbish and made into a small workshop where other benches were installed, the power and telephone were connected, I purchased some items of tools including a complete oxy-acetylene welding and cutting outfit from BOC, which I then had to learn how to use!! A call came for a large number of wheel barrows for a site, most that I had found had splits and cracks in the bodies and all had narrow steel wheels, repairs by welding were hastened and a quantity of wheels with pneumatic tyres were purchased, a coat of paint given from our stocks, all of which turned out to be grey of various shades when mixed together, the site foreman phoned to send transport, who shortly after receipt of the barrows phoned to register his delight in getting what appeared to be a truck load of new equipment. Gradually sheds were emptied, their contents sorted and listed and put away in some sort of order, all stocks of bricks, tiles, screws, nails, plumbing fittings, and all the multitude of items used in the building and construction industry were sorted and listen on stock sheets, these were sent to head office for typing and all site foreman and those people in the drawing, quantity and supply departments given copies, amendments made to these when required. All materials for building work was on licences, which were hard to get and the cause of a great amount of office time and paperwork, my lists helped to overcome some of these delays and gradually most people in the organisation used them to help in planning, they became even more useful when I was able to add separate sheets which gave lists of what machines were held in stock and what their state of readiness was. I was now getting more and more calls from sites asking for my help not only to supply machines and materials but my advice was asked for on the manufacture of items for sites and in many cases I was asked to make thousands of an individual item for the massive tower blocks being built in and around London to house those who had lost their homes
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due to enemy bombing. for most of this twelve years we still lived at Tivoli Road in the requisitioned house, much cleaner and more livable [sic] after Phyll’s ministrations, the wall paper in our bedroom which consisted of large purple parrots on a dark blue background had like the rest of the house been removed and given coats of a more restful colour of paint, there was always plenty of part tins returned from contracts so no problem with supplies! Philip our second son had arrived on the scene about two years after Tony, which gave Phyll. more work with washing and caring for two boys who carried on a constant war with each other and would always try to outdo each other in the speed at which they turned clean clothes into dirty rags. Sheila, Phyll’s sister came to stay and had the usual boy friends, mostly American service personnel from Manston, none of which seemed to understand that rationing of everything was still in place in the UK, invited to an evening meal on one occasion the incumbent boyfriend took out family’s weekly ration of cheese spread it our total stock of biscuits and swallowed the lot! Whether it was the same one who broke our settee into fragments one night in a fit of passion I don’t know, the remains however did come in useful as our ration of coal for heating had largely been burnt and the settee end up as fuel the stuffing and covers used to add humus to the starved patch of soil called garden at the back. To help with the family budget Phyll had obtained part time evening work at a large restaurant on the sea front manning the till, she also cleaned the Margate library, and at times the Margate Information centre, she wasn’t afraid of hard work but it did and still does seem all wrong that people like her who had done their bit during the war got nothing for their efforts while the stay at home fortune markers still got all the benefits, I noticed this particularly when visiting an aircraft factory in the Midlands, whole families worked in the one factory each one taking home much more than the fighting men did and most seemed to have a fiddle of some sort which enabled them to get the best of every thing regarding food and clothes, some got bombed but most got rich! Susan came along after a further eight years, she was born at home as Phyll had not been happy at the treatment she received at the local maternity hospital and determined not to suffer that again, her brother Peter was performing with a band at a local venue and his wife Jean stayed with us until she had her second child, we even at times had other artists to stay all to help with the family budget. I had changed my cycle for a “Corgi” , this was the war surplus parachutist motor bike, dropped with them for quick movements of men, they had a small 125cc two stroke engine, folding seat and handle bars, no instruments of any sort and very basic lights, push start, no gears, and certainly no suspension, the front tyre wore to a point after some miles so that turning on wet or icy roads was fraught with peril, many was the 360s I did on old cobble stones and slick corners. A large metal box was made and fitted and my range of operations grew to sites many miles away from base, it was a cold and slow means of transport, crawling up a
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hill with the box on the back filled with heavy tools after an hour or so on the road to be passed with ease by everything on wheels and some even on hoof did not endear me to other road users, who out of pure spite drove near and informed me if I pedalled harder would get along faster. To spend over an hour on the road to get to a site that had called me that they had problems with machinery, only to find as I often did that failure to check the oil in an engine had caused it seize up, the topping up with fresh oil prior to my arrival supposed to fool me, strong words were said by me while I stripped the engine freed the pistons and rings and got it running again. Some cases were even more bizarre, once called to a site two hours away because the small bulldozer would not “go”, this was in the middle of winter with ice and snow about, found that the machine had been left after it’s day’s work in a large puddle of liquid mud, this had frozen overnight and struggle as it may the poor thing could only slip clutches trying to get out of the clutches of the ice, a stern word to the “ganger” to get off his backside in future meant no more silly alarms from that site. On another occasion nearer home I was asked to call at a site because the 14/10 mixer would not mix (14/10 – 14 cu ft of dry material in and 10 cu ft of wet mixed out) It was still operating when I arrived on site to be shown that as the hopper tilted to pour the dry material in it shot straight out the other side, shut it down and had a look at the blades inside the drum, these often got badly worn after months of use, not in this case the drum was full to the brim with rock hard concrete. Again poor or perhaps in this case non existent maintenance, I had issued guide lines to all foreman as I found that certain work methods damaged or caused performance problems with plant, in this case of concrete mixers at the end of a day’s work a few shovels of sand or gravel should be placed in the drum and allowed to mix for a few minutes this combined with the liquid cement usually still present from the last mix and made it too weak to set hard, the following day it would be broken up during the first mix. There were a number of these information suggestions most of which I have no memory, one that still remains is the one involving flexible drives used on vibrators to consolidate in shuttering, or formwork, it was common practise to hang the vibrating head over the shuttering and leave it operating while the concrete was poured, the sharp kink in the flexible drive caused the high speed inner drive to cut a hole in the outer casing, this would be fairly large on the inside but often a very small slit on the out side, if this slit became immersed in the concrete the rotary action of the inner drive sucked in liquid concrete which soon set when switched off and the next day no vibrator, more obvious to the operator was the damaged caused if the actual vibrating head was to touch the reinforcing steel bars inside the shuttering, I have had the heads returned to me cut in half after being in contact with the steel. During the 12 years I was employed by Rice and Sons many things happened that are worth repeating. I cannot begin to remember them in any proper order will just tell them as they pop up in my memory, a local garage
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owner who’s place of business was just up the road from the yard, I bought my petrol from him and we often helped one another out with bits and pieces, he had been the only one who had an independent supply of electricity provided by a single horizontal cylinder glow bulb diesel engine to start it needed a long heating of the bulb part with an oversize blow lamp, then grasping the spokes of one of the very large fly wheels a heave to start the rotation and followed by more pulling until it fired and continued on it’s own, the trick was to let go before you went with it, rather like prop swinging an aircraft engine, his wife helped him to serve petrol, but needed the engine running to supply electricity for the pumps, the odd times when he was too ill to get out of bed I would start the thing for her and so we became friends and swapped ideas about thing, he had “come upon” some very cheap metal twist drills and wondered if I would like some they certainly looked good quality but would they cut I asked, we’ll give them a go he said and put one in his bench drill stand and tried to drill a hole, no luck must need sharpening, and still no luck, a close examination showed that they were left hand drills were stamped USAAF and no doubt had originated in the USAAF Base at Manston and were made for a DeWalt machine that did a number of operations some of which required left hand drills. The local manager of Rice and Sons had a number of children one of which was a young girl who like so many of her gender rode and had horses, the garden at his house had become too small for her latest horse and as there was quite a bit of open space at the yard now it was tidy he asked if we could manage to find room for it, wasn’t very keen but found a space between piles of bricks and partition blocks that could be fenced and space in a shed near by that would do as a tackle store. The young girl turned up with this, to us great hairy beast, and put him away while dad pulled up in his car and took her home. We used to let it out to feed around the yard during the day and never really had any trouble putting it away at night, not that any of us felt very comfortable with it, but it did cause trouble, one day it got it’s nose and most of itself jammed in the door way of a shed while it warmed itself on a potbelly stove that was burning to drive out the moisture from stored items, one of us climbed through a window and tried to back it out but it wouldn’t budge, only thing to do was push it forward and dodge the backward explosion as it’s nose got burnt, it often scratched it’s back on stacks of bricks or tiles, our only warning the rumble as thousands of carefully piled ones slowly slid down to cover yards of ground, when burning worm infested wood it loved to put its hooves into the hot ashes and the long length of pipe we used to move the wood about poured out smoke from it’s top end, the horse stood with this in it’s mouth and seemed to enjoy the odd smoke. We had a few minor problems with this horse, it got out one day when a stupid lorry driver left the gate open and the young lad I had taken on spent most of the day chasing it over hill and dale until it leapt a fence into a paddock of other horses and charged about until this owner
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caught it and insisted on knowing who the owner was. The end for us came when I arrived at the yard one Monday morning to be greeted by a very irate RAF officer, the horse had apparently got out during the weekend and right opposite was the grass runway of Manston Aerodrome, these acres of lush grass were heaven to the horse so in spite of large numbers of service personnel in jeeps and on motor bikes it just cantered madly about preventing the circling aircraft from landing. The main runway at Manston was some miles long, equipped with FIDO and a major airfield during WW2, at this time it was occupied by the USAAF flying Lockheed “Shrunk Works” F80 Shooting Stars, Spifires [sic] had by legend taken off across the runway it was so wide, the grass runway was used by visiting light aircraft to leave the main runway free for ops. I noted that the officer concerned was a non flier and after he had calmed down suggested that he get a few years in before going off at the mouth to me, but felt sorry for him as no doubt he had been torn off a strip by some other prat in uniform, told him the horse was not mine and mentioned my service number which shut him up, but the horse had to go and so it did. Another morning I arrived to be called over by the next door neighbour, who had a small holding and piggery behind his house, to complain about the noise I had been making late into the previous evening, said he would come over and shut me up if it happened again, told him I wished he had which surprised him. What had happened was I crawled into the drum of a large concrete mixer to check the blades and water feed pipes, it was going out on to a site the next day and the phone call only came in as I locked up the workshop, my men had already gone, knew that most of the mixer was in good condition but wondered if the blades and water pipes had been checked, blades were OK but still a small amount of concrete on the inside of the water pipe, got a hammer and cold chisel from the toolbox and chipped out the bits and pieces, a small pebble just didn’t want to move so pushed my finger in to flick it out, the pebble dropped down jamming my finger in and the harder I pulled the more it jammed. The only way I could get out was to hold up the pebble with a piece of wire while I eased my finger out, the tools I had with me were too large, that is why I was banging on the drum hoping someone would come and help me, but no luck and I was going deaf from my hammering. Perhaps the last shovel of sand put in to weaken the cement remaining in the drum had a piece of tie wire in, what a hope but after scrabbling about with my free hand for some time I found a piece, held the pebble up and quickly grabbed my tools and crawled out, the neighbour laughed and would come quick if heard banging late again. Another Monday I arrived at the yard to find the entrance blocked by a very large and dirty Steamroller, no sign of a driver, enquires with neighbours did not help, no note or message on the machine, just parked most tidily across the entrance, walking space only. None of my people knew anything about it and none of us knew how to drive, we checked the tank which had some water in it but no coal or wood,
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lit a fire made sure the sight glass was full and when steam started to come out of various holes, pushed and pulled every lever in sight until it moved into the yard, rolled up and down the yard a few times to make our road smooth and put the brake on, the fire was only wood so it soon burnt down and went out. It stay there for a couple of days and then one morning when I got to work it was gone, never did solve the mystery of the vanishing steamroller. While I was having fun and games at work Phyll was doing her best to balance what budget we had, many times when the gas meter was emptied we didn’t get any “rebate” only the return of the many foreign coins left over from my trips abroad that we had used to get gas because we were flat broke. Tony and Philip were a great trail being about 5 and 3 years old, she once got them all dressed up in their best white outfits, told them to be good boys and play together while she got dressed in her only decent frock, we were going to my Granny and Grand Dad Miles 50th wedding anniversary party, all the family would be there and poor as we were had to make out we were not. I was on my way home from some job or other and arrived in time to see the two boys playing together in the garden as requested, only they were playing in the heap of soot that the chimney sweep had left the previous day after sweeping our coal fire chimney’s!! Poor Phyll all the hard work, no [sic] only did she make their outfits, get them clean and looking smart, rushed to get dressed herself, and now had to start all over again, and I turned up dirty as well. We got to the party and everyone said how smart the boys looked, just one more of the miracles she worked. Kids can drive you mad and at other times make you laugh, arriving home from work one day Phyll told me that Tony had put his head into the bath of bleach water while she had been hanging out the clothes, ‘What a silly thing to do’ I said to him, ‘it could burn you and make your hair fall out’ With eyes as large as saucers he looked at me and said, ‘Is that what you did Daddy’ I couldn’t keep a straight face nor could Phyll. Returning from a trip to my brother’s small pig farm Tony suddenly said ‘I know eggs come from chickens Dad, do pigs lay sausages?’ always expect the unexpected where children are concerned. Apart from all the house work, looking after our growing family, Phyll always managed to find yet another job to help the budget, with Susan in her pram she pushed her quite a way to clean and tidy the house of the local vet, his wife looking after Susan while she did this, funny thing neither of us complained, just glad that we could feed and clothe us all from week to week. Among the jobs I did as part time extra work, was painting a house that a nurse lived in near the Manston yard, and doing all repairs and maintenance at the same restaurant that Phyll did evening work. This later one was a real learning experience, all equipment and machines had to be checked before the place opened for the summer season and most were completely strange to me. All the kitchen machines had to be cleaned and tested, and what most of them did was a mystery to me but head down and asked a few questions and off I went, the
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chipper didn’t work I was told, pulled a cover or two off and found that the last one to use it had put in a rock instead of a potato (dissatisfied employee?) cleared that, straightened the blades and OK again, the spud peeler was very slow, found that the abrasive lining was no longer abrasive! new lining ordered and fitted, and so I worked my way through all the catering gear. The manager asked me to look at the revolving entrance doors, had been very stiff at the end of the last season, what did I know about revolving doors, nothing but there must be a reason, climbed on top and found that the lock nuts that held the door up were loose and had allowed the door to drop so that it dragged on the floor, soon adjusted that and smiles from the manager, he began to think I was a miracle worker, but most of it was just the very uncommon common sense. This restaurant was situated on the land side of the road that ran along the beach, a section that was below high tide mark had a dance floor and entertainments as well as food and drinks served. The floor and walls up to high tide level had been “tanked” with a bitumen coating to prevent sea water damaging the decorations and timber block dance floor, some clever “dicky” had removed some of this timber block dance floor and “tanking” to increase the area used to cater for food and drink patrons, vinyl floor tiles had been stuck over the bare concrete floor that was exposed, at the same level and matching those already installed, but these new ones had no “tanking” underneath. The manager explained that as the tide came in and out the salt water dissolved the adhesive which expanded into a large ulcerous looking lump in the middle of the tiles, ladies with stiletto high heels punctured them when they stood on them and the resulting black goo shot up their legs damaging stockings and dresses. I had a look at the problem and sure enough a number were well and truly ready to “blow their top”, dug out those that needed replacing and realised that to put new ones in with adhesive was not the answer, nails would be good but the heads would probably trip people but headless one might be the answer but into concrete could be a problem, had an old gramophone at home that used the old steel needles, gave that a try and magic no problem the hardened needles went into the concrete easily and held the tiles OK, quick trip to the local gramophone shop got all their old used needles and a few boxes of new ones and just kept an eye on the tiles and as they started to bulge out they came and new ones in, during that summer think I changed the whole lot. I was on call during the evenings and week ends not too many problems, most had been already fixed mainly things broken by staff or customers, the ‘chefs’ were a funny lot always on their “high horses” about how clever they were and just threw things about if upset, more work for me, the amplifier and microphones at the dances often played up due mainly I think by drunks grabbing the mic. to bellow their inane rubbish. During the summer ‘season’ Phyll did other work, one of her aunties had a “Boarding house”, perhaps the more modern ‘bed and breakfast’ might convey to readers what it was,
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whole families came to Margate and other seaside resorts to spend their summer holidays, the cheapest accommodation for a family being the Boarding House, must be out of the house by about nine thirty and not let back in to the afternoon, these regulations varied, some miserable people stuck to them, but people never went back to them. Phyll’s job was to clean and tidy all the bedrooms, change over days, usually Saturday was very hard, most of the houses were big old places with perhaps only one lavatory and bathroom on each floor, some not even that, so chamber pots or ‘gusunders’ were provided under all beds, hence the commonly used expression used in those days for all things running late “here it is (time) and not a po emptied”. How Phyll managed to keep house, look after me and the kids and still go out to work I don’t know, no such thing as child minding in those days, we couldn’t have afforded it if there had been, must ask her some time how she managed it all!!! The house in Tivoli Road had no electricity, lighting by gas may be romantic but fraught with problems, too much gas pressure or touched when being lit and mantles break, a small hole will send a jet of flame against the glass cover and in winter when the whole house is cold, the glass shatters and people get cut, candles were used to move from room to room, and checking a sleeping baby without dripping candle grease on everything was an art soon learnt. We decorated this old house from top to bottom, never thought to ask for money to pay for things just got on and did it, remember Phyll standing on a chair wallpapering our bedroom just hours before she asked me to go out and phone the midwife as Susan was on the way, we had made up a bed for her in the dining room so no stairs to climb, I was pushed out and told to boil lots of water and get piles of newspaper, think the water boiling job was to shut me up, brave things woman, glad it was Phyll and not me going through child birth, I need medical attention if I break a finger nail, guess all men are cowards. Because the house was one of a long row of terrace houses, now known as town houses, houses all joined together, being old and some had been empty all during the war, mice had invaded one or two, we had used traps and got rid of ours but roofs and coal cellars joined, so that migration to the best food source was common. All food was kept in mice proof containers, the only source of food not covered being the layers of fat on the inside of the ancient gas cooker, efforts to get it clean only disturbed the recent deposits. Leaving Phyll sitting beside the fire in the room we used most of the time I went out to the cold kitchen to make our nightly drink of cocoa, as I lit the gas light I could hear a scrabbling coming from the oven, a mouse was having supper also, blocking the rear vent up with some clothes waiting to be washed I turned on the oven gas, waited for the scrabbling to end and picked up a dead mouse and in triumph took it in to show Phyll threw it on the fire and returned to make our cocoa. The next night a repeat performance was in sight as the next mouse awaited it’s fate, on went the gas, open came the door and Reg ended on his back against the wall as the
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cooker exploded, with the eye brows, eye lashes and moustache singed I staggered into Phyll, no longer the hero just a poor wounded soldier. The previous night the gas for our cocoa had not been lit, tonight it had, when I opened the oven door the gas escaped and was lit by the gas alight on top. Phyll covered my sores with Vaseline and I hurried out to get the mouse only to see it disappear behind the vegetable boxes in the larder, using all my force I crushed the box against the wall and another dead one, but of course the milk boiled over so I guess you could say, Reg one, the mice one, a draw. A friend of both Phyll and I when were at school was Laurie Foat he worked with his father who had a Greengrocer’s shop in Eaton Rd, I had been interested in bees when at school and found that Laurie also had an interest and had in fact a number of bee hives. We got together and started to expend the number of hives by breeding and bought quality Queen bees which we introduced after removing the old queens, we had bees in all sorts of places, orchardists welcomed us as pollination of their fruit trees was ensured, growers of many crops wanted our bees on site, this sometimes was a very painful as during transit the hives often moved and many times we travelled with swarms of bees round our heads, hoping that we would arrive on site still with enough to carry out the job in hand.
We experimented with new ideas, the only hive that had been used in England apart from the straw skip was the WBC, this had inner boxes in which the frames fitted, usually two types, honey and brood, and outer sloping ones that gave insulation in the cold months when the bees were in hibernation, we tried out the new style National hives, these were single wall and larger than the WBC (how I remember all this after 50 years, I do not know) The National hive was a copy of hives used in warmer countries such as Australia and South Africa, where the honey flow continued most of the year and hibernation was not needed, our extractor could not handle the bigger National frames and filling by the bees took much longer and in fact frames were often found to be only half full even if the honey flow had been good, they were easier to handle but really not for the small bee keeper who enjoyed the hobby more that the honey.
We also tried out a new floor board which had a fine mesh panel in it, a cover over it was controlled by a thermostat which opened and closed it depending on the temperature, this in theory helped the bees to drive off the moisture from the honey before it was capped. An old wives tale says that your bees know you and you must tell them all about you family particularly births and deaths, whether this is true I don’t know but sitting by the entrance to a hive as the sun goes down with crowds of bees at the entrance to the hive all facing inwards fanning their wings madly to drive off the moisture from that day’s honey crop is a rather magic experience, the bees ignore you and with your face close to them the sweet smell of clover,
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apple or other flowers they have been visiting beats any of man’s bottled perfumes.
As winter approached one year, it was obvious that two of our hives were not big enough to survive over the long months ahead, one had been used as a breeding hive for new queens, the other the remnants of one that had swarmed in an orchard miles away and the orchardist had not told us until it was too late to get most of them back. We would need to combine them and as bees are very territorial they couldn’t just be put together (one of the two queens must be removed), most of both hives would be killed, there were two normal ways to do this, cover each lot of bees with flour then combine them and by the time they had cleaned all the flour off themselves they would all smell the same, another ways was to block up the entrances put many layers of newspapers between the two and wait until the two lots of bees had chewed their way through and hope they would be friends.
Laurie lived over his father’s shop which had a flat roof which could be reached from one of Laurie’s windows, the combining needed to be watched to see if it was going according to plan, and the bulk of our hives were on land some miles away, the flat roof above the shop was an ideal place, we thought, the hives were set up near one another and a search through Laurie’s wife’s food cupboard failed to find any flour but a number of half packets of different coloured blanc-mange powder seemed just as good, the lid was removed from one hive and well dusted with powder, the floor taken off the other placed on top and it’s roof removed and the remainder of the powder sprinkled in.
Some of the bees took offence at this and gave us both our usual injection of anti-rheumatic treatment (after the number of stings I took should never get any joint problems, perhaps another old wives tale!) we retreated behind the closed windows of Laurie’s flat to watch events, all seemed to be going well until Laurie’s father suddenly appeared in the room, not a very happy Daddy, bees, all colours of the rainbow were driving his customers away, no one had been stung, but they were landing on everyone and everything and bright orange red, blue, and even multi coloured bees were not the normal thing seen in shops. After about an hour the panic was over and all the bees had settled down to do what bees do best, hum, and make honey.
Bees like the rest of living things get sick and we sent any suspect ones to Rothamstead Research Institute for analysis. I had been working the bees one weekend and on the Monday morning woke up feeling not too good, turning to Phyll in bed asked if my face was swollen, the look on her face and a sudden withdrawal of breath told me the tale, got out of bed and looked in the mirror, two slits that must have been eyes once, two nose holes
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that belonged more to a member of the pig family, the whole lot buried in a red blotched landscape of no sharp edges just fat curves, felt even sicker after seeing that sight. Phyll rang the doctor, (doctors actually came to see the sick in those days) who knew of our family history and at once remarked that it looked like a bee sting, told him we had a hive that we suspected had paralysis and were awaiting the results of tests, sat on my bed for about half an hour finding out all the symptoms of various bee diseases, gave me pills to take, come and see me in ten days, these blue pills got rid of the swelling but seemed to deposit glass chips in my joints, Phyll had to help me move and the pain was worse than the sting, managed to walk with great pain to his surgery after ten days, when I told him of my joints problem, said he should have given me these other pills to dissolve the crystals that would form in my joints.
Went to him once with a very swollen elbow, tennis elbow he said, don’t play it I said, showed me his elbow which was just as swollen as mine, got mine playing golf he said, what shall I do I said, don’t play golf or tennis for a bit was the answer!! Good doctor always came when asked and never gave you any bull, just one of the old school, straight answers to straight questions and don’t go to him if you just wanted a note to stay away from work, I never did, in fact had to argue with him at times when he wanted me to rest, but mutual respect was our way.
At work load was getting greater most self inflicted see a job do it is still my way, and the firm found that if they wanted some thing done and it was possible for me to do it, it got done. The “Corgi” motor bike was just too small for all the tasks expected of me, tried to get a van from the firm, but even old ones were very hard to get after the War, saw an advertisement for a 1928 Austin 7 only 20 quid, borrowed the money from my Dad and went to pick it up, one of the firm’s lorries dropped me off at this farm many miles away from home, it was in the back of a barn and sounded a bit rough when started up, farmer said it had been used to carry a full milk churn down to the front gate each day, drove it out to the yard at Manston, the engine rattle getting worse as time went on. Left it there to begin work on it the next day, stripped it right down, found the front seat was a bale of straw, no back seat, when pulled to pieces the small parts just filled a cardboard box, the chassis was two slender bits of channel joined at one end and that had a number of cracks in it, engine and body was all aluminium so very light, Phyll not very impressed when she first saw it, a box of greasy bits and some other bits of tin hanging on the workshop wall. I rebuilt the thing from scratch, crankshaft reground, cylinders rebored, valves and seats refaced, king pins and bushes renewed, any cracks in the chassis or body welded up, new seats, and tyres and tubes, it was a “tourer” open body and need less to say the canopy was missing, I had a new one made by a coach builder, when finished I spray painted it dark blue, and we now had our own motor car to
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go about and I had arranged payment by the firm for so much a mile when I used it on the firms business, which in fact covered all our costs of the car and a bit over, the overhaul had been done in the firms time and at their cost, not that they were made aware of it, and wouldn’t have minded if they had, for me to be mobile anywhere anytime was what they wanted and now had it.
I could take a decent size tool kit out on repair jobs and even the odd spare part, if they wanted me to do oxy cutting or welding a van or truck had to be available to carry the cylinders and other gear, and the oxy cutting began to become a major part of my work, I had taken on a fitter who stayed at the yard and together with the young bloke I had engaged kept on top of the repairs to machinery while I was out on jobs. A list of all of the metal work jobs I did on site would take pages and strain the old memory but some can never be forgotten for various reasons.
There are three which stick in the memory, Dreamland a very well known and large entertainment park, side shows, scenic railway, ghost house, roller coaster, you name it, Klingers a stocking and tights factory built by Rice and Sons, and The new Margate and district Telephone Exchange also built by Rice’s.
I’ll start with the last, the telephone exchange, this was a multi storey building with imposing stairs and entrance halls, Italian workers had been brought from Italy to do all the Terraza work to floors and stairs, my first contact with the site was when one of their machines would not start and the local garages couldn’t or wouldn’t repair it for them, not a very big job to fix it as I remember, but with typical Italian gusto I was treated as if I had saved them from a fate worse than death itself, showed me all their secrets for treating Terraza floors before people were allowed to walk on it, dozens of bottles of milk poured on after it was ground and washed, the fat from the milk sealed the pores in the cement and polish was applied over this.
The interior hand rail supports up the stairs had been concreted in before the Italians started their work, before they applied the final grinding and polishing they wanted the steel core rail for the wooden hand rail fitted, from their previous experience metal filings often landed on their Terraza and caused stains which were hard to remove, all the interior and exterior steel fences and railings had been contracted from by a London based company some 75 miles away by road. Their workmen arrived on site to fit the core rail and spent a couple of weeks drilling and fitting this top rail and returned to London, the manufacturers of the wooden rail itself came to the site to check that this work had been carried out properly, most people don’t look at wooden hand rails in multi storey buildings, next time you are in one have a look at the complicated solid wood shapes made to change direction
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round corners or up to the next flight, all made from plans and joins that are hard to see. The steel core rail was a mess and phone calls to the London manufactures went un-answered, there was also the question of some hundreds of yards of exterior fancy railings which had to be fitted into holes cut in the Portland Stone capping that was the topping for a wall that curved round and sloped and ended at various entrances on three sides of the building.
The call came in one morning to visit this site and see the site manager, who just happened to be my Father! He showed me the stair problem, the core rail in some cases had been cut short and in others it was too long making the legs fixed into the concrete look like a row of trees, some of the end rolls were all twisted, in fact it was a mess, went back to the yard got oxy gear and other tools told my staff expect me when see me and ring if you can’t cope, the only way was to remove completely the core rail, straighten and check for plumb the supports, and start one end and rectify as I went, finished that part in a week or so, it was OK’d by the handrail people and the Italians who still made a fuss of me and I started to pack up my gear to return to base, that was not on my father’s plans, the steel railing manufacturers had been ‘sacked’, would get no further payments, I would complete the work! ‘Thanks Dad I had other jobs to do,’ ‘but you don’t leave here until the railings are complete’, see what happens when you do a good job? you get more!!
I found that not only had I to get the railings to fit, but had to concrete the legs into the wall leaving the cement a good half inch below the top of the Portland Stone, I then had to come back when the concrete was set and pour melted lead into this space leaving it slightly proud, which I then had to hammer flat using a caulking chisel so that the lead prevented any water from getting at the steel in the wall and causing it to rust. All this was said as if I had been doing this all my life and my own father standing there and saying it, there’s family for you.
I started on a long straight section and when concreted in it was straight as a gun barrel, a good start, now for this curved and sloping section, each day was yet another battle with wedging posts upright, cutting and welding, all joins in the rails had to be half lapped, welded and smooth, at last this very long section was finished, ready for the lead. Back to the yard for a coke fired furnace, pouring pots, melting pots, scrap lead, coke and other tools, I needed help with this lead pouring so told my fitter to report to the site the next day and we would make a start, did the straight run first, each hold had to be done in one pour, lead soon gets a skin on it and if stopped half way would not seal properly, things went well until we did a hole that was damp and all hell broke loose, the hot lead turned the dampness to steam the lead sealed the hole, but the steam won and lead shot out covering
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both of us with lead spots on face and clothes, none in our eyes thank god, a lesson learnt, back to the yard to make to face masks with thick glass and a frame much like an arc welding mask.
Each hole after that had to be heated with the oxy torch to ensure no moisture was present, winter in England there is always moisture present, and so we poured and heated and caulked our way round to the last post outside the main entrance, heated, checked for moisture, poured, and bang the whole of the dark brick work at the main entrance covered in very pretty sparkling lead spots, who should walk out before we could hide, yes dad, “now you’ve got a long job picking every bit of lead out”, some we removed but like I said earlier it soon gets a skin and goes dark and it was winter with no light so we only spent one day doing the easy seen ones and then back to the yard for a rest!!
Dreamland was a very different job, it was the height of the holiday season and the crowds filled every place of entertainment, Margate was a sea side place and families came from all over southern England for their week or two of fun in the sun. Those businesses that depended on the holiday makers for their lively hood had just three months to make enough to last all year, rain didn’t really matter the people came anyhow just spent their money in different places and Dreamland was humming. A very large building had been erected just inside one of the entrances it was about 40 feet high and about a hundred yards square, really only consisted of a corrugated cement and asbestos sheeting clad roof on massive steel supports, the interior filled with side shows and games of chance (very little chance in most cases) and it was always very well patronised, if the sun was out it was a place to get cool and if raining a good shelter, most of the people who ran the side shows paid rent for the site and many managed to find a space in their stall to get their head down when Dreamland was closed for the night. I received a call at home before I even left for the yard to get my Oxy gear and come down to Dreamland to do some cutting, I always had plenty of gas bottles on hand and had purchased very long hoses because of the difficult jobs I was always getting. Arriving at Dreamland I could see this skeleton of a building still smoking from the fire, the foreman met me to say that the owners wanted it cleared away as soon as possible so that trading could start again, but if I made a start a professional in building removal was on his way and he would take over from me. Looking at the structure it was basically a cross with massive compound girder columns at each corner, with again compound steel trusses spanning from column to column, the roofing material had collapsed into the rubbish beneath, but the heavy purlins were all twisted about and had been put under great stress by the heat of the fire. The safest way was to get on top of the building and using boards climb up to the ridges from both sides cutting and dropping the purlins as you went, this would leave the massive truss supported only at
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each end, cut through this at one end with great care, and hang on when it dropped, climb up the other side and drop the remaining end of the truss, this could then be cut up into manageable size lumps and carted away, the two columns could then be cut close to ground level and chopped up and after the whole building had been removed a final cutting of the column stumps would make the site use able again. Explained my thoughts to the site foreman and the boss from Dreamland who both agreed that it seemed OK, barriers were put in place and men stationed to prevent anyone entering the area where I was working, ladders erected for me to get up top, but my hoses though long would not reach far enough, so with a bit of a strain got the two heavy cylinders up to the top of the columns and lashed them there, I would leave them in that position until the time came to fell the columns. Up I went, ladders removed and I started cutting away the purlins, each one acted in a different way depending on what the stress was, just had to be careful and not get too close at the final cut, but things went OK and soon the clatter of falling steel and the showers of sparks from the Oxy torch had a crowd of sight see’ers, got the first truss free of purlins and ready to drop one end, when an almighty bang nearly tossed me off the roof, looked round to where the noise had come from and there was the “professional”, with his long ladder leaning on the truss, he had cut through one end of the truss and had not cut any of the purlins, dangling by a rope tied to the ladder his torch burning the ladder and the truss hanging by the already under stress purlins. The site foreman rushed to help him down and put out the ladder fire.
I cut my truss end and went round to start on the other end when another loud crash rang through the site, the idiot had cut the same end of another truss and now two were hanging and swinging, told the foreman I was off, let the idiot kill himself but not me, don’t worry he said he has scared himself half to death and is going home the job is all yours, I often wonder if I should have thanked the foreman. For a number of days I started at sun up and worked long into the night, balancing on boards and cutting steel, usually woke up in the middle of the night shaking at all the near misses I’d had during the day but just went back to the job in the morning, Phyll was going to the cinema one night with her friend up the road and took a short cut through Dreamland to get to the cinema, saw me up on the roof sparks flying everywhere and just couldn’t go any further, got the job finished in the end but nobody ever thanked me and not even a whisper of some extra money, should have asked for some before I started I suppose, just too thick for my own good. Reading this could make people think that I am boasting about how clever I was, I’m afraid the reverse is the case, all of my children have more sense than I, if extra work is undertaken, extra pay is demanded, and received, promotion is given with extra perks for an employee of value, I just did everything asked and in most cases took on extra responsibilities without being asked and it seems never thanked, managers used my work to enhance their own images and gained increases
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of salary and position by getting work done under cost and dead lines because they could depend on me, and I the mug just kept on delivering. I obviously didn’t realise any of this at the time, probably would have carried on just the same if I had, but I had something that none of them had, satisfaction of doing a good job and over coming difficulties that would have had many asking for help, none of my jobs could ever cause me any embarrassment about my skill as a fitter, my training in the RAF taught me that near enough is not good enough, only one way, the right way, think before you start, it might be too late if you start to think after you have started!! The next job I will describe was again something quite different, a site had been cleared on the industrial are between Margate and Ramsgate for a factory being built to manufacture stockings and tights and owned by Klingers. This factory was a very special construction in reinforced concrete, a triple barrel vault roof with north facing double sealed windows, parking and storage beneath, no columns or supports of any kind on the factory floor. The drawings of the reinforcing steel bars to go into the roof were a maze of interlocking rods, the roof changing in thickness from massive beams running the full length, to just three inches in thickness in the centre of the curves and again getting thicker to support the large double glazed window units. I was given various lists of machinery required and the dates when they should be on site, apart from the usual concrete mixers and scaffolding, steel bar bending tools were wanted to make all the complicated shapes of reinforcing needed, the men on site would start working to the drawings provided many weeks before the actual construction work started. Benches, various benders and cutting gear was delivered to the site but the foreman had trouble actually bending some of the shapes with the machines provided, investigations of machines on the market indicated that there was none that could do the tight and difficult shapes wanted. The architect would not change his design, so the foreman, workers and I put our heads together and worked out a simple device to bend the difficult pieces, made one of the machines and once we were all happy with it made a couple more. Further tales of working life can be found in the FAMILY CD. Reg
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[Missing photograph]
[underlined] Wedding photo April 28 1945 [/underlined]
– Reg Miles
http://www.geocities.com/jkjustin/Milesbio6.html
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
Biography of Reg Miles
Description
An account of the resource
A detailed Biography of Reg' service and post service life.
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 Navy
Royal Canadian Air Force
Royal Air Force. Transport Command
Royal Air Force. Fighter Command
Free French Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Margate
England--Wendover
England--Aylesbury
England--High Wycombe
England--Dover
England--Shrewsbury
England--Liverpool
England--Penzance
England--Devon
South Africa--Bloemfontein
England--Taunton
England--Blackpool
Sierra Leone--Freetown
South Africa--Durban
South Africa--Muizenberg
South Africa--Cape Town
South Africa--Krugersdorp
Germany--Dortmund
Belgium--Ghent
England--Folkestone
France--Paris
France--Lens
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Karlsruhe
Germany--Essen
Belgium--Liège
France--Somain
France--Pas-de-Calais
France--Neufchâtel-en-Bray
Germany--Stuttgart
Germany--Hamburg
France--Creil Region
France--Saint-Vaast-La Hougue
France--Montrichard
France--Mimoyecques
France--Le Havre
Germany--Castrop-Rauxel
Germany--Osnabrück
Germany--Kiel
France--Boulogne-sur-Mer
France--Calais
Germany--Bottrop
Germany--Oberhausen (Düsseldorf)
Norway--Bergen
England--Harrogate
Malta
Egypt--Cairo
Australia
Queensland--Mackay
Libya--Tripoli
Israel--Tel Aviv
Middle East--Jerusalem
West Bank--Bethlehem
Iraq--Baṣrah
Pakistan--Karachi
India--Kolkata
Sri Lanka--Ratmalana
Sri Lanka--Negombo
Israel--Lod
India--New Delhi
England--Cornwall (County)
France
Queensland
Libya
Egypt
Germany
Belgium
India
Iraq
Israel
Norway
South Africa
Pakistan
Sri Lanka
Sierra Leone
West Bank
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
England--Kent
England--Shropshire
England--Somerset
England--Lancashire
Egypt--Jīzah
France--Chantilly Forest
Creator
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Reg Miles
Format
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109 printed sheets
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Text. Memoir
Identifier
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BMilesRJMilesRJv1
Publisher
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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.
Contributor
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Georgie Donaldson
346 Squadron
347 Squadron
420 Squadron
425 Squadron
428 Squadron
432 Squadron
6 Group
77 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
Anson
anti-aircraft fire
B-17
Beaufighter
Blenheim
bomb aimer
C-47
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
control caravan
crash
crewing up
debriefing
demobilisation
dispersal
Distinguished Flying Cross
entertainment
FIDO
fitter engine
flight engineer
Fw 190
Gee
Grand Slam
ground crew
ground personnel
H2S
Halifax
Halifax Mk 2
Halifax Mk 5
Hampden
hangar
Harvard
Heavy Conversion Unit
Hitler, Adolf (1889-1945)
home front
Hurricane
Ju 88
Lancaster
Lancaster Mk 2
love and romance
Manchester
Master Bomber
Me 109
mess
military ethos
military living conditions
military service conditions
Mosquito
navigator
Nissen hut
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Oboe
P-51
Pathfinders
perimeter track
pilot
promotion
RAF Carnaby
RAF Dishforth
RAF East Moor
RAF Elvington
RAF Halton
RAF Langar
RAF Lyneham
RAF Manston
RAF Nutts Corner
RAF Prestwick
RAF Shawbury
RAF Skellingthorpe
RAF Skipton on Swale
RAF St Athan
RAF St Eval
RAF Tholthorpe
RAF Tilstock
RAF Woodbridge
recruitment
runway
Scarecrow
searchlight
Second Tactical Air Force
service vehicle
Spitfire
sport
Stirling
target indicator
Tiger Moth
training
Typhoon
V-1
V-2
V-weapon
Wallis, Barnes Neville (1887-1979)
Wellington
Window
wireless operator
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
York