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25
205
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/4/9/AAndersonW150517.1.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
Anderson, William
William Anderson
Les Anderson
W L M Anderson
William Leslie Milne Anderson
Description
An account of the resource
Two items. An oral history interview with Flying Officer William Leslie Milne Anderson (1925 - 2018, 196733 Royal Air Force), and one photograph. William Anderson was a flight engineer and flew operations in Lancasters with 166 Squadron from RAF Kirmington.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by William Anderson 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
2015-05-17
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
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Anderson, W
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
WA: My name is William Lesley Milne Anderson, and I’m recording this for the International Bomber Command Centre, on the seventeenth of May, 2015 [pause] at – where am I [pause] at Beverley, in Yorkshire.
MJ: Right that’ll –
WA: Right [pause] I was a flight engineer on Lancaster aircraft. My rank a, at the end was flying [emphasis] officer. [Pause] I went to Edinburgh Aircrew Recruitment Centre when I was eighteen and a quarter, hoping to join the RAF and to fly. Everybody wanted to be a pilot. I went there with a school pal of mine who was going to join up as well, but we were told, at that time, if we wanted to be down for pilots, if we pass the various medical and tests, we would have to wait for nine months before we were called up. So this friend of mine decided, ‘fair enough’, to accept nine months wait so that he could eventually become a pilot, whereas I decided that I’d go for something else, and when I asked what was available to go more or less straight away I was told ‘a flight engineer’, so I said ‘that’ll do me fine’. [Pause] I w – when war broke out I’d only be, oh, fourteen [pause] and [pause] but, I thought ‘well, if I’ve got to go into the forces, I would rather fly somewhere than walk in the Army [laughs] to get there’, so that’s why I chose the Air Force. The training was at a place called Saint Athan in South Wales, that was after – well funnily enough, I had to report to Lords cricket ground, and that was where we had a medical and were issued with a uniform, and then we were marched along to a part of London called Saint John’s Wood, and when we had to go and collect our pay one day we were marched to the zoo [emphasis], I thought – was funny, I been in the Air Force and I’ve landed in a cricket ground, in a block of flats, and I get paid from the zoo [laughs]. So I thought ‘when do I see an aeroplane’. However, I was, was going to have to wait quite a bit longer [emphasis] because after, think it was a fortnight or three weeks, we were posted to Torquay, and when we got to Torquay we found that quite a lot of the hotels [pause] had been taken over by the RAF, and there, once again [emphasis], no aeroplanes in sight! But we did the basic training, the marching, ohhhh, the guard duties, even a bit of clay pigeon [emphasis] shooting, and this went on for about twelve weeks, and after the twelve weeks we were sent off to Saint Athan, and at last [emphasis] thank goodness, there were aeroplanes, because [pause] it was – I can’t remember exactly how long, but it was interesting, not sitting in little classrooms, but in a big [pause] building – a hanger I suppose – divided up into sections, where you could hear what was going on just across the wooden division that was separating you from the next group. So anyway – oh I missed the bit out where, at – the important bit, was I couldn’t swim [emphasis] [pause] and, they didn’t tell me, when I got to Torquay, until I got to Torquay, that I had to pass a swimming [emphasis] test, and so they took us down to the harbour, and the Corporal lined at the squad I was in [?], on the harbour, and told us we were going to jump in, and swim down just about twenty yards to a set of steps so that we could climb up to the top again. Luckily we had a Mae West , but [emphasis] my name being Anderson, on some occasions, is very handy because quite often you’re first, but in this case there was a chap called Adams before me, and when the Corporal said ‘Adams, jump in’, Adams said ‘I can’t swim, I’m not jumping in’, and so he said ‘Anderson, in you go’, and I said ‘I can’t swim, I’m not jumping in’, and so he said ‘if you go in the way I tell you to, you’ll go in and hit the water without doing yourself any damage. If I’ve got to push [emphasis] you in, you might land on your head or your back or your behind’, so bearing in mind that we got a Mae West on, he said ‘curl your toes over the edge of the harbour wall [pause] hold your nose, and take one step forward’, and of course, went down, and when I opened my eyes under water I saw millions of little bubbles, and with a Mae West on I was shot to the surface and up, and somehow or other I managed to get to the steps – don’t know how. But, when all the squad had been in, there was Adams, still in the water, still in the same spot where he’d jumped in, paddling like mad but going nowhere. So the Corporal said, ‘one of the swimmers, jump in, drag him to the side’, and that was our introduction to swimming. The rest of the swimming was done in the baths. And then, when we got to Saint Athan we carried on with swimming there. [Pause] Now, so, we did quite a bit of training at Saint Athan, I would say it was a very good course, and so, when the course was finished, although we’d made some friends during the time we were there, we were broken up by being posted to different placed training units up and down the country. I landed up in 1656 Heavy Conversion Unit at Lindholme just outside Doncaster. That was where I met the crew. The six other crew had been together for a while, flying of course, in two-engined Wellingtons, and the Conversion Unit was to convert them to four engine aircrafts so they had to pick up a flight engineer. At that time, which would be [pause] forty-three [pause] forty-three, most of the Lancasters were going from the factories to the squadrons, so we were actually trained on Halifaxes [pause] and then after a course there we went for a fortnight to RAF Hemswell which at that time was number one Lancaster finishing school, and we were only there for [pause] two weeks, and I seem to remember [pause] most of the work that we did there was ground work on the systems different in the Lancaster from the Halifaxes and the flying [pause] consisted only of circuits and bumps, daylight, circuits and bumps at night, and the number of flying errands we did was eight, and we were sent off to the squadron, and the squadron happened to be 166 Kirmington, which nowadays is, of course, Humberside International Airport. [Pause] At Kirmington [pause] it was a fairly basic [emphasis] airfield, had only opened in forty-three, near the end of the year, and [pause] roundabout in the countryside there were lots and lots of trees, forest, and the, the huts, the mission huts we were in, were in the trees. Fair bit of walking to be done to get to the airfield if you happen to miss the transports, but [pause] on the whole, it was Kirmington village, the people were very good to us, although I didn’t particularly drink, there was only one pub in the village [pause] that was in forty-four by this time – May. Now [pause] oh, got stuck, um, yes. The crew that I joined at Lindholme contained three Canadians, the mid-upper gunner, the rear gunner, and bomb aimer, were all from Canada. The pilot was English, from Halifax, the navigator was from Leicester, and the wireless operator was from a village – I’ve forgotten the name of the village again, but up somewhere around Newcastle. [Pause] Anyway, off we go, and start operations. We were lucky [pause] inasmuch that the battle for Berlin had finished roughly in the January of that year, because Berlin causalities had been heavy. Many of the trips that we did were not long trips because at that time – [pause] oh, forgotten, sixth of June, D-Day, that was the start, that was my first operation, sixth of June, D-Day, and that was to a marshalling yard north of Paris. A lot of marshalling yards had, were being attacked to make sure that the troops and supplies didn’t reach D-Day, er, reach the [pause] [knocks on something] [pause] and of course [pause] doodlebugs had put in an appearance, and so they had to be taken care of, and so many of the doodlebugs were, weren’t very far in to France, so a number of the trips were fairly short. For that we were thankful. Some of the trips of course were quite long. Anyway, we had got there in May, forty-four, and we did our last trip on the thirtieth of August forty-four. My skipper, the navigator, and myself, were all posted back to Lindholme as instructors. My skipper decided that he would like to stay in the RAF and by this time he had become a squadron leader, so he applied for a permanent commission. He stayed in and did his time after the war was finished, and finished up as Group Captain Laurie Holmes DFC, AFC [pause] and the OBE [laughs]. [Pause] When the war finished, because of my age I knew my demob group was a long way off, and I didn’t see much point in instructing to pass crews on to still to squadrons as if the war was still on, so I applied to join Transport Command. [Pause] Just as well, because, although the war finished, May, forty-five, I didn’t get out until, somewhere about August forty-seven! [Laughs]. But in that time I saw quite a bit of the world and got paid for it in Transport Command, flying on Yorks, which was virtually a Lancaster with a different shaped body. First flying carrying freight, because they changed the shape of the body so that freight could go easily in, or seats could be put in for passengers. After a number of trips taking us as far as Delhi and back, we were reassessed and went on to passenger carrying. Still Yorks, of course this time with seats in, and we went as far as Changi, Singapore, and that was our turnaround point, and came back. [Unclear muttering] [break in tape]. Well luck [emphasis] had to play a big part in things, I mean as I said earlier on, many, a number of our flights were fairly short because it was the time when doodlebugs were around, and they had got to be get rid [emphasis] of. Also, when you found that you were maybe down for mining. Mining was considered a, oh, quite a, you know, easy [emphasis] flight, mining, going along drop some mines in the water, come back. But we, one night, had to go to a place about fifty miles from Russia, right along the Baltic, and there were the airfield next to us, or closest to us, was called Elsham Wolds and there they had a, oh well all together there twelve Lancasters going mining at this target, all that distance away, and five were from Kirmington, and seven were from Elsham Wolds. Now because it was near the end of our tour, [unclear] some systems and some squadrons where, as you were classed as being more experienced, you moved up, from say maybe the third wave, to the second, to the first, and somebody got to be first in dropping – until this particular night we were down to drop first, the mines. But we went out with four hundred other aircraft that were going to Keel, but so we left this country, crossed the North Sea, in the company of four hundred other aircraft. Didn’t see four hundred aircraft but nevertheless, that’s what they said there were there, and then they turned off to starboard, to head for Kiel, where we kept on along the Baltic – twelve of us, supposed to be. As we got near the target [pause] a searchlight popped up, and another one, and another one, the three of them started waving around and we thought ‘they know we’re coming’. However, after they’d waved about for a little while they all went out – sigh of relief. So we were supposed to drop first. So we dropped and went through the target a bit and turned away and headed back, and as we turned away the searchlights came on, so the rest of the aircraft had to come through searchlights, but, although there was fire from the Baltic, from ships in the Baltic and [emphasis] from the harbour, we didn’t see any aircraft shot down. However, we had been told that we might not get back into Kirmington because of weather and so we were given an alternative route back to land at Lossiemouth, North of Scotland, so we landed up there, and but there weren’t twelve Lancasters, but we didn’t think much of it at the time because [pause] we knew that the weather was such that we weren’t getting back into Kirmington or Elsham, so then, landed somewhere else, maybe couldn’t get into Lossiemouth, or anyway, I don’t know, but it wasn’t until the next day that we got back to Kirmington that we found that we had lost two out of the five aircraft and word came through from Elsham Wolds that they had lost three out of the seven. Which meant five out of twelve, which wasn’t a very good result, and yet [emphasis] in coming back all [emphasis] that way, along the Baltic, we didn’t see an aircraft being attacked, or an explosion, but when the chap called – Squadron Leader Wright [?] came to read or to write the history of 166 Squadron, in doing research, they found the bodies had been washed up in, er, countries bordering the Baltic, from, from the raids. So, there we are – luck. Lost five out of twelve aircraft, but you haven’t seen one attacked, you haven’t seen one explode, you haven’t seen one on fire, you get back to Lossiemouth without any problems, you know.
MJ: And that’s unusual.
WA: Aye. But five out of twelve, aye. But for a mining trip, and people were thinking ‘oh, Holmsey [?] and crew they’ve been lucky they’ve been down to do a mining trip tonight’ you know, aye [laughs]. So, aye it’s, I don’t know. Anyway, anyway up there, that’s [break in tape].
MJ: On behalf of the International Bomber Command Oral History Project, I Michael Jeffries would like to thank Flight Officer Anderson for his recording on the date of the seventeenth of May, 2015. 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 William Anderson
Description
An account of the resource
Flight Officer William Anderson began his service in the Royal Air Force at the age of eighteen when he signed up in Edinburgh. In this interview he speaks about his training, reporting to Lord’s Cricket Ground in London, being paid at the London Zoo, and having to learn quickly how to swim in Torquay. After training at RAF St Athan, he was posted to 1656 Heavy Conversion Unit, and joined a Lancaster crew based at RAF Kirmington. His first operation was on D-Day to a marshalling yard near Paris. After that Anderson recounts stories of going on mine laying operations, particularly one over the Baltic, where five out of twelve aircraft were lost on one operation.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Michael Jeffries
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Christina Brown
Heather Hughes
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AAndersonW150517
Subject
The topic of the resource
World War (1939-1945)
Great Britain. Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Format
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00:30:43 audio recording
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-05-17
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Air Force. Transport Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England
France
Wales
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
England--Devon
England--Lincolnshire
England--Yorkshire
France--Normandy
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
Scotland--Moray
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1656 HCU
166 Squadron
bombing
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
Initial Training Wing
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
mine laying
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
RAF Hemswell
RAF Kirmington
RAF Lindholme
RAF Lossiemouth
RAF St Athan
RAF Torquay
recruitment
searchlight
training
York
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/99/928/BArcherSWArcherSWv10001.2.jpg
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/99/928/BArcherSWArcherSWv10002.2.jpg
e5df773c8321e1b4e84a13eba6a8c727
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
Archer, Stanley
S Archer
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Description
An account of the resource
18 items. The collection concerns the career of Flight Sergeant Stanley Archer. He originally trained as a fitter and served in Fighter Command before re-mustering as a flight engineer and flying operations with 97 Squadron from RAF Woodhall Spa. The collection includes a memoir, a joke medal, an engine test report, a diagram of constant speed units, three operation honours cards and 11 photographs.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Rosemarie Da Costa and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Archer, S
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-04-29
Access Rights
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Permission granted for commercial projects
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
[inserted] F/LT STAN W. ARCHER DFM 97 & 467 SQDNs [/inserted]
My association with the Lancaster started in 1942. I was one of the first Flight Engineers to be trained specifically for operational duty on this new bomber which for a while after its introduction carried two pilots.
The training started with an Air Gunnery course, 6 weeks at Walney Island and the flying carried out on Defiants. We were posted from the Gunnery School to our bomber squadrons in my case 97 Sqdn at Woodall Spa. 10 of us. Ten more went to 106 Sqdn at Coningsby and the remaining 10 went to Waddington.
97 Sqdn with 44 Sqdn have just carried out the incredible daylight raid to Ausburg [sic], 6 aircraft from each [deleted] each [/deleted] Squadron. This raid was to bring Sqdn. Ldr. Nettleton the Victoria Cross. [deleted] and [/deleted] We were received with some incredibility and disbelief, but we were soon to go on to our Lancaster Training. This was 2 weeks at Avros [sic] at Chadderton, followed by 2 weeks at Woodford. As I recall, the Instructors went through the various systems of the aeroplane, but of course there was no flying training and no real Engineer training.
This month with Avro’s was followed
[page break]
by a month at [inserted] No 4 S of T.T. [/inserted] St. Athans [sic] where we were instructed by R.A.F Flight Engineers on the Halifax which had only one thing in common with the Lancaster. The Halifax 1 had Merlin Engines. The course was in my case rather a waste of time, as I had worked as a fitter on Merlin Engines fitted to the Hurricane & Spitfires, and as all of the u/t Engineers were Fitter II E’s most of them knew the Merlin.
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
Training as a flight engineer on Lancasters
Description
An account of the resource
Stanley Archer’s account of his training as one of the first flight engineers for Lancaster operations in 1942. First he attended an air gunnery course then transferred to 97 squadron at RAF Woodhall Spa. He comments on a daylight operation on Augsburg. Training continued for a month at Avro's at Chadderton then Woodford. This was ground based on Lancaster systems, there being no flying training. This was followed by a month at RAF St Athan on Halifaxes. He had previously worked as a fitter on Hurricanes and Spitfires and he considered the course a waste of time.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Stanley Archer
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1942
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Two handwritten pages
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Memoir
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
BArcherSWArcherSWv1
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
Germany
England--Lincolnshire
England--Chadderton
Germany--Augsburg
England--Lancashire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
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 Bloomfield
106 Squadron
97 Squadron
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
Defiant
fitter engine
flight engineer
ground crew
ground personnel
Halifax
Hurricane
Lancaster
RAF Barrow in Furness
RAF Coningsby
RAF St Athan
RAF Stockport
RAF Waddington
RAF Woodhall Spa
Spitfire
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/106/1010/BBriggsDWBriggDWv1.1.pdf
4ed57d765e8a8fd48923aeec0ce8532a
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
Briggs, Donald
Donald W Briggs
D W Briggs
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-03-27
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Briggs, DW
Description
An account of the resource
21 items. The collection consists of one oral history interview with flight engineer Donald Ward Briggs (1924 - 2018), his logbook, memoirs and 16 wartime and post war photographs. He completed 62 operations with 156 Squadron Pathfinders flying from RAF Upwood. Post war, Donald Briggs retrained as a pilot flying Meteors and Canberras. He eventually joined the V-Force on Valiants and was the co-pilot for the third British hydrogen bomb test at Malden Island in 1957.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Donald Briggs and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
Don Briggs A brief description of Wartime service
How it all began
1939 saw a rapid build up of the armed forces. The Royal Air Force were recruiting ground servicing personnel in large numbers. I was a 15 year old schoolboy and saw my chance to learn Aircraft engineering so applied to take the Aircraft Apprentice entrance examination. I passed OK and two days after World War 2 was declared I was on my way to RAF Halton No. 1 School of Technical Training. There is little doubt that the harsh discipline coupled with excellent theoretical lessons in Schools (known as Kermode Hall after the well known aerodynamicist) and many hours filing pieces of metal in workshops, turned boys into men. Later in the course we worked in teams stripping down and reassembling many types of aero engines. At the end of training (which was reduced in length due to the demand for Engine fitters) I passed out as a Fitter 2E.
My first posting was to RAF Finningley where I worked on the engines of Wellington and Hampden bombers. The Rolls Royce Vulture engines in the Avro Manchester were giving trouble which meant I assisted with several engine changes.
My next posting was to RAF Upper Heyford where I was promoted to Corporal at the age of 18. There I worked on The Wellington MK3 with more powerful Hercules engines. After carrying out rectification on an aircraft if an air test was necessary I usually asked if I could accompany the pilot.
After approximately two and a half years I decided that more excitement was needed so I volunteered for Aircrew. The President of the selection board said I had passed all the aptitude
[page break]
tests for pilot training. However there was little demand for pilots at that time (Mid 1943) and in view of the fact that I was already a Non Commissioned Officer aero engine fitter all I needed was the three months Flight Engineer’s course and I could be operational in less than six months. So I became a flight engineer by passing the course at RAF St. Athan.
During the crewing up procedure I was fortunate in meeting the captain of the crew that I was to fly with. He was Flying Officer Bill Neal with his crew and they had already completed a tour of operations on Wellingtons. Bill explained that they had been selected to join the Pathfinder Force and what our duties would entail. Our first step was to convert onto the Halifax Mk1 at RAF Lindhome[sic]. During our training sorties Bill Neal gave me a “potted” flying lesson and I handled the controls of an aircraft for the first time! We completed the course of 30 hours then went on to convert onto the Lancaster at RAF Hemswell. I did the night convertion [sic] on my 20th birthday. After attending a short course to learn the Pathfinder procedures we joined No. 156 Squadron at RAF Upwood near Peterborough.
As a new crew we had about two weeks of training to complete during which time I took on the additional role of bomb aimer and dropped practice bombs at a nearby bombing range. Also during this time Bill Neal vacated his seat (there were no dual control Lancasters on the squadron) and allowed me to fly this superb aircraft.
On completion of this training we were declared Operational and 11th June 1944 saw our crew on the Battle Order. The target was the vast marshalling yards at Tours in the South of France. The Germans were routing most of their reinforcements through here to the Normandy battle front.
[page break]
What were my feelings about starting operational flying? Well firstly I volunteered for aircrew and I was fully committed now – there was no turning back. Destiny would decide whether or not I survived. Secondly I was fortunate in joining a very experienced crew and they all made me a welcome addition to the crew. They had not flown with a flight engineer previously. I should explain that in Pathfinder crews the reason the flight engineer took on the extra duty of visual bomb aimer was that the primary bomb aimer operated the H2S radar. No. 156 Squadron were primarily a Blind Marker Squadron which meant that if no target indicator flares were seen cascading the radar operator would release Red T1’s. The Master Bomber would then know that the markers were dropped blind and the target had not been visually identified. On this first operation we were about to fly, we were part of The Illuminating Force and carried twelve hooded parachute flares. The master bomber or his deputy would then be able to identify the aiming point visually. Our first ten operations would be mostly dropping flares. On this first operation to Tours I received my baptism alright as we had two night fighter attacks just before the target which Bill Neal corkscrewed to shake them off. Also the Marshalling yards were well defended by heavy predicted flak and searchlights. So it was a great feeling to be safely back on the ground at our Upwood base.
Our crew flew several sorties in support of allied ground forces on the battle front where we dropped sticks of 14 X 1000lb from only 400ft! Needless to say the aircraft shook with the blast. We also attacked V1 launch sites in the Pas de Calais area. They were well camourflaged [sic] so the technique was that six Lancasters formated[sic] on a Mosquito Bomber equipped with “OBOE” a very accurate blind bombing system. When his bomb doors opened the Lancs also did so, followed by bomb release by all the Lancs when we saw the bomb leave the Mosquito. Thus we achieved a bombing
[page break]
pattern which should have rendered the buzz bomb site unusable. This must have saved many lives in and around London! My first German target was Hamburg (13th OP!) which was heavily defended but we came through the barrage unscathed. Night fighters were in the area and although we saw several bombers going down in flames we were left alone. A sickening sight knowing our comrades would meet their end in a fireball from bombs and fuel. We made a note of the position and got on with our own job.
I gradually became used to flying on operations but there was always that nagging thought that the worst might happen and I may not be climbing down the ladder again. Most of our operations from August 1944 were German – we were even sent to Rhur targets in daylight! Several oil refineries were on our list of targets – the German war machine became more ineffective during the final months of the war mainly due to fuel shortage. Our longest flight in the Lancaster was to Stettin (8hrs 30 mins.) and we landed back at base with barely enough fuel for a diversion!
After completing 40 operations (end of my first tour) I became Pilot Officer Don Briggs and was able to join the rest of my crew in the officers mess. I was given a couple of weeks end of tour leave then pressed on with Skipper Bill Neal for a second tour who had now flown two tours and was awarded the DFC. We flew deep into the heart of Germany attacking oil targets at Stettin, Leipzig, Mersburg, Chemnitz and Dessau. In March 1945 we attacked Nurnburg for the second time and were lucky to survive three night fighter attacks. Our rear gunner had amazing night vision and saw the enemy first thus enabling Bill Neal to take evasive action successfully. We were told at debriefing after a safe return to base that the Germans were using jets at night for the first time.
[page break]
During a daylight operation to Kleve in October 1944 we had a flak burst on the port wingtip which damaged the aileron quite badly. Our skipper with his amazing piloting skill brought us back to a safe landing back at Upwood!
I pressed on into my second tour with Bill Neal apart from one operation with another crew, as their flight engineer had completed his tours of operations.
I’m happy to say that despite several very close shaves I came through 62 operations unscathed. Lady luck was certainly on my side!! Bill Neal pressed on with another flight engineer and notched up just short of a hundred ops! He was awarded the DSO, DFC, and the French awarded him the Croix de Guerre. I am eternally gratefull [sic] to Bill for getting me through the most dangerous period of my life. He made sure that my operational record was recognized resulting in the award of the DFC in July 1945.
A few statistics
French Targets 24
German Targets 38
Night Operations 41
Daylight Operations 21
41 operations in “our own” Lancaster GT – J (NE 120)
Oil refineries 3
V1 Sites 5
Battle Front 5
Marshalling Yards 4
[page break]
Rhur Targets 10 (4 in daylight)
My last 30 operations were all German targets
It was a massive relief to have survived and great to be able to enjoy end of second tour leave with my parents and four brothers.
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Title
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Don Briggs, a brief description of wartime service
Description
An account of the resource
Describes wartime service from 1939 to 1945. Joined as Halton apprentice in September 1939. Posted as fitter engine to RAF Wittering working on Wellington Hampden and Manchester aircraft. Followed by tour at RAF Upper Heyford working on Wellington where he often accompanied pilots on air test. Volunteered for aircrew in 1943 and trained as flight engineer at RAF St Athan. Crewed with then Flying Office Bill Neal and his crew who had completed their first tour. Joined 156 Squadron Pathfinders and declared operational on 11 June 1944 flying operations to support Normandy invasion forces. Describes pathfinder blind marking operations and mentions engagement by two night fighters. Describes operations against V-1 bomb sites formatting on oboe equipped Mosquito. Explains that most operation after August 1944 were day and night operations to Germany. Completed 40 operations and volunteered to go onto a further tour with his crew. Awarded Distinguished Flying Cross and commissioned. Completed 62 operations. Memoir ends with a statistical breakdown of operations.
Creator
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Donald Briggs
Format
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Six typewritten pages
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Text. Memoir
Identifier
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BBriggsDWBriggDWv1
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Temporal Coverage
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1939
1943
1944
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.
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Cambridgeshire
France
Germany
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Contributor
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Sue Smith
David Bloomfield
156 Squadron
aircrew
crewing up
Distinguished Flying Cross
fitter engine
flight engineer
ground crew
ground personnel
H2S
Halifax
Halifax Mk 1
Hampden
Lancaster
Manchester
Master Bomber
military service conditions
Mosquito
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Oboe
Pathfinders
promotion
RAF Finningley
RAF Halton
RAF Hemswell
RAF St Athan
RAF Upper Heyford
RAF Upwood
RAF Wittering
target indicator
training
V-1
V-weapon
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/128/1278/AAbbottsC151015.2.mp3
cc3222384b5959170d324f9b72e8d83f
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Title
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Abbotts, Cyril
C Abbotts
Description
An account of the resource
Two items. The collection consists of one oral history interview and one service and release book related to Warrant Officer Cyril Abbots (b. 1924, 1583753 Royal Air Force). Cyril Abbotts volunteered for the Royal Air Force and trained as a pilot in Canada. On his return to Great Britain he flew operations as a flight engineer with 57 Squadron from RAF East Kirkby in 1945 and later converted from Lancasters to Lincolns. The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Cyril Abbot and catalogued by IBCC staff.
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.
Date
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2015-10-15
Identifier
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Abbots, C
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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CB: So today I’m with Cyril Abbott and we are at Malvern in Worcestershire and it is the 15th of October 2015 and we’re just going to talk about his time in the RAF. Cyril, could you start off by talking please about your, family early, your earliest times you recollect?
CA: I was born in 1924 in a place called Princes’ End, Tipton. I lived with father and mother, with my grandparents. My mother was one of a large family, unfortunately she died when I was six and for the next two years we were looked after by my Grandma until Dad remarried. My mother and father were, had a house built in a village Coseley, which was about two miles away but we never moved there because of my Mum’s death. But having remarried we moved as a family, mother, or I should say step-mother, and father and my sister Doris who was four years older than myself. And we moved to a house in Bradleys Lane Coseley. I went to junior schools in Princes End, Tipton and at the age of eleven I passed scholarship and entered Dudley Grammar School where I was educated for the next five, six years. I left school in ‘39 and went out to work with W and T Avery at Smethwick as a engineering apprentice. I didn’t like work so at the first opportunity I volunteered for the Air Force, for aircrew, and having had all the two days of tests at Digbeth, Birmingham, I was accepted as a recruit and sent home and told to wait until I heard from the RAF. I was a bit of a nuisance to my father and mother because every day I used to come home from work and say ‘Has the letter arrived?’ and nothing had appeared and I really caused a bit of grief. But eventually the letter arrived ordering me to report to ACRC at Lords’ Cricket Ground, London. I travelled to, down to London with a fellow from the village who was also joining up, I think it was the first time we’d ever been away from home by ourselves in the whole of our lives but we arrived at Lords’ and the cricket ground was full of recruits, you couldn’t see a blade of grass basically. But they formed us up in groups of about forty and marched us off to Seymour Hall baths where they told us to strip off and swim a hundred yards. This rather shook us I believe ‘cause having to swim without a costume, but we did this and those who could swim the hundred yards were pushed to one side of the bath, and those who couldn’t swim went to the other side. We found out later that the non-swimmers were sent off to RAF Cosford to learn to swim, if I’d have known that I would have done the same [laughs] because Cosford was within about twenty miles of home. But still, we, we were billeted in flats around St John’s Wood, waiting for postings to ITW. Eventually I was posted to 8 Wing ITW at Newquay, Cornwall where I spent the next three to four months school work. In actual fact I can remember the flight commander was a Flight Lieutenant Paine, he was an ex solicitor and the Squadron Leader I think was a man named Fabian, who was a English international footballer amateur. But, and the two PTIs was Corporal White and Corporal Beasley, one was a Londoner, a real Cockney, and they used to take us out on cross country runs. Because one day I, I decided I didn’t want to go, so we had to get changed and set off and I drifted to the back and at the nearest public toilets I disappeared into it, little realising that Corporal White was running right at the back and he caught me [laughs] and I was taken in front of the squadron commander and given three days CB, confined to barracks, but at the end of the, I think it was about twelve weeks of school work were finished and we were waiting then to, for postings and I eventually was posted to RAF Sywell for familiarisation, twelve hours in a Tiger Moth. Again, I remember the instructor was a Flight Lieutenant Bush, I think he could have owned the flying school which had been taken over by the RAF, but we did, we did about ten to twelve hours flying around in Tiger Moths to see if whether we were compatible with flying and then at the end we were posted to Heaton Park, Manchester which was a receiving centre for people waiting basically to go overseas. I mean there were literally hundreds of UT aircrew there and we used to have to attend in the morning when they would read out lists of people with the postings and you had to answer in a certain manner to signify that you’d understood the shouted instructions. Initially I’d received a posting to South Africa, Rhodesia for flying training and we went up to Blackpool to receive the inoculations required, and having received these inoculations we were sent back to Heaton Park where we found out that we weren’t going to South Africa after all. I was sent to Canada and we, we sailed from the River Clyde, Greenock, or something similar on the Queen Elizabeth, the original Queen Elizabeth one, and I think it was about three days and four nights journey which I didn’t like, I don’t, I’m not a, I don’t like sailing, I don’t like water and it was a welcome sight to go through the harbour bar at New York to get inside the docks because as we went through the bar and they closed it the ship lit up because we’d sailed in darkness over, through the Atlantic, and as soon as we entered the, the New York dock area all the lights came on the ship. I mean New York was lit up as you see it on the films, I mean we hadn’t seen lights for three years. Eventually we, we docked in Pier 91 next to the burnt-out Normandy which had been, it had gone on fire and had capsized in the dock next to us, and it was still there. But eventually we were taken off the boat and we went under the river to New Jersey to get a train to go up to Monkton, RAF Monkton in Canada. We had to pass through the customs between America and Canada, and we stopped on the American side and one or two of us shot off because we were near to a small town and got a glass of beer, and we’d got to drink this very quickly and we didn’t realise the American beer was practically frosty, it was very, very cold. But we, eventually we arrived in Monkton, and we were there for maybe a week or so before we were sent west to the flying schools and I finished up at 32 EFTS, RAF Bowden in Alberta, I mean we could see the Rockies on the horizon, as we drove from the station, Innisfail was the station, why I know that is because I was reading a book by an ex Worcestershire cricketer, Cheston, who had trained there as well, and I picked up the name Innisfail I’d forgotten, but as we drove up from the station to the aerodrome all the training planes were lined up with their tails towards us and we all thought God, we’re all going to be fighter pilots, they looked like fighter ‘planes ‘cause they were all Fairchild Cornell which was a low wing plane. We were there for a period of time, I think we got in about seventy or eighty hours, and I soloed quite quickly after about five hours and during the training I realised that I would never become a fighter pilot because I didn’t like aerobatics. I always remember being sent up to practice spins and to do this you climbed to about three or four thousand feet and then spun down, and pulled out and climbed back and did it again. But every time I went to do it I’d get practically to the point of stall, at which point I was supposed to kick in rudder to go right or left and my nerve went so I pushed the nose down and climbed another thousand feet until I finished up at about ten thousand feet before I forced myself to spin. But having done it the first time and realised I could get out of trouble it wasn’t so bad, but aerobatics I just did not like. So I made my mind up then that I would never become a fighter pilot, I’d go for twins or multi engines. Having completed the elementary training we were posted to service flying training and I was posted to a place called RAF Estevan in Saskatchewan it was right on the American border just a few miles on the Canadian side but it was more or less in the middle of the dustpan, everything was covered with dust, there was a wind at all times and it was just blowing this dust and coating everything. The dormitories had got double-glazing with a mesh screen to try to keep this dust out, but they were flying Ansons there for training and we had to have a check to see whether our leg length was sufficient to be able to apply full rudder in the event of an engine failure. Well I didn’t like the station I thought I’m going to do my best to get away from here, so when I came to do my test I put, extending my to get full rudder and I gradually slipped down in the pilots’ seat so that I couldn’t see over the top of the board, dashboard, so that I failed the test. I didn’t realise that I could have been washed out of pilot training but I was posted away from Estevan to RAF Moose Jaw at Saskatchewan to fly Tiger Moths. The Anson hadn’t got a moveable rudder pedal whereas the Oxford had, you could wind them in to suit your leg length. The Oxford had got a bad reputation for killing people. It was a very difficult aeroplane to fly and they said that if you could fly an Oxford you could fly anything. And I took to the Oxford, I soloed after about five hours again and from then on it was just train, train, train until we eventually finished, I think we did something like about a hundred and fifty hours flying, and it came, the wings, the graduation ceremony, and I believe we were presented with our wings by Air Vice-Marshal Billy Bishop who was a Canadian fighter pilot in the First World War. I believe that it was him but we had already sewn wings on our uniforms and stripes on our arms if we were becoming sergeants, but we had to parade without, without wings or stripes on. But then having graduated, we had, we were given a posting back to Halifax, to get the boat back to England. We were allowed, I think, forty eight hours to have a leave in either Quebec or Montreal on the way back. I can’t remember now whether we were in Quebec or Montreal, but we eventually got back to Halifax and boarded the French liner, Louis Pasteur, to come back and it was a terrible journey. Since we were now supposed sergeants capable of looking after ourselves on the ship some of us were posted as assistant gunners on the anti-aircraft guns which were put about ten feet above the boat deck on a little platform with a rail around it to stop you falling off. And we had an Oerlikon cannon to look after. I mean we’d never seen a firearm but we’d got a naval man as the gunner and we were just there to help, But we always said the Louis Pasteur was a flat bottomed boat because it rolled and rocked like nobody’s business and there were literally thousands on the boat, the conditions were terrible, but every morning at about twelve o’clock if I remember rightly, we had a rendezvous with a Coastal Command aircraft so that when it came time we had to close up the guns in case it wasn’t an RAF plane, but bang on the dot it would appear out of the clouds, circle round for about half an hour, and then off it would go and we’d plough on. I mean we were not escorted it was just a, a quick dash across and I must admit I saw more U boats in the sea, that on that journey, than the German’s had got, every wave was a U boat. [laugh] But eventually we arrived at Liverpool, and we disembarked and were shipped to RAF Harrogate, the Majestic Hotel we were billeted in, and there were literally thousands of pilots, bomb aimers and navigators there. We just, we just didn’t know what was going to happen to us. I mean they came round I think twice, once asking for volunteers to change to glider pilot training. I mean those that did, that accepted it, I think most probably went in at Arnhem. But I being frightened, I decided I would stay and get an aeroplane with engines. So I was there for quite some time and eventually I was sent, we had um, because we’d been in Canada, living the life of luxury, they sent us up to Whitley Bay, Newcastle under the Army to have a month toughening up, and everything was done at the double. I was given a rifle and a band to cover my sergeant’s stripes, we used to have to wear these because the instructors were corporals and privates of the commandos and they gave us a real tough time. Route marches of about twelve miles, my feet were sore, but that was completed and we came back to Harrogate. They just didn’t know what to do with us. So we, eventually I ended up at RAF Bridgenorth, under canvas, and we always said we were draining an air commodore’s farm because we were digging ditches all the time and there were, there were Australians, and other Commonwealth aircrew with us and they used to, to show how tough they were, they’d sleep out in the open without a tent, until they got wet once or twice, [laugh] but we were there most probably two or three weeks and back again to Harrogate. And then I went on airfield control at RAF Gamston, just outside Worksop, acting as traffic control watching the Wellingtons, it was an OTU unit, and we were there [indistinct] at night on flare path duty and the control hut flashing greens or reds as required with an Aldis lamp. While I was there, I became friends with one or two of the screened pilots so I managed to get a few hours in on a Wellington. At the end of the, at the end of the time Gamston was closed down and the ‘planes moved to other OTUs so I got a few hours flying with the screen people taking these aeroplanes to the stations. The funniest part was we landed at one, we had a plane which went round all the aerodromes picking up the screened crews to take them back to Gamston, a Wellington, and it was very funny we landed one control, or pulled up at the control tower and shut the engines down waiting for the people to be picked up and out trooped from the Wellington, about eighteen people and the control officer’s jaw dropped when he saw all these people coming out [laugh] but it was quite, we stood, down the Wellington hanging onto the geo, geodetic structure, it was quite funny. From Gamston, I eventually was posted, oh yeah, I think I went back to Harrogate again and there I was volunteered to do an engineers’ course at St Athan down in South Wales. There was no chance of becoming an official pilot because they hadn’t got enough aeroplanes and there was too many people. So we were volunteered to do an engineers’ course at St Athan on the Lancaster systems, which we did about six weeks just to get the fundamentals of the system. And having completed that I was posted to sixteen 54 HCU at RAF Wigsley in Lincolnshire, where I was going to get crewed up with an ex OTU pilot and crew who wanted an Engineer, so we walked in, as engineers we walked into an office where there were pilots sitting around and the first person I saw was a man who’d been on the course immediately in front of me at Moose Jaw, a flying officer, he was a Pilot Officer Coates and we made contact and starting talking, he said ‘Well I’m looking for an engineer’ I said, ‘Well I’m an engineer but I’m also a pilot’ he said ‘Do you want to come and fly with me?’ ‘Yep’, and that’s how I joined Pilot Officer Coates’ crew because we knew each other. We completed a number of hours on the, at the heavy con unit, the conversion unit, and we were posted as a crew to 57 Squadron at East Kirkby.
CB: So when was this exactly?
CA: Well I think it was in either February ’45, because I wasn’t on the squadron long enough to be able to be awarded the Bomber Command Clasp which I thought was a bit em, bit naughty of them, I can come to that later. Well we were introduced to Wing Commander Tomes who was the Squadron Commander and I think Squadron Leader Astall although I’m not sure about that name. And we were more or less sent off to go and do some practice flying which we thought we’d done enough with the heavy con unit but it wasn’t good enough for the squadron. So we did quite a few cross countries and bombing practice at Wainfleet. And one day I was, I think most likely the last one in the engineer’s office and I was about to go for tea, and as I was walking out the engineer officer shouts, ‘Cyril, what are you doing tonight?’ I said ‘I’m going to have a beer why?’ he said ‘No you’re not, you’re flying.’ He said so and so has called in, his engineer’s gone sick, so they want an engineer so you’re flying as a spare bod on Flying Officer Jack Curran, who was an Australian pilot, he was short of an engineer so I was going with him and that night we went to Luetzkendorf which was the first operation, our rear gunner had also been made a spare bod and he went as a rear gunner with another crew. But Jack, Jack Curran had been shot down about two months previously and had got back so he was, he was a bit nervous as a pilot, he gave me a bit of jitters, because once we crossed, if I remember rightly, once we crossed over the Channel and got to the other side he proceeded to weave all the time and it made a heck of a mess of my petrol consumptions. But the thing that I always remember, was having got to the target, was the different colours or shades of red that there are, or were, I’d never seen so many different shades. Of course I mean I didn’t realise what was happening I mean I was, I’d got bags and bags of window which I was pushing [unclear] down the chute like nobody’s business thinking they were saving me but they weren’t they were saving the people coming behind me. But I pushed packets of it down, I even jammed the ‘chute once I had to get a big file from out of my kit, my tool kit and try and clear it and the file went down the ‘chute as well so that if that hit anybody downstairs they would have had a headache. But eventually we got, we came back and as we neared East Kirkby, Jack had called in to ask for landing instructions and we were told to vamoose, scatter, it was either an intruder in the circuit or something but we scattered like nobody’s business heading towards Wales, and on the way, we were told to make for RAF Bruntingthorpe which we eventually reached and Jack landed the Lanc’ alright, we parked it and were taken into a room for a bit of a debrief, given something to eat and then we were taken to beds in the dorms, in the Nissen huts. And I was, I was lying there on the bed, I couldn’t get to sleep, I suppose it was the adrenalin still coursing through the veins, but I was smoking away like nobody’s business, and I woke up the man in the bed next to where I was and he sat up and he saw I was a flight sergeant, he saw my tunic on the bed, so he said ‘What’s happened?’ so I just explained that we’d been diverted there and we were talking, he was a corporal engine fitter and he looked at me and I looked at him quite intently as if we knew each other. So eventually one or other said ‘Were you ever in Canada?’ and I said ‘Yes, you were at Moose Jaw, were you at Moose Jaw?’ ‘Yes’, he’d been an Engine Fitter out on the flights at Moose Jaw and had been posted back to, from Canada and he was working, was working at Bruntingthorpe on the Wellingtons. Well eventually we were given the all clear to go back to East Kirkby and, although it was forbidden, the squadron pilots always shot up the aerodrome having taken off. So we, we took off and joined a queue of people waiting to go down the runway and ignored it which we did. The station commander went mad and by the time we got back to East Kirkby the squadron commander was waiting for us and he proceeded to tear us off a strip. ‘They were OTU pilots being taught to fly safely and you people go down and show them what not to do’ [laugh] still it was Lancaster below zero feet going at about two hundred miles an hour is something, it’s really exhilarating, but still. Um, oh yeah, a few days later we went to Pilsen as a crew, Fred Coates the pilot and the rest of the crew, I mean he’d already done two spare bods as a pilot getting the idea of what happened, and Johnny the rear gunner had been, but the, I’d been but the others hadn’t so it was all new to them, but us old hands [laugh]. Well we went to Pilsen and our navigator was a graduate and he was a very meticulous navigator, very good, but very meticulous. I mean when we were flying you’d hear his voice come over the, the intercom, ‘What speed are we supposed to be flying at?’ ‘About two hundred and twenty, why?’ he said ‘I want two hundred and twenty five, nothing else, two twenty five is the airspeed.’ So I spent minutes trying to get the, the right speed. And he’d come through, ‘What course are you steering?’ ‘Why?’ He said ‘You’re two degrees out’, oh he was a, he was a menace [laugh]. But on the way, it’s only in latter life that I’ve realised this, but it was his first trip, it was most of us second or third and he was navigating and he said ‘We’re too early, we’re going to get to target too early’ so Fred said ‘Well what do you want to do?’ So Marsh says ‘We’ll do a dog leg, turn, and he gave us a course to turn to the left, to port, and flew out for a few minutes and then to come back into the, into the stream and go, head toward the target again, we’d lose the required minutes. And like fools Fred and I did this, but during the flight we were getting, we were getting, bumped about a bit and we couldn’t understand this because there was no flak to blow us around but we’d get jumped up and down, it would last a minute and then die down and then about a few minutes later again. We couldn’t fathom out what it was, but it’s only in latter life that I’ve realised what it was, because we got to Pilsen and back okay, and then we were put on a daylight to go to Flensburg, and I mean the RAF didn’t flew, didn’t fly in formation, they just got into a gaggle and went. So we joined the bunch and the idea was to get into the middle of the stream, so you kept lifting yourself up a bit, move over and then gradually drop down and force the man underneath to move out of the way so that you were doing this all the time. And occasionally we’d get this bump and it’s only as I say in latter life that I realised that at night when we got these bumps it was the slipstream of planes in front of us, that I never, I never saw a plane during flying at night but we must have been very, very close because it showed up during this daylight. But we went to Flensburg and it was aborted we couldn’t bomb, why we were never told but I did see a Messerschmitt 262 I think was the jet fighter, something came, went through the formation like nobody’s business but we’d got Mustang fighter escort they were most probably about ten thousand feet above us, but we did see them come down and go through the formation, on the way down to the deck whether they’d, they went down to er, hit some of these two five twos taking off, two six twos, but that was quite a sight to see these little, little bits going through the, through the formation. But my war ended with that aborted raid on Flensburg. We were thinking we should be going to Berchtesgaden but all the, the higher ups of the squadron did that, they didn’t let the lower lads do it. Then after the , after the war I flew on Lincolns, 57 Squadron were given three Lincolns initially to carry out service trials on them and by this time our pilot, Fred Coates, had departed. He’d been a police constable before the war and since they wanted the police in peace time to build up again they got Class B releases, or they were allowed to take Class B release. So Fred had just married his Canadian girlfriend who’d come over here to marry and 57 Squadron was one of the squadrons that were going out on Tiger Force to the Far East but Fred said no he wasn’t going to go, he’d get his Class B which he did. And we had another pilot, a Flight Lieutenant Strickland, who was posted into us to take over the crew. He came up I think from Mildenhall, I can’t remember which group they were, but he’d been an instructor in Canada for a number of years and he was very meticulous with his flying, everything was perfect and he kept the rest of us on top line. We flew the Lincolns, we’d got three and I think Mildenhall station they’d got three, we had lots of trouble with engine failures where as Mildenhall had airframe failures, rivets popping and things like that so it was quite, it was quite stressful flying these Lincolns. I’ve got a write up.
CB: We’ll stop there just for a moment.
CA: Yeah, I’ve got a write up actually,
CB: So we’ve stopped for a comfort break, and you were talking about Lincolns, you took on Lincolns?
CA: Oh yeah.
CB: You took on Lincolns. What happened then?
CA: Well, with the Lincolns, we as I say we’d got three and I since found that there was a Flight Lieutenant, Flight Lieutenant Jones who was one of the leading lights in the flight, I can’t recall him really, but erm.
CB: This is still war time before the Japanese surrender isn’t it?
CA: It was, yeah, but it was after the European war –
CB: Yep.
CA: And it was in the time between May and August -
CB: Right.
’45. The Lincoln was, was being produced to go overseas with the Tiger Force because the Lanc’ hadn’t got the range that was required and the Lincoln was supposed to have. But it wasn’t, in our eyes, it wasn’t as good as the Lancaster, I mean we were in love with the Lanc’ whereas the Lincoln was, was something different. I fully remember on one flight, I was sitting down on the right hand side and Pete was flying and I looked out of the starboard side and looked at the wing and I could see the skin rippling and I nearly collapsed with fear because I could see the wing moving up and down, and when it lifted up, so it rippled the skin at the join between the mid-section and the wing section, and for the rest of the flight my eyes never left that section [laugh] that part, but I found out when we got down that the wings moved five feet between the bottom and top and this was due to the weight of them and the, the fuel. And it was only after then that I noticed that when the Lincoln sat on the ground the wings appeared to be drooped and they moved up during the take off period to obtain the flying attitude. But it was a frightening sight I will admit.
CB: So it was a bigger aeroplane?
CA: It was a bigger aeroplane, it was heavier, I don’t know about the bomb load. I don’t think it was any different.
CB: But they were bigger engines and could fly higher and the span was a hundred and twenty four feet?
CA: A hundred and twenty.
CB: Hundred and twenty.
CA: About a hundred and twenty feet, yeah.
CB: Now when did you get promoted to warrant officer?
CA: Two years after I graduated. You were made, when you got your wings, you were a sergeant for about nine to twelve months and then flight sergeant for a year and then you became warrant officer. I mean a lot of the ground crew, senior NCO’s didn’t like this, I mean there were us youngsters who were up to sergeants after about eighteen months and they’d been in the Air Force for years and had just made corporal. So there was a bit of resentment between the ground crew NCO’s and the aircrews. But of course I mean we were only as aircrew given stripes, or officers in case you were ever shot down and taken prisoner, you got better treatment as a NCO, but that was the only reason.
CB: OK, so fast forward again to the Lincolns, your time in the RAF finished when, 1946?
CA: 1946 November.
CB: Right, so what did you do?
CA: What did I do afterwards?
CB: After the war, after the war finished?
CA: Well, I came back and as I said previously, I’d been an apprentice with Avery’s, and my apprenticeship had been cancelled when I joined up. So I went back to Avery’s and recommenced my apprenticeship but due to my service, instead of having to do a further length of time, because I was apprenticed for about five years and I had only done about twelve months, they reduced the remaining time by about twelve months and they concluded my apprenticeship about twelve months, having served and I’d done a four year apprenticeship instead of five, and that would have been somewhere around about 1947, ‘48 when I, they transferred me into the drawing office at Avery’s and I became a draughtsman.
CB: How long did you work as a draughtsman?
CA: Well I left Avery’s in 1951 and I was employed by the Cannon Iron Foundries for a year and then I, I went to Thompson Brothers in Bilsden for about three years and finally finished at ICI Marston Excelsior in ’56.
CB: What did you do there?
CA: I was a design draughtsman there and I, I did design, design work on, I always remember my first job was designing a heat exchanger for the Folland Gnat , just a small one, I can’t remember what it was for, I believe it was for the pilot cooling system to keep him cool. But this was on heat exchange. I finished up actually on heavy fabrication work, in aluminium work, and I became a section leader. I did various jobs, I engineered a liquid ethylene storage plant for ICI organic, organic section I think, or one of the sections at Billingham where we stored surplus liquid ethylene. And we stored it in a big container like a gasometer and I, I was given a piece of ground on the side of the river and put a storage plant there. I must admit that my initial estimate of costs was way down, [laugh] I made a hell of a bloomer, I think I estimated about a hundred and fifty thousand and it finished up at about, eight hundred thousand [laugh] we had quite a, an argument, not argument, discussion why [laugh]. But then I went onto production, onto the production side of the factory, as chief planning officer on fabrications which I, I did until the work started to peter out so I went onto development work on cold rolling of noble alloys for jet engines.
CB: This is all for ICI?
CA: All, yes, it’s all under ICI’s name, we bought in a cold rolling machine from Holland and we used to roll to very, very close tolerances. Rolls Royce were trying to reduce their costs by getting in components where they didn’t really have to do any work on, and I mean the jet engines required diameters to a thou’ in tolerance and we were supposed to try to do this by rolling them, which we did eventually, I mean we bought this machine. I went out to G, GE the American counterpart of Rolls Royce. GEC?
CB: GE yeah, General Electric.
CA: And I spent a fortnight out there getting some idea of how they tackled it but I mean they’d got a different idea I mean where here we had to justify spending sixpence, there the engineer, development engineer said ‘I want a machine it costs two hundred thousand pounds’ and he was given the money and they got the machine. Whereas we were trying to do it on one machine they’d got a battery of them, about ten. I mean this is the reason why they are the world beaters. Money is no object.
CB: When did you finally retire?
CA: I retired in March ’86 having completed thirty years.
CB: OK, thank you, I’ll stop there. So we’re restarting, we’re restarting just on a flashback. So you’re back from Canada as a qualified pilot.
CA: Yeah. I should have said then that I went up to, we were asked where we wanted postings to go to for flying. I never realised that there was a flying school at Wolverhampton otherwise I would have asked, instead I got posted up to RAF Carlisle on Tiger Moths where we did about a month flying a Tiger Moth around getting used to flying in English conditions. We used to take a navigator or a bomb aimer as a passenger for them to practice map reading while we flew it. We did a lot of flying around the Lake District, we were flying over Maryport and Workington I think is the other port, on the coast there. And we, we used to go down and count the number of ships that were in the harbour and things like this, and then having to fly back over the Lake District which was very, which could be quite treacherous with the down draughts and the winds whistling over the hills. It used to bounce the Tiger Moths around like nobody’s business. But we did that for about a month and then we were posted again hoping we were going to get posted to OTUs but it never, never, I was, you asked how I felt. I felt disappointed having made my mind up I was never going to fly single engine fighters I put down for twin engines or multis. The onus was on providing crews for four engine planes. So to get there I’d got to go to an OTU and that was never going to happen. So when I was posted to the engineers’ course I accepted it and it, I was still flying, that was what I wanted to do, I wanted to fly. So that, I made the best of a bad job. I thoroughly enjoyed it I mean, I enjoyed the, being on a squadron, being a crew, being a member of a crew and we’d got a good crew. I mean our mid upper gunner was the only one who could shoot through the aerial leading to the rudders which he did time and time again, it used to cost him half a crown a time when he pierced them, I mean this was when we were doing air to air gunnery and he was firing at a drogue and he’d traverse and ‘ping’ and Andy the wireless operator would say ‘You’ve done it again’ [laugh], but um.
CB: So, how long did you keep your pilots brevet?
CA: All the time.
CB: Oh did you, throughout the war?
CA: Yes, yes we were never forced to change them. That is why I always say I was a PFE rather than a flight engineer, I was a pilot flight engineer. And the pilots that I flew with gave me the opportunity to fly, to pilot. I mean Peter who was the ex-instructor, he was always within reach of pulling me out of the seat if necessary, but Fred he used to go and wander down to the Elsan at the back and leave me in charge. I mean I was playing about one day above the clouds and I was following the, the shape of the clouds up and down and Johnny who was sitting with his turret doors open, fore and aft, and it, it started to get a bit robust, the movement of the up and down movement and the Elsan lid which was tied down with a bungee rubber broke and the contents of the Elsan came up, [laugh], oh dear, and it covered him [laugh], he didn’t speak to me for days [laugh] because he knew it was me and not Fred [laugh].
CB: How did the crew get on together socially?
CA: Very good, very good we never went anywhere unless we went as a six. I mean, we bought our beer in the mess, we bought it by the bucket and helped ourselves with dipping the glass into the bucket rather than separate. No, it was a very good crew, very good.
CB: So in those days you could buy beer in a bucket could you?
CA: In the mess.
CB: In the mess, right.
CA: In the mess yeah.
CB: OK, and as a crew you worked well together?
CA: Oh yes, yes.
CB: And er.
CA: Well Marsh, he was working, he wanted to get onto pathfinders.
CB: Marsh being?
CA: The navigator. He was a very good navigator but, Mac, the bomb aimer, he was more of, an easy come, easy go.
CB: So.
CA: That second or the first raid as a crew to Pilsen we went through the target twice because Mac he wouldn’t drop because he couldn’t line it up properly so he said ‘I’ll send you round again’ and the rest of us shouted ‘What the hell, will you pull them’ and Fred said ‘If you don’t I shall jettison’. So he says ‘Go round again!’ So we had to make our way round and come back and get it back in the stream and fly it through but on the second time he let them go.
CB: This is a daylight raid?
CA: No, this was a night raid —
CB: This was in the night. So the reason I said that is because that sounds a particularly dangerous thing to do when you can’t see anything —
CA: It was a, well this is it, I mean what with trying to get in, slip into the stream, I mean you, I never saw another Lancaster in the stream. And I mean we went through the target we were only given somewhere maybe half an hour from the start to the end of the squadron’s time over the target so I mean God knows how close we were, but we were very close when we were getting buffeted by slipstream. But I mean a, when Marsh sent us on a dog leg when we turned out of the stream and then had to come back and join it again. We didn’t realise the stupidity of it, but Marsh being Marsh he’d got to have it down on his chart.
CB: Why would it have mattered if you had arrived early?
CA: Well a, the target may not have been indicated, or they were down below marking it, so you, I mean er.
CB: You could have bombed your own people —
CA: You could have bombed them, yeah —
CB: Right OK.
CA: And since the Lancaster was always the top flight, I mean it was Lancasters, Halifaxes, Stirlings.
CB: Right, there’s a ranking.
CA: So.
CB: And how did the crew feel, and you feel, about what you were doing as bombers?
CA: I don’t think we thought about it.
CB: OK.
CA: I don’t think we thought about it. I mean the first one — we had been bombed at home in 1940. We’d had a landmine dropped within about a hundred yards of home and our house is most probably still standing with the back, back wall bulged where the roof lifted and the walls started to move and it dropped down and it held. So I wanted to do something back but having that I don’t think you, we never talked about whether there was a right or wrong, it was a job.
CB: My wife was born in a bombing raid in Birmingham.
CA: Eh hum.
CB: What about LMF, did you know anything about that, or experience.
CA: We knew of it.
CB: Yes.
CA: We knew of it but we never met anyone who was accused of it or anything like that. But we didn’t like the idea because it wasn’t nice when you were over there. A funny tale, we had a man on the squadron, he was a dark, a Negro, and he was as black as the ace of spades, colour. And he’d got perfectly white teeth and he was known as twenty three fifty nine, that was his nickname, because twenty three fifty nine is the darkest part of the night, or supposed to be, a minute before midnight. And he was a rear gunner and when he was in his turret at night and you walked past it all you could see was these white teeth. It was really funny, but he was a good lad.
CB: What about other aspects of the work? When you boarded the aircraft what did you have with you to eat or drink?
CA: I think the only thing I can remember is boiled sweets. I mean I can’t ever remember fruit, or anything like that. I don’t think we ever took, I never took a drink at all. I mean I can tell the tale where, I mean, we used, sometimes to remember to take a bottle to use and one day Fred had forgotten his, the pilot, and he was in, he was in dire trouble. So he said ‘I’ve got to have something, I’ve got to have something’ so I was scooting round trying to, what the hell can he have? And I went and took the cover off the G George instrument, gyro, which was a pan of about eight or nine inch diameter and about three or four inches deep held on with four screws. So I took this off and gave him this to use, which he used. So he used it and said ‘Here get rid of it’ so I said ‘How?’ he says ‘Throw it out the window’ so I pulled my sliding window back —
CB: [laugh] —
CA: and threw it out, threw the contents. Of course, I mean as soon as the contents went out the slipstream took it all the way down the canopy, the Perspex, and we, I couldn’t see out of that side all the way back, and I also lost the G cover [laugh] which cost me five shillings and a telling off from the engineer officer. How, why was the G cover uncovered. ‘I can’t remember’ [laugh].
CB: Now what about the ground crew because you relied on them so, what was the relationship with them?
CA: Very good, other than the first time I went, we joined the squadron, and I don’t know whether I ought to say this, can I, can I not get up?
CB: Um.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Cyril Abbotts
Description
An account of the resource
Cyril Abbotts volunteered for the Royal Air Force while he was an engineering apprentice with W T Avery at Smethwick. After his reception at Lord’s Cricket Ground and initial training,he trained as a pilot at RAF Bowden and Moose Jaw in Canada. On his return to Great Britain, he spent some time in holding units, before being posted to retrain as a flight engineer at RAF St Athan. He flew operations with 57 Squadron from RAF East Kirkby in 1945 and later converted from Lancasters to Lincolns. Post-war he completed his apprenticeship, becoming a draughtsman for various companies including ICI. He retired after 30 years of service with them.
Creator
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Chris Brockbank
Date
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2015-10-15
Contributor
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Dawn Studd
Format
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01:18:53 audio recording
Language
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eng
Identifier
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AAbbottsC151015
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Spatial Coverage
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Canada
Saskatchewan--Moose Jaw
England--London
England--Lincolnshire
England--Yorkshire
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
Great Britain
Germany
Wales
Saskatchewan
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
1654 HCU
57 Squadron
African heritage
air gunner
aircrew
Anson
bomb aimer
bombing
Cornell
crewing up
demobilisation
fear
flight engineer
Flying Training School
Heavy Conversion Unit
Initial Training Wing
Lancaster
Lincoln
Me 262
military discipline
military living conditions
navigator
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
P-51
physical training
pilot
promotion
RAF Bridgnorth
RAF Bruntingthorpe
RAF Carlisle
RAF East Kirkby
RAF Gamston
RAF Heaton Park
RAF St Athan
RAF Sywell
RAF Wigsley
RCAF Bowden
RCAF Estevan
recruitment
sanitation
Tiger force
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
Window
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/88/1931/LYoungJ1569980v1.1.pdf
fb760915619d3e45c356c32067e67b27
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Young, John
J Young
Description
An account of the resource
13 items. The collection consists of an oral history interview with Sergeant John Young (1569980, Royal Canadian Air Force), his logbook and 11 photographs of aircrew groups and Halifax aircraft. John Young was a flight engineer on 432 Squadron based at RAF East Moor, part of 6 Group. The collection shows a number of aircrew groups which include him as well as ground and air shots of his Halifax Mk 3 with Ferdinand II nose art.
The collection was donated by John Young and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-10-02
Identifier
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Young, J
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.
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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John Youngs’ flying log book for navigators, air bombers, air gunners and flight engineers
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
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IBCC Digital Archive
Description
An account of the resource
Royal Air Force flying log book for Sergeant John Young, flight engineer, covering the period 28 June 1944 to 6 January 1945, detailing training, and operations flown. He was stationed at RAF St Athan, RAF Eastmoor. Aircraft flown in were the Halifax III, V & VII. He flew 30 operations, 13 night time and 17 daylight with 432 Squadron. Targets were le Havre, Dortmund, Wanne-Eickel, Osnabruck, Kiel, Boulogne, Calais, Bottrop, Stekrade-Holten, Duisberg, Essen, Homberg, Cologne, Hannover, Oberhausen, Dusseldorf, Bochum, Gelsenkirchen, Julich, Munster, Opladen, Troisdorf, Hanau, Magdeberg. His pilot on operations was Pilot Officer Stedman. The log book has a photo after the last operation which shows seven aircrew under an aircraft. Captioned ‘Back Row: L to R: Self; ‘Cam’ (Mid Upper); Earl Fox (Bomb Aimer); Lloyd Gapes (Navigator) Front Row: L to R: ‘Buzz’ (Tail Gunner); J Hartley) W/Op; Les Steadman (Pilot)’.
Creator
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Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Contributor
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Mike Connock
Format
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One booklet
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Text. Log book and record book
Identifier
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LYoungJ1569980v1
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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France
Great Britain
Germany
Wales
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Atlantic Ocean--English Channel
England--Yorkshire
France--Boulogne-sur-Mer
France--Calais
France--Le Havre
Germany--Bochum
Germany--Bottrop
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Essen
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
Germany--Hanau
Germany--Hannover
Germany--Homburg (Saarland)
Germany--Jülich
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Leverkusen
Germany--Magdeburg
Germany--Troisdorf
Germany--Wanne-Eickel
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
Germany--Osnabrück
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Münster in Westfalen
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1945
1944-09-09
1944-09-10
1944-09-11
1944-09-12
1944-09-13
1944-09-15
1944-09-16
1944-09-17
1944-09-25
1944-09-26
1944-09-27
1944-09-28
1944-09-30
1944-10-14
1944-10-15
1944-10-21
1944-10-23
1944-10-24
1944-10-25
1944-10-28
1944-10-30
1944-10-31
1944-11-01
1944-11-02
1944-11-03
1944-11-04
1944-11-05
1944-11-06
1944-11-16
1944-11-18
1944-12-17
1944-12-18
1944-12-28
1944-12-29
1944-12-30
1944-12-31
1945-01-06
1945-01-07
1945-01-16
1945-01-17
1664 HCU
432 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
flight engineer
Halifax
Halifax Mk 3
Halifax Mk 5
Halifax Mk 7
Heavy Conversion Unit
RAF Dishforth
RAF East Moor
RAF St Athan
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/88/1932/PYoungJ1728.2.jpg
ca14344a1eccb212189a907b8ef15c9d
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/88/1932/AYoungJ170630.1.mp3
313a939331ccee9e37b4e29ffc166265
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
Young, John
J Young
Description
An account of the resource
13 items. The collection consists of an oral history interview with Sergeant John Young (1569980, Royal Canadian Air Force), his logbook and 11 photographs of aircrew groups and Halifax aircraft. John Young was a flight engineer on 432 Squadron based at RAF East Moor, part of 6 Group. The collection shows a number of aircrew groups which include him as well as ground and air shots of his Halifax Mk 3 with Ferdinand II nose art.
The collection was donated by John Young 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
2015-10-02
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Young, J
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. 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.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
JS: Ok. This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Jim Sheach. The interviewee is John Young. The interview is taking place at Mr Young’s home in North Berwick, East Lothian on the 30th of June 2017. John, could you tell me a little about your life before you joined the RAF?
JY: Yes. Well, before I joined the RAF I was, I was working on the railway as a, as a locomotive fireman. That’s in the days of the steam trains. And before that I was at school. And, well, all through the business of the war I was a schoolboy [pause] But do you want to go further back or is there no point?
JS: No. That’s fine. So where did you live then?
JY: Well I lived here in North Berwick. In — I lived up in the other end of town in North Berwick. In the council houses. And I left, I left school when I was sixteen and I went [pause] I went to work for the local electrician. A builder — electrician. Well that was until all his men were called up. So, that left the big boss, myself and the typist [laughs] So, that being not very good I decided to have a go at the railway. So, I went and I joined the railway and went as a cleaner. Just wiping with things which, in those days, it wasn’t very much. And from a cleaner you automatically were graduated to a fireman and from fireman to driver. Those were the steps you made and I stayed in the force, in the railway doing a bit of cleaning and a large amount of firing until my, until I volunteered for the air force at seventeen and a quarter. And then they shoved me off. Said, ‘Well go home. We’ll call you.’ And so, at eighteen and a quarter I got the first, first notification — ‘Please report to St John’s Wood.’ So, that’s when I went. I was there for about four weeks. Four weeks or six weeks. I can’t remember. And then I was posted down to Newquay, Cornwall. This was in April ’43. April ’43. And I was down in Newquay for three months. And then I was posted to the Isle of Sheppey in Eastchurch — no. Is it Sheppey? The Isle of Sheppey in the Thames Estuary? Yes.
JS: Yeah.
JY: Off Kent coast. And I was there for about a month just doing jack all really. I was waiting for a posting which was then given to me and I went up to a bomb dump in [pause] oh, in Lincolnshire. And I was there for about, oh, a month or two. And — and from there I was posted back to Eastchurch and I was asked what — what I wanted to do. So I said I’d prefer to be a flight engineer or a wireless op. So they said, ‘Fine.’ So, they, they sent me to — I was next posted to an ITW in Durham county. I forget the name of the place. And I was there for six weeks and then I was posted down to St Athan’s in South Wales where I was six months there learning the ins and outs of various aircraft. But, in point of view, we would, we were told that we would be either flying in Lancasters or Halifaxes and make your now choice now. Make your choice anyway. So, I preferred Halifaxes. So, on, on our now graduation we were, we were assigned to our different groups which required engineers. Now, the thing is the Canadian Air Force were not training engineers as such. They had a few but there wasn’t many. Now, we all got separated off and I was posted up to Dishforth which was a Heavy Conversion Unit and it was there I was, I was put in a hall. I was put in a, well a big — big hall like place and there were, were as many pilots as there were, as there were engineers. And the officer said, ‘Well there you are. Get mixed up. Take who you fancy as your pilot.’ [laughs] And then they comes and they were given the same chance. So, he says, ‘No one’s going to help you.’ So, he said, ‘Goodbye.’ [unclear] So, we flooded around and we met and ultimately, I picked this little sergeant. Well, little — he was the same height as me but he was fair haired and his name was Leslie Steadman. And I said — he said, as I remember right, he came up to me. He said, ‘Are you being crewed up with anyone?’ I said, ‘No. As a matter of fact I haven’t started.’ He said, ‘Well. I’m Les Steadman.’ He said, ‘I kind of likes the looks of you,’ [laughs] — looks. Anyway, he said, ‘Anyway,’ he says, ‘How are you on hydraulics?’ I said, ‘Not bad.’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘Thank God for that because I don’t know the first thing about them.’ And he said — there was something else. But anyway, he said, ‘The rest of my crew,’ he said, ‘Are – well they are skulking around somewhere but,’ he said, ‘I’ll get them and I’ll introduce you to them.’ And I said, ‘Well, before you do,’ I said, ‘Where have you come from? I mean air force wise.’ ‘Oh,’ he says, ‘Up in the Moray Firth,’ he said. ‘Flying Whitleys.’ ‘Oh God’ [laughs] I says, ‘You’ll be glad to get off them.’ [laughs]. So, he said, ultimately, we came to — we, we talked about the technicalities of the air frames and that and he says, ‘Well it seems to me you’re going to be a blessing in disguise,’ he says. So, he says, ‘I’ll tell you what. After tea I’ll get the crew.’ And we [rattling of packet] we [pause] that’s them. Well, there’s a bigger one. Aye. There’s Flying Officer Fox. He’s the bomb aimer. He’s the first one. And there’s flying officer, oh no, he’s the, Gates is the navigator. Flying Officer Fox is the bomb aimer. And Warrant Officer Hartley is the wireless operator and Sergeant Campbell is the mid upper gunner and Sergeant Busby is the rear gunner. And there’s myself. So, so that was my introduction. So, we all had our photograph taken by the company, the squadron photographer. And what’s [pause] right, well Sergeant Steadman, Flying Officer Gates, Flying Officer Fox were all from Ontario. Warrant Officer Hartley, he was from British Columbia and he was from, he comes from the back woods literally. But he was English. He was taken out to Canada when he was two years old. Sergeant Campbell. He was, he was the oldest one and he was, he was Southern Irish and was — had gone out as a young man to Canada. And Busby — he was, oh, he was a farmer from Saskatchewan. And Young me was a locomotive fireman. So, so that was that. So we, we all got our [unclear]. Gradually, we, we sort of knit together. Well I was, I knitted in to the rest of them because the rest of them were a crew. And then — well there was a series of— by the, the squadron [pause] damn it. [pause] The pilot and myself — we were taken to our — an aircraft. A spare aircraft. And the OC, the flight and the screen engineer who was a fellow who had done a tour of ops and was experienced would come with us. So, the pair of us would go with experienced people and we would go down in an aircraft and the logbook tells me we went. We had a wing commander and a squadron leader, a flight lieutenant and one or two POs were taking turns. And gradually the screened engineer showed me what I was supposed to do. And one of the things was you were supposed to get the engines started. You and the pilot. And behind the pilot was a little cubbyhole with a mass of instruments. They were all engine, engine-type instruments. You know, oil pressure, fuel pressure. Air pressure. Oxygen. Cylinder head temperature. Things like that. And you were given a log sheet and you had to fill this out every twenty minutes of flying time and — it was either twenty minutes or half an hour. And gradually we, well, we, we satisfied him, the screened fellas that we knew enough that we were sure that we were, we were prepared to be loosed off on our own. And, well, it — after that it was a case of bombing exercises, fighter affiliation exercises with a Spitfire diving on the camera guns for the gunners. And, well, this we had. And my circuits and landings, circuits and landings and circuits until you were bloody well fed up with them [laughs] but that made the pilot, he got it. And the engineer — he kept it, he got it. Well, towards the end of our Conversion Unit they said we’ll go on a couple of ops and see what it is. So, he said, ‘But it will be safe for you. You leave the airfield and you’ll fly out over the North Sea and you’ll go towards Holland and at a point twenty miles off the coast you’ll turn and come back.’ He said, ‘Just get the learning.’
JS: Yeah.
JY: So, we had a couple of those. A couple of those are things we did and then we got posted. No. [pause] Then we got posted to the squadron. Yes. And we got posted to the squadron and we were — that was —the picture there was taken at the squadron. That was there. And we were — went through the same [presence?] again of having a screened pilot and engineer go up with two of us. And they said well you’re good. We were sent on various test runs. Tests. Mostly circling the whole island, you know. The whole. That was cross country’s. And then we got the first operation and the first operation was, I think [pause] a radar bullseye. That’s what they called this photographic. Oh yeah. Le Havre. Le Havre we went to twice. Dortmund [unclear] Osnabruck. These are all Ruhr targets. And Kiel was our first, first night fighter, night flight and I’m telling you they flung everything at us that they had. It just seemed we were going through flak and then there was, as we were going to come on it he said, ‘Watch it Les, ‘he said, ‘A night fighter. Prepare to corkscrew port.’ And he said, ‘Corkscrew port. Corkscrew port. Go.’ And a corkscrew [unclear] was when they were fling it around and fling it down, the aeroplane and it rolls at the bottom and comes up on the other side. Well that’s a corkscrew. And Christ [laughs] I thought, Oh Jesus. And we, we flew over the target area, dropped the bombs and out in to the other side and then you’d have more fighters come for you. Course the fighters wouldn’t come where the flak was. They cut you before and after. And, anyway, we, and that was, that was the point there, the point when we started the flight they said you travel at one thousand feet over the, over the sea until you get to the Danish coast and then climb to get to your bombing height over here. Well, he said. Well he said, the idea about this was so that the German radar can’t dip down below a thousand feet. So ,there’s only one thing about it. The pilots get a bit twitchy about that ‘cause if an engine cuts on you you’re down in the sea before you can say Jack Robinson and anyway that’s how it started off. The Danish coast — climbed up. We got attacked by this night fighter and luckily he didn’t — he waited too long to press the button but allowing the gunner — gave him the correction and we made the bombing height, came around and down and I thought phew and come along, come back over the North Sea and the [fighter?], what I saw of it, I thought the first time, the first time I go on a night sweep I’m going to get up outside and I’m going go out on the first bus that comes for North Berwick [laughs] So, but anyway we we had several targets at Calais for ops. For [turning pages] Yes. Yes, we had, we had [pause] what do you call them? Buzz bomb sites and they was [pause — pages turning] There was, the next thing there was Duisburg. And Duisburg — that’s another Ruhr target. And Essen. Homburg. Cologne. Hanover. Cologne again. That’s a series of targets. Oberhausen. Duseldorf. Bochum. Gelsenkirchen. Hurlach. Munster and Opladen. Tresdorf. Cologne, Duisburg. Hanover, Magdeburg. And that completes our thirty. Thirty trips. And that’s before we go up in the [pause]
JS: That’s great. How did you — you said you fitted in with the rest of your crew?
JY: Yeah. Yeah.
JS: Because they were already a crew together.
JY: Yeah.
JS: How were they as a crew?
JY: Oh. Well these two stuck together more or less, you know. Being officers. And the sergeant and the warrant officer and the rest of us were [pause]] I forget who [pause] — I was, I was billeted in a room with four guys. There was a Jewish gunner on the far end of the room and another fella. I don’t know who he was. He was in another crew. So was the Jewish chap. And there was myself and the wireless op with the other two. And the two gunners were in another room. And the sergeant — I don’t know where he was. I don’t know. I don’t know. And of course, they were in the officer’s mess, you know. So, I found it — they were very easy to get along with, you know. And I don’t know with the officers. I — incidentally, I said, after I came out of the air force I went back to the railway. I stuck it for about ten months and then I said, ‘I don’t like this. My hands are getting dirty,’ [laughs] so, I signed up for another five years. So I signed. This time I chose the signals and I I I was [pause] I passed that alright but anyway they had all goofed off to Canada, you see, by that time. And the wireless op and myself — we corresponded. Well, now and again. And the at the end of my five years I came out and I worked for the [paused] oh I worked for the radar. For the [pause] radar. Oh Jesus. Well, it was a little, it was a little and I was working on this. Anyway, the four of us worked on this mobile radar at various army units and we used to — and we had a civilian driver. We were civvies then and we’d go around and we’d pick the things up and hoist the balloon and track it. Until one day Jimmy Oliver, one of the blokes, he says, ‘Here,’ he says, ‘Look at this Jock.’ And I said, ‘What is it?’ He says, ‘They want blokes to build a dam out in BC.’ A dam. ‘Yes. Look at the money they’re getting.’ I said, ‘What do you say we try for it?’ ‘Right. You’re on.’ So, it took us about six months to get, to get permission to land and we went across in, on an old Greek tub. Or a boat. And it was, it was, it landed at — oh what’s the name of the place? In Quebec. Oh yeah — Quebec City. And from there we we were just shunted off and the immigration people took our particulars and what trades we were and, by the way, said, ‘How much money do you have?’ ‘Two hundred dollars.’ He said, ‘That’s not going to last you for very long.’ [laughs] So, we split up and Jim and I we went to Montreal. This would be 1954 and we were six weeks. Six weeks. No. Not exactly. What would that be? It was four weeks before we and we were living in a rooming house in Montreal and there was about ten blokes in it. And there was a couple of Swiss guys, and a French guy and two or three Brits. And anyway, we were [pause] Jesus — oh God. [pause] Anyway, we went around the rounds of the RCA, Canadian Marconi and GE. GE and places like that. And, ‘Don’t call us. We’ll call you.’ Fair enough. So we — and suddenly there was a phone call. [unclear] We went to this place not far from our digs. A great big factory. And it was Northern Electric. So, we thought, Northern Electric, it sounds all right. And we went around and we were real, we were real upbeat you know, you don’t have any [unclear] get us down. [unclear] the guy says, ‘It depends what you do,’ he says, ‘What do you do?’ I says, ‘Well we’re radar. Radar and radio.’ ‘Well,’ he says, ‘That sounds interesting,’ he says, ‘But just a minute,’ he says, ‘I’m only a personnel,’ he says, ‘I wouldn’t know what you’re talking about.’ He says, ‘I’ll get Mr Young [laughs] down from the sixth floor and he’ll —’ So Mr Young came down along with another chaps and he was a fistful of pencils and a bundle of paper. ‘Right.’ He says, ‘Jim. You go with that fella to that room and you, you — my namesake,’ he says, ‘Come into this room.’ He says, ‘Alright. He says, what’s [Holmes?] law?’ [laughs] I couldn’t tell him. I was floored. I was [laughs] ‘Alright,’ he says, ‘Forget it.’ He says, ‘Draw me a one valve amplifier.’ Oh [chchchch] Right. Now, he says, ‘Draw me a forward part of a super head receiver. ‘ So, I did that. I said, ‘Alright?’ He says, well various other things. ‘Well’ he says, ‘I find you alright,’ he says, ‘When can you start work?’ ‘Tomorrow?’ [laughs] He says, ‘No. Monday. Monday,’ he says. Monday. So, we were there about oh I don’t know about four or five months and we got taken into the bowling team. You know this pin. Bowling pin. Oh, they were good to us, you know. And anyway another phone call comes from Canadian Marconi. So, he said, ‘Are you guys still interested in us?’ ‘Well, that depends what you pay.’ You know. ‘Oh,’ he says, ‘Well how much are you earning just now?’ We said, ‘Fifty five dollars a week.’ ‘Oh God,’ he says, ‘We can pay more than that,’ he says. So, he says, ‘Get yourselves up,’ to some district of Montreal, he says, ‘And bring your buddy.’ So, we said, ‘Right,’ so the pair of us scoot up there and well, to cut it short, he says, ‘Do you have briefcase by the way?’ ‘Briefcase?’ [laughs] ‘No. I’ve never had a briefcase in my life.’ And he says, ‘Well take my tip. Invest in one.’ He says, ‘Here’s two hundred dollars,’ he says, ‘That should get you a briefcase and the price of a flying ticket from Montreal to St John’s Newfoundland.’ Newfoundland. Oh Jeez. And he says, ‘That’s where one of our sites is.’ He says we will have, once you have a three months course at St Johns, at the company buildings, you know and he says then you’ll be posted off to various parts, you see. And in the meantime, we met up with this other bloke. He was a Londoner. So that was, that was a Londoner, a Geordie — that was Jim Oliver, the guy that came out with me and myself. And, well the Londoner went to — where was it he went? He went to Goose Bay up in Labrador and I went to the other end of the island at Stephenville and Jim went to North Bay. Went to North Bay. And that was still on the island. I forgot the name of the place. Ans anyway, we were all split up and we were, while we was there I was, when I was on this course at St Marie de Beauce in Quebec and I got into — we used to, when dinner time came the three of us would plump ourselves at a table and the waitress would come up. The waitress. We were billeted in the officer’s mess you see. So we were — ‘Letter for you,’ there, ‘letter for you’ there from the mail. So we were reading our letters and finally three women came up to the table and says to us, ‘You know, we’re getting a bit sick and tired of you guys.’ Yeah. ‘You’ve not come and introduced yourselves so we’re coming to introduce ourselves.’ Well one was a schoolteacher. One was an ASO [unclear] which was an adjutant of this radar, this small radar establishment and one was a nursing sister. And — well we all got talking together and gradually the school teacher and I became very very [pause] close. And eventually we married, you know after I was [unclear] I was married — I married her and we’ve got — then I was she was, she was posted. Well, she was at this station and that’s where she taught and I was sent down to Stephenville. And there come a time when I went over. I went over and [pause] Rhoda. Rhoda was her name. Rhoda Stewart. ‘How about coming down to see my parents?’ So, ‘Ok. Sure.’ So the upshot was we went to Halifax because they were down in lower Nova Scotia and we went up to Halifax and I bought her a ring there for her finger. So, this was after months, you know. And so, we was, we were married eventually and then we split again and when Easter time she came over to Newfoundland to be beside me. And we had a big trailer parked in a trailer park and there we started our married life. And we, we started our married life. And in the meantime I had written away to Atomic Energy in Ontario and because Newfoundland was a nice place but, you know, it’s kind of rough and ready. And so I wrote and after six months I got a letter saying, in effect — come on. You’re hired. You know. After that. That was after they sent [pause] oh no they sent a message to Liverpool CID and the CID sent a searcher up to North Berwick and the guys who, and Ben Miller, who was Jan’s first husband, he was a post office engineer and it was a time of the [golf at Govan?] and that’s where — he was up a pole, you know, screwing things around and this guy in civvies and a trilby hat says, ‘Are you Mr Miller. He said, ‘Aye. Who wants to know?’ You know. He says, ‘Oh,’ he says, ‘I’ll introduce myself. I’m Detective Constable [unclear]. Do you know a Jim Young?’ and he said, ‘Christ’ — what have I done now? ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘Just a minute. I’m coming down.’ And he says, ‘Aye I know him.’ ‘Well what’s he like?’ He said, so, he explained who he was. He was from the Liverpool CID who had a message from the RCMP who were, who were checking up on me. He says, ‘He’s applied for a job with Canadian Atomic Energy.’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘Jeez,’ he says, ‘That’s interesting,’ he says, ‘Well,’ he says, ‘I know him very well. He was best man at my wedding.’ And he said they jawed about a bit. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘Fine, fine. Alright. So long as you’re satisfied with him that’s alright. Fair enough.’ Shake hands. And I got, it was after that I got ok’d. So, we packed all our gear in a train and chugged off. Away to Montreal from Nova Scotia and then swapped trains and got on the Trans Pacific one to get to a place called Deep River Ontario. That’s where they had the town site for the staff to live in and they said there’ll be a house ready for you. Well a house. It was actually, it was a shack. Well it was wooden, you know. It was two bedrooms, a bathroom, a kitchen and a living room. So, and anyway Rhoda came with a dog. A dog. I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you. He was a poodle. A poodle. A French poodle. Anyway, it was a medium sized one and he was, he was a good dog. But [pause] so, I spent about twenty eight years of my life with Atomic Energy and then I retired from there and stayed in Deep River. And by this time my wife had gone into hospital with a complaint which I didn’t know at the time but it was multiple sclerosis and she — it wasn’t long before I knew about it and gradually it forced her into a wheelchair. And as it was her brain remained absolutely spot on and she could speak but the rest of herself she was absolutely immobile. And she was like that in a hospital in Toronto for, let me see, eight years. And I got a transfer from the research establishment up in Deep River, up in the pines down to Toronto which was their, well it was a [unclear] it’s a stuff where they build. Build machines. Refuelling machines for reactors.
JS: Yeah.
JY: And they had three up on the shores of Lake Huron which we used to go up to. But anyway, but anyway, Rhoda eventually died in ‘83 and after that I wasn’t interested in Toronto as such so I applied to my former branch head, you know. So I said, ‘Any chance you can get me back to it?’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ’No.’ he says, but,’ he says, ‘I know another branch head who is willing to take you.’ So, I said ok. So, I got all my stuff bundled into my car and drove up to the, to the [pause] Christ. I can’t. Drove up to the point see. And I got in no problem. Turns up and I got a house. I got a three bedroomed house [laughs] just myself. And shower, so and so, kitchen, bathroom, living room and in the town area and it was, it was just a residential hacked out of the bush and I stuck it there until ‘94. ‘95. No ‘93. And I came, my father was getting on so I came across here and I fell in with Jan and we were married and [pause] where was I? My mum and dad, they — dad died in 1988. I had to come across to go to his funeral. So I went back and I went. While I was across at [pause] I forget — for Jan. And she was moving house and by this time her husband was dead. In ‘91. ‘91. And he was, well he was ‘91 and he was, he was sixty five and shortly thereafter we were married and we were, we had a house down there. Down the Forth Street. And then we came up and we got this one and I’ve been here since ‘2004.
JY: Yeah.
JY: 2004.
JS: Yeah. That’s great. Can I, can I just take you back a wee bit to something interesting you said earlier? You said that when you were in the air force you got the choice what would like to fly in? Would you like to fly in Lancasters or Halifax.
JY: Yeah.
JS: Why did you choose the Halifax? Was it — it was the choice you had.
JY: Yes. It was a choice. We had to. They split us. The course was — basically it wasn’t, it was before that as I remember it because each aircraft was totally different so you either went the Lanc route or the Halifax route. So, I chose the Halifax. Because we went [laughs] we went, they dressed us up in full flying gear and stuffed in a Lanc. Outside. And it was a sunny day and it was beaming. Christ. And I had a look. I said, ‘By Jeez,’ I said, ‘If I have to get out of this thing in a full suit and in a hurry there’s no way I’m going to get to a forward escape hatch packed in the back. Oh no. And the Halifax was different. You go straight up above and you had to deek around the mid upper turret but the rest of the fact was a straight run and up to the escape hatch. There’ s a door and — or you could go in the pilot’s get out, [laughs] put your foot on the pilots knee [laughs] and get out if he hadn’t already gone. And the bomb aimers they had a hatch in the floor. That was for three guys. Well, that’s why we had to choose the different — ‘cause the fuel systems, the hydraulics and all these wiring systems — they were all different. Just totally different. And you had to. Is there anything else.
JS: No. As a Bomber Command veteran how do you think you were treated after the war?
JY: It’s hard to say. I was, as far as the war was, I was thankful to get through a tour of ops, you know. And I think we were just, we were just so damned glad to get out of the air force, you know and shove it behind us. Come to think of it they didn’t do to much for us except giving you some money at the end. Demob money. And the rest of it — you were, ‘Alright. Get outside and get yourself a job.’ You know. Aye. No, I didn’t think too much about it because I already had a job to go to and I floated from one job to another.
JS: Yeah.
JY: But some of the others I’ve since read about, you know, over the years they had a hard time. A real hard time. And I’m fortunate. I never went the alcy way, you know. I never was much of a drinker. So. Yeah [pause] No.
JS: That’s great. That’s been really brilliant.
JY: What?
JS: That’s been really, really good. Thank you very much.
JY: You’re welcome.
JS: I’ll just stop this.
JY: Yeah.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with John Young
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
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-06-30
Format
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01:04:49 audio recording
Language
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eng
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AYoungJ170630, PYoungJ1728
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
After John volunteered for the Royal Air Force, he reported to St John’s Wood before being posted to Newquay in April 1943. He was sent to RAF Eastchurch on the Isle of Sheppey with a short time in Lincolnshire. He chose to be a flight engineer or wireless operator. John was posted to an Initial Training Wing in Durham, followed by RAF St Athan, learning about different aircraft. He chose Halifaxes over Lancasters. John was posted to the Heavy Conversion Unit, RAF Dishforth, where he crewed up and learned his role as a flight engineer. He was posted to 432 Squadron where they did various test runs before completing 30 operations, many of which were to the Ruhr Valley.
John returned briefly to his former job before signing up for another five years in Signals. He then emigrated to Canada before eventually returning to Scotland.
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Kent
England--Newquay
England--Yorkshire
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
Germany
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Sally Coulter
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
James Sheach
432 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
crewing up
flight engineer
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
RAF Dishforth
RAF East Moor
RAF Eastchurch
RAF St Athan
training
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/105/2223/PAmbroseBG1618.2.jpg
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/105/2223/AAmbroseBG160629.1.mp3
1a62c9696c9bb6097db0beeb806bb242
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
Ambrose, Basil
B G Ambrose
Basil G Ambrose
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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Date
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2016-06-29
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18 items. The collection consists of an oral history interview with Basil George Ambrose (1923 – 2016, 1604870 Royal Air Force), his log book, a page from his service book and 15 photographs. Basil Ambrose was a flight engineer flying Lancasters with 467 Squadron Royal Australian Air Force from RAF Waddington between September 1944 and March 1945 and with 617 Squadron from RAF Woodhall Spa.
The collection was been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Basil Ambrose and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
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Ambrose, BG
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IBCC Digital Archive
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6 March 1942: Joined RAF as a trainee turner
Posted to RAF Sealand, qualified turner
Posted to RAF St Athan, Flight Engineer training
5 July – 8 September 1944: RAF Swinderby, 1660 HBCU, flying Stirling aircraft
8 September 1944: Promoted to Sergeant
22 – 26 September 1944: RAF Syerston, Lancaster Finishing School, flying Lancaster aircraft
29 September 1944 – 23 March 1945: RAF Waddington, 467 (RAAF) Squadron, flying Lancaster aircraft
Commissioned, promoted to Pilot Officer
November 1945 Promoted to Flying Officer
22 April 1945 – 9 January 1946: RAF Woodhall Spa, 617 Squadron, flying Lancaster aircraft
11 January 1946 – 15 April 1946: Detached with 617 Sqn to Digri, India Command
28 May – 1 July 1946: 617 Squadron RAF Binbrook
October 1946: 1604870 Flying Officer B.G. Ambrose released from Service
<p>Basil George Ambrose was born on 24<sup>th</sup> June 1923 in Derby Street, Reading, the youngest of five children. He attended Wilson Road School near Reading’s football Ground. In 1937, when he was just 14 years old, he left school and took up employment as an apprentice turner at the Pulsometer. He was paid five shillings a week, half of which he had to give back to pay for his indenture training.</p>
<p>Although engineering was a reserve occupation, on 6<sup>th</sup> March 1942, he was able to join the RAF as a trainee turner. On completion of training, he passed out as a Leading Aircraftsman and was posted to RAF Sealand. Whilst there, he applied, and was accepted, for Flight Engineer training at St Athan.</p>
<p>His first ever flight was memorable in that he took the opportunity to join an old family friend (a test pilot at St Athan) who was taking a Beaufighter up for an air test. While airbourne over the Bristol Channel he witnessed a long line of merchant ships, all nose to tail as far as the eye could see, the ships were readying for the for the D Day landings.</p>
<p>On 7the June 1944, he completed his Flight Engineer training and joined the HBCU at RAF Swinderby, before moving on to the Lancaster Finishing School at RAF Syerston. In September 1944, Sergeant Ambrose and his crew, now fully trained, joined 467 Squadron (RAAF) at RAF Waddington. </p>
<p>On just his second operational flight, tasked with destroying enemy field guns in Holland, his aircraft had to drop below the cloud base at just 4000 feet. Almost immediately, the aircraft alongside them was hit by ack-ack and went down in flames. Basil’s aircraft returned safely, but the mission ended in failure.</p>
<p>Just over a fortnight later, his first ever night operation proved even more eventful, one they were all very fortunate to survive. En-route to Brunswick, a fire in the cabin set alight the blackout curtains surrounding the pilot and navigator. Basil had to use two extinguishers to put out the fire. The events caused significant delay and at their estimated time of arrival on target, they were still approximately 40 miles away. By the time they got there all the other aircraft had gone through and were on their way home. Basil’s aircraft was now completely alone over the target and although they were able to drop their bombs successfully, the aircraft was illuminated by a whole cone of search lights from the ground, plus an enemy fighter aircraft was fast coming in from the port side. The skipper took evasive action by immediately putting the aircraft into a 5000 feet dive and Basil found himself pinned to the cabin ceiling by the ‘G’ force; conversely when the aircraft pulled out of the dive, he was forced down to the cabin floor. The evasive manoeuvre was repeated one more time before they managed to lose the searchlights and the fighter. The trip home was conducted at low level without further alarm. In all, Basil and his crew went on to record thirty operations together. </p>
<p>After 467 Squadron, Basil was commissioned as a Pilot Officer and was posted to 617 Squadron in April 1945. He was never to fly operationally again although with 617 Squadron he served for a brief period in Digri, India. Basil reached the rank of Flying Officer and was demobbed in 1948.</p>
<p>Basil returned to the Pulsometer and finally qualified as a turner. After a short period working in Birmingham, he settled in Reading with his wife Jean and two children. He continued to work in engineering, eventually moving into the engineering safety field. He retired from his final position of Chief Safety Advisor for Greater London Council in 1981.<a href="https://www.getreading.co.uk/news/local-news/war-veteran-still-swing-90-4802178"></a></p>
Chris Cann
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today we are in Tilehurst, near Reading, and the date is 29th of June 2016 and we are talking to Basil George Ambrose of 267 Squadron about his experiences in the war and we’ve also got here together with us Christine Parkes, his daughter. So Basil, what are the earliest recollections you have on life and tell us from there?
BA: First may I correct you?
CB: Yes—
BA: 617 Squadron —
CB: oh 617 Squadron —
CP: And 467, and 467.
BA: I was in — I’ll carry on then —
CB: Yes. OK. 617. Fire.
BA: We‘ll start with my birth—
CB: Yes, yeah, yeah —
BA: in Derby Street, Reading,
CB: Yes —
BA: on 24th of the sixth 1923. Well, you’ve got all that haven’t you? Sorry. And I was fifth, if you like, but my father was married twice. He had, he was a fine man who’d seen the war and had a wife that became [unclear]. She had four children with him. Horace was the eldest, no beg pardon, Doris was the eldest, Horace was next and they were both born in 1910, one at the beginning and one at the end. And Graham was next. She was, er, no — anyway Bernard was the last and it was 1915. But my father was brought back from the trenches [unclear]. He was in the Royal Ordinance, no, Royal Army Service Corps. So he was surprised in other words and he was sent home to put his family together when his wife left the children. Maybe I shouldn’t be saying this, I suppose. But anyway, he did a very, very good job of putting them together. He left them in charge of his mother, who was a very strict disciplinarian, and they saw the war through. But of course, he had to find somebody [unclear] to love and look after his children, which was my mum, and I was born in 1923. And the first memories I have in Waverley Road is of a doctor calling for, I don’t know for what reason. And we had seven Alsatians in a very nice wooden kennel, if you like, big, big kennel, and you could go in there and I grabbed the Doctor following me (Doctor Milne was our doctor for many, many, years) and diving in there was seven Alsatian puppies and they were all over me. So that was one of my best memories. And my other memory is, the garden was surrounded with cages of rabbits, rats, chickens [unclear]. It was, what you’d call it? A menagerie and most of them liked by the older children. I was too young to appreciate it. I suppose I can think, I was about, I must have been about the age of four when we moved to Waverley Road, in West Reading. In a big five-bedroom house, which was very, very suitable for a lot of jokes and pranks. I can even remember climbing on the roof out of the attic ‘cause my younger brother Gerald, who was the only other child of my mother, he was about four years younger than me and, can we stop for a second? And yes we had lots of fun there. I remember we were in an attic, Gerald and I, and we shared the same bed. I had an uncle who was looked after by my mother, her brother in fact, her eldest brother, and he used to work at the AEC in Southall and caught a very early train. So he used to get up very early and go to bed when he came home to ‒ and always had his curry [laugh]. [background noises] The er — Yes, so, I’m lost.
CB: Caught his train.
BA: Yes, yes. Very early train up to [Ealing]. The story is, my brother Gerald came running along the passageway to the end bedroom where I was, I suppose, and Uncle Harry came out, because he, having woken up having worked all night, and slapped Gerald across the face, which was not very good really. But anyway, these are snippets of memories, I suppose. And the other thing that is my brother Horace was a real prankster. We had a, my mother had a, er, Mongol, Mongolian, do you’d call it?
CP: Mongol.
BA: Mongol sister. She was a very, very, nice person. She used to nurse me and look after me but Horace took advantage of her. He used to invite friends in and then go and get a kitchen knife and give it to her and say ‘go and fight them’ you see and she knew exactly. She would be going in the room saying ‘Nicky, nicky, nicky’ [slight laugh] and mainly they were his friends of course and they would jump out of the window, on the ground floor of course. The memories come flooding back. The other thing is, my eldest brother had a very, very nice bicycle, a racing bike, which he gave to me when he went in the Navy. ‘Cause my Dad decided that it was going to be too much for my Mum to look after four of them, me and when Gerald was coming along I think that was the trigger that caused the break-up of the family. So, where are we now? Yes, the garden was walled all the way round. There was a greenhouse at the bottom with a storage room next door to it. There was an alleyway that went right round the back of the houses in Beecham Road. We could get over that wall into this alleyway, although we didn’t have a right of way. Everybody else did. Because we were at the end, we were not on the right of way. And I used to hop over and go into Beecham Road that way. The other thing I remember are the things that Dad made for me. He made me a beautiful pedal car and other things like that, he was very good. He was the stage manager at The Palace Theatre, Reading, by the way, and was there from 1906, away from the war of course, the Great War, and he used to get complimentary tickets which he could swap with people like the Reading Football Ground. They had given him a season ticket which I could use on occasions.
CB: So, where did you go to school?
BA: Wilson Road, Wilson Road School, which was right by the football ground. The top of Wilson Road came out by the football ground and then it was up Wantage Hill to the top of Waverley Road, left to Prospect Park and right to our house, 137.
CB: What age did you leave school?
BA: Fourteen. Fourteen. I wasn’t very good. A sickly boy, I think. I had, what do you call it? Bronchial catarrh. I suppose I was kept at home on more than one occasion. And the other thing I remember is having a friend, Dick Chandler, whose father had a post office at the bottom of Norcot Road and the Oxford Road. Quite a busy post office and grocery shop as well, and he was able to tell me what to do for [laugh] getting out (well I didn’t get the buckshee) to go in and tell the lady, Miss Bacon (a nice little lady with a tiny little shop opposite the school), ‘Tell her you put a penny in the chewing gum machine and you couldn’t get anything out’. So she used to give you — she gave me [emphasis] this chewing gum, but of course it was found out, obviously I got caught, and I had to pay for it, go and apologise. Fair enough. I don’t think it crossed my mind [laugh] the way I misled her, I suppose. And the other occasion was my brother Horace had a very, very good catapult which he allowed me to borrow one day so I take it to school and I was showing off, I suppose I was boasting really. Dick said ‘let me have a go with it’. Just coming out of school. I said ‘No, no. We’ll get into trouble’. Sure enough he managed to persuade me. He got himself a stone and fired it over towards the [unclear] back gardens and I heard a crash, and obviously a window being broken. Probably it wouldn’t have been found out but for the fact the caretaker’s house was right by the playground and he’d seen us do it. We were — So we had six each, six strokes of the cane. We had the catapult confiscated. I paid for the window. It was any amount of punishment. My dad was a bit furious about this, thought it had gone over the top. I should have been punished but within reason, which was justifiable, I suppose.
CB: You left school at fourteen. What did you do then?
BA: I went to the Pulsometer. I got a job, an apprenticeship, as a turner. That was 1937 and you had to pay, pay for this, these indentures, and the only thing I could do was pay half crown a week. I got five shillings a week pay and I paid half a crown a week for the indentures. It was a good training, very good training. I went — And it was very beneficial to me in the finish because when I was called up (and this is jumping the gun, sorry, let me go back). I did try to get in to the ‒ I went to get into the Navy and they said ‘You’re too young.’ then I was told by the firm I was in a reserved occupation. I was quite useful to them really because I’d already got about, how many years’ experience? Two and a half years’, three years’ probably experience, in training. It was good training. [Pause] Oh yes, yes, yes, when you had the call up everybody had to do it, at the age of eighteen? And they saw I was in a reserve occupation and wouldn’t be able to go and the officer, he was an RAF officer, who was interviewing, he said ‘Well you can,’ he said, ‘come in in your own trade and then remuster when you’re there to what you want to do’. Which was a great benefit to me because I went in May ’42? (I can’t read it.) Yes, it was May ’42 when I went in. I’m jumping a bit like a frog.
CB: It’s OK.
BA: One of the first persons I met at Cardigan, Cardigan [coughs] where new recruits had to go first of all and get the uniforms [unclear]
CB: Was it Cardington?
BA: Cardington. Yep.
CB: Right
BA: Well, the first person I should meet, because you had to go and get your hair cut, was Johnny Good, my barber —
CB: [laugh] —
BA: from Tilehurst and, er, [slight laugh] ‘cause you get sent back immediately on the next parade by the sergeant ‘go and get your hair cut’. Well this would go on several times but Johnny just said ‘Don’t take any notice of him, you’re alright’ he said to me and I didn’t, and it was perfectly all right. But anyway, [pause] so where am I?
CB: So, you’re at Cardington and you’re getting kitted out and getting your hair cut.
BA: Yes, I suppose yes, and then going on to do the square bashing at Skegness was the first place and then to Weeton, in-between Preston and Blackpool, and there as a turner, a trainee turner, and I took a trade test and passed out with flying colours and the only person who did it like that was another man from the Pulsometer. Which made me feel it was one of the best training schemes there was and although he wasn’t an apprentice like I was, he was a, what they call a shop boy, much the same, he did exactly the same as I did really. But it was good training. Started off very small, drilling, and working your way up to big machines, and then, as I say, when war was declared I became an instructor for the dilutees [emphasis] that came in. People were needed for the trades during the war. Pulsometer made a lot of pumps. Still going by the way, still there, Sigmund Pulsometer Pumps. Still around. [pause]
CB: So, you’ve just done your trade training —
BA: Oh yes —
CB: and that’s all on the ground, so then what?
BA: I passed out as a LAC [emphasis].
CB: Ah!
BA: Ah! And so instead of getting two shillings a day I was getting six and six a day. I always allowed my mum a shilling a day allowance —
CB: Yep.
BA: always right the way through. I can’t remember when I stopped it. I think when I got my commission she said I would need it, all my money. I think she turned it down. Anyway, so now I’m trained as a turner. Oh yes, I was posted to Sealand. Because you have to then, of course, have to apply for aircrew and I can’t quite remember quite how I did that but I did it and I had to, I think I did work one machine at Sealand (which was near Chester by the way). It was a very, very pleasant time there, very, very pleasant. Nice river, salmon leap all those sort of things.
CB: So from Sealand, having applied for aircrew, where did they send you?
BA: Well I, first of all, went back ‒ oh I’m missing the other bit out. I first of all went back to ACRC in Regents Park from Sealand, and this is the only time I’d be wearing a white flash. I can’t really remember that bit. Anyway, I must have done and there were, of course, all these people coming in, new recruits, and I was an experienced airman by then. Er — what happened? Oh yes, square bashing again, that was Bridlington [unclear]. So, Bridlington.
CB: Yep. It was an ITW? Initial Training Wing, was it?
BA: Well, I suppose so, but they wouldn’t know that I’d already been —
CB: No, obviously —
BA: trained at Skegness and done square bashing, but there of course was a Sergeant Steele, Flight Sergeant Steele. Blond hair, blond moustache, oh a fine looking chap he was. Not all that tall but a real first class airman. And I was fairly tall myself, not curved like I am now, and I was always their marker? Right marker?
CB: Right marker. Yeah.
BA. So everybody dressed on me. And our squad was right at the back. I don’t know how many squads there were, quite a lot, and I, we were doing the guard march, which you have to do right a bit, then left a bit, always face the front. And the girls were on the pavement right by where we were marching and everyone was far away from us, so I was chatting to the girls and forgot to turn right instead of left a bit [laughs] and so my squad was the only squad going that way and everybody else ‒[laughs]. He called me out to the front. Never, never get called to the front because once they know your name you are for it [laugh]. And every demonstration he wanted, he always called my name. I always had to go out and do it. I was not bad, I couldn’t have been that bad otherwise he wouldn’t have used me as an example. But it was a big, big error, a big mistake. What else? And of course, from there, as I say, to Weeton. At that time they took off the reserved occupation of the police force and the policemen poured into there. I remember these wooden huts, quite nice huts there were really, quite comfortable. I’d be lying awake at night listening to these policemen tell their stories and they were pretty vivid. A lot of them were Metropolitan policemen. And all sorts of things I’d never heard before in my life I heard there. And then from there down to St Athan I suppose. I can’t think of anything else. I went all the way down there [sound of shuffling papers].
CB: Do you want to stop for a mo’?
BA: Thank you.
CB: Now, we were just talking about St Athan. You went to St Athan for your flight engineer training?
BA: Yes.
CB: So what did you do there?
BA: All manner, hydraulics, pneumatics, all of the things I was a bit weak on I suppose, but yes general maintenance of the engines, and we went all over the engines. In fact I went to Woodford in, er, Manchester?
CB: Yep, where they built the Lancasters —
BA: And I had a week there I think. Yes
CB: That’s alright. So how long were you doing your training at St Athan?
AB: Until, until about D Day because the thing that makes me recall this is the fact that a friend of the family’s, Stan Abbot. Stan Abbot. He’d been in the RAF for many, many years. He was a, flight engineer, not a flight engineer, flying officer, no, no, that’s not right —
CP: Don’t worry, we’ll come back.
BA: Tut, terrible, terrible. Anyway he was a test pilot at St Athan, because they maintained aircraft as well there. He was going to take a Beaufighter up to test it and said would I like to go up with him, which I did [laugh], much to my chagrin, because I was stood behind his seat and he would throw this Beaufighter all over the sky. I could feel the G forces forcing me down on the seat. And then whilst we were doing this it was over the Bristol Channel, I had a chance to see, there was a line of ships, merchant ships [cough] nose to tail, all the way as far as you could see towards the Bristol Channel, right up — [unclear] it was the Bristol Channel. And right up as far as you could see the other way as well. So I realised that something was on but didn’t know what. [Pause]. Anyway, that was my first experience of flight, realising that something was going to go on soon, and what happened then? I was posted to ‒
CB: Is that when you went to the HCU at Swinderby, straight after that, or did they send you somewhere else?
BA: Somewhere else. Did I go somewhere else? That was right. Yes, that’s right. You go in as a second engineer. And you spent some time ‒ it’s in the log book, isn’t it? Spend some time, with different crews and that’s when I say that Shirley [?] asked me if I’d join them [unclear] can’t see it, and then yes 5 LFS Syerston yes, the next one, and that’s when I got ‒ still not got a pilot’s licence. That’s the squadron. I thought we had a few weeks. That is [emphasis] it. Does that look familiar? LFS? Lancaster —
CB: Lancaster Finishing School. Right, so you went to Syerston, to the Lancaster Finishing School before you—
BA: Where did I go for the —
CB: HCU? Did you go to the HCU first?
BA: Swinderby. Yep, Syerston and Swinderby. Yep. Ok, 1660 HCU.
CB: OK.
BA: OK [unclear]
CB: Right, so you are now part of the crew because of the HCU. What happened at the HCU? What did you tend to do when you were at the HCU Basil?
BA: This was the, did I say Stirlings?
CB: Yeah.
BA: Did I say Stirlings [papers shuffling]
CP: Do you want a break?
CB: We’ll have a break while you’re following that.
BA: Fred Ward in the bed next to me.
CB: This is the HCU.
BA: Yes HCU, and he was already an engineer so he had been there some time and I was the second engineer. And, they’d obviously, they’d obviously got some trouble with the undercarriage and he was winding it down and there was a pilot error so I understand, and he was killed. He was killed. As I say, he was in the bed next to me and we used to chat together. I remember that he’d told me he’d been up to Lincoln to get some photographs taken. I’ve got one in the album somewhere ‒
CP: Here, don’t worry now —
Ba: Anyway, yes, so his name was Fred —
CB: Fred Ward. This is Stirlings, we’re talking about.
BA: Yes, yes, That’s right. So he was killed at Swinderby and —
CB: Because the pilot made a mistake.
BA: Yes, I think so. I’m not sure that anyone else got killed. It was only because he was winding up the undercarriage I think. Not sure. Anyway, I go into Lincoln and find the photographer who’d taken these pictures. So, I collected them. I get his address, home address, and take them to his family, which I did and they were extremely grateful. They gave me one of the pictures. It’s in the album somewhere. Yes, so very sad that was. Made me hate the Stirling, hated it, but it was supposed to have been one of the best aircraft going except in fact, so they say, is that the wingspan was reduced by a hundred feet to get it in the hangar.
CB: Not a hundred feet but reduced yes, reduced to a hundred feet.
BA: And it spoilt it, I think.
CB: Yes, it couldn’t get any height.
BA: It was good at towing gliders, I think.
CB: Absolutely.
BA: So where am I?
CB: We’re at the HCU.
BA: Did we go somewhere else? No? Yes, we had to pick up the Lancasters didn’t we?
CB: That’s when you went to the Lancaster Conversion Unit. No, Lancaster ‒
BA: LFS.
CB: The Lancaster Flying School.
BA: Yes, OK. That was at Syerston. The first thing I saw there was a Lancaster in the Trent with the engines [unclear]. Must have overshot or didn’t take off properly. Yes, so then we go to Waddington as a crew. Yeah, and I was pleased [emphasis] that the first operation we had was in support of the British Army, which was going up towards Brussels and were being held up by guns on the, by the Walcheren. We were sent to breach the dykes and very successfully. There’s a book by Paul Crooks. Which I’ve got two, I’ve got two of his books. He was a Dutchman. They are Dutch, aren’t they? And he said that they never blamed the crews, never blamed the crews. But we flooded these islands successfully, but it didn’t put the guns out of action because all the guns were on high ground —
CB: Yeah, right —
BA: and so we were sent the following day to go for the guns. So that was our first two raids and both daylight raids and that made me realise that daylight raids were not going to be a sinecure. The pilot was — we flew in formation, I believe. Don’t know why, I’m sure. But the pilot said it was hard work. We got there and the cloud base was lower than forecast. We were supposed not to go below four thousand feet but we dropped down. The cloud base under four thousand feet and almost immediately the plane alongside us was hit by ack-ack and went down in flames. I can’t remember the name of the engineer but I did know him. Anyway, we lost a plane almost immediately it came in sight. But we did have a go at the guns, I think it was unsuccessfully. We could have done [unclear], much better, much easier but the pilots wouldn’t have it. [Cough] We’d not done a very successful job. We didn’t go back there again. The next one was of course was our first night raid, Brunswick, and that one is, as I say, the one we should never [emphasis] ever have survived. First night raid, Brunswick. We had a fire in the G circuit, which caught all the curtains around the navigator and round the plot. The blackout curtains, it caught those alight and I had a go at it with the first, nearest extinguisher and that didn’t put it out. [Cough] Started to get it under control but the bomb aimer was stood by with his extinguisher and gave it to me and we successfully — he had another one eventually but I managed to get it out, before it got any worse. But anyway, it was a very useful aid to the navigator. We lost the G circuit. It was, well, a fairly quiet ride from there on [coughs] excuse me.
CB: Why, why was it a raid you shouldn’t have gone on?
BA: Well, [unclear] at the estimated time of arrival, or estimated time at the target, ETA, [coughs] the navigator said ‘Can anybody see any green TIs?’ And I said — I’m the only one probably looking to the port side because the pilot was looking ahead like this and I was looking across in front of him. And I could see these TIs going down some forty odd miles way and I could see them going down. So he said, ‘That’s it, that’s it, go for it!’ and the pilot immediately turned round and headed for it and of course by the time we’d got there the whole force had gone through —
CB: Oh.
BA: and we were over target, totally on our own. Wonderful picture we got, the bomb aimer got because simultaneously ‒ oh, before that, the skipper said ‘No ack-ack, watch out for fighters’. He thought they wouldn’t fire ack-ack if their own fighters were there. And simultaneously the bomb aimer said ‘Bombs away. Bombs gone. Bombs gone’. The gunner at the rear, rear gunner reported a fighter coming in from the port side to the rear. And the searchlights. The major searchlight. What do you call it? Anyway, the main searchlight came on and immediately picked us up. No two ways about it. Bang, straight on to us and then there was an absolute cone of searchlights all around, all on us and the skipper puts the nose down and I understand this is the only, and the classical, way of getting rid of searchlights is to dive. But he said ‘no’ he said ‘I lost control’ (laughs). Sense of humour. Anyway, we dive about five thousand feet, I suppose, and I’m pinned to the roof. I am supposed to help if he is in trouble. If he can’t manage it on his own I’m supposed to try and assist him in some way or other and I can’t. I’m pinned to the ceiling, pinned to the roof of the cabin. And then when he managed, he manages to pull it out and start going, climbing again I’m pinned to the floor [laughs]. Can’t get off the floor. Absolutely pinned —
CB: because it pulls out the G, yeah.
I never felt so useless in all my life. Anyway, we do this a second time, and by that time I think we’d lost the searchlights, and the fighter. We did another, dropped about three thousand feet, and then we went back home at about a thousand, five-hundred feet thereabouts, I’m not sure. Quite on our own. Then on the way, quite clearly we were flying alongside an autobahn and there was, the gunner spots, what he thinks, is an official car, big car with outriders, outside outriders, and they wanted the skipper to let him have a go at him and he said ‘No, no, we’re going home’ and sure enough we did. We were a bit late, but not too late.
CB: T I is target indicator.
BA: Yes.
CB: Yes.
BA: That’s the green ones. Well, you could have reds, greens, and yellows.
CB: Right.
On this occasion they were supposed to be green for bombing. But I understand that the bomb aimer was commended for his photographs. They really saw what happened over Brunswick, which I believe was very, very successful. The only time I ever felt sorry for the Germans was the fact that you could see everything, everything was clearly picked up, close to you. You could see the firemen up the ladders using their hoses. I thought ‘Poor devils’. What did they do to cop this? Whether they did or not I don’t know. Don’t know what side it was. If you were bombing a particular part of town because of railway, or the sidings, whatever. I don’t think it’s in the book, is it? But it was the one raid I think we should never, ever, have come home. If anyone was going to get shot down, it should have been us. No two ways about it. From there on we had a good mixture of raids. We did thirty altogether.
CB: Right. And this is with 467 Squadron? Yeah. Ok. So, thirty ops took you to when? The end of the war?
BA: No, no —
CB: No.
BA: No, no, because we went over to 617 Squadron by the end of the war —
CB: After that. OK, well we’ll pick up on that in a minute. So, then what? After you’d finished the ops, what did you do?
BA: Well the navigator wanted to go with them. No, that’s right, the skipper stopped me — I don’t know when — he stopped me and said ‘Do you want to go to 617 Squadron?’ So I said ‘Yes. If you’re going, yes I’ll go with you’. But the only ones who could go were the rear gunner, (they didn’t curry with the upper gunners nor wireless ops because you had your VHF so, there was the rear gunner, the bomb aimer, navigator, pilot, engineer. Six.
CB: Right.
BA: Anyway. So we go fairly quickly to Woodhall Spa. Was it Woodhall Spa? Yes. Straight away. I go in, I got a commission before that, didn’t I? ‘Cause the pilot got awarded the DFC and I think, yeah, I did instruction. I had to go and do some instruction, things like that, they watchedg me do it, lecture I suppose you’d call it. It was rather convenient because at that time and it was looking like the end of the war was there and people were looking to go as far as they could. [unclear] The Australian Squadron was no better place to go but Australia. [Unclear] I’m dreading the telegraph about this. [Unclear] I used it to advise some of them about getting to Australia, migrating to Australia, which some of them did I think successfully.
CB: When did you come out of the RAF?
BA: October ’46.
CB: Right.
BA: I had to be on reserve for 6 months I think, to April I think it was. So April ’47 I was clear of the RAF. They could call me back any time, day or night within 6 months.
CB: So what rank had you reached as an officer. Were you still a pilot officer or had you got to flight lieutenant?
BA: I was a flying officer by then because that was an automatic promotion I would think, from PO to FO.
CB: Yes, because you were experienced. Ok. So the war ends, you were demobbed. Then what?
BA: Yeah, the war ends. No, when we finished the operations the only ones in the crew of the Aussies were the bomb aimer, the skipper, not the navigator because he’d had a baby at home he’d never seen. So, he wanted to go straight home, which he did. Yes so we go to ‒ how we did it I don’t know. You had to be — you had to have had a tour of operations before you could be accepted by 617 Squadron and we’d done that. So then when we go there, in March, no before that. Anyway, we go to Woodhall Spa and you had to get your bomb aimers exam. Get down to a hundred, a hundred yards before you’re put on ops. Well then of course the end of the war came. No, no, before that we were put on ops twice, but both were cancelled. I suppose because, er, timings were getting short, over run. So they were cancelled. We never flew, much to my disappointment. I’m sure we were going to carry a 10 ton bomb on the same aircraft on both occasions. [cough] It didn’t happen. So I was a bit disappointed. But then the end of the war. The pilots, all the Aussies go and I’m left. The rear gunner’s in a different place to me. I’m in Petwood Hotel, Room 110. That was great. With the little cinema in the woods. Golf course all round. I wasn’t able to play golf at that time. [cough] Yes, so, I’m a spare engineer. I’m [unclear] and then this pilot, this New Zealand pilot, came to the station, Squadron Leader Saxeby, Saxelby. New Zealander. Very experienced I think, especially in digging the tunnel. He was waiting to get in the tunnel when it was discovered. This is at Stalagluft 3B?
CB: Yes, 3B
BA: He never told us anything about this. It was a friend of his that told one of the crew and then, of course, we all began to know about it. Anyway, he never told us that but this chap, Castagnola (it’s in the book), he was a real character, he had a harelip, but he was a good pilot, flying officer. He was on some on the last raids of 617 Squadron. He was on the Berchtesgaden one. Anyway, he asked me if I’d go up as a flight engineer with him and Squadron Leader Saxelby. So I said ‘Yes, I would, and pleased to do it’ and we did a couple of circuits and bumps. He got us to go to the offices, what do you call them, yes offices, flights, flight rooms. Anyway, alongside the hangar there were these rooms.
CB: The crew rooms.
BA: The what?
CB: The crew rooms.
BA: Yes, so I drop in there and Squadron Leader Saxelby said ‘Are you sure you want to go with me?’ I said ‘Yes, of course’ and I think that endeared me to him and so I was the first member of his crew at 617 Squadron. And he, Saxelby, he was B Flight Commander. He actually commanded the aircraft, the Squadron, and I think he flew in Canberras and all sorts of things. In fact, he flew many, many, aircraft (not with me). We went to ‒The Tiger Force was being formed to go to the Far East. Kuala Lumpur we were due to go to, and presumably support the British army there against the Japanese but then of course, the atomic bomb was dropped before we even left. So, we still went but we still went to Digri in India instead. And, as I say, Saxelby was in charge of B Flight and Squadron Leader Ward [?] and Somerby [?], the Canadian Fauquier was the Wing Commander. Fauquier, French Canadian I think he was. He was the Commander of the Squadron. I was following Tait, and then Fauquier, I think. [unclear]
CB: So, that was the end of the war.
BA: Yes, so we go to India. We did a fly past, a victory fly past, because VJ day was over there. As I say, the war had stopped before we got there with the atomic bombs and — sorry [unclear]
CB: It’s OK, we’ve got good background there. So when you left the RAF what did you do?
BA: Oh, I went straight back to getting my indentures at the Pulsometer. I hadn’t completed them and the Government had introduced a scheme where, you could get them if you did four and a half years, not the seven years that the indentures required ‒. So, in any case, I’d had some good experience in the RAF at that time and they did promise to give me a better job than just a turner. Mind you, I was on one of the best lathes. Strangely enough [laughs], I was making parts for aircraft. Turning in parts for aircraft but it was mainly a spindle machine and that was a very skilled job, if you like.
CB: So how did you progress in the —
BA: So then, I’d asked them ‘If I could I do something better?’ because I didn’t want to stay in the workshop, working on the machine, and they said ‘yes, yes, they would’ but when the time came when I finished my apprenticeship I asked them again and they said ‘oh yes, we’ll do something’ but I thought yes this’ll go on and on and on so I just walked out, gave my notice to leave, and I went to Cooks in Reading, who installed milking machines in barns and things like that. Quite an experience but very, very useful. Alfa Laval, I think. Yeah, Alfa Laval Milking Machines. Oh yes, my Dad had a friend called Hughie Graham, whose brother had the land on Silverstone Racecourse. He was farming that and he wanted, oh yeah, he had also this firm, Modern Conveyors at Adderbury. [unclear] Yes, it was Adderbury, and they wanted somebody to erect their dryers which were dual [?] combustion dryers but they were making them. So I had, first of all, down here at Percier-Pratt [?], one drier up there, [unclear] anyway, so next one was Birmingham, Birmingham Industrial Plastics. They wanted four and then another five, so I was there some long time actually, building these industrial driers, big things. In fact they probably caused me to stop smoking [unclear] ‘cause I’d already stopped. I couldn’t get cigarettes so I was trying a pipe. Anyway, somebody caught me [slight laugh] so the pipe goes [unclear] so I smashed two or three pipes so it wasn’t worth it, wasn’t worth doing.
CB: How long did you stay there?
BA: Birmingham? A long time.
CB: No, how long did you stay with Modern Conveyors?
BA: Ah, David was born. We were in a caravan on Colt’s farm.
CP: 1950.
BA: Yes, 1950 and it was when Jean was pregnant with Christine and she said ‘I want to go home, I want to go home’ so we came back to Reading. We were able to bring all we owned. The caravan was parked on the bottom of ‒ Langley side, Langley Hill area, at the bottom of my Dad’s garden. The electricity board had a plot next to us so I could get right down and put the caravan at the bottom.
CB: So, what did you do as your next job?
CP: It was AWRE.
BA: [unclear] Not immediately. That’s right. What happened then? British Estates Services. I think it was the mayor of Reading had this business down here on the Bath Road. Still there, I think, opposite [unclear] somewhere there, or maybe the garage there. Anyway, I went there as a machinist.
CB: What was that called?
BA: British Industrial Estates.
CB: Right OK and then eventually you went to AWRE.
BA: Well, what happened: We were coming up to Christmas and one of the men working in the shop —you were repairing machines, engines, and things like that for earth moving equipment, yes earth moving equipment — and he went to the store and said he was short of a long, long or short, pole I don’t know what. And they accused him of cutting one to fit and then coming to get another and they sacked him and he had four kids, and he was sacked. [unclear] before Christmas. They wouldn’t give him any Christmas pay so they asked me if I’d go and speak to the management and I did. But they were hard nuts. They just said ‘You can all go, if you like’ so we did, we did. And much to my pride, everybody did exactly what they said they would and supported me.
CB: And left.
BA: They all left. And nicest thing I could see was advertisements in the papers for weeks and weeks and weeks from British Industrial Estates trying to get mechanics. Anyway, oh yes, I came home and Mum was crestfallen. ‘It’s Christmas’, she said ‘It’s Christmas’ [unclear]. And then Denis Baldwin [?} he was the postmaster or something or other down here in Reading where they sorted all the parcels at Christmas time, and of course they wanted extra people at Christmas time, and he asked me if I’d go there for a week or so and it was very interesting that. There were these big chutes coming into the station and all the parcels being brought out to be sorted. Anyway, yes, so that was an experience, if you like. What then, oh yes, knowing I was coming back to Reading, Aldermaston was just beginning and I’d written sometime before, made an application, and I think they did a security check, a very, very vigorous one, you could say. It it was going on and on and I thought ‘probably nothing will come out of this’ but just as I finished the post office job, I had a letter from AWRE to go for an interview so I was taken on as an RE mechanic. And what did I do first of all? Industrial Chemistry Group, which was dealing ‒ no that wasn’t the first, was it?
CB: Don’t worry. I think we’ve done really well. So, thank you very much. I don’t want to wear you out.
BA: And I got an extremely good pension.
CB: Chief Safety Adviser for Greater London Council?
BA: Yes. It was there I got into safety, first of all at Aldermaston. A friend of mine was in electrical and strangely enough his name was the same as the ex-factory inspector who came to Aldermaston as their safety advisor. They called them officers in those days. He was electrical advisor and I’d already worked with him and he said would if I’d like to go over and join them as their mechanical safety advisor. Which I said ‘yeah, I would’ I think I got promotion to that. I never, ever got Tech one grade and I wanted to go ‒ there was a job advertised down here in, Winforth [?], Whitworth [?] in the West Country? A Tech one there and I applied for it but didn’t get it.
CB: What year did you retire?
BA: ’81. February ’81. That’s right ‘cause Dad died a year later. Yes, I was fifty-seven, but it was stupid, really stupid. This is Maggie Thatcher’s fault, well I suppose. The Conservative Party wanted to get in the Council, lead the Council for their next election and they said they would cut down three thousand staff and they couldn’t get three thousand staff to go so they asked if anyone wanted to retire. And when I saw what I could get — I was in a department that dealt with all these things — and they told me I’d get around sixty to sixty-two thousand lump sum and all sorts of things. It was a real golden handshake, if you like, so I applied for it and my boss, who was controller of manpower, [unclear] he said ‘Why do you want to leave me?’ I said ‘I don’t want to leave you but I can’t, cannot refuse to take this.’ So, it was left at that and then it was about eleven months later and he asked me to stop behind after a meeting and said ‘Do you still want to go?’ and I said ‘of course if I can’. ‘Well’ he said ‘You can because I’m going as well!’
Dublin Core
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Identifier
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AAmbroseBG160629
Title
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Interview with Basil Ambrose
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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
Type
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Sound
Description
An account of the resource
Basil Ambrose was born in Reading. He left school at fourteen and became an apprentice turner. He joined the Royal Air Force in May 1942 and trained as a turner before transferring to aircrew as a flight engineer. He trained at RAF St Athan, and completed thirty operations on Lancasters with 467 Squadron at RAF Waddington. In 1945 he was posted to 617 Squadron at RAF Woodhall Spa. He left the RAF in October 1946, and returned to his apprenticeship. He retired as Chief Safety Adviser for Greater London Council in 1981.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1945
1946
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Braunschweig
Netherlands--Walcheren
Germany
Netherlands
Format
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01:11:15 audio recording
Date
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2016-06-29
Creator
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Chris Brockbank
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
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Christine Kavanagh
Chris Cann
1660 HCU
467 Squadron
617 Squadron
aerial photograph
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
Beaufighter
bombing
flight engineer
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
promotion
RAF Bridlington
RAF St Athan
RAF Swinderby
RAF Syerston
RAF Waddington
RAF Woodhall Spa
Stirling
target indicator
target photograph
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/184/2409/PSandersDS1606.1.jpg
bcbc31c9af960e94130f17aa9a184b7b
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/184/2409/ASandersDS160305.2.mp3
a759a084fadbc2e92b6a1749462ccfd5
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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Sanders, David
D S Sanders
Description
An account of the resource
19 items. The collection contains an oral history interview with Sergeant David Stuart Sanders (1925 - 2022, 1869292 Royal Air Force), his logbook, engineering documentation, operation schedules, a personal record of all his operations, a Dalton computer, a number of target and reconnaissance photographs. David Saunders was a flight engineer on 619 Squadron and 189 Squadron at RAF Strubby and RAF Fulbeck in 1944-45.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by David Sanders 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
2016-03-05
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Sanders, DS
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
GC: Right. So. This is an interview being conducted on behalf of International Bomber Command. My name is Gemma Clapton. I’m here at the home of David Sanders on the 5th of March 2016. He was a flight engineer in 189 and 619 Squadrons. We’ll begin with something nice and gentle. Tell me about how you joined up for the war for Bomber Command?
DS: Well it’s very difficult because my brother was in the Air Force and I didn’t particular want to go in the army so I volunteered not knowing exactly which part of the aircraft I wanted to be in, but as I was in engineering before as a youngster I decided to go as a flight engineer . So I went to Cardigan and they did an exercise and interviews and I had to file a cube to go into a square [unclear]. I did it perfectly so they said go back home and a few months later I got accepted as a flight engineer. Um, my first thing, my dad took me to Lord’s Cricket Ground for six months, sorry six weeks, as an introducing and being uniformed and have inoculations and all these things there. And we had to march every day to the zoo for our food. [laughs] Anyway – that ok?
GC: OK. Um, where was you stationed first? What’s your first memory of life of Bomber Command itself?
DS: Of Bomber Command? Well ‘cause this came a lot later ‘cause I had a six months course in St Athan. Learning the inside and out of the Lancaster Bomber. Um, so my first actually meeting the crew was at, I can’t remember the name of the place now, but the, the rest of the crew were already joined up and I was the odd man out. So my skipper came and I joined up to the crew, that’s my first thing and we flew into Stirlings aircraft and that was on operations, I forget what they call me. You kept — just a minute, I can’t remember the name of the places now and we were there for several months and flying and then we converted on then to Lancasters. Did training and eventually we went to a squadron. OK.
GC: Can you remember the first time you was inside a Lancaster? First op in a Lancaster?
DS: Oh the first op was quite traumatic because obviously we were all nervous, ‘cause being our first one, even though the pilot’s already done as a spare introducing. Anyway we went to Blenheim [?] and the only fault ever the navigator made he got us too early there and the rest of the time he was perfect. So we had to hang around being fired at which we never experienced before in our lives. After we’d dropped our bombs, on the way out we were combed by searchlights for about seven minutes and we thought we’d never get out of it ‘cause you’re a sitting target. But fortunately the pilot, he was a wonderful Australian, a lot older than us, a lot of experience of flying, just pulled back the throttles and we fell out the sky and we lost them. So we managed to get home and that was our first [laughs] experience.
GC: OK. Tell me a bit about the crew, ‘cause you obviously had an Australian?
DS: Well the pilot, Australian from Sidney, he was in his thirties so we, we treated him as our dad. He looked after us very well. The two gunners were wonderful Canadians, my age. The navigator was more — a little bit older. He was from Nova Scotia in Canada. A little bit snootier him [laughs] but the wireless operator [unclear] came from somewhere Middle East. Unfortunately he was shot down in another plane later. My mate Matt and I were both Londoners.
GC: So you had a real mixed crew?
DS: Very mixed crew, yes.
GC: Did – What was, what was the camaraderie like?
DS: Great, yes, yes we would — generally we used to go out and have drinks together. Perhaps the pilot was a little bit more aloof than us ‘cause we were much younger. [laughs]
GC: OK let’s take this somewhere else. You were obviously quite close to the rest of the crew. Can you describe a bit about life on the station?
DS: Um.
GC: As, as a group.
DS: Yes. Well ‘cause we were, we were in Nissen huts so it was quite, quite funny really ‘cause the Canadians, if you’re from the East or the West they used to fight each other so you had to put the fighters [unclear] up by the door in case we get raided. There was always, always friendly friction between, between people. In each Nissen hut there were two crews. So you had a funny old fire and we had to try and keep warm by putting in anything we could find to keep it — to keep us warm. [laughs] It was quite fun really, you know.
GC: It, it sounds good. OK. So can you, can you — is there a raid or op that sticks out in your memory for a various reason?
DS: Um, oh yes ‘cause most of them. There was an instance possibly in every one. I did say, the — when we went to Dortmund Canal, Heinbeck [?]. We’d go there every three months ‘cause they’d build it up and we’d knock it down again for them. It’s a viaduct. And we lost seven aircraft that time. But on the way back over England we were all relaxed thinking it was good we were getting home. Then we saw an aircraft go down, we thought the poor chappie didn’t make it. And later another one came down. And we had to log them each time. When we got to our aerodrome the perimeter lights were out so we asked them to put them on. They put them on. We landed straight down and we went to the end of the runway and went through our perimeter at the end of the runway. The [unclear] was in the truck ready to pick us up when a Messerschmitt came down the runway firing bullets all the way down. Jokingly the mid-upper Canadian [laughs] he [unclear] in his arms and said ‘it was worth every minute of that’. That night we lost about twenty something aircraft ‘cause we didn’t know the fighters were in, coming in with us.
GC: Was it common for the fighters to follow the planes?
DS: Sorry.
GC: Was it common for the fighters to follow –
DS: No.
GC: Follow home?
DS: No, no it was practically unknown and we weren’t warned ‘cause we had in the aircraft friendly and foe, and you press that and on the radar it would, it would tell whether you’re friendly or not and so they should have seen these coming but they didn’t and they didn’t warn us.
GC: And it wasn’t common?
DS: No.
GC: No. When you was on an op what was more unnerving the, the lights going up or knowing that there was possibly fighters up there with you? Was there a –
DS: Oh no, it’s, it’s very mixed. Another bad raid we had. This time I wasn’t with my crew, I was just spare and I had to go and do this crew. I’d been to Harburg before and Harburg was rather flak. Harburg, which is very near Hamburg. When we went there and bombed there wasn’t any flak and we couldn’t understand it, but when we came out we could see air to air fly, firing going on and as we – all of a sudden our aircraft lit up by an aircraft put a flare beside us. Behind that a fighter came in and fired on us so we had to corkscrew right away. The [unclear] bullets were flying everywhere and the two gunners, very experienced, shot him down. Hurray [emphasis]. And later another aircraft came in we started to corkscrew but he disappeared. We got home safely. The two gunners were awarded DFNs.
GC: Oh wow.
DS: Um.
GC: So, is there, was there a difference in attitudes towards a daytime op and a night-time op?
DS: Um.
GC: Was there a difference?
DS: Well they’re totally different really ‘cause the Americans generally did the daylights and we always did the nights. I went on one daylight. A thousand-bomber raid and you don’t believe what a sight. Everywhere you see is aircraft and when you got to the target you had to look up. You see aircraft are probably opening their bomb doors [laughs] and [unclear] get out of the way skip, you know, but generally speaking apparently all my raids were at night. And, er, you’re individuals. Your navigator is on his own. Do you like one?
GC: No.
DS: OK.
GC: Do you – I’m, I’m reading here your list and it said at one stage you, you went up to Bergen.
DS: Bergen, yes.
GC: Bergen. Would you like to tell us a bit about that please?
DS: It was more or less straight forward, no problems just a bit of flak and not difficult at all. The longest raids I did was Munich into Poland, I can’t think of the names in Poland. Oh Politzs [?] and that thing — they were very long raid. Took us about ten hours and standing in the dark all that time. It’s – your eyes start to play tricks on you. You’ve got to look out all the time. So long raids were very fatiguing.
GC: So if you are doing raids say of nine hours plus. I know going out you’re going to be concentrating. How do you keep your mind sharp to concentrate for that amount of time?
DS: Well you used to take wakey wakey pills. You had little pills to keep you awake [laughs]. But I don’t know it’s very difficult because then you get – your life is at stake so you had to keep, you know keep on, keep on watch. My job being a flight engineer I had to look out a lot to – apart from looking after the engines and everything I had keep doing – and your eyes did play tricks with you sometimes looking out in the dark for so long.
GC: So I take it from that you didn’t have something to focus on it was all done by maps and –
DS: Sorry I missed that.
GC: As I say it was all done by maps rather than what we would class as modern technology?
DS: Oh Yes. Well he had – the navigator had Oboe and other radar type of improvements. Though it was up to the navigator completely. I mean the pilot was the great, he was the chauffeur, but the navigator was very important if he didn’t get us to the proper place at the right time we were in trouble.
GC: Right OK. Is there anything that sticks in your mind from serving in Bomber Command? Any incident or –
DS: Well you see. I learnt to talk about the flight engineer job he was the jack of all trades. I had, once or twice, I had when the trimming – when you trim the aircraft you had a wheel to turn and it wouldn’t, it stuck so I had to go out and put my oxygen thing. Go round the aircraft to try to see what the problem was and the wires had slipped under the little wheels, so I had to correct that for the skipper ‘cause he can’t fly with that keep trimming his aircraft. Odd jobs like that the flight engineer had. We lost an engine one time therefore balancing the fuel was very tricky. I had to switch over and the flight engineer – if one of the gunners was injured or something it was my job to get up and take over so I learnt a lot about being a gunner. So it was rather a different job. And in take off I was the pilot’s third hand in take off and we had quite a thing between the two of us and know how to take the aircraft off. So it was quite an interesting job.
GC: What was it actually like inside a Lancaster though?
DS: Well being tall, six foot odd, I had difficulty getting in the aircraft because there was a part going right across the aircraft where they hold the wings together I had to climb over. So it was very restricted. It’s much smaller inside than you think it is and I had a little portable seat to sit so I could lift it up so the bomber, bomb men could get by and get underneath. So [laughs] it was a – not the most comfortable of places.
GC: OK. I’m going to take a [unclear]
DS: Yeah.
GC: OK. Tell me a bit about the actual training for Bomber Command if you would please?
DS: Yeah. One of the interesting things was that when you fly, when you got above ten-thousand feet you had to put your oxygen mask on and to prove that it was necessary in training we went into a decompression chamber. There was a whole crew we was all in there all sitting round all happy and joking then they said would you write down this poem. So we was writing the thing, we was writing it down and then we had to take our masks off then went down – I was still writing and I just went out. Then after they put us back onto our masks and I looked and I found that after the poem was just a scribble. The other thing he asked me he says ‘what’s the time now?’ I looked at my wrist, my watch has gone. So it just shows you that you’re oblivious once you have lack of oxygen when you go to, as we had to go, up to eighteen-thousand feet.
GC: You said, you said earlier that you had an engineering background. How did they train you? What part did they train you for? I know you were a flight engineer.
DS: Well –
GC: Just want to try and find out a bit about your training.
DS: Well as it happens every fortnight we did a different part of the aircraft and had exam on each one so you could pass onto the next one. So we did the whole – the frame, the engines, the hydraulics, the pneumatics, gunnery, bombing. We did the whole lot over six months. Every, every – it was very, very –
GC: Intense?
DS: What’s the word? Very, very – what’s the word? [laughs] Very, very, um —
GC: Intense? Intense?
DS: Intensitive that’s it yes. Anyway that’s — so at the end you had to pass another, another examination completely. I had a moaning [?] engine in front of me and they asked questions one after the other about that particular engine. I just scraped through. [laughs] OK.
GC: Um. We was talking earlier as well also about your uniform about the boots and things. Was — How was —What was it like putting that on? What —
DS: I think it was no problem really. I think we got so used to it and quite pleased to put it on knowing it was going to warm us up a bit. No I think it was quite easy. I think we got quite used to it. We did it so many times. We had big boots and we had a flight engineer I used to stick something in there just in case I needed it and also I had to carry the thermos for a skipper for when he wanted a drink. [chuckles]
GC: OK. Tell me about one of the ops when —
DS: One of the most vivid things I can remember was going to Brunswick. It was an incendiary raid. Very old town and terribly on fire. When we was going to a bombing raid there was another aircraft right beside us coming in with us. And all of a sudden he was hit and a huge [emphasis] great flame came up and he held us for a little while and then went down. That could’ve been us, we were right beside him.
GC: Did your brain work like that? Did you just accept it or —
DS: Well you had to. You had to go on. Do a bombs. And after you’d dropped your bombs you had to hold, I think for about forty seconds to take a photograph. You dropped a flare and you had to wait until that photograph was taken. And another bit of a funny thing with the photographs because my second raid was on Wolfen Island off Holland. We had to go to the island to breach the fence and when we took off we couldn’t find the group we was in so we rushed over to one to try to find it. It was the wrong group. We keep doing this and all of a sudden the bomber with me said ‘Your targets coming up. Quickly!’ So we lined up, dropped our bombs, came back home. Easy raid only two and a half hours but the next day the pilot and the navigator were up to see the CO. We’d bombed the wrong island. [laughs] So it was a — we’d bombed the — [laughs]
GC: Did they make you go back?
DS: No. Well actually we did it another, another time but they were in trouble. But it’s only because we couldn’t find who we were meant to be flying with. [laughs]
GC: Did you bomb mainly Germany or were you —
DS: No, we, we — Germany, Poland, Norway. Mainly those three.
GC: OK. I’m just going to introduce that there is a third person now in the room and it’s, it’s David’s wife, it’s Daphne. So if you hear a third voice it’s Daphne. So my apologies.
DS: One raid, I tell you is — how clever the Germans were. We went to Munich which is a very long raid. We had to go down South and across Switzerland but on the way we suddenly saw an aircraft on fire and it all of sudden you saw a big explosion on the ground, but we sussed out that when the aircraft was hit it wasn’t moving. So the Germans are very crafty and trying to scare especially the new, the new, new, the ones on their first and second raids. Thinking that they — but they, they shot over a flare up in the air that looked like an aircraft. Then did an explosion on the ground thinking that’s them. It’s very very clever how they tried to trick you.
GC: I know we have spoken about, like you said, the thousand-bomber raids. What was it like being surrounded by all those planes?
DS: You don’t believe it. ‘Cause today if two aircraft go anywhere near each other they’re in trouble. There was a thousand and they were all putting out window. That’s a big strip of things — to try and, to confuse the German’s radar. And everywhere you could see there was aircraft. In fact you know you had to keep your eyes open and tell the skip to watch out, go higher, go lower. Watch out the bombs are dropping in front of you. They were everywhere. [laughs] Anyway it was a very easy raid, there was, I think, only one or two aircraft lost most probably by other, you know, own aircraft. But you can’t believe watching everywhere you see there are so many aircraft in the air.
GC: What kind of bombs did you carry? Weaponry?
DS: Well they varied. The big cookie. Funnily enough once it didn’t release properly and it was rocking about in the bomb doors so the skipper had to open up and waggle the aircraft about tremendously to release it. [laughs] and it did go but sometimes we had incendiaries for fire. Yeah it was varied but generally it was a cookie and a few smaller ones either side of it.
GC: Can you describe a cookie for us?
DS: Sorry.
GC: Can you describe the cookie for us?
DS: Well it was like a big barrel, a huge great bomb, er, nothing like the ones you have on the 617 Squadron. They had, they had huge great things, but it was quite a big one. I forget the weight of it now.
GC: Good.
DS: Quite a big one.
GC: So it was just the one you carried at any one time?
DS: We carried the cookie and we had about six either side of the smaller bombs. [pause and whispering]
GC: Right, tell me about — you was describing to me the take off for a Lancaster please?
DS: Yeah OK. This is the flight engineer’s job on take off. So we taxied round to the runway. Lined up the runway and waited for the red light to come up, or the green light, I forget what, to start. So then we keep the brakes on and the skipper puts the throttles right up, half way up to get big power. Then suddenly releases the brakes so we go off. As the pilot is pushing the throttles my hand is behind him. Then he takes his hand away. Then I take over the throttles and I push them up to what we call the gate. I hold it there. As we go down the runway he says ‘full power’. Then I push it right through the gate and lock it. We can only hold that for a few minutes because it will blow up the engines. So now we manage to take off, so then I throttle back and lock it there. Then the skipper says ‘wheels up’. So I pull the wheels up, then he asks for flaps up by a third. I put them up a little bit then I pull the flaps up. Then we should be full take off then, so now we can just throttle back to the speed we need what the navigator has taken. That’s my initial job on take off.
GC: OK. Thank you very much. You often hear referred to in rides — you often hear referred to the phrase of a corkscrew. Can you describe a corkscrew for us please?
DS: Yes. A corkscrew is a — on the radar I said before when one of the enemy aircraft lit us up and the other fighter came in on the blind side the gunner said ‘corkscrew’. So we go down, fly down, very very fast. Then pull the aircraft up into like a corkscrew, going through the sky like a corkscrew. We’d done this many times on practice so the gunners know exactly where to put their guns. The enemy has got to keep resetting his aircraft to fire upon us, so fortunately this time it worked and we shot him down. But it’s, it’s very dramatic in a sense because one minute your, your blood is pouring down your face, next minute you’re lifted up as if you’ve gone into the sky. So it’s quite a dramatical thing to do really.
GC: Thank you. We was talking earlier as well about superstitions. Did you have any lucky charms or —
DS: Well I had a threepenny bit sewed in behind my wings. And I had a funny little thing that had a little beer barrel on and you tried to pull it and it would come down and you release it and it would go back again. So as I got in the aircraft I always gave it a pull.
GC: You was also talking about you had a dog, well the squadron had a dog.
DS: It was a stray dog which we, we looked after. A big black dog. And when we went into town on our bicycles he used to come along beside us. But as we speeded up a bit he didn’t like it so he rushed in front of us and grabbed hold of our wheels to stop us. So, and also on the way we got a piece of wood and we used to throw it in the field. And on the way back we’d tell the dog ‘go and fetch it’ and believe it or not he’d find that piece of wood we’d thrown in, you know. It’s a great dog. And a stray one. [laughs]
GC: You don’t know where he came from?
DS: No.
GC: You talked about going into town, obviously as a squadron and as a crew. What were the kind of things you did on your off days?
DS: Well. Relax one thing, and the other thing we obviously went to the pubs. We went to Dirty Annie’s for our meal and she used to give us eggs and bacons and things ‘cause we did like the breakfasts you used to have. We obviously had a bit of fun. We had parties in the mess. We went to once with an urn to fill it up with beer to come back so we all had a nice drink. It’s, it’s — we went together. So it’s, it’s about being together and enjoying our company ‘cause we’re, we’re fighting together.
GC: OK. We, we, we talked earlier as well about your crew. Could you just give us a little snapshot of each crew member please? With you.
DS: Well the pilot was Australian. He was in his thirties. He was very senior to us and he was our dad. He was a great pilot. The navigator was from Nova Scotia, Canada. Very, very good, very good navigator. The two gunners, mid-upper and rear were Canadians. The rear gunner at Penrose [?] thought he had enough so he went AWL and unfortunately got the LMF, lack of moral fibre. The bomber [unclear] and myself were both Londoners. And the wireless operator was somewhere from Middle East. I’m not quite sure where but unfortunately he went on a spare trip and got shot down and died.
GC: OK. I’ve read your CV and you, you spoke about bringing the POWs home. Could you tell us a little bit about bringing the POWs home?
DS: What? Sorry.
GC: Could you tell us a bit more about bringing the prisoners of war home?
DS: Oh sorry, yes. After the war, rather a wonderful thing really. We went [clears throat] — a whole lot of aircraft went [clears throat] I think it was to Belgium to pick up the prisoners of war. They were all lined up everywhere and as we taxied we stopped and our line all came into the aircraft. Full up. One sitting — standing right behind me. We took off and on the way back we saw the Cliffs of Dover and believe it or not they were all in tears.
GC: OK. I’d just like to say thank you very much. It’s been a pleasure and an honour to have met you today.
DS: It’s my pleasure. Thank you.
GC: You’re welcome.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with David Sanders
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Sound
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Pending review
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Gemma Clapton
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-03-05
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
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00:31:24 audio recording
Language
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eng
Identifier
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ASandersDS160305
Description
An account of the resource
David Sanders flew operations as a flight engineer with 189 and 619 Squadrons. He joined the Royal Air Force as a flight engineer and discusses an operation when they arrived too early over the target, being followed by a night fighter and having a bomb hang up. He also explains the role of a flight engineer.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
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Great Britain
Wales
England--Lincolnshire
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
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Tracy Johnson
189 Squadron
619 Squadron
aircrew
animal
bombing
flight engineer
Lancaster
military living conditions
military service conditions
Operation Exodus (1945)
RAF Fulbeck
RAF St Athan
RAF Strubby
Stirling
superstition
training
-
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df6f6cc8ff0327e30fb6a0b48ae46145
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/186/2434/AMarshallS150508.2.mp3
cfb718b423c94b1acd547feb3a16e437
Dublin Core
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Title
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Marshall, Syd
S C Marshall
Description
An account of the resource
Ten items. The collection contains two oral history interviews with Warrant Officer Sidney Charles Marshall (1924 - 2017, 1594781 Royal Air Force), his decorations, training notes, photographs and a photograph album. Syd Marshall was a flight engineer with 103 Squadron and flew operations from RAF Elsham Wolds.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Syd Marshall and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-05-08
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. 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.
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AMarshallS150508
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Permission granted for commercial projects
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre the interviewer is Mick Jeffries, the interviewee is Mr. Sidney Marshall. The interview is taking place on 8th May 2015.
SM: My name is Sid Marshall, I’m recording this for the International Bomber Command Centre on the 8th May 2015. I live in Boston, Lincolnshire, right then? I left school in 1938 at the age of fourteen which most people did in those days, this was about a year before the outbreak of war, so when that started I was still only fifteen, and I had gone to work with a local engineering, agricultural engineering I should say, we were repairing tractors and all kinds of agricultural equipment, and of course this I suppose was considered in war time to be extremely er important, farming, farmers were never called up and that sort of thing, and when I got to be eighteen I er discovered, in conversation with my boss that I was in a reserved occupation, which simply meant that my job was considered more important than me joining the forces, but I think there is a bit of peer pressure comes into it here, everybody keeps saying to me ‘when you joining up, when you joining up’ , and eventually I got a bit fed up with this and I discovered that if I volunteered for aircrew I could get out of it, this was about the only thing I could er go to do, er, which would get me into the forces and away from me civilian job. It’s quite a performance getting in as well, I had, I went one day I was out on the job and I knew the recruiting officer was at the local, [coughs] excuse me, was at the local Job Centre and er so I thought I would go and see them and to my surprise when I got there it was a young lady, and she looked me up and down and I was in my greasy overalls, I suppose I didn’t present a very good picture really, and she said you know I told her I wanted to volunteer for aircrew, and she said, ‘ you know you have to be absolutely fit for aircrew’, and she was sort of trying to be put me off I thought anyway I insisted, and of course that’s how it all started. I didn’t say anything to my boss about it for a start, but I had to tell him when I got called for a medical, I started off, I had to go to Lincoln and this was the same medical that was used for any kind of military service, they used to jokingly say if you had two arms, two feet, and you were felt warm, you were all right, [laughs] you’ve heard that before.
MJ: Yes
SM: Er, anyway I, eventually came round I had to tell him when I went to Lincoln, I said look, tell the boss ‘I said look I’ve volunteered for aircrew duties and I’ve got to go for a medical’, so I went and this was pretty simple really, and er, I there was then a break of probably a couple of months, and I then had to go to Doncaster which was the full aircrew medical. You had to go and be prepared to stay there for a couple of nights, so the thing was spread over three days really. So anyway I got myself to Doncaster, and I found the Selection Board and all that were in the top floor of a multi-storey shop, and er, the first thing you had of course was the medical because if you didn’t pass the medical then you didn’t go any further, and they were very very strictly, they didn’t exactly turn you inside out but very nearly, you had to blow up columns of mercury and hold them, and you had to do various exercises, you were given a much stricter medical then had been for you know for what I call ground crew job. Anyway I passed the medical okay and in fact if you didn’t that was as far as you went, if you hadn’t passed the medical you were sent home again, that got the first day over. The second day [coughs] because I hadn’t been to Grammar School I had to sit a maths and general knowledge sort of test, anyway as an engineer I had been taking lessons in er [coughs] excuse me, in science, er maths and technical drawing, and of course that had boosted my education enough and I managed to slip past the exam okay, and that was about the last thing on that day. The third day you went before a panel of officers and they asked you what you wanted to do, they interviewed you and er, I realised the fact that I hadn’t been to Grammar School was not going to help me and they said ‘what would I like to do?’, and of course I think everybody wanted to be a pilot originally, anyway I told them I had been studying at night school and that and they said ‘ oh I think you’ll just about make it’, but to try and put me off they said ‘we have got such a lot of applications we probably won’t be able to take you in for seven or eight months’, I think it was just a gag really to put you off. Anyway they then asked me was I what work I had done and as soon as I mentioned that I had been working in engineering for four years, ‘oh your just the chap we want you can become a flight engineer’ and I’m afraid my sealed, fate was sealed at that, so that’s how it all came about. I went back home anyway and told my boss that I’d be going shortly but I was another, I should think another two or three months before they called me up, and er, anyway that was it, he never got on to me about it I think he understood how I felt, and he did say, ‘well your job will be there when you come back’, which was fair enough wasn’t it. Anyway the time came round for me to go and I found myself on Boston Station early one morning with my little suitcase bound for Kings Cross. I got on the first train and er, when I got to Kings Cross there was an NCO working there, waiting I should say, and by that time there were seven or eight of us who were all going to the same place, we had to report to what they call the er, er, oh dear, RTO, that’s the Rail Travel Officer, and er she gathered us all up and then we set off on the underground to St. John’s Wood Tube Station. We got off the station there and there was a corporal there waiting, marched us in some sort of disorder to the holy, holy place, Lords Cricket Ground, that was where it all happened. The first day we got there, we were booked in, they took our names and that sort of thing, and then we were given a card with a number on it and told to go and sit in the grandstands until we were called, of course there were hundreds of other lads there, and er, eventually my lot was called, and you went in and you had another er medical, it was only brief, it was what they called, it had all these er initial letters in the forces, this was an FFI, free from infection, I don’t quite know what they thought what we’d had picked up in the interim, but anyway it wasn’t very severe that one, and we went on, and then er, the next then we got to er [coughs] we went and got kitted out, we were given a kit bag and you went down the line, and I was fascinated by how they got the size of uniform right, there was a sloping line on the wall marked off in feet an inches, and as you walked by one bloke called your height out [laughs].
MJ: [laughs].
SM: Another bloke put a tape measure round your chest and that’s why, that’s how they decided the size of uniform unit. So you finish up with arms full of stuff and a kit bag, and we stowed all that lot in there and that’s about all we did the first day, and of course the next day we had to kit ourselves up in uniform and something else that really tickled me was [coughs], we decided that, you’ve seen Poiroit on the television haven’t you in these very posh block of flats, well we were in one of those, mind you it wasn’t very posh, there was nothing much on the floor and each room just had a double bunk each side and that was it there was nowhere to hang your clothes up or anything else, if you aren’t wearing it, it lives in your kit bag [laughs] or hung on the end of your bed, and we er, and we were there in all for about three weeks, and when I wrote home my address sounded very good, and it was er, the house was called Grove Court Mansions and it was in Grove End Road, St. John’s Wood, London, which is a very posh address isn’t it, and of course when my mother wrote back, she said ‘ [unclear] lad you’ve got such a nice place’, I didn’t disillusion her, [laughs] I let her think if she was happy I would leave it at that [laughs], and we were there for about three weeks altogether, we started to drill, we had another full medical, we were divided up into swimmers and non-swimmers, and we started er the you know we had our meals by the way, the zoo of course was closed in those days, London Zoo, not being too far away we used their canteen that was our cookhouse, we had our meals there, and anyway time passed pretty quickly and we got to know er some of the other lads, there were four of us in this room and er, I, and we managed right the way through our training to keep together [coughs]. As I say in all we were about there for three weeks and then one night we were packed up and we were put back on the underground again back to Kings Cross Station, and they never tell you where you were going, and when you got to Kings Cross, I thought if you are going to Kings Cross you are going North. We got to er, overnight, we travelled at midnight, I think they put troops and that on the train at night to leave the trains free for the civilians in the day time, imagine that was the idea. Anyway we found ourselves in the early hours of the morning at er York, clambered out there and we were put on another train and er we arrived quite early in the morning at Scarborough, and here’s another posh address the place we went to there was called The Grand Hotel, and of course the forces used these places, they were empty in those days, nobody taking holidays were they, but it wasn’t very grand, but we didn’t have to worry us too much, because we had our breakfast there and then we were all drawn up outside and we were ticked off where we gonna’ go and they found there wasn’t room for us all at er Scarborough, so my flight which consisted of something like thirty of us were put on a train again and went to Bridlington, and this is where I did my, we got these letters again, this is ITW, Initial Training Wing, and when we were in London it was ACRC, which sounds a bit queer but it was Air Crew Reception Centre, you get used to all these letters don’t you. So this was where our initial training was going to be and in all I think we were there for about eight weeks, and it was the middle of winter and we used to do PT on the beach in the snow with the spray blowing off the sand, and do you know you never catch cold because you are fit aren’t you, and er when we went into the er Ex’, we were based in the Expanse Hotel, which I’ve seen since it’s still there, it is one of the top hotels, but of course they took us to these places ‘cause there was accommodation available didn’t they. We lived on the ground floor of the hotel in my particular case, and we were told when we went out to leave all the windows open get some fresh air in, well the sea was rough and the spray was blowing as well [laughs] which didn’t help matters. Anyway we were introduced then to our er instructor, a drill instructor, Corporal Horrocks, I won’t tell you what we called him, because would it be rude to mention it?
MJ: If you want to.
SM: [laughs].
MJ: It’s up to you.
SM: I won’t mention it, but you can guess what it was, he was a very nice chap actually, and er the only trouble was he was, we got lads there some of them from London, some of them from all over the country, and he was a Geordie, and you just couldn’t understand what he said a lot of the time, his favourite thing we used to drill in the streets, and of course along the seafront, no traffic about in those days as nobody had any petrol did they, and we used to be marching up and down there and I remember one occasion we came out of a side turning up to the promenade and he said something, he said ‘hey up [?]’, and we didn’t know if he said right or left and we parted company like that you know, one line went left the others went right, and there was a group of women coming up there with their shopping bags laughing their socks off at us [laughs], and of course he bollocked us as they say for that [laughs], but he was actually a very nice bloke he didn’t mess us about too much, and er we did, we had lectures in the Spa which is a sort of dance hall place there isn’t it, and we were, and I think the main thing was getting us fit, we sometimes we’d go jogging in just of a pair of shorts and if you like a vest if you like, and I remember on one occasion, while we had it I don’t know we had a rifle, a bayonet, a tin hat and all that and a gas mask, we never used any of those things did we? Anyway we, they took us one day, I’ve forgotten the name of the place there, seaside on the coast near er, and we all got out and er we had to march to the far end which was probably three or four miles and then we this lorry followed us up, we had to chuck all our kit in the back of the lorry get stripped off and run back, [laughs] this is all part of the getting fit process, and we had lectures as I said in the Spa, er it’s surprising we did drill instruct, drill we had to do shooting, we then started using, do clay pigeon shooting which was shooting at moving targets which I think was more akin to aircrew than anything else wasn’t it, anyway we were you know there in all for about eight weeks, and then we got at the end of the time we, it happened to be Christmas, we were very, very, lucky, we were sent home we had a ticket wherever you were going to get home and then we had to go back to London, so I was home for Christmas so that was very nice, I had a full week at home, and then I was back to Boston Railway Station again and down to Kings Cross and we had to return, and again we had to report to the RTO, that’s the Rail Travel Officer, they had these offices on all the main stations to you know supervise troops travelling about telling them where to go and all that sort of thing, and this time we were put on a train we knew were we were going, er we were put on a train to Wales, and we rode at first of all, I think we got as far as Cardiff and we had to change onto a slow local train then and this was taking us to our final destination for that, we pulled up er, went through Barry, and er we eventually stopped on the little wayside station it was at the bottom of cutting and it was one of those places where there was only about one man there he was the station master, the signal, the porter, and everything else, and er we got off the train there and er we then marched up there was a corporal, there always corporals aren’t they, corporal met us, with all our kit and that we were marched up to the RAF Station at Saint Athan, this was where we were to be for the next, I don’t know seven or eight months. In the war time you know the courses get shortened, I think the engineer’s course at one time would probably be nearer eighteen months, at the time I got there it was down to about seven or eight months, and er, if you had er, some people had engineering experience like myself didn’t find it too difficult, but some of the lads had never touched it and they of course you know an exam about every fortnight and if you didn’t get on very well you got put back a week, and I think if you got put back more than twice you were kicked off the course [laughs]. Anyway we were there for, let me just get my book, I’d only really got to er we’d just arrived at Saint Athan hadn’t we, for our training, I didn’t realise then how long it would be but we actually, er training of flight engineers lasted about seven months, and it covered all aspects of the aircraft, we had to know a little bit about everything, we had to know about the hydraulics, I mean the undercarriage and the bomb doors and all that sort of thing are all hydraulic, so then we had to learn about brakes because they’re pneumatic, and we had to learn about the engines and how to get the best out of them and keep in in an eye in view the amount of fuel we were using, if you opened the engines up too much the fuel consumption went up drastically and if you did that too much you might think you hadn’t got enough fuel to get home with again [laughs], this is the sort of things you had to you know get used to, but this is what we were taught to do, we had at the end of it we had actually we had an exam about every couple of weeks and if anybody was not quite up to scratch they were put back and did that section over again and you could do that twice but if you did it more than twice you got chucked off the course for taking too long [laughs]. All in all I was at Saint Athan for about seven months, you can’t really go into detail about it, it’s too technical and too complicated, but we had a [unclear] a list of all the things we had to do anything mechanical or anything that worked was my option, and my most important job really was in a Lancaster you know you got four engines and you got six fuel tanks and normally the two sides of the aircraft are separate, there is a valve in the mains bar[?] where you can open so you can transfer fuel from one site to the other, [sighs] but normally you took off on the middle tank, there was a tank between the engine and the fuselage, another one between the two engines and the third one was out in the, out part of the wing, so you’ve got, your wings are full of petrol and the floor underneath you was full of bombs, it’s not a very good situation really to be in is it, you don’t really want to get hit, and er, the most important job I had to do was, ‘cos an aero engine uses a lot of fuel er, anywhere between about twelve hundred and fifty horsepower each engine, in fact to put it an easier way a Lancaster did about one mile to the gallon, which is pretty [unclear], not far is it, and if you had a full load of petrol you could go out somewhere there and back and do two thousand miles and that was about your limit, you always had to keep at least a hundred or nearly two hundred gallons er back for landing you don’t want to be landing on your last gasp of fuel do you, and when of course they were arranging operations they took the weight of the aircraft and er then they [coughs] I had to look at the plan and calculate how many miles it was there and back, shall we say if was probably fourteen hundred miles there and back, and without going into decimal places the Lancaster did about one mile to the gallon, so okay fourteen hundred miles you want fourteen hundred gallons of petrol and they gave you two hundred gallons extra that’s your safety margin, so if all goes well you should arrive back at base with two hundred gallons of petrol, but it does allow for the fact you might get delayed, you might have a head wind which might make it take a bit longer to get back home again, you might not be able to land at your own base because it’s probably fog bound, so you have the hours grace, and I remember of one occasion we had to, we came over, got over Britain and we set off, er the bomb aimer, sorry, the navigator gave the pilot his last course back to base, we hadn’t been going long before we had a radio call through to say that we couldn’t land at base because it was covered in fog, and er we were to land I think it was somewhere in Norfolk, anyway that’s fair enough so we made a slight alteration of course and we are heading towards this not long after that we got another message to say we couldn’t land, it was Langham in Norfolk, can’t land there it’s now fog bound as well, so we start to circle around and they said to stand by, so did a wide circle round, we went round a couple of times, and I said to all of them [unclear] ‘we soon want to be landing somewhere because we are getting down on fuel’, and almost at the same time the wireless op, the mid upper gunner came on the, on the intercom and said ‘I can see a glow in the sky skipper it might be FIDO’, you know fog dispersal, so we made our way over there and we’d been told to stand by but we never got any further instructions I think they were struggling to find us anywhere to land, so we went on and we circled round over this and your call log if you were in trouble you called dark here, that was your trouble, it mean’t you were in difficulties, and our, our call sign was suedecoat, aircraft was C-Charlie, so you called ‘darkie darkie from suedecoat charlie’ and we got an immediate call back the usual lady’s voice, WAFS, ‘are you over an airfield with FIDO burning?’, so we think we are because we could see the glow in the sky so we came down a bit lower and er we called em again and they gave us landing instructions, and it was quite, I say it was a bit scary really, because do you know what FIDO was made of there were pipes laid down by the side of the fuselage, the runway, not too close to the runway, they were blocked off at one end and then holes drilled, a bit crude really, holes drilled in them and at the upper end near the entrance to the runway was a pump and a fuel tank and they were pumping neat petrol into these, and I don’t know who did it some brave guy must have gone out and lit it probably used a flare or something like that, and they only did about half the length of the runway but when you got lower you could actually see the flames and you usual drill was, er ‘yes Charlie you are clear to land call down wind’ that’s when you are coming down wind, so we called ’Charlie down wind’, you’ve got your wheels down, got your flaps down, [?] down, you then turn and say ‘Charlie Roger call funnels’ and your lights from the high up looked like a funnel that tapered into the runway, so they guided you onto the runway, in this case it was the flames, so we got on funnels they called ‘Charlie funnels’ they said ‘Charlie [?] mission is a Charlie pancake’ that means land, so we landed and there was a bar of flames and when we went over the bloody aircraft went ugh like than [laughs], like a kick up the backside, because tremendous heat from these flames literally lifted the aircraft, anyway we came in and we landed, I had my fingers crossed ‘cos I knew we’d got some damage, I said to Luke[?]the skipper ‘I hope to Christ we haven’t got a flat tyre if we swing off into that lot it will be unfortunate’, anyway we landed all right we taxied to the end and er a vehicle met us there and we followed it round, they took us round into a spare dispersal and of course you went through your drill close your engines down everything else, shut everything off, and er you can’t really leave anything in the aircraft so we went out loaded up with our parachutes and everything else which, we were then taken to a room where we was briefed, debriefed, and we discovered that the aircraft there were Mosquitoes, because one or two of them took off in that lot to go and bomb, so that’s they were using the flares to guide them, I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it, we heard this roaring come along, said ‘Christ it’s a Mosi’. Anyway we were debriefed, then we were given a meal and then we were given an armful of blankets and pointed toward a hangar, a Nissen hut, you go in there and there was Buckaroo [?] on the floor, it’s like dark brown lino on the floor usually isn’t it just so you can sweep it up, and you make your bed up and I think we was that ruddy tired, we just chucked the, we had three biscuits you know what biscuits are? Three padded squares that you put end to end, tuck a blank around it and that’s your base for your bed, I don’t know if we even bothered to do that we were that ruddy tired I think be then we just crashed out and went to sleep, we couldn’t get undressed ‘cos you’d nothing with you, trouble is when you got diverted like, you got no shaving kit, you got no ‘jamas or anything like that, you just had you were in what you were. Then we slept the sleep of the just there and next morning we went we found out, found the sergeants mess and had some breakfast, very much do it yourself isn’t it [laughs], and then we got, er we went to see, I think we went to see the CO or the squadron leader anyway, and he said ‘well you chaps look as if you are stuck here we can’t er, you’ve got some damage which your aircraft has got to be repaired before you can take it off again, you might even need an engine change’, and we discovered it was two days before Christmas and we knew we’d got Christmas festivities on at our base, ‘that’s bloody handy we are going to be stuck here over Christmas’, anyway our skipper went to see the adjutant and they had a bit of argy bargy with him and he came back and he said ‘we’re going home on the train’, we did we got [laughs] he’d got a , he’d got a ticket for the lot of us, so we the truck took us to the, I can’t remember where the nearest railway station was, um it might have been Cambridge even, I don’t know, I can’t remember now it’s a long long time ago. Anyway we got on there and we had to get on the train I think it took us to Norwich, then we had to go across to Peterborough, and then when we got to, we went through Boston and er we went back we got back to Grimsby, and then we had to get on a packed line from Grimsby to Elsham, now that railway train ran through Elsham that was still about three miles away from the camp, anyway we rung up and they come and picked us up, and you do, you don’t ‘cos we took our parachute with us and everything, and when you get on a train with your flying kit carrying your parachute you get some very funny looks off people [laughs], that was one of the most interesting things that ever happened to us, and anyway we had our ‘cos when you went on ops you emptied your pockets you’d no money, you’d nothing have you, you couldn’t even go in the sergeants mess and buy a pint as you’d no money. We had our Christmas there, and I, shows you in my book anyway, em I think we had Christmas and it was about four days after Christmas eventually one of our other crews flew us back to Graveley to pick our aircraft up, so we didn’t do anything for nearly a week [laughs] is that the sort of thing you’d be interested in?
MJ: Yes
SM: That’s a bit unusual and er.
MJ: Yes
SM: That was, we were halfway through a tour when we did that, but it’s just something that came to mind. I think er the first time we ever went out we got hit, I’m going backwards now. When you got the you’d finished your full training, ‘cos we did some further training after we got posted to a squadron and er we thought well we’d only done about nine and a half hours flying on a Lancaster, we did our ITW that’s interesting our heavy conversion[?} rather on Halifaxes, which wasn’t very good for me because I’d been trained to go on Lancs’ so I had to learn about Halifax a bit quick we did about sixty seven hours flying on heavy conversion unit[?} and then we went to Lancaster Finishing School and we went to Elsham we’d only nine and half hours flying on the Lancaster which wasn’t very much was it? We found out when we got there the reason was though because we’d, know you know what H2S is now the down [?] scanning radar and not all squadrons had it. The reason we went to the squadron was we were nearly there for nearly a fortnight before we did any operations because we’d never seen this apparatus before and the bomb aimer was the set operator so he had to learn all about the H2S and then we had to go on cross country flights using it to get the hang of it and get used to it so we were a fortnight really before we did any operations and of course we eventually we were ready [laughs], and that was I think it was the 14th October 1944, and er, the first, did I had already mentioned when we got, no I haven’t, um, so no I was going to say we got hit on our first trip didn’t I. We went our first trip was to Duisburg and er over the target we were going lined up you got, once your bomb aimer has taken over you can’t diverge you have to do what he says, he’ll say ‘left, left, steady’ and ‘right, right, steady’ and then when you dropped your bombs you also drop a photo flash and you take a photograph, well of course the photograph doesn’t want to happen until the bombs have hit the ground does it, so you going along straight and level over there you’re being shot at but you can’t do anything about it because you have got to keep straight and level and er then a light comes on on the dashboard telling you that the photographs been taken, and then you can open the throttle, put the nose down and get the hell out of it [laughs], and while we was over Duisburg I was also we used to have another job had to do was throwing bundles of Window, you know strips of silver paper, there was a chute in the nose of the aircraft and this stuff came in bundles with a bit of string looped through a brown paper wrapper, pull the string, tore the wrapper and you put it out the chute and it scattered all over and it caused blips on the radar which they couldn’t pick out the aircraft from the rubbish if you like, and I was down in the, down in the nose doing that, and of course er this pilot shouts out he said ‘come and look at this engine’, and I scrambled up and there were flames coming up out of the side of the end [?] port engine, and you remember to do your drill, the first thing you do is shut the fuel off, close the throttle, wait while the engine slows down then you know what I mean by feathering it, you know what I mean by feathering it , but if you don’t feather it the windmill will keep turning, so you have to turn the blades of the air screw so that the edge on to the wind so it’s stop turning and then and only then you can fire, fire extinguishers in the engine cowling, there’s two extinguishers in each engine fastened on the back plate and er you just press a button and er ‘cos there was flames coming out of the engine but we didn’t know what it was at the time and it went out, but we discovered afterwards if it had been petrol it probably wouldn’t have gone out, but a piece of shrapnel had gone through the side of the engine, smashed a hole the size of my palm in the engine casting and of course the oil spilled out and got on the red hot manifold [?] it was the oil that was burning fortunately for us not petrol, so that was our first time out we came back on three engines [laughs]. Just by way of introduction. Switch it off a minute. - Is it ready?
MJ: Yes.
SM: Well on this occasion I was asked to speak at a meeting which was a fundraiser aimed at raising funds for the new spire to go up on Canwick Hill, and I said I was wondering really what I could talk to you about, something I’ve often been asked about was what was it like to fly in a bombers stream at night, I said when you took off of course from your station you circled round over your own base until you had a time to set course, and I said there were several in er problems arose there because you’ve got people going right and people met head on an all this and collisions, so we had a special arrangement where we went from our base to Goole to Crowle to Scunthorpe and then back, all the aircraft in that area went round this big circuit instead of meeting other head on and that kind of thing and when it was your time to set course the navigator would tell you and you’d cut across and er so you set course at the right time, and well on this occasion I’m thinking about we often flew down to Reading and of course if there was no enemy activity over England you could keep your navigation lights on, you’ve got a red and a green light on your wing tip and a tail light that’s all you have got in’it, you don’t have any headlights or anything on car on aircraft, I said to you we flew down to Reading we changed course and then we [coughs], excuse me, we headed towards the coast and as we crossed the coast everybody starts to switch their lights off ‘cos you going in to over enemy territories and over the sea, so as up to then you can see one another ‘cos you’ve got lights on, now it’s all gone dark and it’s dark outside, I said the nearest thing I can give it to you is, you imagine you are driving down a motorway and everybody has their lights on and all of after time they start switching their lights off, first this one and then that one, and you finish up you are still bombing along there at about seventy miles an hour and now you can’t see one another, and I said you’ve got your eyes peeled you are looking in the dark because in an aircraft you you’re going a good deal faster er even with a bomb load on you probably cruising at about hundred sixty five or hundred and seventy mile an hour, and I said you find that er we used to have, I would sit beside the pilot, the pilot’s looking out in the front and over to his wing tip, I’m taking that side from the front round to the wing tip, the gunners are taking a quarter of the sky each at the back and if he is not doing anything else the wireless operator probably stood in the astrodome he’s keeping a look out as well, so you’ve got have five pairs of eyes looking out, and I said you see people sometimes coming when you get to a turning point everybody doesn’t always turn exactly the same you find somebody drifting towards so you have to go up a bit and he goes underneath you and then you turn and then you probably find you are chopping somebody else off, I said it was a bit scary, it was, that’s about as much as I told ‘em [laughs], and that was gonna’ last the rest of the trip wasn’t it, you didn’t put your lights on again until you were back over friendly territory at er it was a bit scary really the er you can imagine if it [unclear]. Anyway I er – I think that’s about it, was that any good? I remember being asked at a meeting some time ago to speak for a short amount of time I was at a loss to know what to talk about and I suddenly thought about to mention what it was like to fly in a column of aircraft at night, there could be three or four hundred aircraft all going to the same place, and er there would be spaced out of course, each aircraft had a time to be over the target and that sort of thing and it really meant that a raid that was gonna’ last er probably twenty minutes the aircraft flying at hundred eighty miles an hour roughly I mean, twenty minutes so that means that you’ve got a string of aircraft probably sixty miles long and that’s [perfectly fine until you get to a turning point when you find that er you’ve got you’ve got no lights on of course and er you might see a little bit of exhaust flame, but they carefully put some covers over the exhaust because it gave your position away to the fighters but also it mean’t so you couldn’t see one another either [laughs], it’s do debatable which is the worst situation, but getting along talking about what it was like at night if we were flying over England you could keep your navigation lights on providing there was no enemy action and I think on one occasion we flew down to Reading and then turned across head towards the coast as we got approached the coast everybody switched their lights off and of course you could see one another with your lights on so now we’re going along, your flying along at about hundred and sixty, hundred and eighty miles an hour and you can’t really see where you’re going, and on top of that you can’t see the other people who are going with you, er all you might get is a flicker of light now and then from something and er and I know it was the case of the pilot looking out the front and across to his wing tip and I’d be doing sitting at the side of him providing I wasn’t doing anything else keeping a look out, the gunners had got a quarter of the sky each er which they’re looking out for aircraft coming up behind you and er[coughs] excuse me – getting lost – I’m sorry I’ve lost my track.
MJ: That’s all right.
SM: The nearest thing I can tell you to flying along in a group of aircraft at night with no lights on, I want you to imagine that you probably driving down a motorway at night and everything is lit up as usual, headlights, sidelights, a bit of street lighting, you imagine what it would be like if suddenly the all the lights went off gradually, first one switches their lights off and then another, and you finish and you are still buzzing along probably sixty seventy miles an hour but now you can’t see one another and it was exactly like that in the air, unless somebody got very close to you, you couldn’t see them you had to keep a really good lookout, and er it was certainly the worst point was when you reached the point where you’re changed direction and you’ve got people cutting across the front of you and you went up a bit and let them go underneath or dived under or went underneath and so you could keep an eye on them and it really was quite exciting, never muind exciting it was ruddy dangerous really wasn’t it [laughs], but er that was what it was like, and er you had everybody provided everybody kept on time it wasn’t too bad but it was still a crush when something like three or four hundred aircraft all going to pass over the target in the space of about twenty minutes and er it really I think that was one of the most dangerous things apart from enemy action of course which er hopefully you’d avoid. – You asked me what I did on VE Day as it happens I was home on leave and of course as you can imagine there was great excitement everywhere and add to that we were very fortunate in Boston that the annual May Fair was there and of course this gave us something to do and I remember me meeting up with some of my friends I mean er a lot of them were away in the Far East and all over the place but there always seemed to be somebody you could meet up with, we’d got a couple of pals and then we got along with some er local people we had also one of my pals who was in the Navy joined us and we came across a I think it was a sergeant in the American Air Army and he seemed to be on his own a bit so we adopted him as well, and you know how it goes on these nights you [unclear] you pick up until you’ve got a little group don’t you and I remember particularly that we er went into one or two of the pubs and of course beer was always short in those days it wasn’t very long before they ran dry we came out of there and went somewhere else, there was a lot of toing and froing in that respect and by the end of the evening we had er several sufficiently to put is in a good humour I’ll put it that way, and I do remember particularly towards the end of the evening we had the sudden idea that we would swap clothes and I think I finished up the day with this American chaps tunic I think he was a sergeant actually, and one of my pals had got his sailors hat on, and we were all mixed up and we were going round, it was really very jovial and thoroughly I think we had a jolly good time and nobody considered the fact that we were improperly dressed or anything [laughs] silly like that it was just a jolly old night and a really memorable occasion, and it’s not the sort of thing that it happens every day very often is it?
MJ: No.
SM: Was that all right?
MJ: Sidney Marshall let me thank you on behalf of the International Bomber Command History Project, this is the end of the recording taken by Michael Jeffries on the date of the 8th May 2015 at three thirty. 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 Syd Marshall
Format
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00:44:58 audio recording
Type
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Sound
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
Creator
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Mick Jeffery
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-05-08
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
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eng
Conforms To
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Pending review
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AMarshallS150508
Description
An account of the resource
Sidney Marshall grew up in Lincolnshire and worked as an agricultural engineer. He volunteered for the Royal Air Force at eighteen and trained as a flight engineer. On his first operation to Duisburg one of his Lancaster's engines was hit by shrapnel and they returned on three engines. Returning from another operation they had to divert and land at a station in Norfolk with the help of FIDO, as the aircraft was nearly out of fuel. He also discusses what it was like to fly at night over Germany as part of a stream of hundreds of aircraft, and his experiences of VE day celebrations in Boston.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
Wales
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Duisburg
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944-10-14
Contributor
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Jackie Simpson
103 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
FIDO
flight engineer
H2S
Halifax
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Mosquito
RAF Elsham Wolds
RAF St Athan
recruitment
training
Window
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/187/2440/SMarshallS1594781v10005.1.jpg
15c017f44b371c25b74f1268fc9e05f8
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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Marshall, Syd. Album
Identifier
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Marshall, S
Description
An account of the resource
77 items. The album contains wartime and post-war photographs, newspaper cuttings, and memorabilia assembled by Warrant Officer Sidney Charles Marshall (1924 - 2017, 1594781 Royal Air Force). Syd Marshall was a flight engineer with 103 Squadron and flew operations from RAF Elsham Wolds.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Syd Marshall and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-05-08
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Syd Marshall and flight engineer brevet
Description
An account of the resource
Half-length portrait of Sergeant Syd Marshall with flight engineer brevet.
Syd Marshall's flight engineer's brevet.
Captioned 'After passing out St Athan 12-7-1944
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1944-07-12
Format
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One b/w photograph on an album page
One brevet on an album page
Language
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eng
Type
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Photograph
Physical object
Identifier
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SMarshallS1594781v10005
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Wales
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944-07-12
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.
aircrew
flight engineer
RAF St Athan
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/167/2445/LAllenDJ1880966v1.1.pdf
9e5a668d1c670d39cf4e1ba2b8204224
Dublin Core
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Title
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Allen, Derrick
Derrick Allen
D J Allen
Description
An account of the resource
75 items. The collection covers the career of Flight Sergeant Derrick John Allen (1880966 Royal Air Force) who was a mid-upper gunner on 467 Royal Australian Air Force Squadron at RAF Waddington in 1944-45. Collection contains his logbook, Royal Air Force documentation, notes on air gunners course and photographs of various aircrew. Collection also contains maps and photographs covering the loss of his Lancaster near Spa in Belgium from which he successfully bailed out on 2 November 1944. There is also an oral history interview with his family.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Judy Hodgson 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
2015-08-30
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. 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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Allen, DJ
Access Rights
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Permission granted for commercial projects
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
Derrick Allen's flying log book for navigators, air bombers, air gunners, flight engineers
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.
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Text. Log book and record book
Identifier
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LAllenDJ1880966v1
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Creator
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Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Format
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One booklet
Description
An account of the resource
Navigator’s, air bomber’s, air gunner’s and flight engineer’s flying log book for Flight Sergeant Derrick Allen air gunner, covering the period from 11 February 1944 to 25 April 1945. Detailing training and operations flown. He was stationed at London, RAF Bridlington, RAF Bridgnorth, RAF Pembrey, RAF Silverstone, RAF Wigsley, RAF Syerston, RAF Waddington, RAF Strubby, RAF Blyton, RAF Cardington, RAF St. Athan and RAF Spanhoe. Aircraft flown were, Anson, Wellington, Stirling, Lancaster and C-47. He flew a total of 19 operations with 467 Squadron, 6 daylight and 13 night, his aircraft was shot down on his ninth operation to Dusseldorf, when Pilot and Rear Gunner were killed, he abandoned aircraft. Targets were, Kaiserslautern, Wilhelmshaven, Bremen, Walcheren, Brunswick, Homberg, Dusseldorf, Ladbergen, Politz, Dresden, Chemnitz, Dortmund-Emms Canal, Sassnitz, Harburg, Essen, Komotau and Tonsberg. His pilots on operations were pilot Officer Landridge, Flight Lieutenant Evans and Flying Officer Rodinson.
Contributor
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Mike Connock
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Czech Republic
Germany
Great Britain
Netherlands
Norway
Poland
Czech Republic--Chomutov
England--Bedfordshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--London
England--Northamptonshire
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Shropshire
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Essen
Germany--Bremen
Germany--Chemnitz
Germany--Dortmund-Ems Canal
Germany--Dresden
Germany--Harburg (Landkreis)
Germany--Homberg (Kassel)
Germany--Kaiserslautern
Germany--Sassnitz
Germany--Wilhelmshaven
Norway--Tønsberg
Poland--Police (Województwo Zachodniopomorskie)
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Braunschweig
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1945
1944-09-27
1944-09-28
1944-10-05
1944-10-06
1944-10-07
1944-10-11
1944-10-14
1944-10-15
1944-10-30
1944-11-01
1944-11-02
1945-02-07
1945-02-08
1945-02-09
1945-02-13
1945-02-14
1945-02-15
1945-03-03
1945-03-04
1945-03-06
1945-03-07
1945-03-08
1945-03-11
1945-04-18
1945-04-19
1945-04-25
1945-04-26
1654 HCU
17 OTU
467 Squadron
619 Squadron
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
Anson
bale out
bombing
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
C-47
Heavy Conversion Unit
Initial Training Wing
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Lancaster Mk 1
Lancaster Mk 3
Operational Training Unit
RAF Blyton
RAF Bridgnorth
RAF Bridlington
RAF Cardington
RAF Pembrey
RAF Silverstone
RAF Spanhoe
RAF St Athan
RAF Strubby
RAF Syerston
RAF Waddington
RAF Wigsley
shot down
Stirling
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/159/2504/AParkinsHW150612.2.mp3
a7b074df4b419b69687ccb1c168e6939
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
Parkins, Harry
H W Parkins
Description
An account of the resource
Five items. Two oral history interviews with Harry Parkins (891679 Royal Air Force), his logbook, identity card and one photograph. Harry Parkins was a flight engineer with 630 Squadron and 576 Squadron and flew 30 night time and 17 daylight operations from RAF Fiskerton and RAF East Kirkby.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Harry Parkins and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-06-05
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DE: Harry, you were going to tell me the story of being shot at.
HP: Yes it was on the 21st of the 6th ‘44, we were on operations to Wessling, and we had twelve thousand pounds worth on bombs, we succeeded in doing that but on the way back I spotted what I thought was a plane coming towards us, I shouted to the gunners ‘cause [sic] they hadn’t seen it, and as it got nearer it started firing tracer bullets which was very frightening, and the gunners spotted it and shot at it and luckily they downed it, so we were able to get back home safely but I went down to see where the tracer bullet had gone in the aircraft to see if there was any serious damage, I couldn’t see any but when we landed the ground crew actually cried because there was seventeen holes in the plane and it didn’t fly again, a shame that was, and that took us four hours twenty minutes that trip.
DE: Where were you standing when you saw this aircraft attacking you?
HP: I was just standing by the seat that’s next to the pilot, where there’s a little dome, and standing in that dome you can see all the way round, and I always liked to look all the way round when I wasn’t checking the engines because, it was your job really to spot anything, and some of the frightening aspects of it is if the Perspex wasn’t cleaned very well, in the night time, incidentally that was a night time flight, in the night time if you saw a little speck of dirt that hadn’t been cleaned it could be a fighter coming after you, so we always wanted the ground crew to make sure the Perspex was always as clean as possible.
DE: So what did an incoming eighty-eight look like then?
HP: [slight laugh] it’s hard to remember because with the tracer bullets coming at you, you practically didn’t see the plane, all you saw was these lights coming at you, which was very frightening, it’s bad enough being shot at but to see, actually see it coming at you, it was worse than ever.
DE: Did the pilot take any evasive action?
HP: Yes, he did a slight corkscrew but not too much because the gunners had got the plane, and it went down, so he really didn’t have to do a corkscrew, but that’s a frightening thing when you do a corkscrew, because at one time coming back from an operation, I forget where that was, we were caught in searchlights, and that again is another frightening thing, and it’s, it’s like being on a stage completely naked and everyone’s looking at you, and well the gunner shouted to do a corkscrew and it went really mad, it was a really violent corkscrew, you thought the wings were gonna [sic] come off, but we managed to get out of the searchlight and carry on home, again we were lucky.
DE: And when you landed, you say the ground crew were really upset, was it that obvious then that the plane had been hit?
HP: Yeah, you could see all the holes in the side, yeah, but we didn’t know until after briefing how many holes there was, seventeen all told [sic], which is quite a lot, [pause] that was our twentieth operation that one.
DE: So, you mentioned at certain points when the searchlights were on you or if you were being shot at you felt frightened, how did you feel before and during operations normally?
HP: I didn’t feel too bad because, I think half the time being a young age it was like excitement more than anything else, you didn’t really have a lot of fear at all, at least I didn’t, and I don’t think the rest of the crew did, except maybe the rear gunner because that time when we had a mid-air collision, I think that really frightened him.
DE: But he was OK?
HP: He carried on until the end yeah, and when we finished the tour of ops, they went back to their various countries, which was Australia and New Zealand.
DE: You had another story about some low flying?
HP: Oh yes, my skipper like to do low flying, and, we were low flying what we called air to sea firing where the gunners fired off their guns to make sure everything was OK and you checked various things in the plane and coming back, he decided to do a bit of low flying along Skegness and in actual fact when I looked out from my little blister, I could see the pier above us [laughs], and he still carried on and as we passed further along near to the pier there was two men in a boat, who must have thought we were coming into crash because they jumped out the boat [laughs] and we passed them and coming up to Butlins camp which at that time had been taken over by the navy, and the navy was having a parade on their parade ground and he went so low that the parade all scarpered and ducked down and we all laughed at that and carried on back to East Kirkby, but a couple of days later we were called to the group captains office and he said, ‘first of all you needn’t deny this because we’ve got people who witnessed your aircraft number from the naval station’ and he said the naval officer in charge contacted him because he knew it was from East Kirkby and said that ‘tell your crew that next time if they do that, it won’t be air to sea firing, it’ll be ground to air firing’ and he just said ‘dismissed’, I think he thought it was more of a joke as well [pause], anything else?
DE: Well anything else you can tell me?
HP: I don’t know if I told you about when Pilot Officer Jackson and I went, three, twice with him, did I tell you that?
DE: Yes you did.
HP: I’m just trying to think of the other thing.
DE: Yes you said that three was your lucky number.
HP: Yes, well I lived in 13, Churchill Walk in England, in London I should say and we had a bomb dropped on the next street and it shattered all the windows of our street, right the way along except number thirteen, never touched the windows at all, and with no explanation for that at all.
DE: Would you say you are quite a superstitious person then?
HP: In the way of three and thirteen, yes.
DE: What about any lucky charms did you have anything?
HP: No, never had lucky charms but quite a few air crew used to have lucky charms, and my opinion is that often the lucky charms cause them to do something wrong and end up being either shot down or crashed, because when you think about it, if a member of the crew had a lucky charm and he’d gone and left it before he was flying, instead of his mind being on what he should be doing, his mind was on, ‘what did I do with that lucky charm?’ and during that period something could happen, but that was only my opinion.
DE: So you think it’s more professional just to keep your mind focused on the job?
HP: Oh yes, definitely.
DE: Did you know if anybody in your crew had anything like that?
HP: No, none of them, none at all, the only thing we considered a lucky charm was our whistle and we all had a whistle it was always pinned to your coat.
DE: So the other thing I’ve read about is similar superstitions that if you associated with a certain woman she was unlucky or anything like that, do you have any stories about things like that?
HP: No, the only story I had was that one of the air crew, I don’t know who he was, I think he was a pilot, he’d got going with one of the girls in the village and after a while, whether he got fed up with her or not, she found out that he’d been seeing someone else when he said he was off flying and she happened to be in, the, it was a WAF and she happened to be in where they had the parachutes and as a revenge apparently she cut the strings of the parachute and of course nothing happened for a while but eventually they were shot up and the crew bailed out but his parachute didn’t open properly and that was the end of him, there was an enquiry about that but it was more or less hushed up because it would’ve scared other members of the crew. Whether that was a true story I don’t know but that’s the story that went round.
DE: And you heard that on, during your time on operations?
HP: Yes.
DE: Did you have any associations with any WAF’s?
HP: No, only when I was training I had a association with a land army girl who lived in Nottingham, and, I think it’s more or less after, no towards the end of the war, I was stationed at Stirgate and we got leave and I thought ‘oh I’d go into Nottingham and see if I could find this land army girl’ and as it happened, whilst I was in Nottingham I met up with some Americans and they got chatting to me and they said they had a club, would I like go into the club and having a few drinks, well a few drinks ended up to a lot of drinks and then I found out where this land army girl lived and I knocked on the door and she came out and give me a cuddle and said ‘oh lets go for a walk’, and at Nottingham there’s the Lincoln castle where you go up a sort of a hill, and we were walking up there and we got to the top, we were going to sit down and have a chat and I was dying for a leak [slight laugh] and I said ‘I’m ever so sorry, I’ve got to go and find a toilet’ and I actually run down all the hill to find somewhere, I found somewhere, when I went back up she’d gone, [slight laugh] that was the end of that ‘cause [sic] she didn’t like people drinking, and that’s about the only experience I had.
DE: Did you have a lot to do with Americans then?
HP: Not really, but we did have an American who swapped a pilots, with, he came to East Kirkby as a pilot on Lancaster’s and an English pilot went onto theirs, to go onto super fortresses , just an exchange and it appeared the American was a bit of an unruly type so that’s why they were keen to get rid of him go to the RAF, but if ever we went out together because we always get chatting together, he would go into Boston with us and instead of wearing either his American outfit or his British outfit he used to go with part aircrew American on top and part RAF at the bottom and he was always being picked up by MP’s, but being American he always got away with it, and there was one incident where, it was when a lot of prisoners made an escape and the Germans found out where they were coming up and I don’t know if you ever read about it but the Germans shot, I think it was about thirty or forty of the escapees, so at that time the group captain said that if anybody wanted to draw a gun, fifteen rounds of ammunition, he’s not saying you should do that but if you felt you wanted to you could do, so I think nearly half the air force drew guns and fifteen rounds of ammunition, and this American he’d got his gun and fifteen rounds of ammunition, and outside his nissen hut, there was a tree where a blackbird used to come every day twittering away and it upset him he didn’t like this blackbird so he went outside and fired at it but he never hit it at all until he run out of ammunition , and I can remember also, where you went for ablutions, it was in a place outside where your nissen hut was, and they used to issue you with a tin bowl, and I was walking across with this tin bowl and all of a sudden a bullet hit this tin bowl [laughing], I dropped the tin bowl and rushed into the ablution, never found out who fired it, but there was so much ridiculous firing going on round the airdrome at East Kirkby that the group captain got to know about this and he said ‘right, that is stupid of all these people’, so he wanted all the guns handed, handed in and all the ammunition handed in, well, all the guns were handed in OK but I think there was only ten rounds of ammunition, all the rest had been spent. Similar things like, in my crew a New Zealander, he didn’t like flies and we used to often play darts a lot and he saw this fly going across the dart board so out come the gun firing, [laughing] firing at the fly, so as I say there was all daft things like that going on, that’s why the group said, group captain said ‘right they’ve all got to come back in again’, he didn’t trust any of them.
DE: So, people in your crew took them, did you take one?
HP: Oh yeah, we all took one I think, as I say, I think everybody who was allowed to took one, I never fired mine, I don’t think my crew did except this New Zealander, he did at the dart board [laughs] a crazy lot.
DE: I’ve read in other people’s stories that the medical officers sometimes gave tablets to help you get through night operations, did that ever happen with you?
HP: Never heard of it, never, although once when I got a sty on my eye it was considered to be unlucky if you couldn’t go off on your routine operations one after the other all the way through, and I got such a bad sty on my eye, I thought ‘well they won’t let me fly’, so I said to the crew ‘I’m going down to sick quarters’ to see if they can do anything, and sick quarters was quite a way off the airdrome and it had a seat in there which was just concrete to sit on while you was waiting to be seen by the doctor, well when I got there there was nobody else there but the doctor wasn’t there, and while I was sat there, the dentist came out and he said ‘it must be freezing cold over there, son’ he said ‘come in, sit on the dentist chair and we’ll have a look at your teeth’ [laughs] so he had a look at me teeth and before I knew it he’d took one out and [laughs] I got blood all over me shirt and I said ‘oh I only came in for me eye’ he said ‘well it was much warmer in here wasn’t it?’, [laughs] and I said ‘yes’ and his WAF helper, she said ‘oh here’s the doctor now, so you can go in next door and see the doctor’, and he looked at me and said ‘good God, what’s all this blood all over you?’ ‘I said ‘well the dentist decided to keep me in the warm and took a tooth out’ and I’m sure, it was that one there, and I’m sure there was nothing wrong with it, and he looked at me eye and he said ‘I could lance it’ and he played around with the sty for several minutes and he said ‘if you go back and rest before you get your briefing’ he said, ‘I think you’ll be OK’ and that was it, I carried on on ops.
DE: I would’ve thought you’d need more time off for having a tooth out?
HP: Yeah [laughs]. We certainly had some funny things happening during our time in the RAF.
DE: You briefly mentioned the ablutions then, what were the living accommodations and the ablutions like there?
HP: Well it was only a nissen hut with so many beds all the way down which weren’t all that comfortable but you had plenty of blankets that you could put underneath or over the top of the mattress so it weren’t too bad and the ablutions was, well you had to take your own bowl, you didn’t get hot water, just turned the tap on and that was it, so it was very sparse, but you got on with it, you didn’t complain, if you complained nothing would happen about it [slight laugh], and another thing happened, they used to be card mad and if you weren’t on any day light trips or anything like that, you used to sit there playing pontoon or shoot, shoot pontoon, I don’t know if you knew that, it was where you had a dealer and he’d go round to everybody to see how much they’d put it the deal in the front, either to match his or over match it then as they dealt the cards round to each person you said ‘shoot’, either put a bit more money in or you left it as it was and you either lost or you won and you took something out or put something in and when it got to my turn, I had an ace and I thought its worth shooting the lot , so I shot the lot, I got a queen and the damn dealer got a king so his took preference over mine so I lost the lot and another fella next to me, weren’t member of my crew, he had an Indian motorbike and he’d done the similar thing and lost it all so he still wanted to go again so dealer said ‘what have you got?’ and he said ‘well, I’ve got no money left but I’ll put my motor bike in’ [laughs] and he put the motorbike in and he lost, so round it went and when it came to my turn again and I said ‘I’ve got no money neither but I’ll shoot the motorbike and I’ll have to pay if I lose, at a later date’, anyways I won so I won this motorbike and I had no clues what so ever how to drive a motorbike, and the fella who had originally lost it, he said ‘you lucky devil’ he said ‘I’ll show you what to do’ and we got outside the nissen hut ‘cause the card game had finished and he said ‘right, you do this, do that, and away you go’, so I did that and did that and I went straight through the ablution, straight through [laughs], straight through the covers that were on the outside and just stopped so I said ‘no I don’t want this anymore’ [laughing], I had a few bruises but the motorbike was OK, except where there was a big hole in the side of the ablution, so the next time we played I put the motorbike in purely to lose it, and I never went on a motorbike again.
DE: Probably quite right. So did you play cards with other crews?
HP: Yeah there was all sorts that used to mix in with playing cards yeah, yeah there was one time when we were due leave but the train wasn’t due till, I forget probably about half past ten or eleven and we were always up before seven, you go for your breakfast, come back and waiting to go in, get in to Boston station and you’d play cards, and I played cards and lost again, lost all me money, I went on leave purely with your leave application where you didn’t have to pay anything and when I got to London, I relied on my father to pay for the fayre to get back home, and I said what I had been doing, playing cards and he said ‘your best bet is to leave cards alone unless you’ve got a good memory for where cards turn up’, so I never played cards again [slight laugh].
DE: So just quickly going back to the nissen hut, who did you share with?
HP: Just your own crew, maybe, possibly another crew that were in a nissen hut nearby, so it weren’t too bad, bit cold in winter though, yeah [pause], but I had a cut throat razor, as where we used to live in London, we always used to go to the top of the road ‘cause there was a Jewish barber there and he was always asking about me, when I come home on leave I always used to go there to have a haircut and have a chat with him and he said, ‘you’ll soon be needing to shave, won’t you?’, I said ‘well I got a little bit of stubble coming’, he said ‘I’ve got something for you, I’ve saved this for you’ and it was a German crop razor one of the best there could be and he said, ‘there you are, that’s for you’ and eventually I had to use this, and people used to come and watch me shaving thinking that if I got the twitch from flying I’d cut myself [slight laugh] but I never did and then we went off somewhere and we came back and somehow the call up[?] seemed to go astray, went wrong and instead of landing at east Kirkby we landed at another field, airfield nearby, can’t remember what it was, it might have been Strubby or some name like that, and when we landed we had briefing and they said ‘oh you are not far from East Kirkby so you may as well stay the night, which we did, then next morning refuelled and fly back to East Kirkby, when I went into the nissen hut there was nothing of mine there, it had all gone, and I had a wallet where one of the young ladies I knew in London had given me a ten pound note and I’d always kept that in this wallet for emergencies and that had gone, ‘cause you weren’t allowed to take anything on ops with you, nothing to identify you, and what had happened, if any crews were shot down or didn’t come back, rather than send any of the stuff that the person had kept, they used to have what they called a committee of adjustments, and that was where the stuff was put in to be auctioned off and everything was auctioned and I lost all my stuff, and other members of the crew had lost their radio or maybe a bike, it was all gone, so I never ever got my razor back.
DE: Oh dear and this was because you were somewhere else for one night?
HP: Yeah, they thought we had been shot down.
DE: So for the sake of one phone call, you lost all your kit.
HP: Yeah. That was one of those things, but hardly anybody had ever heard of it, committee of adjustments, I’ve never heard of anybody who knew about it, none of the parents or lovers knew about it either, it just all sort of vanished.
DE: And over efficient as well it seems.
HP: Yeah, very efficient [laughs]
DE: You mentioned when you were talking about your razor, about the dangers of shaving if you got the twitch, could you explain a little bit about the twitch?
HP: Yeah, well that was where some air crew who had got so scared, that they were too scared to admit that they were frightened and they used to have a sort of twitch which gave them away, you know when they were walking along they would go like that somehow, do a funny little twitch with a hand or the head and we we [sic] had one fella who had got it so bad he was walking along as though he was carrying a ladder and if anybody was near him they’d shout at them ‘get out the way, can’t you see the ladder?’ and he’d got nothing, again [laughing] this is what we called the twitch.
DE: Did these people carry on flying then?
HP: Some of them did and some of them didn’t, they ended up in hospital you know having consultations and things like that, see if they could get them back to normal.
DE: Did you know anyone personally?
HP: No. I say on an airdrome or a base you’d mainly know your own crew really thoroughly but other crews you didn’t really mix a lot at all, so didn’t know many of them at all, ‘cause many a time I spoke or people have asked me about being in East Kirkby and they say, ‘do you know Jack Thompson?’, I said ‘never heard of him’, ‘oh well he was there, he was at East Kirkby’, as I say you just didn’t know these people, unless they were someone famous.
DE: So you wouldn’t talk to each other in briefing or anything like that then?
HP: Not really no, ‘cause your crew was your crew altogether and further down was their crew, all listening to what was going on.
DE: I see, what about the ground personnel and the ground crew that looked after your aircraft?
HP: They were smashing, really good blokes, yeah.
DE: Did you have more to do with them then?
HP: Not really, only when we took off and come back again, so you didn’t really mix with them in the mess because most of them were, I forgot what, LAC’s, they weren’t sergeants or anything like that, so they were in a different category.
DE: I just wondered if you chatted to them about anything out on the dispersals?
HP: You did occasionally but not very often, not unless like when we came back and we had seventeen holes and they were upset about it.
DE: Did you always fly the same aircraft then if you could?
HP: No you had several different aircrafts but in just looking at that, we flew an X, X X X X, the same Lancaster all the time there, then, after that X X, Q V, all different letters to the different Lancaster’s.
DE: I’ve read somewhere that the ground crew said that the aircraft belonged to them and the air crew only borrowed it.
HP: Yes [laughs] I think that’s true as well, because they really were good blokes, nothing wrong with them at all, they really looked after your aircraft, [pauses] in fact they should have got more praise than they ever did, ground crews.
DE: Did you have any views about what you were doing? I know it’s been a matter of debate since the war a lot.
HP: Not really, but I always thought we were doing the right thing as being a Londoner and being in the Blitz, seeing what had been happening in London and you felt you were doing the right thing to do the same thing back to them.
DE: Yes you mentioned last time we spoke how you were on your way to work and the factory wasn’t there anymore.
Hp: Yeah, so you know you had that feeling we were doing the proper thing.
DE: I can’t remember if I asked you much about your recruitment and your training?
HP: Well I think I mentioned that, two lads at the outer city trip (?-name of company) transport company where we were thinking we might get called up, we were having our lunch and we were debating should we volunteer and we decided we ought to so we got what we wanted and we went straight out after lunch, straight down to the recruiting office and both volunteered for the RAF and that was because I thought it was safer in the air than on the ground at the time.
DE: Yes you said that you didn’t want to join the navy because you couldn’t swim very well.
HP: No only across the canal because there was a big canal near us in London and we often used to go and swim across the canal, and we also used to get an old bike wheel, break all the spokes out and thread a sack round, put some string on and drop it down, pull it up and we’d got loads of sticklebacks and it reminded me of that, seeing I don’t know if you watch it, Countryfile, it was showing you about a stickleback there that was blowing its nest waiting for the little ones to come out and they called it the star of the show and it reminded me of that because we used to sell these sticklebacks then to other kids, because everybody used to like a fish in a jar, made a little bit of money doing that. [laughs]
DE: But you were expected into the RAF and then you went away?
HP: Yes we, we went first of all to the flats were film stars used to be, the RAF had accommodated those and I thought it was marvellous because the bathroom was cut glass all the way around with like fish swimming round and I thought ‘boy this is the life to be in the RAF’ but that was only temporary while we were doing the training, and also on the square we had a fella called Alva Liddel, he used to be an announcer for the news and he always used to say ‘this is the news and Alva Liddel speaking it’ and he happened to be in, I don’t know whether he volunteered or not or was called up, but he was on the square and in the papers it said ‘this is Alva Liddel on the square, bashing it’, so that was interesting and we were opposite London zoo and we had our food in the zoo, and people used to be wondering around looking at us having food in the zoo which seemed strange to them, and there used to be a place, I forget the name of the place but we used to march from the flats where the square was, down across the stop lights on Marylebone road to a swimming baths, where we used to have training for, if you came down how to turn the, not the airborne lifeboat, it was like a big circle, I can’t remember what they call that now, but often if you dropped it for you to go in to, it would turn up the wrong way so the bottom of it was on the top and there was like a suction, so you had to be able to go over the top of it, hold on just where the bottle was for blowing it up, grab hold of that and pull yourself up like that and go right the way under and re-put it right, [DE: turn the dingy the right way round] yeah dingy that was it I couldn’t remember what they were called them, yeah and I wasn’t pretty good at that even though I couldn’t swim very far, but they used to make you march in this place as well, because they put boards across and if it was raining you could go in there and do your marching up and down on these boards, when it was swimming they used to take all the boards up and you did the swimming exercise, and there was one where this sergeant he called out, I don’t know if I mentioned this before, he called out that all the crews that were there had to put on their flying suit and he said ‘I want all the swimmers this end and all the non-swimmers that end’, so I thought to myself ‘I don’t know what he’s going to do so I’m going to go to the non-swimmers’ so I was down the non-swimmers which was the least deep part of it and all the swimmers were up by the diving board, then he said ‘right I don’t want anybody to move but all the non-swimmers come up by the diving board’, all the swimmers went down to the non-deep side and the idea was you had to climb up to the top diving board and jump off with your flying suit on then swim to the side if you could, and I was that scared of having to go up that ladder I kept getting behind and behind and behind, and I was the last one and everybody was booing me and he came up to me and he said ‘I can understand you being scared but just go up to the top, I’ll come with you and just look over and you’ll be OK’, he said ‘then you can come back down’ so I believed him and I went up with him, got to the top, and he said ‘you can let go of the bars either side’, so I let go and he just pushed me and down I went and I went right down under, well I didn’t come up because where the zips on my flying suit didn’t work they just filled up with water, held me down, so there was panic on to fish me out, get me back and pump me chest to get me spilling all the water out and after a while I was OK, but I wouldn’t dive after that [slight laugh], and that was a frightening experience, and I always hoped that I would never have to jump out of an aircraft into the sea or even have to turn the dingy over, but luckily we never had to, but that was a frightening experience before I even got to flying.
DE: So what other things did they have you doing for your training to be an engineer?
HP: Oh before you was, became an engineer you had to do like army training, going through tunnels and climbing over things and that was done at Bridlington, I think I mentioned that, [DE: briefly yes], well that was where we were marching along and I looked over the side and I thought that looks like my Uncle Ernie, and I didn’t know he was in the army, he’d been called up, and I just went marching over to him, because the sergeant halted the crew, came over to me and shouted, shouted a few abusive words at me and I said ‘well that’s my Uncle Ernie’, he said ‘I don’t care if it’s the f’ing queen’ he said ‘you don’t walk out of my marching section’, so I got ten days working in the cook house cleaning dirty tins, yeah, and he got chatting to me uncle to see if it was true, he was my uncle and they got quite friendly and he used to arrange football matches between the RAF and the army, ‘cause the army didn’t get on very well with the RAF but that broke the ice down.
DE: Why didn’t the army and the RAF get on?
HP: Well we were called the ‘Brylcreem boys’ [laughs], supposed to be the aloof.
HP: Did I mention that on, when they were expecting the invasion from the Germans they put us on duty either end of Bridlington with our rifle, so many rounds of ammunition and you had to march up a little way and back just to see if there was any invaders coming and shoot them, and this particular time it was a moonlight night with the clouds suddenly going over, and I looked up at one of the hotels and I could see what I thought was somebody flashing to the enemy, so I thought ‘well I’ve got to go and investigate as I’ve seen it’, and I got my rifle ready, I went scrambling up the stairs, right to the top, and as I went along the top corridor I saw another fella coming at me with the rifle and it frightened the life out of me, I dropped my torch, dropped my rifle and ran like mad and when I got to the bottom I thought ‘that was odd, nobody shot at me and nobody come running after me’ and I couldn’t work it out so I thought I better go back, pick me gun up, rifle, and when I got up there I realised I’d saw myself in a mirror [laughs] at the end of the corridor and there was anybody there and the light that I thought was somebody signalling was as a cloud went over the moon it was flickering on the window and the window was sort of flashing, I never told anybody about that [slight laugh] so that was another funny story.
DE: Were you at Bridlington very long then?
HP: Not long, no.
DE: Where did you go after that?
HP: After Bridlington, it was to do with going down to Saint Athens where you learnt everything from the book and from me looking at the engines to find out how they all worked and that took a couple of months, so you really knew everything about the Stirling bomber, and then you eventually went flying with different people in a Stirling and that’s where I said you were dead scared seeing as you’ve never flown before and you were meeting your crew for the first time in the bar, and that’s when this Aussie, rear gunner come up to me and said ‘you sound a bit like us, mate’ I said ‘why where you from?’ because I didn’t know where he was from, he said ‘Australia, where are you from?’ I said ‘Hackney’ he said ‘where’s Hackney?’, I said ‘in London’ he said ‘that sounds good, Hackney Harry’, ‘cause I’d told him my name and that’s when he said come and meet the crew, and I think I went through that.
DE: Yeah you did, you mentioned you got put on a charge and had to work in a kitchen?
HP: Yeah that was through meeting me uncle.
DE: What did they have you doing in there?
HP: Well all the greasy tins when they fried anything or done anything, they couldn’t wash them straight away, so you had to scrub away with the brush to get all the grease off and you had to do that at breakfast time, dinner time and evening meal time, which weren’t very good [slight laugh].
DE: Was it a fitting punishment then do you think?
HP: Yeah, I didn’t think so at the time, but there in the hotel where we used to go into, there was a stairway like that coming up with a landing like that and the toilet was right in the middle, and there was no locks or anything on it, did I tell you about that? [DE: no] well there used to be a scotch fella, who always had a great big knife, always down the side of his belt and I was on the toilet and this scotch fella came out, bashed the door open and said ‘out’ [emphasis], like that and it so infuriated me, I head butted him, he’s much bigger than me, great big bloke, and he went over the banisters, landed on the floor, I, I honestly thought I’d killed him and the sergeant come over and he was still laid there, he’d been knocked out actually, ended up in sick quarters, and all the rest of the air crew that used to be training there they were really scared of this scotch men and I became his best friend because nobody had ever stood up to him and it really upset him and he looked after me from then on, [slight laugh] but it was a frightening experience.
DE: Did you keep in touch with him?
HP: No, no once we split up, went off to you know the squadron where you met your crew and started flying with them, and as I said before it was with Stirling’s to start with and then after a little while they decided Lancaster’s were coming in, so you ended up at East Kirkby on Lancaster’s and I think I told you what happened when I said that I needed more training, they put me on ops.
DE: Yeah. That’s smashing, I think we’ll call that a day unless you can think of any other amusing anecdotes? I’ve ticked all the questions I had for you.
HP: Yeah, well when I was at the end of my first tour training with, I think I said that the pilot trained a pilot and the engineer trained an engineer, and I was with a, a pilot and we’d be on a cross country or something and it was dark when we were coming back so they used to let you go round the circuit before you came in, and this particular time someone fired up a red flare which meant there was danger you couldn’t land, and the pilot carried on landing and I said to him ‘we can’t land, there’s something wrong’, I think somebody had crashed before us, so he said ‘oh, we better go round again’, so we went round again, he was a squadron leader and he’d been on a lot of ops, and as we come round again, another red flare went up and he said ‘oh good we’re ok now’, I said ‘no it’s a red flare, what’s up with you, are you blind or something?’ [laughs] and round we went again and we were called up on the intercom to keep flying round until a green flare was fired, so we did this until I spotted a green flare coming up and I said ‘it’s ok now, there’s a green flare’, so he said ‘ok, we’ll go into land’ and when we’d landed and taxied round I said to him ‘I know you are a higher rank than me but I’m wondering if you’re bloody colour blind’ and he said ‘sssh, I am’ [whispers] and he said ‘I’ve never admitted it to anyone’, he says ‘so please, please don’t report me’, I didn’t know what to do really, because he was training he wasn’t on ops anymore so I just forgot about it, and I thought well if he’d been on ops, he’s done his share so let the poor bloke carry on, but that was frightening as well ‘cause if I hadn’t had said something he would have gone in and probably have crashed into the other plane crash.
DE: Which operation training unit was this you were at then?
HP: Can’t remember where that was. It might have been at Stirgate, fifty squadron ,Stirgate, it was there and that’s where we went on to picking up the passengers in Italy.
DE: Yes, you told me about that.
HP: Oh and another time we had to go to Brussels, this was after the war, to pick up twenty four ex-prisoners of war and the first time went there, everything went through OK, we had a couple of days off and then we had to go again and as we were coming into land, my pilot was looking either side because there’d been a lot of aircraft that had crashed there, and they were just bulldozed over the side and he was looking at, ‘oh look at that, that’s an American so and so, oh look at that’, and there was a great big gulley where somebody had crashed there and they’d moved the plane out the way and we went into that and burst a tire and an American bulldozer come out, up to us, I’d got, well we’d all got out the plane and he said ‘ok, everybody out the plane, I’m bulldozing you over to the side ‘cause other planes have got to come in’, I said ‘no you daren’t, you’re not gonna [sic] bulldoze my plane’, I said ‘we’ll wait until we get a new tyre’ he said ‘no I’m gonna bull doze it’, so all the crew stood in front of him so he couldn’t do it so in the end he gave up and somebody else came out and towed us over to the side where we had to wait for somebody to bring out another wheel for us, and that was at Brussels and we ended up at Melbrook, wherever that was and then we got the tyre all sorted out and then went on to our base, that was a daylight operation.
DE: Did you bring many prisoners of war back then?
HP: Yeah there was twenty four there, another twenty four the second time and then when we went to Italy there was six where we brought twenty back at a time so [adds up out loud] so that’d be about hundred and eighty blokes coming back.
DE: How does that make you feel that you did that?
HP: It made us feel good because they couldn’t get back other than by sea and going by plane it was a couple of hours so they were really grateful to us but really scared of flying, so we went without our parachutes to prove to them that it was safe to fly [slight laugh]
DE: What state were the POW’s in?
HP: Very poor state, very poor, some of, some of them were being sick but they couldn’t help it because they’d never ever flown before and some had bandages on them where they had broken their limbs, but it felt really good fetching them back.
DE: The other thing I’ve read about, about flights at the end of the war, where you had a sort of tour of Germany and had a look at the bombing, did you do any of those?
HP: No, no I didn’t hear about it though.
DE: I think people called them cook’s tours?
HP: No never heard of it, [pauses] the only time I heard of anybody going around, looking round again is Guy Gibson, I think I told you about that didn’t I? I had a mate, air crew flight engineer, used to on the same sort of ops as we did but I had done a lot more than him, we got very friendly and if we managed to get back we’d go into the pub and exchange stories, and this particular time he was right down in the mouth, he wouldn’t have a drink and I couldn’t get him to talk and I thought he’d got lack of moral fibre and was likely to disappear, so I kept talking to him and in the end he said ‘I’ve been sworn not to say anything ‘, so I said ‘well that’s a bit daft’ I said ‘because we could be not here, on our next op so what does it matter about telling me what you’re on about?’ so he said ‘alright then’ he said ‘you know we’re the last ones to get in the plane after our inspection?’ I said ‘yeah’ he said ‘I was just going up the ladder and this bloke come up to me, pushed me out the way and before I knew it was on the plane’, he said ‘I didn’t know what to do so I pulled the ladder up and went up to my position’, he said ‘and when I got there was this bloke sat in my seat and he just said ‘bugger off down the back’ and I was just about to shout at him when the pilot said’ ‘ssh, it’s Guy Gibson’ he was a squadron leader then, so I shut up and listened to rest went on and he said ‘all the way over when we went on the op he was criticising everybody, the gunners, the navigator wasn’t doing it right, the pilot wasn’t watching this and watching that’ and he said when they got to the target, they went round, dropped the bombs and the idea was you got away quick but Guy Gibson said ‘hang on, go round I want to have a look’ and he made the pilot go round about three times before they flew off back and all on the way back he still criticised them all and he said just as we were coming into land he said ‘I wanna [sic] speak to every member of the crew, I want you to swear an oath that you never saw me in this plane’ and he said ‘it frightened the lives out of all of us’ and that was why he was like he was but anyways he got over that and carried on flying, and I never liked Guy Gibson and when I once went to, I forget where it was, somewhere near Coningsby, which was the end of the runway where they’d got a museum there of what happened with bomber command and one of the fellas there happened to mention something about Guy Gibson and I said ‘I hated him, from what he did to one of my mates’ so he said ‘you’re not the first one to say that’ I said ‘why?’, he said ‘well there was a young pilot who was just about going to take off, walking up to his plane and Guy Gibson happened to be just at the side and he called this pilot over and he said ‘don’t you ever salute your superiors and the pilot said ‘I didn’t know you did that when you’re going off flying’ and he said ‘right, when you come back, you’ll be reduced in rank’, reduced him down to sergeant from a pilot officer, he said and that’s why he didn’t like Guy Gibson, but strange nobody liked him not on the squadron he was at and there was once when we come back from ops, we went into the pub and all of a sudden there was a shout and everybody saying ‘wahey’ and I said ‘is that the end of the war, have we finished?’ and somebody said ‘no, Guy Gibson’s caught the bucket’, in other words he’d gone down and that was where he’d gone off with some, I think it was mosquitos he was flying and on the way back instead of keeping with them, he spotted a train and he decided to go down and shoot this train up, and the story we heard was that one of the guards on the train had a rifle and he fired at Guy Gibson’s plane and a million to one chance he hit the fuel tank and it blew up and he went in, but that was all hushed up, they gave another story about why he was shot down.
De: What was the other story?
HP: I forget what it was but he was coming back and he was with the two other mosquitos and he was unlucky that got a shot that hit his plane and down he went, but we believed the first story, no he was never liked at all.
DE: Why was that do you think, was that just his attitude?
HP: His attitude to everybody, he was the king and he was the one who knew everything.
DE: Was there a lot of discipline or difference between people with officers and sergeants?
HP: There was some, I wouldn’t say a lot, but often when people were sergeants and they were made up to officers, that’s when you got a bit of flack, ‘cause I always remember after the war there was something happening and all crews were going to this place, I forget where it was, and I’d been issued with medals and I’d got the air crew Europe and star, because I had actually flown before my crew had so I come under that particular section and my pilot who’d got the DFC on behalf of crew co-operation, we never got anything so we were a bit bitter about that but I happened to spot my pilot and I went up to him to shake hands and say ‘how you doing?’ and the first thing he said to me, ‘how is it you got that?’ I said ‘what?’ he said ‘the air crew Europe and star? I’ve only got the air crew Europe’, I said ‘that’s because I flew before you’ and he weren’t very pleased and just walked off, never even spoke to me, so that sort of thing did happen.
DE: Was there a difference between people who were flying before the war and people who were volunteer reserve?
HP: Not really no, they were all doing the same thing.
DE: So how long did you stay in the RAF for?
HP: I think it was about seven or eight years, all told [sic]
DE: So what did you fly after the war?
HP: It was Lancaster’s and Lincoln’s, that was at Waddington, and did I tell you about the story of taking a photo of a, a Lincoln bomber? well when the Lincoln’s come onto the squadron, I was thinking about this and I thought to myself ‘it’d be marvellous , a Lincoln bomber flying over Lincoln Cathedral’, sounded good and I said this to my pilot and he said ‘yeah that sounds good’, he said ‘if you could get it organised ‘cause I’d had more experience than this new pilot, so I said to the photographer who used to unofficially do our photographs for us, I told him about this, he said ‘that would be marvellous, if you get me on the plane’, so I spoke to another pilot and we all agreed that we’d do this, we’d be in a plane with the photographer and another plane in the Lincoln would fly over Lincoln Cathedral but he happened to be late on take-off, the Lincoln pilot, and he came in a bit late, but because he was late he went flying too low and he went below the cathedral so anyways we got the photo of this, got back on the ground and I said ‘I’m going up to the photographer’s to see how he’s getting on’, so when I got there, he said ‘oh come in’ he said ‘a fabulous picture, Lincoln bomber flying below Lincoln Cathedral’ he said ‘it’s absolutely marvellous’ and he’d put the either negatives or something on a drum which used to go round to dry these photographs and just as he was doing this the group captain came in, inspected and he said ‘what are you two up to?’, ‘nothing, sir’ saluted him and out came this picture and he looked at it, he said ‘good God are you trying to get me demoted?’ he said ‘that’s illegal [emphasis], where is the negative?’ so the photographer was dead scared gave him the negative, he ripped it up and he ripped the photograph up and he said ‘you deserve to be on a charge, you two’ and he stormed off , and just as he stormed off the second picture came out and I grabbed hold of it and put it in my battle dress and the photographer said ‘you can’t do that!’, I said ‘I’ve done it, cheers’ and I kept this right the way till the end of the war and when I came out and I got friendly with a photographer, can’t remember his name now, of the Echo and he got to hear where I was working at Thorne electrical wholesalers and he phoned me up and said could he come in and see me so I said ‘what for?’, he said ‘I’d like to have a chat with you’ and in my office ‘cause I was a manager, I had a big picture up of the Lancaster and anybody who used to come in to see me said ‘that’s a super picture, why have you got that in an electrical wholesalers?’, because I said ‘I was in them’ and I used to get in with these people who used to come flogging you things for the electrical side, so he came in and he saw this picture, he said ‘that’s marvellous’, I said ‘I got a better one than that’ and he asked me questions like you have about me war record and he said ‘can you fetch that picture in to me?’ and I said ‘yeah I can fetch it in but I don’t want to let go’ so he said ‘OK’ he said ‘I’ll have a word with the editor and see if we can publish it’, so a couple of days later he rang me up at work and said I’ve got some sad news, he said the editor said it’s on RAF paper, it’s illegal photograph and he said it couldn’t be published until say twenty five years until that time had expired so he said ‘but I’m keeping it on file’, so I said ‘Ok then’ he said ‘I’ve got a copy of it and I’ll let you have that back’ and I got a copy in the bedroom I’ll let you have a look, and I suppose about twenty years afterwards he rang me up at work and he said ‘do you get the Lincoln Echo?’, I said ‘now and again’, he said ‘well buy it today’ so I did, front page was this picture, that marvellous picture and no end of people wanted to know how I took this and I told them and as I say I can show you the actual photograph, but this group captain, did I tell you about him who lived across the way? When I got a puncture outside his house? [DE: yes you told me but it’s not on the tape] Oh I was going one Sunday to get the Sunday paper and just as I got near this group captains house, I didn’t know he was a group captain, something went wrong with the car and I got out and I found I got a puncture and I jacked the car up, tried to get the wheel off but do you think I can undo those nuts, just couldn’t do it, and this young fella come strolling over and he said ‘I can help you there, I’m a younger fella than you’ so I said ‘oh thank you’ and he did everything, put the old one in the boot and put the new one in pumped it up, I said ‘oh thanks very much’ so he said ‘I hear you was in the war, in the RAF, is that right?’ I said ‘yes, I was flight engineer’, he said ‘did you do any ops? I said ‘yeah, I did thirty nine all told [sic] and had a mid-air collision at East Kirkby’ he said ‘good God and you’re still here’ [laughs] I said ‘yeah’, then he put out his hand and said ‘well done, I’m a squadron leader’ no he was a wing commander then, ‘I’m a wing commander’ so I said ‘well fancy that, that’s a new one ain’t [sic] it?, a wing commander changing the wheel of a warrant officer [slight laugh], it’s never been known’ and he laughed and he said ‘can I come across and see you?, where do you live?’ I said ‘just across from you’ so a few days later he came over and like you he sat there and he said ‘have you still got your log book?’, because you’re not supposed to have had it really but most people did and I said ‘yeah’, he said ‘can I have a look at it’ and he went through it and he said ‘I can’t believe you’re still here’ [laughs] and he said ‘there’s going to be a do at Petwood hotel’, I forget what it’s called but I can show you what it’s called up here [pause – background noise, moves to collect something] it’s called the memorial dinner, 3rd of July 2009 and there would be all top ranking officers there and these officers either had the girlfriends or their wives there and it was a fabulous dinner because lots of companies had donated money, they didn’t have Petwood hotel chefs they had the, what do they call those top chefs?, I’ve forgotten what they call them at the moment but they did the dinner, wish I could remember the names, you see them on television sometimes, very top chefs, somebody had arranged to have all the drinks so everything was free there and it was marvellous, and half way through, a fella got up and he was a famous painter, don’t know if you’ve ever seen a big elephant, I forget the name, what it was called but he was there and he said ‘gentlemen and ladies’ he said ‘I’ve asked the squadron leader if he would auction those three paintings that I’ve donated to the RAF because my heart is felt with the RAF for what they did during the war’, so the squadron leader got up and the first two paintings went for fifteen hundred pounds each, the last one went for two and a half thousand pounds, so it was smashing all donated to the RAF, and I thought I’ll have to go up and get his signature this fella and I went up and there was a couple of people in front of me and it was funny because one of the group captains wives was there with all her gold and chains on her, and she turned round to me and she said ‘oh’, she saw me medals and she said ‘you were in the RAF were you during the war?’ I said ’yes, that’s what these are for’ she said ‘what did you do?’ I said ‘I was a flight engineer on Lancaster’s and I did thirty nine ops’ she said ‘good God can I kiss you?’ [laughs] I said ‘if you wish’ [laughs], she kissed me and she said ‘thank you very much’ she said ‘if it wasn’t for people like you we wouldn’t be here having this do’ so I said ‘oh thank you’ and they gave us one of those, [DE: the mug] also a book of Lancaster’s and spitfires in it, it’s fabulous and then I suppose a couple of months after that, he rang up here and he said ‘would you like to come over?’, so I said ‘yes’ went to his door, he said ‘come in, I want to show you this’ and he showed me his hat and his lapels on his suit and he said ‘I’ve been promoted to group captain’ so I shook his hand and said ‘well done’ and he said ‘we’re having a do at’, he said ‘I’m at bomber command headquarters at the moment now’ he said ‘but I’ve come home for the weekend to show the wife me promotion’ he said ‘so when I go back I want to take you with me to bomber command headquarters and have a big dinner there’, did I tell you about that? So he said ‘have you still got your uniform?’ I said ‘you’re joking its seventy years ago now’, he said ‘well you need to have a dress suit’ so I said ‘well I haven’t even got that’ never even thought about it, so he said ‘well I’ll leave you to it, see if you can get one quick’ and he said by such and such a date, he said ‘I’ll be taking you down with me’, so at that moment my wife wanted to go to Matalans and my son said ‘I’ll come along with you I might see something I want’ ‘cause it’s a bit cheaper buying stuff there so we walked round and my wife brought a few skirts and things, and my son said to me ‘you wanted a dress suit didn’t you?’ he said ‘come and have a look at this’, and they had some dress suits that they were selling off cheaper so I worked out my size, tried a jacket on and it fitted so I said ‘I’ll buy this’ and instead of paying a couple of hundred pound I got one for about forty five quid so I thought that was really good and, I rang him up then, I said ‘I’ve got a dress suit now’ and I said ‘do I need to have me medals put on?’ he said ‘yes’ he said ‘if you bring it across, my wife will stitch them on for you’ so that was good, so did all that, she made some sandwiches and we went all the way down to High Wycombe, when I got there I’ve never seen so many high ranking officers, because I was only a warrant officer, I didn’t really know where to put myself so he said ‘I’m going to take you round’, he said ‘cause I got to do some work’ he said ‘but I’ll come back for you at seven o’clock, be dressed up with your medals on and we’re go and have a drink first with some of the officers, then we’ll go in for the dinner’ so I thought ‘lovely’, so picked me up at seven o’clock, I was put in an officer quarters so that was nice, went down to where they had the bar, had a few drinks and a lot of these top officers had never been on ops at all and they started asking me questions so that was good, and then he said ‘it’s time now to go in to our table’, and all along the top table, group captain was there, I was sat at the side of him and a nice WAF squadron leader at the side of me and we started off with this dinner and then he said ‘we’ve got to drink to the Queen’ and what is coming round is port and there was a great big jug like that of port so I went to grab hold of this big glass to pour mine out and he ‘aaah no you mustn’t touch it, it’s only touched by the squadron leader coming round, its part of the system that we have’ so they poured these glasses out and went all the way round and it was all silver service, you never see anything like it and then, a little while through, air vice marshal got up and he said ‘Gentlemen’, [clap clap] he said ‘I’d like to tell you there’s an interesting person with us tonight and I’d like to speak about him’ and I looked round and I thought maybe the Duke of Edinburgh were there but by the time I turned back he said ‘his name’s ex warrant officer Harry Parkins’ and he said ‘he did one of the longest bombing trips in the war from East Kirkby where they had to top up at the take off point, they went all the way down to Italy to fool the Germans, came all the way back up again to bomb Munich and on the way back his gunner a New Zealander’, no an Australian said ‘Harry we’re going to lose a day of our leave or maybe more if we land down south where we’d been told to go because we might not have enough fuel to get anywhere else’ so he said ‘can you work out the fuel, Harry?’, I said ‘yes’, there was no computers in those days, and I worked it out and I said ‘if there was a sunny morning we’d just about make it’ he said ‘so all the crew said ‘go for it, Harry’ so we did and we landed at East Kirkby on a nice sunny morning and all the engines chopped at the end of the runway’ and he said ‘gentlemen that took ten hours twenty five minutes, the longest that had ever been done in a Lancaster bomber and a hundred and sixty officers got up and gave me a two minute ovation, I didn’t know where to put myself or what to say but I got up and said ‘it wasn’t me gentlemen, it was the crew’, so we carried on with the dinner, and that was really was smashing and then he brought me all the way back home, stayed there about three nights, and one lunchtime, he said ‘I’ll tell you when to come in’, went in at a particular time and there was two other pilots sat with him, we were having your dinner and you could pick almost anything you wanted and it was a Friday so I said I’ll have fish and chips and they all had the same, they all did the same [laughs] and one of these pilots said to me ‘as a flight engineer did you ever do any flying yourself?’ I said ‘oh yes, we had training in a link trainer’ and up to a point I’d never flown a Lancaster but my pilot was a sergeant and then he was promoted to a pilot officer and he went out celebrating that night, and next night we were on flying, on ops and he was still under the weather so went through the briefing, never said much but felt a bit hazy like, he said ‘I’m going to take off Harry’ and I’m sat at the side of him and he said ‘you can do the rest’ I said ‘what do you mean?’, he said ‘ well you’ve had training on the link trainer’ he said I’m going back and having a sleep and you can carry on’, so I flew I think it was about two and a half hours to the bombing target and the bit that amused me most was when they were saying ‘left a bit, left a bit, right’ ‘till we got over the target, bombs away, turn round and on the way back and on the way back, I didn’t feel like doing the landing myself ‘cause I’d never done anything like that so I went back and woke him up and he came up and did the landing, so that was my time of having, flying the Lancaster myself, I didn’t do anymore that was the only time, but I felt quite proud about it and luckily we got back OK.
DE: Well that’s amazing, you mentioned the story of your ten hours twenty five minutes, is there any significance about it being a sunny day?
HP: Yeah because if it had been dark, you might have had to go round the circuit, to get your bearings for coming in, being a sunny day you could just go straight in, no need to go round the circuit, no other plane were likely to be flying there. I told you about the group captain coming in, yeah? So that was another good story.
DE: Smashing, I’m going to press stop there, that’s another hour and a half that, thank you very much.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Harry Parkins. Two
Identifier
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AParkinsHW150612
Date
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2015-06-12
Creator
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Dan Ellin
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
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Emma Bonson
Sally Coulter
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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01:29:35 audio recording
Language
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eng
Type
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Sound
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Civilian
Description
An account of the resource
Harry shares several memories of his time as a flight engineer in the Royal Air Force. He describes their initial accommodation in luxury London flats, and dinghy training at the local swimming pool. He recounts how in June 1944 they received 17 bullets in their aircraft on an operation to Wesseling but managed to return safely, also discussing lucky charms and superstition.
Anecdotes include a low flying incident near Skegness for which they were in trouble with the group captain, and the issue of guns and ammunition when some German prisoners escaped. They lost their possessions to the Committee of Adjustment when they were diverted to another airfield.
Harry received army-type training at RAF Bridlington and continued his flight engineering training on Stirlings at RAF St Athan. He was sent to RAF East Kirkby on Lancasters.
Harry collected prisoners of war from Italy and Brussels. He describes people’s recollections of Guy Gibson.
He stayed for seven or so years in the RAF, flying Lancasters and Lincolns at RAF Waddington. Harry relates the delayed publication of a photograph, with a Lincoln and Lincoln cathedral.
Harry outlines his encounter with a group captain who helped him to change his wheel, subsequently inviting him to dinners at the Petwood Hotel and Bomber Command headquarters. Harry received a two minute standing ovation for one of the longest bombing trips of the war.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Yorkshire
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
Germany
Germany--Wesseling
England--Woodhall Spa
England--Lincoln
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944-06
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
fear
flight engineer
Gibson, Guy Penrose (1918-1944)
Initial Training Wing
Lancaster
Lincoln
military living conditions
military service conditions
Operation Exodus (1945)
perception of bombing war
prisoner of war
RAF Bridlington
RAF East Kirkby
RAF St Athan
RAF Waddington
searchlight
Stirling
superstition
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/205/3340/ABatesP151009.1.mp3
f5fd2ef009e496cfc1da092a451f6c89
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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Bates, Philip
Philip Bates
P Bates
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with Philip Bates (1307447 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a flight engineer with 149 Squadron until his aircraft was shot down and he became a prisoner of war.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-09
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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Bates, P
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
BW: This is Brian Wright interviewing Mr Philip Bates at home in Urmston, Greater Manchester on Friday 9th of October at 2pm. Mr Bates could you please confirm your full name?
PB: Yes. Phillip Bates.
BW: And your rank.
PB: Sergeant when I was shot down but warrant officer when I returned back from being a prisoner of war.
BW: Ok. And do you recall your service number at all?
PB: Yes 1307447.
BW: It’s surprising how that -
PB: And I can tell you my prisoner of war number as well
BW: Ok.
PB: 222803
BW: 222803
PB: Stalag 4b.
BW: Ok. And what squadron were you on, sir?
PB: 149 at Lakenheath.
BW: Ok. So if you could just give us an idea of what your life was like prior to joining the air force so where you grew up and any sort of significant movements before joining the RAF and what prompted you to join.
PB: Yeah. Well I’m a native of Burnley, Lancashire, a cotton weaving town, until I was employed as a junior clerk with a local manufacturer but once the war started I was keen to get in and immediately after the fall of France I volunteered for the air force. And -
BW: So this would be May 1940.
PB: This would be May 1940 and went to Blackpool for a fortnight square bashing.
BW: Ok.
PB: Those of us who were on that particular course were then posted to Cosford and -
BW: Ok.
PB: Nobody thought about anything in those days except the imminent invasion of Britain and we who’d been in the air force a fortnight were given the job of defending Cosford against German paratroopers which was the most farcical thing you could ever imagine so a friend and I very quickly sneaked away to the orderly room and volunteered for training as flight mechanics and we both -
BW: Ok.
PB: Trained as flight mechanics and then as fitter 2E’s and my friend was posted to 149 squadron where I met up with him in 1943. I went to 86 squadron, Coastal Command flying the Beaufort torpedo bombers and moved from there to Scotland and eventually I was sent to Sealand to a huge maintenance depot on a six month potential NCO course with the intention that when I returned back to my unit I’d be made a corporal but whilst I was at Sealand a Manchester landed and this was June 1942 and I went to look at this Manchester. I’d never seen anything bigger than a, than a Wellington before and this thing was stood there with its bomb doors open and this was a few months after Butch Harris had taken charge and I looked up into that bomb bay and I said to myself. ‘Bomber Command is no longer a joke. It’s big. It’s getting bigger. I’ve got to be part of it,’ and so the next day I volunteered for training as a flight engineer.
BW: Ok.
PB: And I trained early in 1943. Posted to a Heavy Conversion Unit at Waterbeach where I was crewed up with a crew who had just finished their OTU on Wellingtons and we went from there.
BW: And so just thinking back to your decision to join Bomber Command. You’d already had some technical training -
PB: Yes.
BW: At that stage.
PB: Yes.
BW: And so you wanted to further that as a flight engineer.
PB: Well the obvious job for a fitter 2E was to be, was to be a flight engineer.
BW: Ok.
PB: And it didn’t require a great deal of training to bridge the gap of course.
BW: And there were a number of guys who went through Halton. Did you do any training for flight engineering at Halton or not? With [?]
PB: No. St Athan.
BW: Right.
PB: St Athan.
BW: So you weren’t one of Trenchard’s brats or anything?
PB: Oh no I wasn’t a brat. I was too old to be a brat [laughs].
BW: And so it was the sight of the Manchester that prompted you to join.
PB: Yes.
BW: Properly Bomber Command.
PB: Yes, yes.
BW: Were you able, at that stage, to volunteer for flying duties or did that come later? Did you foresee that as being part of that trade as a flight engineer?
PB: Once I became a flight, once I became a flight engineer obviously I was going to go into Bomber Command.
BW: Ok. And -
PB: When I arrived at St Athan I was given choices I could train to be. I could train to be on Stirlings or Halifaxes or Lancasters or Sunderland Flying Boats or Catalina Flying Boats. Now, as a fitter I’d always worked on radial engines and so I chose this, I chose the Stirling for the reason that it was Bomber Command and it had radial engines. It perhaps wasn’t the wisest choice. I’d have been better off on Lancasters probably but I I I liked the radial engine so that’s why I chose Stirlings.
BW: Speaking as an engineer how did you find the radials then? Were there, were there particular properties about them that you liked?
PB: Yes. They, they, they were more powerful than the Merlin for starters and they were more dependable and they could take more, they could take more damage.
BW: That’s er that -
PB: When I when I was a boy very keen on aircraft now to me the inline liquid cooled engine was just a big motor car engine. The radial was a proper aeroplane engine.
BW: Ok.
PB: That’s what it was all about for me. The radial was a proper aeroplane engine. The other was just a big motor car engine.
BW: I’m sensing there there’s a difference between the aerial engine and flying. Did you have a wish to fly at an early age?
PB: Well as a fitter whenever I worked on an aircraft and a pilot came along to do a test flight I invariably asked if I could go up with him so I flew on, I flew on Lysanders, Blenheims and Oxfords as a passenger.
BW: And which of those was your favourite? Which was -
PB: Oh the Lysander.
BW: Really?
PB: Oh gorgeous. You’re going, you’re going along and there’s a slow, you heard a terrible creaking noise and the slots and slats worked and the flaps come down.
BW: Ahum.
PB: And you could practically stand still. Wonderful aeroplane. Wonderful.
BW: They used that -
PB: Aeroplane.
BW: On special duties -
PB: Yeah.
BW: Squadrons.
PB: Short take off, short landings.
BW: Yeah.
PB: Yeah.
BW: But they were, they were a lovely aircraft to be a passenger in.
PB: Oh yes.
BW: Was it?
PB: It was a marvellous aeroplane was the Lysander. I loved it.
BW: Did you get many flights in those?
PB: Yes quite a few. Yes. I was on, I was on an ackack calibration unit. We worked in concert with the defences of Edinburgh the Forth Bridge and the Rosyth dockyard and I was once in a Lysander where we did dive bombing exercises on the Forth Bridge which was fantastic.
BW: Brilliant.
PB: Absolutely fantastic. It was like being in a JU87 almost.
BW: And this was just to calibrate the ackack guns as you say.
PB: Yes.
BW: To make sure they had the right sort of -
PB: Yes.
BW: Ranging or -
PB: Yes. Yes.
BW: Distance. There were no rounds fired in these -
PB: No. No. No just -
BW: Just to make sure.
PB: Calibration yeah.
BW: Right but either way the pilot imitated a dive bombing manoeuvre on a
PB: Yeah but we had a real clapped out aircraft.
BW: So having had some experience of Lysanders, a single engine aircraft and Oxfords the twin engine.
PB: Yeah.
BW: You then -
PB: All radial engines of course.
BW: And radial engines yeah you then opted while you were at St Athan to go forward for Stirlings.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And what was the course that lead you from St Athan to your squadron? How, how did you go about getting that?
PB: Well, we, we completed our course and we got our brevies and were posted to, to Waterbeach Heavy Conversion Unit and I was introduced to a pilot, a Pilot Officer Cotterill and he was my skipper and I then met the rest of the crew and we took it from there. Did our heavy conversion training.
BW: And how long did that take? Roughly.
PB: Not very long. Maybe about eight weeks I suppose. Something like that.
BW: And was most of that or all of it daylight sorties or were there night time -
PB: No.
BW: Ops involved as well?
PB: We did, we did two four hour sessions of daylight take offs and landings, circuits and bumps. Take of twenty minutes to take off and land for four hours. And having done eight hours of that in daytime we did another eight hours at night and then after that we did, we did cross country flights.
BW: And when you met your crew at this point did you stay together from the conversion unit through to, on operational squadron as the same crew or were the members interchanged?
PB: We lost two members. We lost two members shortly after we joined the squadron.
BW: And was there a reason behind that at all?
PB: Yes. Our first, our first navigator, Geoff was a regular soldier stationed in India when the war broke out. Browned off. To escape he volunteered for training as air crew. He had a stammer which didn’t help and he was a useless navigator and we knew he was useless and our first trip was a very simple mine laying in the North Sea and he flew us straight through the balloon barrage at Norwich coming back and the next day he packed his kit bags and left us.
BW: And was that his choice or -
PB: No. No, that was forced upon him.
BW: Right ok so it wasn’t something there like a moment of self-awareness. He decided to leave.
PB: No. No, he told, he told us he said, ‘They decided I’m not suitable for Bomber Command. I’m being posted to a Coastal Command station.’ Well I think that was just a face saver on his part. I can’t imagine what happened to him but he couldn’t navigate for toffee. Even, even, even with a Gee set he was useless.
BW: Ahum.
PB: And then we did two mine laying trips. We did a lot of fighter affiliation exercises and our mid upper gunner [Bolivar?] a Londoner was brilliant during, during fighter affiliation. Now, Len, Len the wireless operator was always sick. He spewed up everywhere and I sat there and think, ‘Why don’t you crash the bloody thing and get it over with.’ That’s how bad I felt and Bob was as happy as could be but we did two mine laying trips. One in the North Sea -
BW: Ahum.
PB: And one in the river estuary at Bordeaux and then our first target was the opening night of the Battle of Hamburg. 24th of July.
BW: This would be 24th of July 1943.
PB: Yeah. The next night we went to Essen. The next day our mid upper gunner reported sick with air sickness. Now, how he suddenly became air sick overnight I do not know but that was the end of him. So we had a new navigator and a new mid upper gunner.
BW: Sometimes after raids like that men would be removed if they were felt to perhaps have broken at some stage. Do you -
PB: Oh yes.
BW: Do you think that might have been an impact?
PB: Yes. He was still, he was still on the station when we were shot down and I’ve often wondered what he made of it that morning when he woke up and found five empty beds.
BW: And so if I can just touch again on the fighter affiliation. What kind of exercises were carried out there?
PB: Well either, either a Spitfire or a, or a Hurricane would make mock attacks on us and the gunners would give instructions to the skipper as to what evasive action to take and it was quite, it was quite, because our bomb aimer was a failed pilot who could fly, fly a Stirling perfectly well and the Stirling had dual controls so him and the pilot used to work together and we could really throw it about. Really throw it about. You could never have done that on a Lancaster what we did with a Stirling,
BW: No. There was only a single set of controls.
PB: Yeah. Oh it was a wonderful aircraft. Wonderful manoeuvrability aircraft. Couldn’t get very high but by George it could, it could manoeuvre.
BW: And so you mentioned about the raid on Hamburg. That was pretty close to being your first operational sortie.
PB: That was our first target yes after two mine laying trips.
BW: And what, what do you recall about that at all because it was Operation Gomorrah, the raid on Hamburg was pretty significant.
PB: It was operational. What, what, what was most fascinated me most was the colours. The colours of the lights. Reds, greens, yellows. Searchlights, blue searchlights, tracer shells, flak it was an incredible sight. An incredible sight and when you see, when you looked down and someone had just released a string of four pound incendiaries you’d get this brilliant white light like that and then it slowly turns red as the fire gets going. An incredible sight.
BW: So you’d see a sort of a line of white which would -
PB: Yes.
BW: Presumably be the magnesium -
PB: Yeah.
BW: In the incendiaries -
PB: Yes.
BW: Setting fire to the building which was then of course -
PB: Yes.
BW: Catch turn orange and burn.
PB: Yes it was quite remarkable.
BW: And did you only make the one raid on Hamburg or did you return because there was -
PB: We, we, we -
BW: Four days I think.
PB: In ten days this was our introduction to the target. In ten days we did four Hamburgs, an Essen and a [Remshite]
BW: Wow so you flew right through the raid on, or the operation against Hamburg -
PB: Yeah.
BW: In that case.
PB: And the second night of course. The night of the firestorm oh, deary deary me, that was terrible.
BW: Were you aware at all of what was, what was going on? It seems a lot of information has come out subsequently. What were you sort of aware of the damage at that time?
PB: Well where -
BW: While flying.
PB: On the second night when we were back over the sea I went up into the astrodome and looked back and there was only one fire in Hamburg that night. It looked to be about three miles across and it came straight up white, red and black smoke thousands of feet above us and I said over the intercom, ‘those poor bastards down there.’ I couldn’t help myself. It was a terrible, terrible sight. I’ve never seen anything like it on any other target.
BW: At once it’s a spectacular sight but it’s also when you see that sort of thing -
PB: We, we, we killed forty thousand people that night.
BW: When did that, when was that made aware to you? When did you become aware of that sort of statistic? Was it pretty soon after or was it -
PB: Well the newspapers reported it a couple of days later and gave the number of dead.
BW: Right.
PB: And quite honestly I was disappointed. I thought from I saw it must have killed more than that.
BW: It sounds like they might have underestimated.
PB: Yeah. But forty thousand people were killed that night.
BW: Ahum.
PB: Compare that to how many were killed in London in the entire period of the war. There was no comparison.
BW: No. It’s different isn’t it?
PB: But we never, we never, we never achieved anything like Hamburg again until Dresden of course and in Dresden it only killed twenty odd thousand.
BW: And so Hamburg has obviously made quite an impression for that reason.
PB: Hamburg, I think was undoubtedly Bomber Command’s greatest success of the war. I’ve just, I’ve just read a book by Adolf Galland who was in charge of the German night fighters and the things he says about what the consequences of Hamburg and what it meant to the High Command and the changes it was, it shattered them. Completely shattered them.
BW: So it had, it had certainly had ramifications on the ground but it had more ramifications for the Luftwaffe High Command is what you’re saying.
PB: Yes. Yes. It terrified the German fighter defence to pieces. Terrified them.
BW: And did you see many night fighters at this stage over Hamburg? Were they active?
PB: No because it was it was the first, it was just the introduction of Window and everything was at odds.
BW: And so Window was the anti-radar -
PB: Yeah.
BW: Jamming mechanism.
PB: Yeah.
BW: Where they chucked out strips of aluminium.
PB: But they recovered, they recovered from, from Window very very quickly and they got, they got a new form of defence which was more effective they forced it out before, before Window and I’ve read the German view that Window did more harm than good for Bomber Command in the long run because it completely organised their defences.
BW: But at least on that night or on those nights that you were flying over Hamburg the fighters were ineffective because -
PB: Yeah.
BW: Of the use of Window.
PB: The first night there were eight hundred aircraft and we lost twelve.
BW: Wow.
PB: And most of those were lost because they were off course. Separated away from the protection of Window.
BW: Were there any hits from the ackack below? German anti-aircraft fire was renowned as being very accurate. Did you feel that as you were flying over there?
PB: The one thing, the one thing that fascinated me about ackack was that the smell of cordite filled the aircraft. You were flying through clouds of the stuff but when we landed the bomb aimer and I always got our torches and we searched underneath the aircraft and if there was no damage we were disappointed. We expected to have been hit.
BW: So that, that, sort of, I suppose summarises or encompasses your first few trips on operations. What happened after Hamburg? What were the next -
PB: Well we flew on -
BW: Significant raids for you.
PB: We flew on the last two raids ever carried out on Northern Italy and we flew twice to Nuremberg which we always regarded as a particularly important Nazi target and we did a few other various towns in the Ruhr and then on the 31st of August we went to Berlin and that was something else. That was an absolute complete fiasco.
BW: And this was still 1943?
PB: Yeah. Yeah.
BW: In August ’43.
PB: Yeah. The raid on Berlin on the 31st of August. Well the trouble was we’d been, we’d been to Monchengladbach the night before and we quite often did two nights, two consecutive nights. Well, you do Monchengladbach you get very little sleep, you go for briefing and you’re told its Berlin. There were howls of rage from all the air crews and that manifested itself later because that night about eighty aircraft ditched their bombs in the North Sea and returned early. Biggest number ever ‘cause people weren’t prepared to go.
BW: That, that almost sounds a bit like a mutiny in a way doesn’t it?
PB: It’s not far off.
BW: Down tools.
PB: It’s not far off really but the raid was also badly planned. All the damage to Berlin had been in the west and it was intended that this raid should do damage in the east and so we were sent to a point south of Berlin. There was Berlin on our left. We expected to fly seventy miles east. Split-arsed turn, fly seventy miles back and approach Berlin from, from the east. Now, nobody did it. The pathfinders put their markers down two miles south of where they should have been and we all approached from the south so the creepback extended miles and miles and miles. We killed less than a hundred people in Berlin. We lost over two hundred airmen killed and over a hundred prisoners of war. It was a complete and utter fiasco.
BW: Wow and that simply stemmed from, as you say, the pathfinder markers being dropped two miles south.
PB: And we’re coming from the south.
BW: Yeah.
PB: You can imagine it, practically no bombs and the Germans that night for the first time put down these parachute flares. It was like driving down the Mall with all the lights on. It was an incredible sight and it’s such a big place to get through. It takes forever.
BW: And so the gunners clearly with those parachute flares they could have a clear sight presumably of the bomber stream.
PB: And you’ve got day fighters looking down.
BW: Wow.
PB: As well as the night fighters looking up and you’ve got the schragemusik by this time as well.
BW: Which are the cannons in the back of an ME110 to fire vertically underneath the bomber yeah.
PB: Yeah or a JU88.
BW: Yeah.
PB: Or a Messerschmitt 110.
BW: Yeah.
PB: Seventy degree angle, in between the inborn engine and the fuselage hit the main tanks. All you’d see is a great big flash in the sky and that’s it. It was gone.
BW: The crews often said they didn’t know they were there.
PB: No.
BW: Those who survived didn’t see them.
PB: You could see an aircraft flying peacefully and then the next second it’s a ball of fire and you’ll see no tracer and a myth arose and the myth was that the Germans were firing a new type of bomb, a new type of shell which we called a scarecrow and it was designed not to shoot aircraft down but to explode and give the impression of an aircraft blowing up and for months navigators would log these and they weren’t scarecrows. The Germans never had a scarecrow. They were aircraft blowing up.
BW: Actually the aircraft themselves.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And -
PB: And the irony of that is that in the First World War the British had upward firing guns to attack zeppelins.
BW: Ahum Yeah.
PB: [laughs] They never learn.
BW: Because they were difficult to shoot down as well. But so ok from, from there that’s two operations on the trot really. Monchengladbach and Berlin.
PB: Yeah.
BW: You mentioned those airmen killed. Were any of those from the squadron? Did you know any of those guys at all? Were there Stirlings in that lot that were shot down?
PB: Er we there was a raid on Berlin on the 24th of August as well but we were on leave but a crew that we trained with went missing that night and a friend of mine got shot down on the night we were on. A fella called Lew Parsons. He was shot down on the 31st .
BW: Luke Parsons?
PB: Yeah. L E W, short for Lewis.
BW: Oh I see. Lew Parsons.
PB: He was a flight engineer.
BW: And he was shot down on the 31st of August.
PB: Yeah. Yeah. But it, it was a dreadful night. Anyway, the next day our skipper and our navigator were commissioned officers and so the next day we met up with the skipper and he said Johnny’s reported sick and Johnny was our navigator. Flying Officer Johnny [Turton ]. A fantastic navigator. Absolutely fantastic and he’d gone sick and later in the day we were given a replacement. Another flying officer but a New Zealander by the name of McLean and he was the exact opposite from Johnny. Johnny was a big outgoing personality who radiated confidence. This chap had no, no, no personality whatsoever. He was with us five days. We scarcely ever saw him. We scarcely ever spoke to him. We never even learned his Christian name. And he got us shot down.
BW: And that was, of course then going to be your last -
PB: Yeah.
BW: Last flight.
PB: Yeah 5th 5th of September. Mannheim.
BW: Ok. I was just going to ask a question there and it’s just gone from my memory but I’ll probably come back to it. So, oh yes how far into your tour were you at that point? It sounds -
PB: That was our fifteenth trip.
BW: So exactly halfway through.
PB: Exactly halfway. We knew with Johnny we could do, we could do the tour because he was so brilliant but without him we were lost and he finished his tour. He joined another crew, finished his tour got his DFC, survived the war. He was brilliant.
BW: It’s strange how fate goes isn’t it?
PB: Yeah. Yeah.
BW: Before we move on to your experience of being shot down I would just like to ask about what it was like for you as a flight engineer in the sort of preparation and flying out. What sort of things you would do? Perhaps if you could give us a sense of preparation you would go through to -
PB: Yes.
BW: To board the aircraft.
PB: Yes.
BW: What it was like to then go up in a Stirling.
PB: Well to begin with once we got out the aircraft there were a great many pre-flight checks to do. One of them was to go up onto the main plane with a member of the ground crew. Now, we had fourteen petrol tanks on a Stirling. Sometimes we only had the four main ones. Sometimes we had fourteen. Sometimes we had a mixture but my job was to go up on to the main plane with a member of the ground crew and he would open up the filler caps on all the tanks that were supposed to be full and I had to check visually that they were full to the, to the brim. Now, every night I’m stood on the leading edge of a Stirling. I’m twenty feet above the ground. I think when he moves to the next one and I follow, if I slip I’ll roll down the main plane I’ll fall fifteen feet to the tarmac and at the very least I’ll break an ankle and I’ll be alive tomorrow morning and I always, always considered that thought. I never did it of course. The thought was always there. It was in our own power to be alive tomorrow morning [laughs]. But once, once in the air my two main jobs was one to monitoring engine performance making sure the pressures, temperature etcetera were as they should be and that we were flying at the right airspeed and the right revs and the other was calculating every twenty minutes I had to calculate the amount of petrol used from whichever tank doing the past every twenty minutes recorded so that I always knew how much petrol remained in each tank because they weren’t over generous with their petrol allowance and people did run short very often. So that was, that was important, to keep, to know exactly how much petrol you had and where it was.
BW: So even though you’d done inspections and the ground crew had correctly filled the tanks presumably you could encounter unknown winds and like a headwind.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And use your fuel more quickly.
PB: As I understand it the calculation was made. This is your track. It’s so many miles. You’ve so much petrol. We’ll give you so much and we’ll give you another three hundred and twenty gallons as a, as a reserve.
BW: Reserve.
PB: But of course you get off track, winds are against you, anything can happen. You can’t hold height, you’ve got to get into rich mixture to climb again. All sorts of things could happen to make you use more fuel.
BW: And that would include of course having to take evasive action over the target or anything like that.
PB: Yes, evasive, any time when you had to open up the engines and go into full fuel. We were using a gallon a minute.
BW: That’s pretty significant and that’s just through one engine. A gallon a minute through an engine.
PB: No. It’s, that’s the aircraft.
BW: Oh, the aircraft. Ok.
PB: A gallon a mile through the aircraft.
BW: Oh right.
PB: A gallon a minute through each engine yes.
BW: And I think you said the Stirling was a, was a lovely aircraft to fly. What was your experience generally of the environment in which you were having to work? Was it cramped or was there enough room to do your job?
PB: I’ve only been in a Lancaster once and it horrified me. There’s no space to breathe. You could hold a dance in a Stirling. It was huge and because of the short wingspan it was so highly manoeuvrable. It was a beautiful aeroplane but it couldn’t get any height. Couldn’t get any height.
BW: A limited ceiling.
PB: We had to fight to fly at thirteen thousand. On the last night at Hamburg. The night of the big storm we did two runs over Hamburg at eight thousand feet with the bomb doors frozen up.
BW: Wow.
PB: That was a terrible night.
BW: Just out of interest the air supply gets pretty thin around ten thousand feet. Did you ever have to use oxygen?
PB: It goes on automatically at ten thousand feet.
BW: Right.
PB: Ten thousand feet, oxygen on and skipper charges into S gear.
BW: Into S gear.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And does that give you extra boost through the engines?
PB: Yeah. Yeah.
BW: Ok and were you able, in some cases crews had to stow their parachutes. Were you able to move around with your parachutes on or did you stow it?
PB: No it was always stowed. Always stowed away.
BW: How did it feel when you were actually bombed and fuelled up ready to go and you’re at the threshold of the runway and you’d got the green light. Could you just talk us through that?
PB: Well -
BW: What you were feeling there and what you were doing?
PB: I experienced three feelings. Between briefing and going out to the aircraft, absolute terror. Once we delivered the bombs and the photoflash had gone off, wonderful. Once back eating bacon and eggs very, very satisfied. Those were the three emotions that I suffered.
BW: How did it feel when you were given that that green light? Presumably as a flight engineer you followed the pilot through on the throttles.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And you feel this surge of power of the engines going.
PB: Yeah all all the while was concentrating on getting the thing up because the Stirling had a violent swing. It had this ridiculous undercarriage and because of the torque of the engines it swung to starboard and you had to correct that swing either on the throttles or the stick. Now, if you got a cross wind as well that swing could be quite dramatic and it went like that and then like that.
BW: So a violent swerve either way.
PB: The undercarriage just collapsed you don’t want an undercarriage collapsing when you’ve got a thousand -
BW: No.
PB: Incendiary bombs stuck in the belly [laughs].
BW: Were there any incidents where aircraft were unable to take off because of that? They perhaps didn’t control the swing or there was a cross wind.
PB: Oh yeah. The very first Stirling on its very first flight in the hands of a very skilled test pilot on its very first landing wrote its undercarriage off.
BW: Simply because of the swing due the power in the engines.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And the imbalance.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And yet it looks from, as you say, the size of it -
PB: Yeah.
BW: It looks a very stable beast to fly.
PB: It’s incredibly strong that way. It’s not very strong that way.
BW: So longitudinally strength.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And laterally not so good.
PB: It was a very strong undercarriage but it’s so tall it [put a side strain on it] like that.
BW: Yeah.
PB: It goes. Time and time again.
BW: And of course these are pure manual controls. They’re not power assisted in any way.
PB: Oh no. No.
BW: So, but it was generally very smooth to fly and very easy to fly once you were airborne.
PB: Oh it was a beautiful aeroplane to fly. Beautiful. It really was. It was like a [? ] You could do anything with it.
BW: How many were, were in your crew? There were normally seven in a Lancaster.
PB: Seven yeah.
BW: The same in the Stirling.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And you had initially for your first part of your tour you had Johnnie [Turton] as your navigator.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And your pilot. Who was your pilot?
PB: Pilot. When I joined him in May it was Pilot Officer Bernard Cotterell.
BW: That’s right.
PB: By the time we were shot down he was Acting Flight Lieutenant Bernard Cotterell.
BW: Is that C O T T E R -
PB: Yeah.
BW: I L L?
PB: Yeah. E L L.
BW: E L L. And so who are the, you mentioned your wireless op.
PB: Yeah.
BW: Um, who was Len -
PB: Len Smith. Bomb aimer was Alan Crowther.
BW: Alan Crowther.
PB: Yeah the rear gunner was John [Carp?] a Scotsman.
BW: John [Carp?]
PB: He was always known as Jock rather than John.
BW: Jock.
PB: And the new, the new mid upper gunner was a Newcastle lad called Ray Wall.
BW: Ray Wall.
PB: Yeah, Ray Wall. There were only five of us, as I say, left from the original crew and of those five I was the only survivor. The mid upper, the mid upper survived and this new navigator survived?
BW: And so from there we’ve looked at sort of the raids and the preparation for them. What sort of things would happen on the return to base? You’d obviously be debriefed but what form would that take?
PB: Well, we, we, we always flew at the recommended airspeeds which got you the most miles per gallon. A lot of people just simply flew back as fast as they could regardless of wasting petrol so we were invariably the last aircraft to land which meant we always had to queue up to wait to be de debriefed which was a nuisance but then of course it was the bacon and egg lark. Bacon and egg time and off to bed.
BW: And what, what was the accommodation like? You were all crewed up. Were they in nissen huts. Was there a crews either side or was it -
PB: We, we, we were in a nissen -
BW: Different.
PB: Hut and I think we shared it with two other crews and one morning, one morning you would find that half the beds are made up and all everything’s gone because they had disappeared but the thing is you never, you never associated with anybody outside your crew. There was no point to it.
BW: Really.
PB: No point to it at all. A crew was a very. very tight little, little group. We did everything together.
BW: And so even though there would be two other crews in the, in the nissen hut with you you would still socialise only with your own crew.
PB: Oh yeah we never bothered with anybody else. Very rarely spoke to anybody else even.
BW: And where did you go during your off-duty hours? Where did you socialise?
PB: Oh the village pub in Lakenheath.
BW: Do you recall the name?
PB: No, I don’t actually. No.
BW: Ah.
PB: But I do remember there was a Mrs Philips who used to provide us with suppers some times. Just across the road. She used to put on bacon and egg suppers. I don’t know where she got the bacon and eggs from but she used to put on bacon and egg suppers.
BW: Just as a special treat for you.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And the rest of the crew.
PB: But you know you sit in the village pub at night and you were surrounded by farmers and butchers and bakers and all the rest of it. People for whom the war was just something they read about in the newspapers and you were just so happy, you’re so happy. It’s wonderful. There’s nothing like a crew. Nothing. Incredible relationship. Incredible.
BW: And did you have opportunity to mix with other locals? Not just the, the tradesman there, if you like, the farmers and the bakers or whatever?
PB: No. The only time we went out, off the camp was to go in to the little pub. On the nights we weren’t flying. We were in there every night we weren’t flying.
BW: Were there station dances at all or anything like that?
PB: No. There was no station. You’d the airfield there, you’ve the mess here and your billet over there and something else over there. If you didn’t have a bicycle you couldn’t exist in Lakenheath.
BW: So quite a distance between -
PB: Distances are immense. And I’ve visited it since the war. It’s an American town now.
BW: Yeah. It’s, it’s a huge place.
PB: Oh it’s a big place and when I, when I was there talking to them they produced some information about the wartime use and they spelt Stirling as if, as if it was the bloody currency [laughs].
BW: Were there, just out of interest, were there other crews in the pub where you went or was it pretty much just you guys?
PB: Well no doubt there were.
BW: Right.
PB: But we just sat in our corner and nothing else existed.
BW: Right.
PB: Nothing else existed.
BW: So tucked away in your own -
PB: Yeah.
BW: In your own little world.
PB: And there my skipper named my first daughter.
BW: Right.
PB: My skipper. I don’t know how we got on, how the conversation got around to that actually but one evening for some reason the skipper said if my wife and I were to ever have a daughter we were going to call her Penelope. I never forgot that and so very many years later when my first daughter was born she simply had to be Penelope. I had no choice.
BW: Well. As you say it obviously comes from being a tight crew.
PB: Yes.
BW: And that connection.
PB: Yeah.
BW: Ok. You mention then about your trip to Mannheim and this New Zealand navigator.
PB: Yeah.
BW: About your, of your crew.
PB: Yeah.
BW: Who, who got you shot down?
PB: Yeah.
BW: Just talk us through that if you would, please.
PB: Well we had a full petrol load which means a minimum bomb load of course. We were briefed for Munich and when briefing had been completed the CO said there’s a Mosquito on its way to Munich at the moment because it’s feared the weather may break down there so we’re going brief you for a possible alternative for Mannheim. So we had a second briefing then. Now, we’d no idea where we were going which meant of course the navigators had two flight plans to prepare. They’d doubled the work in the limited amount of time so they were under stress from the start. So we, we, we retire to our aircraft. Do all our pre-flight checks and the CO comes around in his van and says Munich is scrubbed. You’re going to Mannheim. So off we go. Immediately we cross enemy coast we were hit by flack. Now this had never ever happened to us before. He’d taken us straight over a, straight over a gun batt. I was shocked and I thought I’m going to spend, I’m going to spend the next hour checking the fuel in the hope we were losing fuel and we could turn back. And I went and did a meticulous check on the fuel but we weren’t losing fuel of course. Now, the raid was cleverly designed. You’ve got Ludwigshafen, the Rhine, Mannheim. If you fly over Ludwigshafen into Mannheim a creepback occurs. You get two targets for the price of one. And so that was the way we were to enter. So, to make sure we got it right for each wave of the attack the pathfinders was putting down a red marker. Now if you turn on a red marker on to the right course you flew straight over Ludwigshafen straight to Mannheim. So as we, as we were approaching the point where we could expect to see the flare the navigator says, ‘Keep your eyes open now. You should be seeing a red flare any time now.’ And suddenly there’s a red flare there and another red flare over there.
BW: So one to your left and one to your right.
PB: Yeah. So which, which is, which is the correct one? Only the navigator knows which is the correct one. ‘That one,’ he says.
BW: On the left.
PB: Nearer to the target. We get to the target five minutes early. The skipper makes what I still think was the right decision. He said we’d been hit by a bomb once at Nuremberg so we knew that. You’re either the only one over the target or the bombs are coming down from Lancasters. The skipper did an orbit but unfortunately the radar picked us up and as soon as we start to go in a blue searchlight comes straight on.
BW: Which is the radar guided one.
PB: Yeah and then then the column builds up and we’re flying straight over with the bomb doors open. So we continued like that until the bomb aimer got a sight and then you let the lot go in one go and we didn’t wait for a photograph. And over a target I always went up in to the astrodome facing backwards to help the gunner search for fighters and I was up there [ and we slowly began to pull away? ] and there were only a couple of searchlights on us and I thought I’d better check on my engines cause they’re getting a terrible thrashing. You’re only allowed a few minutes on full power so I get down, I get down from the pyramid and have a very long, I have a very long lead on my intercom so I can, don’t have to keep plugging and unplugging and I get down and I’m just going over to the instrument panel and suddenly there’s a terrible screaming and Len, Len the wireless operator had been just behind the main spar pushing out pushing out the window came running up through the main spar screaming, tripped over the pyramid, fell across my lead, pulled it out so I lost all communication and he fell at my feet and then this huge fire broke out in the fuselage and I’m steeling myself to stand and step over Leonard’s body to get to the fire extinguisher and out of the corner of my eye I see the mid upper gunner get out and put his chute on. I turn around. The navigator’s already on his way down the steps so instead of going for the extinguisher I go for my parachute and follow the navigator. I get to the top of the steps, the hatch is open. The navigator’s gone. I slide down. I get my feet through. The bomb aimer had gone up in to the second pilot’s seat to help the skipper. He started to clamber down from the, from the seat as I go past. I get my legs through. I feel a pressure on my back. I turn. Alan’s got his knees pressing in my back, tap him on the knee and go and as I go I feel the aircraft break in two and Alan never got out. So the rear gunner and Len were killed by the fighter. The skipper was wounded by flak that also set the port inner on fire and the skipper and Alan never had a chance of getting out because the aircraft had broken in two. The tail unit with the rear gunner’s body in it landed a considerable distance away. The main wreck landed right on the German Grand Prix racing track at Hockenheim.
BW: Wow.
PB: I have the map. I have a map showing the exact position and I saw the fire. It was a huge. We’d over a thousand gallons of petrol on board. We had enough petrol for Munich and the three in the aircraft were completely destroyed. Only, only fragments of bone left. The air gunners body was complete and so in the cemetery now at [Bad Tolz?] there’s a, there’s the rear gunners grave there, then there’s a headstone for Len, a headstone for the skipper, a headstone for Alan but what bits of fragments of bone there were are all buried in front of the skipper I’m sure. It was just symbolic. Never, never let the relatives know that of course. Never mention fire to the relatives but those two graves were empty and what bits there were were in front of the skipper which is right and proper.
BW: And you, you must have been pretty close to the ground when you baled out yourself.
PB: No. Oh, no. I was about ten thousand feet.
BW: Oh right. It was, it was the sense I was getting that it was almost a last minute sort of thing where you were able to escape.
PB: No. No, the aircraft broke in two very quickly. It was a tremendous. What happened I think the JU88 killed the rear gunner and then from, there’s a pump on the starboard engine, and dual pipelines to the rear turret that power the turret. Now I think it hit those pipelines. You’ve got hydraulic oil pressure, high pressure, high temperature came out and that’s what caught fire. The fire then came underneath the mid upper gunner, hit Len when he was doing the window in and stopped before it reached me but it was, it was a terror, it certainly was a fire and although I didn’t know till much later virtually simultaneously flak knocked out the port engine and the port inner engine and wounded the skipper and Ray, Ray told me later that when the skipper gave the order to bail out he [signed to say] as if he was badly hurt.
BW: And then at that point, the stricken aircraft, it must be almost I guess vertical if it’s broken up at that point.
PB: It didn’t, it didn’t go like that when it hit the ground it was it just come straight down like that.
BW: Yeah.
PB: I dare say some of it is still there buried under that racetrack. Some of the engine. But later I had a friend in Germany who was, who was in Ludwigshafen. He lived in Ludwigshafen. He was a schoolboy in Ludwigshofen. He may well have been on the flak gun that night for all I know.
BW: That would have been a coincidence wouldn’t it?
PB: Well after, he worked for the postal service after the war and when he retired he set himself up as what he called an air historian and he excavated a lot of shot down bombers and he was very keen on Bomber Command and he provided me with a lot of information and he produced a woman who’d been a schoolgirl in Hockenheim and on the morning after we crashed, after we were shot down, a neighbouring woman knocked on her door and she had what they described as a Canadian airman with them. It was in fact a New Zealander and the girl’s mother gave him a drink of water and later in the day the girl’s interest was aroused and she and a girlfriend went out to look at the crash and she provided me with a map of the actual crash site just by the, so whenever the German Grand Prix comes on I always, always watch it for a few minutes. I don’t like grand prix racing but I always watch it for a few minutes.
BW: Just that particular one.
PB: Yeah. That’s where it crashed.
BW: And have you been back to Hockenheim at all?
PB: No. No, I’ve not. No, I’ve not.
BW: But the information’s come through to you.
PB: Yeah.
BW: As to what’s happened.
PB: Peter provided me with a lot of information.
BW: What’s the air historian’s name? Do you recall?
PB: Peter Mengas M E N Mengas G A S.
BW: G A S.
PB: Peter.
BW: And is he still around?
PB: I don’t know. I’ve not, I’ve not heard from him for a year or two now.
BW: So you’ve managed to get out of the aircraft yourself.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And this is night-time. About ten thousand feet over Germany.
PB: Yeah 1 o’clock. It was just about midnight on my watch. It was 1 o’clock in the morning German time.
BW: And you pulled the rip cord and -
PB: Well, no. This was the problem when I, when I first joined the squadron I got a harness which could be adjusted. Now, I moved about a lot in the Stirling. I’ve controls there, there, there and there.
BW: All around the -
PB: And I used to [bend down?] around number seven tank and the shoulder strap would fall off and I thought I’ll get this fixed but I never did of course so when I baled out I was terrified of falling out of my parachute so I daren’t open it until I got myself you know [? ] as I could.
BW: Sort of braced against the straps were they?
PB: And when I opened it and I felt oh that’s it but it wasn’t that was just the parachute pulling the pack off my chest and then bang.
BW: The snap of the canopy.
PB: And I took all the weight there. The shoulder straps were up here. I came down in agony. I don’t know why it didn’t castrate me.
BW: Because of the tight grip around the -
PB: Yeah.
BW: Groin area where the -
PB: And then when I eventually I saw the ground rushing up and I rolled myself into a ball as I’d been taught and this buckle took two ribs with it.
BW: On the left hip.
PB: Yeah. Broke, broke two, broke two of my ribs and so I, it was, it was very painful. Very painful. And this is funny really by the next day my left side had seized up and I’m walking in a westerly direction trying to get to France [laughs] and, I don’t know and there was just one house which I had to pass and I thought, I thought a girl stood in the window had spotted me. I wasn’t certain but I thought she had. Anyway, I kept going and suddenly I hear a shout and I turn around and there’s this chappy running towards me and running behind him is a woman, presumably his wife and the two things I didn’t believe. I didn’t believe that fighting men put their hands above their heads like the baddies in the cowboy films and I didn’t believe the Germans went around saying. ‘Heil Hitler,’ to each other but as this chappy approached without any conscious effort on my part my hands went up. This one went up. This one wouldn’t.
BW: Your right one.
PB: He saw me like. He stopped running [?]and, ‘Heil Hitler.’
BW: So because you can’t raise your left arm you can only raise your right arm he thinks you’re doing the salute.
PB: He thought I was a Luftwaffe chappy. ‘Heil Hitler,’ he said [laughs] Well, I just I was in a pretty perilous state by this time. I just collapsed in to hysterical laughter. I just stood there and laughed and laughed and laughed and his wife came along and she sized up the situation immediately. She put her arm around me, took my weight on her shoulder and led me towards the town and the very first house we came to she made a very, very cross old woman let me into her kitchen, sit me down and made me a cup of coffee. So this woman very unwillingly gave me a cup of coffee. I hadn’t drunk anything for twenty four hours and I took a sip and I thought, ‘Bloody hell, I can’t drink this. It’s absolutely disgusting,’ and I thought, ‘Well if I don’t drink it it’s a great insult to this woman who’s been so incredibly kind to me,’ so I had to drink it. That was my introduction to the German diet oooph [laughs].
BW: And so you managed from a rough landing in a loose parachute in God knows where -
PB: Yeah.
BW: To get yourself together. You didn’t meet any of the other crew at this point because you obviously talked about -
PB: The -
BW: Yourself.
PB: The mid upper gunner landed right next to a railway signal box and was arrested within seconds. The navigator landed in a tree and had to be rescued. So they were captured very quickly. Both of them.
BW: So there was just you on your own at this point.
PB: I was on my own.
BW: Were you knocked unconscious or, or did it take some time to come around? I mean you’ve obviously had to get rid of your chute and -
PB: No I, I, I was shocked. I was shocked obviously and I was in pain from these ribs but I said I’ve a duty to the RAF and that was to get to Gibraltar. [Laughs] It’s a long way away.
BW: Yeah.
PB: I’d got the Rhine to cross for one thing. That’s not, that’s not easy. [laughs].
BW: And so the, the people that, that met you I mean you talk about heading west towards France and Mannheim is, is quite deep in western Germany.
PB: Yeah.
BW: So you’re actually being met by Germans at this point.
PB: Yeah.
BW: But they assist you.
PB: Yeah.
BW: So what then happened? Did they, they pass you on? Or -
PB: Well this couple took me to the police station where the other two were already held although I didn’t know it and we were kept there for about three days and a couple of Luftwaffe chappies arrived to take us up to Frankfurt to Dulag Luft interrogation camp and when we left we were given a bundle of the rear gunner’s clothing and his flying suit had hundreds of holes in it. The cannon shells must have hit the turret and exploded, it was absolutely riddled and his helmet and his, his oxygen mask was soaked in blood and there were the four guns from the rear turret as well. So we had that to carry. And we had, we had an adventurous journey. We couldn’t, it, this was the most successful raid on Mannheim Ludwigshafen at that time and it was complete chaos and we had to go by train in to a big detour so we travelled that day and went to a Luftwaffe camp and stayed the night in the guard room there and the next day we go back to the railway station and it was a, it’s a station something like Victoria in Manchester. A long corridor with steps going up to the various platforms. We were on the platform and what I call a typical Daily Express German came along, feather in his hat and oh he was furious he was furious and Hitler had issued an order to all military and police units that if civilians get hold of airmen before the authorities do the authorities were not to interfere. They must leave it to the discretion of the civilians what to do with them and this one was stark raving, oh he was angry. And in the air force there’s an offence known as silent contempt. You don’t do anything but you look at an officer who’s ticking you off and look at him and make it obvious you think he’s [lowly?] and it’s a serious crime in the air force. Well Ray and I were giving this chappy the silent cont and the navigator said, ‘Stop being a bloody fool.’ He was a good deal older than we were and eventually this chap storms off and we thought, ‘Oh that’s shown him.’ A few minutes later he’s back at the head, the head of a posse and they’re obviously, obviously intent on doing us serious bodily harm but fortunately there was, there was a train on the other side of the platform. Now, whether it was a troop train or not I don’t know but half a dozen soldiers got out and ranged themselves between us and the, and this crowd and our two Luftwaffe chappies whipped us down the stairs, along the corridor and up another platform and hid us in a room that was obviously used by guards full of red and green lamps and flags and so on and we hid in there until our train arrived and then ran back as fast as we could and got put on the train. But it was, when we thought about it later we were very nearly hanged or beaten to death or kicked to death or something very near but it was only, it was only those soldiers who saved us and that was contrary to Hitler’s orders.
BW: Because the RAF crews at this time presumably were being christened terror flieger.
PB: Yeah. Oh yeah.
BW: And so the civilians were -
PB: Yeah. Yeah.
BW: Properly against them.
PB: Well there were a hundred Bomber Command people were killed by Germans and more than two hundred Americans because Americans, there were a lot more Americans. They had ten to a crew.
BW: And at this point in a station as you mention they’ve reunited you with the navigator and -
PB: Yeah. Well they were in the police station. Unknown to me at the time.
BW: Yeah.
PB: I met them when we got out of the police station. But before I left they gave me a shave. A fierce little barber came in and then he got out this razor and I thought, ‘I hope to God the air raid sirens don’t go off.’ [laughs]
BW: Yeah ‘cause he might, he might stop shaving you and decide to use the razor for something else.
[laughs]That’s the only time I’ve been shaved with a cut throat razor. I don’t want to ever experience it again. [laughs]
BW: So they’ve tidied you up and reunited you as a crew.
PB: Yeah.
BW: Presumably they didn’t interrogate you at this point even though you were in a police station. The Luftwaffe officers took you over and put you in a transport. Is that right?
PB: Yeah. We were taken, we were taken to Dulag Luft at Frankfurt and there I was put in a cell there. Quite a big cell really. It had, it had, it had a very long radiator attached to one wall and there was a bed attached to the floor alongside a radiator and there was a table and two chairs and there’s a bucket in the corner and two windows with shutters on from outside and a very dim light. No ventilation and all I could do was lie flat on my back with these ribs and although it was mid-September the heat on the radiator was turned up full. So I lay there for three days getting hotter and dirtier and stickier and the air getting fouler and fouler and then suddenly somebody opened the shutters. A very smart Luftwaffe officer walked in with a couple of files under his arm, put them on the table opened the windows wide and motioned for me to join him, poured two cups of English tea, a plate of English biscuits, a packet of English cigarettes and then the interrogation started.
BW: And at this point is there just you and this Luftwaffe officer?
PB: Yeah.
BW: In this cell?
PB: Yeah.
BW: And so he’s expected you to get up from the floor to the chair to sit in front of him. Nobody has assisted you at this point?
PB: No. No. No.
BW: So presumably your body’s quite stiff as well.
PB: Very very stiff indeed. Very stiff. I never -
BW: Well -
PB: I never had any medical attention at all. Never. I’ve got a great knob of bone there that will never heal.
BW: And so the interrogation begins and presumably, from what you’re staying, this is daytime at this point.
PB: Yeah. When he put these files down on the table there were two of them and the top one said Royal Air Force Bomber Command 149 squadron. I thought, ‘How the hell does he know 149?’ I said, ‘I wonder if the others had been forced to talk,’ and I had pictures of Humphrey Bogart being tortured by [laughs] but it was obvious the rear part of the fuselage wasn’t burned and the letters OJ. So, he gave me, he have me a great deal of information. First, generally about the air force and then specifically about 149 squadron.
BW: And because the letters on the aircraft had not burned through.
PB: No the -
BW: So the squadron’s code OJ were still visible.
PB: OJ means 149. They knew that so as I understood it he was trying to do two things. He was giving me a lot of information most of it factual but some which he picked up and he hadn’t had checked yet [or someone had corrected] and from my reaction [he got?] and then he picked up bits from me that he could put. That was the whole purpose of it. I don’t know what did affect the war effort. I don’t think very much. Anyway, eventually he finished and this was the middle of September and he said, ‘Are there any questions you want to ask me?’ I said, ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘What’s been happening in the war in the last few days?’ He said, ‘Italy has surrendered.’ I said, ‘Oh good. One down, one to go.’ [laughs] Well he didn’t like that [laughs] so he picked up his files and he left.
BW: You weren’t tempted to salute him either.
PB: But when we, when we were being transferred by cattle truck from Dulag Luft to Saxony to Stalag 4b we were in these cattle trucks and we had a German guard in with us and we had with us at one stage the only German I ever felt sorry for. He’d been born in Germany and when he was a very small child his people had gone to America. He’d been brought up in Brooklyn. He had a tremendous Brooklyn accent and he’d, they’d never taken American nationality and early in ‘39 or late in ‘38 they’d come to Germany on holiday and he was immediately conscripted and there he was [laughs]. Oh dear. So I’d never known anybody feel as sorry for himself as that poor fella. He said, he described his comrades, he said, ‘Bloody mother f***ing, c**k s***ng krauts,’ and those were his comrades [laughs].
BW: And they didn’t speak American -
PB: Deary, deary me,
BW: So he got away with it.
PB: Oh he did feel sorry for himself. And I’ve often wondered what happened to him because when the Ardennes offensive took place Hitler put a lot of American speaking Germans into American uniforms and of course they were shot immediately if they were captured. He was an absolutely perfect candidate for that job.
BW: Yeah. Quite possible.
PB: So I don’t know what happened to him but oh deary me he did feel sorry for himself
BW: And so it seems a fairly, alright it’s uncomfortable but it seems a fairly civil interrogation from the Luftwaffe officer before you -
PB: Oh it was very friendly. Very friendly very friendly. I mean I’d been lying in there for three days thinking about Jimmy Cagney and Humphrey Bogart and it was nothing like that [laughs]. No, he was charming. Really charming.
BW: And how soon after the interrogation ended and he stormed out did you then leave for er -
PB: Well I left the cell then went to the main part of the camp and stayed there for about a week until there was enough of us to make up a wagon load.
BW: And this was still at Dulag Luft.
PB: Yeah.
BW: In Frankfurt.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And so you’re there a little while longer transferred to Saxony.
PB: Yeah and we were lucky and we were unlucky. We were unlucky in the fact that all the luft camps run by the Luftwaffe were full and so we were sent to the biggest prison camp in Germany which was run by the army. It contained about ten thousand permanently and it had scores of working parties attached to it so that prisoners used to come in and get recorded and then sent out to work in mines or factories or quarries or whatever so there was a regular turnover. There was about ten thousand of us there permanently but a tremendous lot of Frenchmen, a couple of thousand Russians who were starving to death and various other nationalities and of course the German army didn’t have the same relationship with us that the Luftwaffe personnel would have had. In fact they hated us.
BW: Was there any, any ill will directed towards you because you were air force?
PB: They didn’t like us. They told us, they said, ‘When Germany wins the war you’ll spend the rest of your lives building the cities that you’ve destroyed but if Germany lose the war you’re soon to be shot.’ That was their attitude.
BW: And even though this was an army camp they, it sounds as though they weren’t just, were they just military personnel? The ten thousand French and Russians were they soldiers that were captured?
PB: Well I don’t know what they were.
BW: So they could have been.
PB: They were dressed in civilian, some in civilian clothes,
BW: Yeah.
PB: Some in bits of clothes. Some were in military uniform but we were lucky too because this was September. Italy had retired from the war. The Germans had taken over the Italian prison camps and they set up two new compounds in 4b. An RAF compound and an army compound. Now, a couple of thousand Desert Rats who’d been prisoners in Italy came in just as we did. Now, without them we’d have been in a right mess because the Germans gave us nothing.
BW: So you were on low rations and you were, were you made to work at this stage as well?
PB: No. No. They couldn’t make us work. Not with our ranks.
BW: Right.
PB: But you know we were put into a hut which has three tier bunks to sleep a hundred and eighty men. They gave us a sack which contained something or other which was supposed to be a mattress, two pre- First World War blankets and that was, that was all they gave us. No knife, fork, spoon, no cup, no plate. Nothing. And yet the food comes up, a great big vat of soup and all you’ve got’s your bare hands. So the army helped us a lot there.
BW: Presumably because they were allowed or brought with them their kit and they shared it.
PB: They brought with all their kit, yeah. Yeah. I mean they’d been prisoners years some of them.
BW: So they knew, they knew how it worked.
PB: They knew the ropes so yeah they knew the ropes alright but the difference between the army and the air force was, was, was incredible. The army compound was run like a barracks. There was a sergeant major in charge of each hut. Total control. And each morning at 7 o’clock there was roll calls outside in decent weather. The roll call in the army compound took fifteen minutes. The roll call in the RAF compound could take two hours. That was the difference in our attitudes. The army would say, ‘We’ll show them what real soldiers look like.’ and we’d say, ‘We’ll cause them so much bloody trouble they’ll wish they’d never been born.’ Different attitude of mind altogether.
BW: And so this is the, the British army in their compound.
PB: Yeah.
BW: Organising themselves to do their roll calls -
PB: Yeah.
BW: Like that.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And the RAF took the view well we’re there to -
PB: Yeah.
BW: Make a nuisance of ourselves.
PB: That’s it exactly. One day the Germans got so exasperated they brought the senior sergeant major and they stood him there and we’re all lined up in fives and he starts telling us we’re a disgrace to the bloody nation, we’re a disgrace to the air force and the replies he got. He’d never been spoken to like that in his life before. Never, ever, ever. He just went redder and redder and redder. Eventually, he turned on his heel and went and we never saw him again.
BW: Gave that one up as well.
PB: I know we really, we really did everything we could and we tamed the Germans eventually and it went whenever a German entered our hut whoever saw him first would shout, ‘Jerry up’ and whatever you were doing you could get away. At the end of the war the German would walk in to the hut, he’d stand at the door and shout, ‘Jerry up’ and wait two minutes before he walked in.
BW: It’s interesting you, you made a comment just before that although the Germans gave you nothing they didn’t make you work either because of your rank.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And the thinking was in the, in the early days with the RAF aircrew was that if they were all sergeants they would be treated better in prisoner of war camps.
PB: Not treated better, just treated differently in that they didn’t work.
BW: Right. So it was a case of you’re not made to work you were just -
PB: Yeah.
BW: Well you were just there and you exist, sort of thing.
PB: Yeah and the food of course was disgusting. The flour was ten percent what the Germans optimistically called wood flour. Which was sawdust. We, we, we had soup at lunchtime. A great vat of soup. We had [minute?] soup which was disgusting. We had [mara?] soup which was even more disgusting and most disgusting of all we had a soup that apparently was made from what was left of sugar beet after the beet er after the sugar had been extracted and we got a handful of boiled potatoes, usually rotten. That was the midday meal and then in the late afternoon you got a piece of bread to be divided between five people and a blob of white stuff which was supposed to be butter, it was about ninety percent water, and a spoonful of jam apparently made from beetroot or swede or some such and you’d get this piece of bread and it’s not a big piece of bread and it’s got to be shared between five people and every, every one of the five pieces had to be absolutely identical with the other four so we picked the man with the best irons and steadiest hand and he cuts the bread up and he gets last choice and the five pieces and he gets the last choice.
BW: And it went on like that for days.
PB: But we had the Red Cross parcels fortunately.
BW: How often were they delivered? Were they regular?
PB: Every Monday we got a Red Cross parcel.
BW: And were they delivered intact or were they interfered and inspected by the Germans.
PB: They were delivered intact until it was decided that they were being used in escapes and so after that they were all opened and every tin was punctured so that it had a limited lifespan. You couldn’t, you couldn’t store it up.
BW: And you see in war films, popular war films, the sort of black market operating in a prison camp and trading and bartering. Does that, did that ever happen?
PB: Oh yes, it was all, with cigarettes you could buy anything. Now in the RAF compound we had two people. We had an English and an Italian name. A chappy called [Gargini]
BW: [Gargini]
PB: Now he was, he was a skilled technician in British, in BBC television and he was an absolute wizard with the electricity. He built at least two radio sets and he also made a succession of heaters, immersion heaters, which you could put in a cup of cold water and fire up in no time at all. And we had another chap who was in fact was a civilian. Terry Hunt his name was. He worked for British Movietone news or some similar company and if you went to the cinema in England during the war from time to time to time on the newsreel you’d see shots taken from the nose of a light bomber during attacks on France. Now Terry was one of the men who took those photographs. He was given a degree of training. He was given an RAF uniform, he was given a RAF number, an RAF rank just in case he was shot down and captured and he had a camera. He had it inside a hollowed out bible with a little hole in the spine through which he took his photographs. Two quite remarkable men there.
BW: And that, that bible with the camera in he used in the aircraft and he kept with him in the prison camp did he?
PB: No. He got it whilst he was in the prisoner.
BW: Oh made it in the prison right.
PB: How he got through well cigarettes you could get anything with cigarettes. You could buy a woman for three cigarettes but there were no women.
BW: And in that case there must have been some sort of interaction with the German guards at that point -
PB: Oh yes.
BW: To be able to bribe.
PB: You waited. You waited until after dark and then you went out and found a guard and said [?] ‘Yah yah yah,’ out it came from a bag in his gas mask case gave him this bit of bread ‘[?] cigarettes?’ ‘Nein. [?]Nein. Deutschland caput’ [laughs]
BW: A piece of bread for twenty cigarettes.
PB: But you could buy anything with cigarettes.
BW: And did you partake in that yourself, did you?
PB: Oh yeah I was out most nights if I had cigarettes buying bread. It was, it was much better bread than we had. It was rotten bread but it was much better bread than we had.
BW: And did you, did you feel able to strike up a rapport or even an element of trust with some of these guards. Were you always meeting the same one or did you have to interact with others?
PB: No, whoever happened to be walking around the compound at the time. Some relationships must have been, must have been formed because big items were bought and of course if there were ever workmen in the camp all their tools were raided. They soon [? ] their tools.
BW: So there were, there were guys in the camp who were raiding the Germans’ tool sets.
PB: Yeah you see we, we had, you know, you got hundreds of air crew. You’ve got a couple of thousand senior NCOs in the army. You’ve got every talent. You’ve got architects, musicians, dancers, journalists. You got all sorts of people and it was amazing what could be done.
BW: And I believe they had classes in the prisoner of war camps as well to keep the men occupied.
PB: Oh yes. We, we had a little library in each hut. Some of them manned by professional librarians, we had lecturers. We had, we had a theatre group and a radio theatre group. We had people who went around individually giving lectures. The most popular lecturer was a chappy, an army man, who’d worked for a very prestigious London undertaking firm and the stories he had. Oh deary me. Deary, deary me. He was a popular lecturer he was.
BW: And so was your days, were your days regulated in any sense? Was there a structure put to you?
PB: No. You had a roll call in the morning, a roll call in the evening. That was it. And then you had the food arriving at mid-day and again about tea time and other than that you were on your own.
BW: So would you have about two meals a day then? Your main midday meal and a meal in the evening?
PB: I don’t think we ever had a meal at all really [laughs].
BW: Well, yeah.
PB: But yeah that’s the way it worked.
BW: Yeah.
PB: On Fridays, on Fridays, Friday was a big day. On Friday you got pea soup and pea soup was so good we didn’t get any potatoes on Friday. Well pea soup was the only soup we ever really ate. The pea soup was quite good.
BW: And do you still like it to this day or does that remind you?
PB: I like pea soup. Yes.
BW: Yeah.
PB: But we Lancastrians had a Red Rose Society. The Yorkists had a White Rose Society and there was a motoring club for people interested in cars or motorbikes. There were all sorts, all sorts of things set up. Every hut was given the name of a British football team. My hut was Wolverhampton Wanderers and a league was set up and matches were played and points scored and then in the RAF compound we formed the rugby pitch as well, I played a lot of rugby.
BW: Even, even though you’d had a bad injury from parachuting you were still able to play rugby.
PB: Eventually. It took, it took, it took about six months until I felt really free but -
BW: Did you manage to get any medical treatment from the British -
PB: No.
BW: While you were in the camp?
PB: Never. Never. I never bothered the British. By then it was healing. They even, even tried to play cricket but that didn’t work. The ground was too soft.
BW: What sort of ground was it? Was it sandy?
PB: It was sort of sandy soil, yeah.
BW: So and we’ve probably all have an image here of Sagan and the Great Escape -
PB: Yeah.
BW: And the sandy -
PB: Yeah.
BW: Sort of soil
PB: Yeah.
BW: And it was pretty much like that was it?
PB: When I played rugby every time I I got a graze and there was any blood it always went, always went rotten. I always had to go and get it, get it drugged up always, always went rotten.
BW: And what sort of drugs could they give you? Was there penicillin?
PB: Red Cross. Red Cross I don’t know what they were but the Red Cross provided drugs and we had, we had certain medical. We had a couple of army doctors as well. We had an English woman in the camp.
BW: Do you recall her name at all?
PB: Well we knew her as Mrs Barrington. She was an English woman. I don’t know whether she was divorced or widowed but sometime in the 20s or very early 30s she had a son called Winston and they had a holiday in Switzerland and met a German who got on very well with and they went back again a few months later and she married him and she and her son went to live in Germany. And then when, when 1938, ‘39 came along and war was obviously imminent she sent her son back to England to live with her parents and in due course he joined the air force in Bomber Command, got shot down, wrote to her where she was living in Vienna and she wrote back and eventually she decided she wanted to be nearer to him then that so she left Vienna and went to live in Muhlburg which was about five kilometres from the camp.
BW: Muhlberg.
PB: Muhlberg yeah and by this time her husband was a very high ranking Luftwaffe officer and when she moved to Muhlberg her husband came with her and we know that he visited the camp and we know that he met the commandant but we don’t know what happened there of course. We don’t know whether some informal arrangement was agreed between them or whatever but it was a fact that airmen were never allowed outside the camp because they’d just disappear but Barrington got outside the camp with French working parties several times, met his mother in Muhlberg and by early 1945 she was getting worried about what her fate would be when the Russians arrived and he reported that to the, to the escape committee and they decided she should be brought into the camp and the next time he went out he took some spare clothes [and met her] she came in to the camp, put in to RAF battledress and was hidden away under the stage in the theatre and stayed there for a few weeks till the end of the war. Not only until the end of the war but until we got away from the Russians but it took us a month to get away from the Russians.
BW: So you mention there about hiding her under the stage in the theatre -
PB: Yeah.
BW: In RAF battle dress uniform.
PB: Yeah.
BW: How did the, the tide of war affect you because many prisoners were forced on the long march but presumably if you were in Saxony in sort of lower -
PB: Yeah.
BW: South eastern Germany. Were you part of that of that -
PB: No.
BW: To evacuate the camps.
PB: No we weren’t in Poland. We were in Germany. Now, by this time the air was full of British and American fighter bombers. Everything that moved was attacked and the commandant gave us the opportunity, ‘If you want to be marched west across the Elbe we’ll take you,’ and the Poles of course jumped at that chance. They didn’t want to be with the Russians. And we said, ‘No. We’ll stay where we are until our allies arrive.’ [Laughs] Our allies.
BW: So you all managed to stay in the camp without being evacuated.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And so this Mrs Barrington stayed in the -
PB: Yeah.
BW: Theatre at this time.
PB: Yeah.
BW: Under your protection.
PB: Yeah she kept hidden. Eventually, when the, when the Russians arrived they made no arrangements whatever for us and so all we could do was break down this perimeter fence and stream out into the countryside to search for food and that went on for about three days and then the Russians got themselves organised and clamped down on it. We came and got a bargaining counter. They held thousands of British and Americans and there were tens of hundreds of thousands of Russians in the west and the Russians wanted them back. Many, many of them even wore German uniforms and they knew if they went back they knew what their fate would be so they didn’t want to go back so there was a lot of bargaining and we were part of the Russians strong hand and then they marched us out of the camp, marched quite a considerable distance and they put us into what was obviously a big maintenance depot full of huge workshops and we were billeted there and still nothing was happening so we began to drift off in twos and threes and tried to make our way across the river on our own which eventually we did. We, we were relieved by the Russians on St George’s Day, the 23rd of April and I reached the American lines on my 24th birthday. The 23rd of May. Exactly one month later. And then it was like moving from hell in to heaven. I lived for a week on steak and ice cream.
BW: You didn’t, you’d been on such bad rations there was no problem moving to that sort of -
PB: No. No. Never had any -
BW: High protein diet.
PB: A lot of people spent a lot of time sat down with their trousers around their ankles [laughs]
BW: You obviously had a tougher constitution.
PB: Yeah -
BW: So it didn’t affect you.
PB: It didn’t affect me. But oh it was great with the Americans. Even went to the cinema. They had a mobile cinema. I saw a film about a book which I’d read whilst in Germany. And then, then we were flown by Dakota to Brussels and handed over to the British. We arrived in Brussels on a Saturday afternoon. The British gave us a ten shilling note and a handful of Belgian coins and turned us loose on Brussels for a Saturday night [laughs]. And the next day we climbed on board a Stirling and flew back to Kent and from Kent we went up to Cosford which was a receiving centre and Cosford had been my first station in 1940.
BW: So this was almost a reverse of your trip out there because you’d gone out on a Stirling.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And then you were flown back from Brussels to Kent in a Stirling.
PB: In a Stirling.
BW: How did it feel to be back on your old sort of type of plane again?
PB: Oh it was funny really. About, about four Stirlings and one Lancaster landed and everybody but me and two other fellas ran for the one Lancaster. [laughs] I was more than happy to get into a Stirling.
BW: And that, that night in Brussels when you’d got a ten shilling note in your hand.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And a few Belgian pennies that must have been pretty memorable. How did it, how did it feel?
PB: I had a terrible emotional shock. There was a great big underground convenience and I was stood in there weeing away and in walked two women cleaners [laughs] and that rather set me back. I don’t remember much about what happened that night actually. I know I’d no money left at the end of it.
BW: Justifiably lost in celebration I think.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And so you were only twenty four at that stage.
PB: I’d just had my twenty fourth birthday, yes.
BW: And you, I guess you got, in retrospect, you got back to the UK pretty quick. I mean the war had only been over sort of three weeks when you were then passed over to the, to the British.
PB: Yeah.
BW: In May.
PB: Yeah.
BW: ‘Cause obviously some guys in service had to wait a long time to be repatriated.
PB: Oh some didn’t get back until well after the September.
BW: And so when you get back to Cosford.
PB: Yeah.
BW: What happened then? Were you able to, I mean, were you still in touch with your other crewmates at this point in your -
PB: No. No. Long lost them somewhere along the way. We were, first of all we were made to give a written description of how we were shot down which seemed to me to be to be a waste of time and then we were medically examined and bathed and haircuts and kitted out with new uniform and then we were sent on six weeks leave on double rations and by this time of course I’d been, I’d been qualified long enough to have become a warrant officer. And I had a lot of back pay. Got paid all the time.
BW: And how, how did they pay you? ‘Cause now it goes straight into your bank account but then did they give you cash?
PB: Cash.
BW: Or did they give you a cheque?
PB: I can’t remember. I can’t remember. I didn’t have a bank account so I don’t, I don’t really know. I know I had a lot of money to come. Several hundred pounds. I’d earned it. [laughs]
BW: Absolutely.
PB: I’d done more damage to German morale as a prisoner than I ever did as - [laughs]
BW: If I can, if I can just hop back to a point you made in the camp. You said there was an escape committee.
PB: Yes.
BW: And as I say they’re sort of impressions of, of “The Great Escape” come to mind. Were there any escape attempts made there?
PB: Oh yes there were people escaping all the time.
BW: Successfully?
PB: A couple of hours, two days. Maybe a week if you were lucky.
BW: So there was quite an active escape -
PB: Oh yes, yes.
BW: Committee from the RAF there.
PB: Oh yes there was a lot of escaping. What, what, what was a popular thing from time to time a British soldiers would come through the camp to be registered and recorded and photographed etcetera and then sent out on working parties and some airmen got the idea it would be easier to escape from a working party then from the camp and so they exchanged identities and this in the end caused tremendous confusion to the Germans because there was a New Zealand soldier, a Desert Rat who’d been captured and held in prison in Italy and he’d escaped and got in with a with a group of partisans and as he was the only professional as it were amongst the partisans he soon became their leader and he carried out minor acts of sabotage and he became a sort of Robin Hood and rumours were circulated about this new Zealander who was doing this, that and the other and the Germans got to learn of this and eventually they captured him and they decided to send him to Germany for trial but it wasn’t known whether he was to go to Berlin or to Leipzig so as 4b was about halfway between the two he came to 4b and was locked up in the [straflagge] and there he made contact with French working parties. French used to work in there regularly and the French notified the British and it was known that if he went to either Berlin or Leipzig and was put on trial he’d be found guilty and he’d be shot and so they decided that he had to be rescued and a plot was formed and the French removed a window from the room where the showers were in the [straflagge] and put it back in a temporary position and he was briefed that when it was known that he was going to leave he was to insist upon having a shower and he was to go in to the shower room and escape from this window and be smuggled in to the camp and one day quite out of the blue we were all told to get over to the French compound as quickly as we could and to start a riot and we all got there and started fighting and jostling and messing and shouting and all the German cars were rushing to the French compound and this chappie escaped and he was hidden above a ceiling in a hut up in the dark, in the rafters and remained hidden until the end of the war. And the gestapo arrived and they made our lives hell for a week and they tore the camp to pieces and eventually we put about the rumour that he’d now left the camp and was on a train going to Switzerland so they all moved out to Switzerland [laughs] to the railway lines then and we were left in peace but he remained in the camp until the end of the war and eventually got back to New Zealand.
BW: Wow.
PB: Remarkable story.
BW: I mean yeah he was -
PB: I’ve got his name somewhere in a book but I can’t remember it off hand.
BW: It would be interesting to, to find his name and look him up.
PB: Well I can get it for you.
BW: Doesn’t, doesn’t need to be straightaway. We can get that afterwards.
PB: I can get it for you in a flash.
BW: Ok well just pause the recording for a moment.
PB: So we’re just looking at a book here called “Survival In Stalag Luft 4b”
BW: Yeah.
PB: And his name is Tony Hunt.
BW: Terry.
PB: Terry.
BW: Terry Hunt.
[pause]
PB: 136
[pause]
PB: Frederick William Ward he’s called.
BW: Frederick William Ward.
PB: Yeah. Born in February 1912. Captured in North Africa in July ‘42. [pause] That will tell you about him there.
BW: Yeah.
PB: Fred Ward and this is, this is in the book by Tony Vercoe um which I’ll look up.
PB: Yeah.
BW: Um it says that he, he was captured and then interrogated and then will go into more detail about the activities with the French workers as you say. There’s a description there.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And then this lady you mentioned is called Florence Barrington.
PB: That’s right. Mrs Barrington.
BW: With a thirteen year old son, married a German photographer and that also gives us the correct name of, just so that I’ve got it right, Muhlberg M U H L B E R G so that helps identify -
PB: Yeah. Muhlberg.
BW: The camp.
PB: Muhlberg on the Elbe.
BW: Yeah. What I’ll do if you don’t mind I’ll have a look at this separately and sort of off air of the recording.
PB: Yeah.
BW: But that, that’s great that is good information.
PB: Yes. You’ve got the full story there.
BW: So we were talking just briefly before about some of the escape attempts and how you’d helped to rescue this New Zealander from, from being shot.
PB: Yeah.
BW: Were there any other memorable attempts at all?
PB: Yes. Yes, there was one other memorable one. I had a friend, Fred Heathfield, who was a Halifax pilot with 51 squadron. He’d been shot, he’d crashed landed a Halifax on three engines in the pitch dark in Belgium and lived to tell the tale and I think the only thing that kept him alive was that he had his parachute on his chest and that took the main force of the impact. He got two black eyes and a broken nose. He was eventually captured in an hotel in Paris but he was, he was a pilot. I was a flight engineer. There was a Luftwaffe field a few kilometres away from the camp and Fred and I decided that if we could steal a JU88 we could fly at low level to Sweden and we, we started to try to get some information about German aircraft but by this time the Germans had issued a warning to all prison camps saying that because of the seriousness of the war situation there were certain areas of Germany which could not be identified but which were of importance to the, to the safety of the country and anybody caught in such an area without authority would be shot out of hand so we decided not to bother and we gave what information we had to an Australian pilot. What was his name? I’ve got a book by him in there. Anyway, this Australian pilot had a Canadian bomb aimer in his crew and I think he’d been brought up in the French speaking part of Canada because he spoke French like a native and also had quite a good knowledge of German and they decided that they would put this plan into operation but instead of flying to Sweden they would fly east and land behind Russian lines and give themselves over which to me sounded like a suicide note. And they left the camp. They went they went out with a work, we agreed to provide cover for three days so for three days the Germans wouldn’t know they were missing and they went out with a working party and disappeared and it was the night of Dresden. The night they went out was the night of Dresden and they, they, they walked. They were stopped several times and were able to convince whoever stopped them that they were French volunteers who were being moved from one job to another job and were on their way there and they got to this airfield and they lay up in the woods surrounding the airfield to watch what was going on and a JU88 landed and it was refuelled and they thought that’s it. So they find a log of wood and they picked it up and put it on their shoulders and marched to the edge of the airfield, put it down, got inside the JU and, what was his name? Anyway, he sat in the cockpit looking at the instruments and the controls and sorting out what’s what and the ground crew come back and said, ‘What are you doing in here? Foreign workers aren’t allowed in German aircraft. Clear off.’ And they got out, they picked up their log of wood. They walked back to the camp and I remember it plainly I was stood at one end of the hut and the door was at the far end and suddenly, Geoff his name was, Geoff and his bomb aimer Smith come walking down the hut and the Germans never knew they’d been away. Never knew they’d been away. And they’d been sat in a JU88.
BW: And they’d nearly got away with it.
PB: If they’d landed. I mean the Russians didn’t ask questions. If you got out of a German aircraft they shot you.
BW: Yeah.
PB: It was the daftest idea I’ve ever come across in my life but that’s what they’d decided on. Geoff Taylor. He was, he was, he was a journalist in Australia and he wrote a book called “Piece of Cake” which had a forward by Butch Harris of all people. I’ve got a copy in there and that was the most audacious escape but of course like all other escapes it came to nothing in the end.
BW: And were there quite a few others who tried and -
PB: Oh yes. It was sport.
BW: Captured.
PB: It was sport. This notice that the Germans issued said escaping is no longer a sport but that’s what it had been. When you read about people who spend all their time organising an escape they’re just a bloody nuisance to everybody. They ruin life in the camp. Everybody has to give way to them. They’re not going anywhere. They might be out for a week but they’re back.
BW: And in the meantime everybody else is perhaps suffering.
PB: Everybody’s inconvenienced, yeah.
BW: Yeah but they’re getting more inspections presumably.
PB: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. To have a fella like Bader in your camp must have been hell. Absolute hell.
BW: That’s why they decided to put him in Colditz.
[pause]
BW: And you hadn’t been tempted to try yourself. You were making yourself a nuisance in the camp you made life -
PB: Only this -
BW: Miserable for the Germans.
PB: Mad plan we had to fly to Sweden which we gave up on. It was impossible. But we had an Australian pilot killed in the camp in a flying accident. This Luftwaffe camp was only a few kilometres away and once the airmen there realised that there were now airmen in 4b occasionally they’d come over and give us a bit of a, a bit of a thrill. They did and they’d come across in a JU86 which was an obsolete bomber based on a, on a civil aircraft. It was a bit like a Hudson it was and it were coming over the camp in a shallow dive right along the full length of the French compound which was the biggest and climb away and all the airmen in the compound would be going like this.
BW: Waving.
PB: And the army went mad. The army said, ‘You’re going to kill us all the way you’re going.’ You know, these lads know what they’re doing. Anyway, one came over one day and it wasn’t an 86 it was an 88 a powerful, big, powerful machine and he came perhaps a bit steeper than usual and when he pulled up his tail mushed in and his tail went into a wire fence and it dragged about twenty feet of wire and two or three fence posts with it. The tail plane hit this, hit this Canadian pilot who was walking around the compound. Killed him instantly. One of the posts hit his companion and badly injured him and I was in our own compound and I could see through the French huts and I saw this thing. It was no higher than that. I don’t know why the airstream wasn’t tucked in the ground and eventually it climbed away with all this wire streaming behind him and the Luftwaffe gave a splendid funeral to this Australian and we were told that the pilot had been stripped of his brevvy, stripped of his rank, and posted to the eastern front as a common foot soldier. I think, it think they just told us that to pacify us. I can’t believe for a moment that that’s what happened but that’s the story they gave us but to be killed in a flying accident walking around a prison compound it’s a bit much isn’t it?
BW: Yeah and as you say there’s got to be some for the tail wheel to be that close to the ground that there’s got to be the plane itself has got to be very, very low.
PB: It was no higher -
BW: Ten feet or less
PB: Than that. I don’t know why the airstream wasn’t hitting the ground.
BW: And that you’re indicating’s about two foot -
PB: Yeah.
BW: Three foot.
PB: Yeah I just saw it go I could see it between the huts.
BW: Wow.
PB: And then it just climbed away with all the stuff just trailing behind it. Beautiful piece of flying. Wonderful skilled bit of flying.
BW: Just unfortunate consequence.
PB: Yeah. So we did get excitement from time to time.
BW: How did it feel when the Russians came to liberate? I mean -
PB: Oh -
BW: You must have had a pretty limited amount of information getting through and an impression of what the Russian forces were like. How did it feel when they -
PB: Well -
BW: Came into the camp?
PB: Well the first thing on the newsreels I’d seen pictures of refugees in France and suddenly early in April we got German refugees going past the camp and it was, it was an incredible sightseeing German refugees like that and they were streaming past the camp to get over the Elbe. And then we could -
BW: The Elbe must have been quite close to the camp
PB: Oh it was only about five kilometres and then we heard gunfire and then on St George ’s day early in the morning someone rushed into our hut shouting, ‘The Cossacks are here,’ and we went out and on the main road there were four of the scruffiest most dreadful looking men I’ve ever seen in my life. On horseback. Oh they did, they looked murderous, every one and they were loaded down with sandbags full of food and ammunition and God knows what and they just sat there and later in the day the infantry arrived and they made no provision for us whatsoever. Nothing. So we just broke out of the camp to steal food and steal drink as well and steal women as well no doubt but the Russians clamped on that and then they started to register us and they were going to send us to a Black Sea port, Odessa or some sort of place, and sail us home from there they said. When the Americans are only five miles away. The other side of the river. And they started to register us and they had great big women, great big fat women, tables outside, taking the records, and they got some funny ones. There was a Micky Mouse and James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart and it became chaotic and eventually we just said oh blow this and they packed it in and then they moved us, as I say, out of the camp and up into this maintenance depot.
BW: So they realised you were giving them some spoof names -
PB: Yeah.
BW: And not helping at all
PB: We sat in this maintenance depot about five of us who were all together and suddenly the most horrible screaming and I said the Russians have either got a woman or they’ve got a pig let’s go and to find out which it is. So we followed the noise and we came to a place and there were two Russians. There was one dead pig lying down and there’s another Russian with a pig like a cello with his hand way inside of it and the pig screaming away and we sit and we watch all this and we’re thinking they’ll give us something and we watch and we wait and eventually they killed it and they cut off the ears and gave us the ears. They took two pigs and gave us the bloody ears off one of pig.
BW: And kept the rest for themselves. And in general when they, as you put it, got their act together in terms of organising the camp presumably they re-erected the fence post that had been torn down.
PB: It became a far, far, far worse place than it had ever been.
BW: Yeah.
PB: They turned it into a punishment camp for German civilians. There were hundreds, if not thousands, of Germans died in that camp over the next five years and so the natives at Muelburg are attached to us really. We both suffered in that camp. It was a dreadful place. What it must have been like when it was dreadful when we were there. What it must have been like.
BW: And they weren’t bringing the civilians in while you were there?
PB: No, no.
BW: They presumably -
PB: No. It was after, after they’d repaired it and repaired all the damage we’d done.
BW: Yeah.
PB: And I think it was about five years they had it as a punishment camp. Must have been hell on earth. Hell on earth. Hundreds if not thousands died and this was just because of complaining about some regulation or other that the Russians had imposed. Anything at all, straight in there. Shocking that.
BW: But they didn’t, did they impose a regime on you as RAF crew waiting to be repatriated during that sort of interim period of April, May.
PB: Well it was all chaos. It was all chaos. I had quite an experience on VE day. They had their VE day a day later than ours because apparently they weren’t satisfied with the arrangements that the west had made so they decided to have their own, their own VE day the next day and I was, I was walking in the German town. Why I was alone and not with any of my friends I don’t know but I was alone and I was walking through this town and suddenly two Russian officers grabbed me and took me to their mess and gave me a huge meal. All, all looted German property of course. Animals, vegetables. The lot. And a particular sweet which I learned later was made from sour milk and it was absolutely gorgeous and after the meal they took me to a public hall where there was to be an address by a general followed by a concert and it was full of full of Russian soldiers, men and women, in all sorts of different uniforms and this general came onto the stage and I got, I got an example of what it was it was like being in a totalitarian state. He made a speech and the only words I heard were Churchill and Roosevelt every now and again he’d pause and somewhere at the very back of the, of the gallery [clapping sound] and immediately everybody’s clapping and immediately they all stopped like that.
BW: As if somebody was coordinating it.
PB: Someone’s coordinating. The whole thing was coordinated and eventually the speech finishes and we had this concert and it was absolutely fantastic. Oh the music and the dancing and the singing unbelievable. Unbelievable concert. It was terrific. Now what happened when it finished I’ve no idea. I haven’t a clue what happened to me that night. Not a clue. Not the slightest idea. I know I joined up with my friends the next day but what happened that night I don’t, I’ve no idea but I’ve never seen anything like the performance that these women who seemed to just move like that.
BW: Gracefully across -
PB: No, no leg movement at all.
BW: The stage yeah.
PB: And the Cossacks down on their heels kicking. Oh it was a fantastic concert and the singing and the balalaika playing. A night to remember that was. And that was VE day. VE day Russian version.
BW: How had you managed to celebrate it in the camp at all? You mentioned it was quite different to our celebration were there any –
PB: Well we didn’t know. We didn’t know it was VE day.
BW: So the only indication you got was from the Russians when they -
PB: Yeah.
BW: Held their celebrations.
PB: And as I say by this time we weren’t in the camp and in fact we’d broken and were trying to get across to the Americans on our own.
BW: And you mention you were in the town at this stage in Muhlberg.
PB: Ahum.
BW: What, what was it like what was your sense of being in the town? Were there, firstly, was it damaged but also were there German civilians who might be hostile.
PB: No.
BW: To the RAF at all.
PB: The civilians couldn’t get us in to their houses fast enough. We were never we were never short of somewhere to sleep or somewhere to wash.
BW: Right.
PB: Because I think the theory was if ten drunken Russians hammered on the door at midnight looking for women we would go to the door and say it was under British occupation you’ll have to go next door. It never worked out in practice [thank God] but that was the theory I think. They couldn’t get us into their houses fast enough.
BW: So a bit I suppose a bit of a protection there for them if the -
PB: Yeah.
BW: If the Russians had seen western RAF aircrew in a house -
PB: Yeah.
BW: They would be less likely -
PB: Yeah. Yeah.
BW: To interfere with it.
PB: And we slept we slept on a feather bed with a feather bed on top of us with a great big bed oh it was wonderful.
BW: And the Germans managed to put you up in the sense that they would feed you as well.
PB: Yes. Yes,
BW: Even though they would have probably been rationed at this stage and -
PB: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, they couldn’t do enough for us.
BW: And did you get to go back to Muhlberg in the intervening years?
PB: No, because I don’t know where we were. I don’t know where the Russians had moved us to.
BW: Right.
PB: The, the Stalag 4b Association organised trips to Muhlberg later and they became very popular because the Muhlberg people themselves were in the same boat but I never went. In fact they had a trip this year starting off in Berlin and moving down to Muhlberg.
BW: And when you came back to the UK we picked up the story at Cosford and we picked up the extra pay that you’d been awarded.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And you were washed and brushed up. What then happened to you sort of post war from Cosford?
PB: Well I was given three options. I could come out immediately or I could go to oh what’s the Yorkshire town, the spa town?
BW: Harrogate.
PB: Harrogate. On a rehabilitation course and then come out or I could opt to stay in until my normal release date. Well I thought there was still a chance of getting back on flying and getting out east and bombing Japan so I opted to stay in and I got posted to a, to a Mosquito squadron near, near Newcastle and there, there I became in effect the squadron warrant officer. I sat in an office all day doing nothing but we had a very, very good rugby team. Our sports, our sports officer was a first class scrub half and we had a very good rugby team and we won the group cup without any difficulty and we got drawn in for the semi-final of the national cup and we got drawn away against Ringway and we came down to Ringway and we found that although paratroopers are army the people who trained them were airmen and practically every one of them was a rugby league professional. So, we turned out on a rugby pitch at Ringway about six hundred red cap paratroopers lying around the pitch cheering their side on. We were up against these great hulking fellas who were fit like butchers dogs. Oh they murdered us. Absolutely murdered us.
BW: And do you still retain an interest in rugby league despite that? Do you follow -
PB: Not rugby league. I don’t like rugby league but we were, they were playing rugby union but they were rugby league professionals.
BW: Right.
PB: But when we got back, when we got back to Acklington I thought that’s it. There’s nothing, nothing doing for me now so I asked to be released and I was released within days.
BW: And was that in 1945?
PB: That would, no, it would be 1946.
BW: ’46.
PB: Yeah.
BW: From Acklington and from then on what happened in your civilian life?
PB: Well, I couldn’t settle.
BW: Your post war life.
PB: I couldn’t settle. I got I got a job as a clerk with a, with a big chemical manufacturing company and I was in this office with about six other people who were as dull as ditchwater, been there forever and all I was doing was calculating lorry loads [eight car loads used to go there and six car loads to go there?] making up that and oh it was absolutely soul destroying. I stuck it I think for three months and then I thought I can’t, I can’t, I can’t settle to this so I then decided I thought the only way to get some companionship again, get some comradeship again was if I joined the police force so I went to, I went to the police station in Burnley and they said, ‘We’ve no, we’ve no vacancies but we can put you in touch with our central organisation.’ So they did and I was called for interview at Wallasey and got into the Wallasey force with three other people and when we went to the police training school we found that three people on the course were Burnley recruits. Burnley. But this gave me my first insight into the police they were recruiting people but they wouldn’t recruit Burnley people. They wouldn’t have anybody who lived in the town going into the police force. So that was the first lie from the police. I worked hard. I came out top of the class and we got to Wallasey and for the first fortnight I was sent out on patrol with another policeman who’d been on patrol for years and I learned how to, I learned which cafes you could sit in the back rooms of and drink coffee and I learned all sort of tricks that really you shouldn’t be doing and it was a complete and utter waste of time and in a small force like Wallasey the opportunity for promotion were very, very few and far between. You had people who had been pounding the beat for fifteen years. They’d passed their sergeants examinations, they passed their inspectors examinations and they were still pounding the beat and the only way you could get on was to curry favour. Start oozing up to some officers and telling tales. It was the exact opposite of comradeship. Everybody’s telling tales about everybody. I thought I can’t stick this so I resigned from that and I was playing rugby in Burnley then and one of the team was a cotton mill owner and he said, ‘If you ever want a proper job I’ll give you a job in a cotton mill,’ so I went to work in his cotton mill and that was no good. And all the time I’m in touch with my bomb aimer’s father. Had regular correspondence and I said to him, ‘I can’t settle I’m going to go back into the air force.’ And he said, ‘Well don’t do anything for the next fortnight,’ and I received a letter -
[interview transmission interrupted]
BW: Alright, so we’re only, we’re only a couple of minutes from the end and I was just asking Mr Phillip Bates that after the end of the war in conclusion he’d said that he’d had a good war but it had had its moments um that were not entirely enjoyable but that overall he’d enjoyed it, his service in the RAF but I was asking just about the commemorations and the national, now centre, at Lincoln and you mentioned that you’d been down to London for the unveiling of the memorial there.
PB: Yeah.
BW: At Green Park.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And you got to meet Camilla as well did you say?
PB: Yes Camilla and the Prince of Wales. I got to shake both their hands. The Prince of Wales surprised me really. It was probably, it was probably the hottest day of the year and everybody had taken his blazer off and I was wearing my Raf Ex-Pow Association tie and the Prince of Wales came along and immediately recognised my tie which surprised me. And as he shook my hand he said, ‘Where did they keep you?’ I said, ‘Stalag 4b, sir.’ He said, ‘Were you a digger?’ I said, ‘Oh no I wasn’t a digger, sir. No. I left that to other people,’ and he was quite jovial and then of course he moved on and made his way down the line but I was amazed that he recognised my tie instantly.
BW: That’s a very nice point that, you know, he’s identified you by that.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And spoke to you particularly because of it.
PB: And part of the Royal Air Force. I’ve got photographs of it all.
BW: And how about now that there’s a centre for Bomber Command in Lincoln?
PB: Well yes he’s lost his football again. I was due to go there and a friend of mine, Dominic was taking me but when it came to it I wasn’t fit to go. I couldn’t have sat in a car for three hours. I just couldn’t. And then another three hours coming back. And Dominic also had a cold so we were ashamed to admit it and then again it’s Lincoln. It’s Lancasters. Bugger the Lancasters I say.
BW: Well perhaps it didn’t prove as reliable as the Stirling because it didn’t fly. They were trying to get the Lancaster flying for the Friday unveiling but they didn’t and I think it may have flown -
PB: Yeah.
BW: The day after but -
PB: What annoys me they chopped up every Stirling. Now, you think they could, it was the first four engine aircraft we had. You’d think they could have had two or three for museums wouldn’t you?
BW: Ahum.
PB: But no they chopped up the lot and that really does grieve me.
BW: And even now they’ve got a Halifax in Elvington.
PB: Oh I’ve seen that.
BW: Which is nicely renovated and so on.
PB: Yeah.
BW: Doesn’t fly.
PB: And it’s got, it’s got the Stirling’s engines in it as well. It hasn’t got Rolls Royce in it it’s got Hercules. It’s a mark iii. It’s that one. The mark iii.
BW: That’s the picture on the wall yeah. And there is a Halifax that they dug out or pulled out of a Norwegian fjord in 1973.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And that is in the Royal Air Force Museum in London.
PB: Yeah. Well for years we hoped that they’d would find a Stirling somewhere but er somewhere in Holland but they never did.
BW: Ahum ahum.
PB: A great shame because it was a beautiful aeroplane.
BW: Could take, from what you were saying, could take a fair bit of punishment and keep flying.
PB: Yeah it was a lot bigger than a Lancaster of course but it had some disadvantages you see. It couldn’t fly high and it couldn’t carry big bombs. It didn’t have a bomb bay. It had three separate ones which gave immense strength to the fuselage because you had these girders running the full length but you could only get a two thousand pound bomb in it so we mostly carried incendiaries.
BW: So just thinking in brief terms about the structure of a bomber formation in that case because you’d see that the pathfinders were going first to mark the target.
PB: Yeah.
BW: Presumably the Stirlings would then go in with the incendiaries.
PB: No. No, we were our main raid was either five or sometimes six waves.
BW: Right.
PB: And the Stirlings were always in the third wave. We got some protection from the first two waves going out and some protection from the last two waves coming back because we were a bit slower than they were. So we were always in the third wave.
BW: Right.
PB: Except, except Peenemunde. Now, that, that’s a terrible story. The night before Peenemunde we went to, we went to Turin and somewhere our radio packed in and we didn’t get the message telling us that East Anglia was fogged up and we had to land in Kent or Sussex. Wherever we could. We didn’t get that message so we arrived back at Lakenheath and asked for instructions to land and they said. ‘You can’t land here. It’s totally fogbound but if you get over to Oakington you might just get down.’ Well, we got over to Oakington, the other side of Cambridge and we just landed. They closed the, closed the airfield immediately we landed and they debriefed us and fed us and provided us with beds and in the early afternoon we went down to the airfield and the Lancasters of seven group were being bombed up and we knew we were on again that night and we were going on leave the so next day so we weren’t anxious to go bombing that night. Anyway, we’d no choice we started the port outer. Come to the port inner, nothing. The starter motor was dead. The starter motors they had in Oakington would fit a Lancaster, it wouldn’t have fit us so we rang Lakenheath to tell them. Eventually a lorry arrives with some fitters and a new starter motor and we landed at Lakenheath just as the squadron is taxiing out for take-off and we were very, very happy because we were going on leave the next day and then I discover we’d missed bloody Peenemunde and at Peenemunde the Stirlings went in first at five thousand feet in brilliant moonlight and all the fighters were circling in Berlin because Mosquitos were dropping target indicators on Berlin. The Germans got away scot free. Eventually the Germans twigged what was happening and got the fighters over and shoot down forty Lancasters and Halifaxes. Stirlings, scot free.
BW: And because you, they’d have been in the first wave.
PB: Yeah.
BW: They got away with it.
PB: There were three, there were three targets. The first one was at the very southern end was all the housing and the Stirlings destroyed that and then the next waves destroyed the science laboratories and then the assembly works and we missed it and it’s grieved me the rest of my life. I’d have given anything to have been on that raid and we were so happy that we weren’t. Oh, a friend of mine got shot down that night. No. I’d have loved to have been on Peenemunde.
BW: I mean that was, that was announced at fairly short notice. It was, you know sometimes a raid has to be planned quite well in advance.
PB: Yeah.
BW: But this was because of the intelligence about the weapons.
PB: Yeah.
BW: They were developing their short notice.
PB: The crews weren’t told, they were told that they were attacking an experimental place for new radar [and the better job of the radar they’d better defend themselves because they destroy all the latest airborne radar] that was the story that was given to aircrews.
BW: Interesting.
PB: Oh I’d have given anything to have been on that raid. Anything. Five thousand feet, brilliant moonlight and you were the first in.
BW: As you say it’s how fate goes isn’t it?
PB: Yeah.
BW: But -
PB: I’ve just been to the funeral of a friend of mine. George. He trained in Canada as a navigator. As a Mosquito navigator which is a specialised navigation job. He qualifies, he gets his brevvy, he’s ready to join the squadron and the war stops. They never even, he never even saw a Mosquito. Oh what a terrible thing to have happen to you. Terrible.
BW: Gone through all that. Well, I was reading in the prep really that they launched a raid on Peenemunde.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And just looking here at some of this um yeah it says here that 149 squadron took part in the early offensive against Germany.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And took part in the first thousand bomber raids with Stirlings.
PB: Yeah.
BW: Made a significant contribution to the battle of the Ruhr, Battle of Hamburg and the raid against the V weapons experimental station at Peenemunde.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And then between February and July ‘44 and in addition to dropping high explosives on the enemy the squadron helped supply the French maquis with supplies, arms and ammunition by parachute.
PB: Yeah.
BW: Of course that would be after you’d been shot down.
PB: About eight weeks after we were shot down Stirlings were taken off German targets completely. Some of them converted to Lancasters. Those that kept their Stirlings were used to drop supplies in France and to do mine laying and later to tow, to tow gliders but they never went to Germany again. The loss rate was unsustainable. I’d been on raids where we lost one in every five Stirlings. You can’t, you can’t keep that up for very long.
BW: No. No. Not at all. Do you think there was a particular weakness perhaps in the Stirling that the losses were so high or was it just good -
PB: You couldn’t get any altitude.
BW: Just because they were restricted to -
PB: Yeah, yeah.
BW: Low ceiling.
PB: Altitude. I mean, I had friends who flew at twenty two thousand feet. On a good night we would get thirteen. On a poor night we would get eleven. Everything that was thrown up reached the Stirlings and everything that was coming down reached the Stirling as well [laughs].
BW: I think you mentioned at one point a bomb hit your aircraft. A bomb -
PB: Yeah.
BW: Dropped from the aircraft above.
PB: This was the Nuremberg. I think it must have been a thirty pound incendiary because it went straight through. If it had been a four pound I think it would have stayed in the wing and burned. If it had been [eighty] it would have taken the wing off. Left quite a sizable hole.
BW: I would just like to show you this. There’s a photo here of a Stirling crew of 149 squadron based at Lakenheath.
PB: Oh.
BW: And I just wonder whether you might recognise any of the names. It’s only a longshot.
PB: Oh.
BW: But there’s -
PB: As I say we never bothered with other crews really.
BW: No.
PB: Except the ones we trained with at -
BW: But it looks like it’s outside the mess at Lakenheath that picture.
PB: Yeah I don’t recognise the photograph. Crowe, that’s a familiar name, Crowe. Oh he was a POW that’s why I know him. Was he a flight engineer? I knew a Tweedy in prison but he was a soldier. I don’t recognise the faces at all. Don’t know why their wearing uniform instead of battledress but there we are. Battledress were far more comfortable. That’s interesting. 27th of September. Oh well they would have been newcomers on the squadron when we were there. The average life expectancy was only six weeks. I had two friends, both on Halifaxes -
BW: Thank you.
PB: Both shot down on their first trip and my friend who were in training, a flight engineer on 15 squadron did four operations and got shot down twice.
BW: Right. I think that sort of brings us to the end as I say unless there is anything else you want to say.
PB: Well I hope I haven’t bored you.
BW: Not at all sir. No not at all there’s plenty of information. Some really interesting and diverse experiences. It’s been very kind of you to share those with me.
PB: It’s a pleasure.
BW: So thank you very much -
PB: A pleasure.
BW: For your time um what I’ll do is I’ll come to the signing of the release form now and a couple of photos so I’ll end the recording there and we’ll sort out the paperwork.
Dublin Core
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ABatesP151009
Title
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Interview with Philip Bates
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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IBCC Digital Archive
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Sound
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eng
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02:13:03 audio recording
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Pending review
Pending OH summary. Allocated S Coulter
Creator
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Brian Wright
Date
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2015-10-09
Description
An account of the resource
Philip Bates grew up in Lancashire and joined the Royal Air Force in 1940. He served as ground crew with Coastal Command before remustering as aircrew. He flew operations as a flight engineer with 149 Squadron until his aircraft was shot down and he became a prisoner of war.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Air Force. Coastal Command
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
Poland
England--Lancashire
England--Suffolk
Poland--Tychowo
Germany
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Nuremberg
Temporal Coverage
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1942
1943
1944
1945
Contributor
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Julie Williams
149 Squadron
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bomb struck
bombing
bombing of Hamburg (24-31 July 1943)
Bombing of Peenemünde (17/18 August 1943)
displaced person
Dulag Luft
entertainment
fear
final resting place
flight engineer
ground crew
ground personnel
Heavy Conversion Unit
home front
incendiary device
Ju 88
Lysander
Manchester
Me 110
military living conditions
military service conditions
mine laying
Nissen hut
prisoner of war
RAF Lakenheath
RAF St Athan
RAF Waterbeach
Resistance
Scarecrow
searchlight
shot down
Stirling
training
Window
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/222/3364/PCarrollT1601.2.jpg
6dcf778874a17c8eddc32754f15ef8a6
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/222/3364/ACarrollT160418.2.mp3
6fcf0cd59fbdbb3b017155d7d3cae483
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Carroll, Thomas F
Thomas Carroll
Tom Carroll
T F Carroll
T Carroll
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with Thomas "Tom" Carroll (1923 - 2019, 184755 Royal Air Force).
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-03-07
2016-04-18
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Carroll, TF
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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JM: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Julian Maslin. The interviewee is Tom Carroll. The interview is taking place at Mr Carroll’s home, near Tarpoley in Cheshire, on the 18th of April, 2016. [Pause.] Tom, good morning. I wonder if you could start by telling us a little bit about your background, where you were born and brought up.
TC: Good morning to you. Yes, I was born in a place called Woodlands, Doncaster, in 1923, 5th of August 1923. It was a model village, and the king and queen came along and declared it to be so. I lived very happily there, with loving parents. My father was a miner, he came from Ballinasloe [unclear] in Ireland. And my grandfather – we all lived together in the same house at this stage – my grandfather worked down the mine when he was eight years of age. I think it’s – I’d like to say a little about him, because I asked him ‘wasn’t you frightened?’ when I was a little boy and we went walking with him around the village and so on, ‘weren’t you frightened, Grandad, at eight years of age working down the pit?’ He said ‘well I was at first.’ And I said ‘well what did you do Grandad?’ He said ‘well they put a piece of rope in my hand, and told me to pull it down, until I couldn’t pull it down any further.’ ‘And then what did you do?’ He says ‘they told me to release it.’ I discovered later on of course this was part of the fresh air that would be brought into the mine. [Pause.] He did, he did this, and I suppose – ‘were you allowed to, when you’re allowed, were you allowed [emphasis] to work down the mines?’ Well he said in those days there was a lot of poverty around, and if you got a letter, you could send a letter to the head teacher, and say that if you had a job they would allow you to go. So that’s how he worked down the mine. Grandad and I became very good friends, and on one of our little walks, he suddenly said to me ‘you know life Tommy? Life is nothing but smoke, magic and dust.’ Now I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about, but there was something about the words ‘smoke,’ ‘magic,’ and ‘dust’ that stayed in my mind until I began to write books. And then I thought, that’s a title of a, I gave to my novel ‘Smoke, Magic and Dust.’ Because, when I grew up, and had lived through the war, smoke, magic and dust made sense [emphasis] to me somehow. I’d been living a life not knowing where I was going or anything, and then, some magic came along and I realised that that was all part of it. And then Hitler, himself, became dust, towards the end of the war. And I thought to myself, really, life is smoke, magic and dust. We all I’m sure can say to ourselves at one time of our lives ‘where’s life taking us to? What is it all about?’ And then we experience some magic, perhaps we fall in love and get married, and that’s magic. But at the end of it all, of course, it all comes to an end in dust. Anyway, that’s how I came to write a novel later on, I’ll talk about that later on. But, everything was happy. We were living a simple life, walking out with my friends, and everything was farmland around the village. We would walk out, bluebells gathering, nuts we got from the trees in the little woods around the place, and then, we, when we were a little older, life began to change [emphasis]. Because of this man called Hitler, and what he was doing, and how he’d invaded this country, and yet another one, and by this time, my mother and father were getting very concerned, because my mother had lots of brothers who’d been in, not only in World War One, but Uncle Bernard had been in the Boer War as well [emphasis], and I remember sitting at his feet at our house and listening to his stories about the Boer War. One of them I’ll mention. At night time, they used to throw barbed wire entanglement around the troops because the Boers would perhaps attack them, and so they hung metal tin cans to the barbed wire which would sound an alarm if they were attacked, and they stacked the rifles ready just in case. And they were attacked, or at least they thought they were one night, the cans rattled on the fence, everybody leapt up, grabbed a rifle and began shooting in the direction of where the noise came from. And everything went quiet, and in the morning, when dawn broke, they found out what had happened. The mule that carried the water for them had somehow stumbled into the fence, and now it was dead, shot dead. But, later on in life I realised what these camps, prison camps were like. When the Jews were later imprisoned in camps. But at that stage, [shuffling] we just [unclear] going from there. [Beep.]
JM: Tom, could you tell us what it was that lead to your enlisting in the Royal Air Force?
TC: Yes. When I was, when I was fifteen and a half, I left school. I learnt to do shorthand and typing, and I thought it would be jolly nice if I could become a newspaper reporter. But, I didn’t. I became, at that early age [chuckles] an assistant cashier for an inter, an international company. Erm, the erm, I’m just trying to think – [Beep.]
TC: I was working for this international mining company, and the war had started, of course, and we were all speculating, young people working there, what would we do when our time came to join up. Immediately I wanted to join the Air Force. The prospect of flying was far more interesting to me than firing at people from a trench [emphasis]. So I must confess, it was excitement of the prospect of flying in aeroplanes that I thought of. And, it sounded much cleaner and scientific and everything else. That’s why I wanted to join the Air Force. And, when I went to be interviewed, by the authorities when I approached them I was eighteen years of age, they rather talked – I wanted to be a pilot, but they said ‘we’ve got a better job for you in the Air Force than being a pilot,’ I said ‘oh, how’d’ya work that out?’ They said ‘well you sit next to the pilot, you won’t be called the pilot, you’d be called a flight engineer, but you’ll be able to take part in operating this aeroplane, and you’ll be an engineer as well [emphasis]. So, that’s a very important role.’ So I said, ‘jolly good, I’ll do that.’ Up till then, the only thing I could do was mend punctures on a bicycle. But they said ‘don’t worry about that, you’ll be trained.’ So in due course of course I was called up, and I was trained at, I remember going to [pause] to, I think it was, it was, I think it was Mablethorpe I think it was, were we did our ground training. Drill and all that sort of thing. And this was where I met a guy called Ken Cameron, who became a friend of mine, a wartime [emphasis] of mine. Dear Ken was killed in the Air Force later on, but we were in it together. Everything [emphasis] we did together, Ken and I, Ken Cameron. He came from Scotland, he came from, he lived in Scotland, and [pause] we were at a dance I remember, at Mablethorpe, it was a very hot day, and we had the ice cream man outside. So we went downstairs to buy an ice cream, and ran slap bang into the arms of a, Warrant Officer Bloomfield, a flight sergeant, a sergeant and a corporal. Well, the outcome of all of that was the warrant officers taking the name of flight sergeant, taking the names of the flight sergeant, taking the names of sergeant, and the corporal, and took our names, and we were marched in and put on jankers for a week, scrubbing pans and all the rest of it. And Ken and I were also having to march up and down and round with a log held on one shoulder each, [unclear]. Anyway, it was a very interesting period. And eventually we went down on the first course of training, which was to be [pause, beep].
TC: So, after the misery [emphasis] of scrubbing all the pans clean, then it became the business of getting us prepared us for flying. And we, we did a course down at RAF Locking, in Holton, and then onto the actual course itself, down at South Wales, at, erm –
JM: [Whispers] St Athan. [Louder] St Athan.
TC: Holton.
Other: St Athan.
JM: St Athan.
TC: St Athan, rather. At St Athans. Erm, [pause] I must say this about the training, if I may. The training in the Royal Air Force, and all the other services I guess, must be the best training in the world, because if you didn’t understand a certain thing, they stayed with you until you did understand it. And in the end, of course, came the day when passed out, and we were sewed on our sergeants wings. That was tremendous. Tremendous. After that we were given some leave, and Ken Cameron, my friend I mentioned earlier on, instead of going all the way up north to Scotland in those forty-eight hours, he came home to Yorkshire with me, and spent a weekend at our house. That was tremendous. And our friendship blossomed [?]. We went back to, we trained then, as, with a crew – we had to be crewed up then. And we went to a place in Yorkshire called Lindholme, and I remember entering this room – how we even saw [emphasis] one another I don’t know. It was absolutely filled with smoke, everybody was smoking their cigarettes, and I was smoking too. But this guy came in, this officer came in, and said he would leave it to us to get crewed up. There were pilots in the room milling around, with air gunners and navigators, and they were all looking for a flight engineer to finish the, to finish the crew off. And a pilot came to me and said ‘would you like to be flight engineer in my crew?’ And I said ‘yes.’ I joined with them and it was terrific, that we were allowed to choose to fly with the people we wanted, we felt we wanted to fly with. So, I said ‘who’s that guy then?’ And someone says ‘oh it must have been a shrink’ [chuckles]. But it was very clever, I think, to be left to choose our own friends to work with. So, that’s how I became part of a Lancaster crew.
JM: What did you think of the Lancaster as an aeroplane to fly in?
TC: Well, we originally trained on a – it was a Halifax, which I thought was a very good aircraft. And then, halfway through the course on the Halifax, we were told we were going to fly Lancasters. And I thought the Lancaster was absolutely terrific [emphasis]. I was so interested, I knew every [emphasis] nut and bolt in that aircraft. I really, I really did. In fact, that’s how I gained my commission through knowledge of the Lancaster. I remember, we were posted then from this place to 100 Squadron at Waltham, and I remember the name of the group captain, Group Captain Newbiggin, and Wing Commander Patterson was the wing commander, I remember them both, and after – it’s very interesting to recall how, what happened when we arrived on the squadron. The [unclear] said ‘you go and see the [unclear – maybe wing commander] now boys,’ he said ‘you give us a buzz and you can go in and see him.’ Okay, we waited for the buzz, and eventually the buzz came, and we marched into his room and saluted. But to our surprise he wasn’t sitting down there to welcome us, he was lying flat out on a long table, and he was wearing, on this hot day, it’s true, he was wearing his overcoat [emphasis]. Somebody said to me, whisper, ‘he’s flak happy.’ Flak happy? [emphasis]. So he said – he told us he was going to take us on our first trip – second dicky. And we duly left. And the [unclear] saw us coming out with these long faces. Second dicky was – he was suffering from, obviously, flak happy, he laughed, he said ‘he’s not flak happy at all,’ he said ‘the reason he’s lying on that table is occasionally because he had a crash landing after doing so many ops, it’s affected his back and he has to lie on his back for a while,’ and the reason he was wearing that overcoat, he says ‘it’s just arrived this morning for him, and he was trying it on when his back went’ [JM laughs] ‘so he really is very, very good.’ And he says ‘the last time you’ll see Wing Commander Patterson flying around on his bicycle,’ and truly that did happen. But nevertheless, after a period of small cross countries to check out our navigator, who incidentally was a Canadian, we were declared fit to go. I was very happy with my pilot – I remember my first time we did a most wonderful landing together in training. The way that he looked at me and I looked at him, it was smashing, it was. So we went on our first op. I just can’t remember what [unclear]. Anyway, it was, it was somewhere in France I think, just my memory, and I remember the wing commander was flying in my skipper’s seat, he was sitting next to me. My skipper was sitting in my [emphasis] seat next to the wing commander, and I was sitting on a little rumple [?] seat at the side. Anyway, I reminded him at twelve thousand feet that he had to put oxygen on, so we all did oxygen, and everyone said yes they were receiving their oxygen, and as we approached France I saw, it was like kiddie’s sparklers, up in the air, and the wing commander says ‘don’t worry about that, light flak is, is, only goes up about twelve thousand feet, don’t worry about it.’ So we didn’t worry about it, and he said ‘I’ll explain what the heavy flak looks like when we get there.’ And, on we went. And suddenly, a searchlight came on, and began, and swept towards us, and he said ‘now, if a searchlight comes on like that to us, you have to do a corkscrew,’ and he described what to do, and he said ‘this is what we do,’ he says ‘you dive through [emphasis] it, you don’t run away from it, you dive through it.’ And then he had difficulty finding it again, well we dove through it, and the searchlight went out, it must have been faulty or something, but anyway we got the idea that you did a corkscrew through an aircraft beam, and you dived through it not away from it. So we thought that was very good training, I was very pleased with Wing Commander Patterson, by then. ‘Cause what we’d done, we’d called him Harpic, you know [JM laughs], clean round the bend [both laugh]. His nickname was Harpic as far as we were concerned, and he never, never escaped that name, but he was known with affection from now on as Harpic. Eventually, we saw what he’d been talking about, this heavy flak, I was rather frightened I must say, because the heavy flak, it lit up the sky with a flash as big as a motorbus. A fla – but out of it you can see big black pieces flying out of it, so we said ‘that’s heavy flak.’ Yeah. Well we had to keep on, with flying [?] and we got to approach the target with the heavy flak pounding away. I didn’t see any aircraft actually getting hit that night, but I thought, as bombs went, you know, I heard ‘bombs away,’ my foot [foot shuffles on the floor] felt peculiar [emphasis]. It had been hit up and down, I thought ‘God, I’ve been hit already,’ first trip! I didn’t tell anybody, I took off my flying glove, I put my hand down my flying boot and stocking, and tasted my hand to see if it was blood. Nothing there. And it wasn’t till a moment or two later, I thought ‘I know what it is.’ I’d been standing on a bomb slip cover. A bomb slip cover is a small piece of metal with a clip that you could pull out with your hand in case the bomb wasn’t released mechanically, you could release it by hand, and this had rattled of course under my foot when bombs were released. So I never told anyone about that, I kept that to myself. Then, on, on our – we landed back safely of course, and we were debriefed, and after briefing we went back to our place, and we were all sergeants at that stage apart from Jack Slater, the Canadian, ex-mounted [?] policeman, a bomb aimer, Goody navigator, a Canadian, he was an officer, pilot or flying officer – both, they were both flying officers, and our pilot, he was a flying officer as well. So our mid upper gunner was a chap called Robinson, and when I say we called him Robbo, we did, because he was a Czecho-Slovakian Jew I think, we could, nobody, nobody knew exactly where he came from, but he was a fantastic gunner, and we put up with him because of that really, although he couldn’t speak. We said ‘why [emphasis] Robbo, did you call yourself Robinson?’ He says ‘well, if we were shot down,’ he says,’ I give ‘em my name, rank and number, my name’s Robinson,’ he said ‘they’d think I was an Englishman.’ [Chuckles.] A Britain, oh dear, oh dear. Anyway, that was Robbie. But he had a little grammar phone, did Robbie, that he carried about with him, and in this Nissan hut where we were sleeping, it was a thin walled hut, made of metal, thin metal war hut, and you could hear the rats moving around in these thin walls, and Robbie and, erm, well he didn’t sleep very well to begin with bemuse, well we were still thinking about the trip, but eventually we, everybody fell asleep except Robbie, who got out, took out his little grammar phone and sat beside the stove in the, the stove in the middle of the room, and began to play records. ‘Shoo Shoo Baby’ was one of them, and what was the other one now, ‘Shoo Shoo Baby’ and [unclear], and another one, ‘Let’s Take the ‘A’ Train.’ And as the ‘A’ train went faster and faster I have to say it inspired the rats [emphasis] to move faster and faster [laughter] it’s amazing really, its true. The rats seemed to wake up and run faster as the ‘A’ Train was playing. Eventually Robbie got tired too, went to bed and fell asleep. I don’t know how long we’d been sleeping, but we were awake at – I woke up, I could hear somebody moving about the room very quietly – this is true – and what it was, there were people coming in, and there was one crew who hadn’t come back, and what they were doing, they were cleaning the bed spaces out from that and making it ready for the crew who were coming in the next day [emphasis] to take their place. So, that made me think, I’ll tell you, because I never ever [emphasis] thought I would die. I was – and all the young people I’m sure who flew, thought the same as me, they were too young to die. And so I was never really frightened very much. I always thought I’d get out of it. But anyway, we did a couple more ops, and by that time, we were legendary [chuckles]. We were the people who’d done three operations, and Group Captain Newbiggin, the group captain said to my pilot ‘do you mind if I borrow Sergeant Carroll and the wireless operator? I got so many hours to do every month to keep in touch, and I’d like to borrow them.’ So, the pilot couldn’t refuse the groupie [chuckles]. So off we went, and he was a nice, he was a lovely station commander [cough, followed by beep]. Group Captain Newbiggin was a, was a marvellous fellow really, I thought he was terrific, and we did about an hours’ training together, and we came back alright, and we said ‘we’ll have to do that again.’ And I thought ‘yes, if we’re not, [laughs] if we’re still here.’ At least, that’s what Mitch said to me, ‘that’s if we’re still alive.’ But we didn’t mean it seriously, we thought we’d go on forever. Anyway, I went up with him this next time, and we’d been flying around doing all sorts of [uclear] flying and all the rest of it, flying one-three [?] and all the rest of it, and then I noticed that our air pressure was going down, very rapidly [emphasis]. ‘Oh.’ He said ‘what’s wrong, Sergeant Carroll?’ I said ‘there’s something wrong, sir, our air pressure’s going down, we’ve got to do something about it because we’ll go off the runway be – we can’t land without any air pressure.’ He says, ‘can you do anything about it?’ I said ‘if I find where it is that, I can repair it.’ I was confident I could fix it. So I thought ‘I’ll check, I’ll check it first of all on the source,’ so I swung down into the bomb aimer’s compartment, and in the bomb aimer’s compartment on the port side was a container for compressed air, and I could hear, even with a flying helmet on, I could hear it’s ‘ssss,’ ‘ssss.’ The noise coming out, escaping. And it was, there was a loose connection on the pipe as it turned into a curve. A little gland had become adrift. So I did as all good flight engineers would do, I took out the chewing gum from out my mouth, stuck it round, I got some binding tape out of my bag, wound it round and that was a job done [emphasis]. So I got back again into my seat, he says ‘that was quick work, what was it?’ And I told him, he says ‘well that’s a story I can tell the wing commander flying tonight.’ And it was a short while after that I became a flying officer [laughter]. And, or I’m pretty sure it was because of the chewing gum and this tape.
JM: Would I be right in thinking it would have been quite unusual to have a commissioned flight engineer?
TC: Oh it was, yes. I was, I didn’t know any.
JM: No, I’ve never heard of any others.
TC: No, I was. There were others though, of course. But, later on in the war there were quite a few. But I was probably one of the first, I think. So [pause], oh there was Mitch, the wireless op who had been with me, he spread it about he said, ‘if it hadn’t have been for Tom,’ he said ‘we wouldn’t have been here today, we would have been off the end of the runway.’ So he said ‘we’re gonna take him out tonight, and we’re going on the razzle.’ And it coincided that – there had been a clampdown, and it coincided with a very special girl appearing on the stage. And she was the girl who appeared in all the new, in one of the newspapers, of Daily Mirror fame. Jane.
JM: Jane.
TC: And she was there at this theatre [emphasis] in Grimsby. Well, we all got there after several – I must say, I think we were a bit sloshed, and they came on the stage, she came on the stage, and of course the spotlight fell on us because we were in uniform, she’s, she said she wanted someone to help her, and of course the crew grabbed me, threw me onto the stage [laughs] and I was, I had to do a high kicks competition together with the rest of these, along with these little legged girls. And I with my short fat legs couldn’t kick very high. But nevertheless she gave me a huge big kiss afterwards as a reward, and it was a big greasy patent [?] kiss [JM laughs]. My lips and everywhere were smudged red. I got back to my seat and I began to wipe my face with a handkerchief, and the crew said ‘don’t you dare throw that away’ [JM laughs], you see. And the flight engineer was always the last one to get onto the aircraft. He got the final checks to do before takeoff. So the bomb aimer got on first, wouldn’t go up the steps until he’d kissed the handkerchief belonging to Jane. And that became the ritual, the whole of our trips. First he did it to Bill the pilot, then the navigator, then the wireless operator, mid upper gunner, then there was Mitch, the rear gunner. They all kissed this, we wouldn’t do anything – it’s crazy [emphasis] I know [JM laughs] –
JM: Not at all. A little.
TC: But that’s what kept people going during the war, these crazy things. So that was that –
JM: That –
TC: I don’t know what happened to that handkerchief in the end. But somehow it disappeared. I don’t know where it went, but it was, sometime after the war I think, sometime [chuckles].
JM: By now you’re operating in the summer of 1944 and it’s about the time of D-Day.
TC: Oh –
JM: Could you, could you tell us a little bit about –
TC: Yes.
JM: Your experiences of operating around D-Day?
TC: Yes. Well there were two things really. What we were really, we were a bit afraid of was the Ruhr. The Ruhr, we called it Happy Valley because there were fighters waiting for you before you went in, fighters waiting when you went out and on either side of the Ruhr there was big eighty-eight millimetre guns, and we were told on this occasion, oh we knew it was the Ruhr again, ‘don’t worry boys, we’ve got a crew going up the side of the coast dropping window. The night fighters will be there, and by the time they find it’s a ruse, they’ll be short of fuel and they’ll need to go back again, so you’ll be okay.’ Not on, somebody must have told the Germans about it, and I saw more aircraft shot down that night – there must have been about twelve [emphasis] I think I saw, and what, what was happening was, they were waiting for us approaching the Ruhr, what they couldn’t shoot down they somehow – well we had to get into the Ruhr to go – shepherd us, it was like shepherding us into a pen. And we went on like this, and we were supposed to be radio silenced of course, from the crew, but honestly this is true, a little voice spoke up, and it was of a Lancashire or Yorkshire voice I couldn’t tell, and it says ‘please God, let me get back from this one, and I’ll be good to Ethel.’ That, well, we don’t know who it was, we don’t know who Ethel was, and we don’t know whether, if he got back to be good to her or not, but that’s what I remember of that one. I remember some very, very brave things too. But, let me tell you about a couple of things then I’ll get onto D-Day. There was one time we were flying, and I remember Wing Commander Patterson telling us about doing a corkscrew through the, through the searchlights, and on this occasion, a searchlight took a lucky strike on an aircraft. We were at twenty-thousand feet, this must have been a bit higher, and it fell flat on this Lanc, illuminated this Lancaster, seven people in it, they knew all about diving this way and that way and corkscrewing, but it was like slow-motion [emphasis] in this searchlight, and then climbing up this beam, was MU109, and just, it got so far, you could see it, and just like a kid’s sparkle came from it, and the next thing was, the poor old Lanc blew up, never to be seen, a dark [emphasis] space where it had been, seven people in a Lancaster had been, and that was the end of that. That really did make us think, that one. And the other one that I remember vividly, was we hadn’t got H2SR, radar in our aeroplane at the time, and the MCs, Master of Ceremonies, were marvellous people, they were like commenting on a cricket match. ‘Right-o chaps, that’s bang on, lovely, now, instead of bombing the reds, bomb the greens, bomb the greens [emphasis], lovely, spot on.’ And off they went. And these people were fantastic in the, when they were marking a target, they were so brave [emphasis], I thought. This Lancaster, it was a Lancaster, because I heard him afterwards bailing his crew out, they were flying about twelve-thousand feet, they were shot at from every direction, and they were hit, and he bailed out his crew, and the engineer went last out of it, [unclear] was going out of it, but he was still talking when the plane blew up. And the deputy then came in and he [emphasis] then started talking just as though the other chap had been there. Yeah I’ve never ever experienced such bravery as I’ve seen in the Air Force. People just ignoring death completely. It was, it was, things I could never forget it, never ever forget it. So, that was that. And I’m going to explain about D-Day. It was decided that the thing to do, we’d been bombing all the railway tracks, marshalling yards, all that sort of thing, and we’re doing this on this particular occasion. And we seemed to be getting no flak hardly, no night-fighters, it was dead easy [emphasis]. Anyway, amazing, ‘keep a good look out for something, something’s going to happen.’ So we headed back home and then we were looking down into the early hours of the morning, I saw a number of ships, I’ve never seen so many ships in my life. They were, it was, you know, it was D-Day I was witnessing, fantastic. And off we went, and we were told at debriefing that was what it was. The other thing I remember about flying are the V-Bombs, you know, and we could see our fighters fling past us, to go and shoot down these [unclear]. Fantastic, well just before, just towards the end of the war, of course, you’ll remember the [pause], Holland was flooded. The dykes had been opened, and the poor people were flooded up to the rooftops, practically. And the RAF Bomber Command was asked if we could help. And 100 Squadron was taking part in, it was called Operation Manna. Oh off we went, I’d been twice, and we flew, we seemed to be just grazing the rooftops, dropping parcels of food and water, and children no older I would say than eight or nine, they were running along the rooftops like cats [emphasis] catching these, and having fun and catching these things before they could fall, drift into the water. And I remember the bomb aimer Jack Slater saying to me, he says ‘one thing Tom,’ he says ‘it’s far better dropping food and water than dropping bombs isn’t it?’ And I had to agree. And I thought about that when I was with him a short while afterwards. The war was over, and we were doing a three day trip to Germany to see the extent of damage. We didn’t want to go really, but somehow or another we had drawn lots or something and we had to go. And, it was, we were staying – we landed at Gatto [?] airport, we were duly met by a German chauffeur who drove us to, I think it was a Yugoslav Embassy really –
JM: This was in Berlin?
TC: In Berlin. And it was a magnificent, I had never been in such an opulent place. It was wonderful [emphasis]. And the food, drink, everything, fantastic. There was even someone there who looked and sang like Lili Marleen, woman who sang like Lili Marleen. And there was a member, there was an army officer there, I knew, I got to know him, he was a French Canadian I think, and he was sitting at a table, there were no other girls there, and we were all young and wanted to dance to the little orchestra that was there, and he was sitting with about eight most beautiful [emphasis] looking girls, they were all French or, different nationalities, they were all in opposite uniforms, but they were all beautiful. So Jack said to me and Goody, ‘you’re, you’re a good dancer Tommy. Go and ask him, ask him if he can, if we can dance with the girls.’ So I had a couple more drinks and I ventured over to him, and I said ‘excuse me sir, do you mind if I danced with one of your retinue’ or something, he said ‘yes,’ he looked at me, he was about six-foot-seven I think, a big heavy looking fella, and he said ‘but you will bring her straight back won’t you?’ That, it was the way he looked at me frightened me to death [laughter from TC and JM]. More than all the trips I ever done [laugher]. Yeah, so I danced with this girl, and I do declare that I, that the space between my hips and her hips was about three foot [laughter]. I was dancing away from her. All I, and she said to me, ‘excuse me,’ she says ‘but have you been wounded?’ [Laughter] in a French voice. I took her back, and he said, he told me to sit next to him, and I did, I couldn’t really stop it and he had, I never tasted brandy before. And he had this big goblet there and he topped it up with brandy, and he drank that. He kept me there talking, took me nearly, told me what he was going to do, he said he’d make sure that Berlin was alright and turned around,’ and I thought ‘I bet he does too.’ [Laughter.] He was so fierce, I thought ‘it’s bound to do what he wants.’ And that was, the first night |I think we’d stayed there. And on the second day Jack Slater and I decided to go down to the Birches [?] Garden, to try and see the Reichstag rather because that’s where the Germans were going with their valuables to try and get the new currency to try and buy food with. So Jack and I went along there with our packed lunches, and on the way we saw this girl, she had a baby in her arms, and she was so young looking and frail, and she indicated she was hungry. Jack and I promptly gave her our sandwiches for which she thanked us profusely, and then I remembered I had a tuppence-ha’penny bar of Fry’s chocolate in my pocket, which I took out and gave to her, and she give a bit to her baby, and I’ll never ever [emphasis] forget the look in that baby’s eyes, when it reached out for more. And I vowed [emphasis] at that time to myself ‘I’m never going to talk about war or have anything else to do with war after this lot, not now,’ not after seeing what happened in Germany, you know, what war had done. And I never did. I didn’t register with 100 Squadron, or 626 after this, or anything, I kept quiet, until I think we were talking about the war memorial in London.
JM: The Bomber Command memorial?
TC: Yes. And the Dutch had already done it for the, for us, but Winston Churchill or nobody else had ever done it for Bomber Command, which, that didn’t suit me at all. But anyway, the Gibbs brothers were very important, gave a lot of money towards it. And we went there, to the war memorial in London, and in fact I wrote an article about it which I sent to a colleague of yours about it, but on the way away Joyce was wheeling me in a wheelchair at the time, and one of the WAF officers said ‘oh, you mustn’t do that Mrs Carroll, plenty of big strong men here who can do that for you.’ And this fellow, he was about six foot odd, tall, and he had more medals than most of the RAF people there had on, and that’s because, although he hadn’t been flying, he’d been to Afghanistan I think three times, or was it six, I forget. And, as he wheeled me away, we stopped under a tree because it was very hot to get a bit of fresh air, and he says ‘my father was in the Air Force, you know, Flight [unclear] Carroll,’ I says ‘was he?’ ‘Yes, he was in Bomber Command.’ ‘Oh, what squadron was he on, do you know?’ ‘Yes, he was on 100 Squadron.’ Well, I says ‘really?’ And he pulled his bit of paper out of his pocket, and on the four, was it the fourteenth of March I think it was in 1944, he says he’d been on an operation, and Joyce, my wife, she pulled my operation book out of her handbag, and on the same date, we’d flown in different aircraft of course, to the same target. Well, he asked if he could take a photograph of me, and I strongly maintain, I know that the photograph he took, who he saw, was not me, it was his father. And he cried, we all cried didn’t we? Anyway, that was, that was the end of the war memorial there, and then I said that I wasn’t going to do anymore towards the Air Force or the RAF ever again. But, I thought later on, something at home happened –
Other: It’s okay – [beep]
TC: And then we came out, change of squadron. My partner [?] became squadron leader attached to 626 Squadron, Wickenby. We didn’t fly many operations there, we went, before war began, close to the end. I remember we went to Ludwigshafen, that was the twenty-fifth op that we did was Ludwigshafen, and we went to Dortmund in February, February of forty-five, [pause, shuffling papers]. And Cologne, we were at Cologne from 626, and then it, towards the end of the war, it became, the Dutch requested, they said the dykes had been opened, the rooftops were almost reached by floodwaters and would the RAF help. So we dropped, we went on the third of May 1945, we went to drop food in Holland. And again on the, I forget, it’s the second and third we went there dropped food for Holland. And I remember, we were flying over the rooftops, almost skimming the rooftops, and the kids were on the rooftops like cats [emphasis], just between the ages of say five and eight years of age, trying to grab the things before they landed in the water. Tremendous. And Jack, the granddaddy of the crew saying to me, ‘it’s far better dropping food and water than dropping bombs Tommy.’ And I had to agree with that.
JM: Did you take part in the operations to bring back the prisoners of war? Operation Exodus?
TC: Never brought – no, we didn’t take part in that, no. It’s after that, after we’d finished the operations, 626, the next thing I remember is being trained – what would it be after that? Oh no, yes, after we’d, the war ended, all I remember is everybody leaving and going to various homesteads. The Canadian people went back to Canada, Bill, he went back to Wales, still playing rugby [chuckles], breaking more bones I would have thought. I went – what happened to me? Eventually I went up to be trained as, I retrained as an air traffic control officer in the Air Force. And I was sent up to Scottish Command. That was a very interesting situation. All I remember was that we were responsible in the RAF for any, for the safety of aircraft, [unclear] air traffic control centre, Prestwick. We were responsible for the safety of all aircraft, military, civil, up to ten degrees west. Any other distance further west than that, that was the responsibility of America. And I remember, this particular room we had, we had our set up, it was fascinating really. It was about the size of this living room, and the wall I am facing now wasn’t a plaster wall, it was etched in glass. And on that glass was etched every airway and RAF station, main master airfields that we had, such as Kinross, Lochenrouse [?] and Leuchars and so on. And they had special equipment at these airfields, they had long runways to begin with, that was important. But they had a piece of equipment, that if an aircraft called ‘mayday’, or any other emergency, a light would shoot out, and it would emit a signal, would make a light shoot out on this etched glass board we’d got, and where the aircraft was deemed to be was where the light crossed in the cocked hat [?]. So there I was on this Saturday morning, sitting at my desk in charge of everything, on a Saturday, everything quiet, everything – nobody flew in the RAF on a Saturday in those days. And I was reading the Scotsman, feet up on the table, reading the Scotsman, having my coffee, I’d checked all around, the master airfield, everything fine, nothing to worry about. ‘Pan, pan, pan.’ This is so-and-so-so-and-so. I’ve got a flame out. I’m at thirty-thousand feet, heading from Abbotsinch up to Lossiemouth.’ Splash, coffee flew all over the place. I switched on what we called a gun in front of me, as a light shot out from, to form this cross up on the board. And what I’d got – we called it a gun but it flashed on there three hundred and sixty degrees of the compass on the board, which I could get a bearing on either transmitting into a course to steer, or they’d ring you showing distances, separating each wing with their [unclear]. So I was able to flash this gun onto the cocked hat [?], and see that this aircraft was in fact thirty miles from Leuchars, and he said, he was plunging down like a stone, it was no, it was a youthful voice, and I’m over forty of course by this time, experienced, he thinks ‘if I just get in touch with air traffic control, they’ll tell me what to do and I’ll be safe’ [emphasis]. He didn’t realise these things could go wrong. So ‘pan, pan, pan,’ so I get back to him, I forget his call sign, I said ‘you’re thirty miles east of, west of Leuchars. Turn right on the heading of zero-nine-zero,’ and he did that, and I knew the runway of course zero-nine-two-seven, main runway, and I pressed a switch on the controller at Leuchars came on, ‘what is it Tom?’ I said ‘I’ve got one for you, a flame out,’ he said ‘oh crikey.’ He says ‘I’ve put people on painting the runway.’ I says ‘well you get them off, quickly else because he’s got a flame out and he’s gonna,’ – ‘hang onto him if you can.’ So ‘I’ll hang onto him as long as I can’ I said, and of course the lower the poor chap got, the less these lights shone out from these respective airfields, until the end of it the only light I’d got on was the one from Leuchars. And as he approached Leuchars of course, he’s now getting low, he’s twenty-thousand feet descending, less than that, and then the light at Leuchars began to twiddle and, oh. I knew it was hoped, he was over the top of Leuchars by this time. So I maintained his heading out onto zero-nine-zero, timed him for a few seconds, turned inbound [?] two-seven-zero, and he broke cloud at seven thousand feet and saw runway straight ahead, he said [emphasis, JM laughs]. And the controller came in at that point and said ‘runway clear Tom.’ I said ‘well, he’s just landing now.’ That little chap phoned, he phoned back to thank me afterwards, but little did he know what a close shave he’d had. And I remembered a similar thing in Germany, I was doing air traffic control in Germany, and I was at Gutersloh, which happened to be Herman Goering’s airfield [emphasis], and you’ve never seen anything like that airfield. Perfect. No running around bits and pieces there boy, fifteen hundred weights and things like that, all by railway. Bomb dump [?], fuel, everything [emphasis] by rail. And I was sitting in the control, doing approach control on this particular occasion, with a CRDF tube in front of me, you know what I’m saying don’t you?
JM: I did, yes. Say it, would you say it for the, for the recording?
TC: Yes, yes. CRDF tube it’s – whenever an aircraft speaks to me on the frequency that we’re on, a light will shoot out from the CRDF tube and it will point to, and I can get either a steer for it to come to our airfield, or I can tell him where it is, where it is on the tube. Whereabouts it is. So that’s a CRDF tube, I hope I’ve explained that alright.
JM: You have. All these experiences that you’ve had as an air controller were after the war?
TC: Yes. Yes, this, this was after the war. But the RAF was strong, was very strong in Germany at this time because the Cold War on [?] with Russia. Anyway, there’d been a clampdown on at, I forget what squadron it was, but they’d been operating fighters from there. We were opping Canberras from where I was, there were Canberras. They took part in Suez, the Canberras from [unclear] airfield. I mean I could go on for hours about what happened there. But anyway, what happened was they diverted, I think it was eighteen, or was it twenty-four aircraft, to Gutersloh, where I was sitting in the chair there, and that was the most fantastic job. The people in a caravan at the end of the runway at that stage could talk them down, but it’s a longer job. You had to be really smart and quick to get people down in a hurry. So, it, I was absolutely thrilled by this opportunity to get them down. It was, I forget what it was, there was a green flight, a red flight and whatsoever [?], so many aircraft in each [unclear] stacked up, all above one another all coming in. And I took one after the other, one squadron after, one flight after another to bring them in. And I brought them in over, overhead [?] turned them out [?] parked them in [?], smack down the middle of the runway, then the second lot did the same. And of course, while you got this sort of thing going on, you’ve got the group captain to wing commander flying, all the, all the high persons [?] there, and of course I was congratulated afterwards by everybody. That was a tremendous thrill.
JM: That’s a, that’s remarkable. But I know that there’s another remarkable element to your career, which is that you’re now an author, writing about your experiences. Could you tell us a little bit about that please?
TC: Well, yes. I, I used to tell my grandchildren stories at night. I used to go, if I was babysitting with my wife, I would go and take, lie on the bed next to them, falling asleep myself [laughing] and make up a story to tell them. And they were so impressed by these stories, that in the end they said ‘Grandad, why don’t you write them down?’ And of course I did, and I wrote a story about wizards first, ‘The Angry Witch,’ ‘Witch’s Revenge,’ and ‘Witches on the Run.’ And they were the first three, and the next one I wrote about was ‘Somebody’s Kidnapped Santa.’ And the last one I wrote about is a solar powered dog, and that’s waiting for, I’m doing a sequel to that one, and I’ve got to do a sequel to another [emphasis] one I’ve wrote as well, which is ‘Smoke, Magic and Dust.’ Now ‘Smoke, Magic and Dust’ means something to me. I was out with my granddad, I mentioned him earlier on, and he said to me, on one of our walks, that life was only smoke, magic and dust. I was too young to understand what he meant by that, but the words ‘smoke, magic and dust’ remain with me, and always will remain with me.
JM: And that book is about your RAF service in part?
TC: Part. In, in book two it’s, yes. It leads up to the part where I joined the Royal Air Force. And everything in it, about the flying, training and the operations are all true, absolutely true. The only thing that’s slightly different is I’ve had to change the names slightly, about Jack Slater and Goody because, well, they did certain things and it’s better that they were private. So, some of the things I wrote about them aren’t true. Everything else is true, except when I went to college, there was a German girl that came to visit us at this college, this is true, and she spoke about Hitler and Germany and all the rest of it, she was a beautiful girl too, I fell in love with her, I was fifteen, and I wondered how on earth I was going to get her to talk to me. And I knew that if I could, and she was staying over Christmas, she would come to the Christmas Dance at the college, we always had one. So I thought, ‘well I wonder how I’m going’ – and then I remembered the Hitler planes, and the other fascist planes that had bombed Guernica. So I said to her ‘what did you think about Guernica?’ And the teacher at that time, he was called, he was called – he was a nice guy, but he was, he was annoyed with me. He said ‘you mustn’t ask questions like that Carroll. I’m surprised at you.’ Because, she didn’t answer. I knew she is [unclear] at home, and it turned out, so I kept quiet. But I knew she looked at me and she knew what I’d said about Guernica, and it came out that she was going to serve at Christmas and come to our dance, and she did come to the dance, and I got her to dance with me. All the boys were lined up one side of the gym, and all the girls along the other, and the teachers I know were putting bets on who would move with her [?]. And they said ‘well nobody will move,’ so I thought ‘well I’ll move,’ when they said, and they told us what to say, ‘please may I have the next dance with you?’ [Laughs] Joyce, my wife will tell you about that later. But, so I went, I broke ranks walked over, and said ‘please may I have this next dance with you?’ So we danced together. And we became quite friendly all the time she was there. But when, then when it was over she went back to Germany, and that was the end of that. But in the book, I kept her in my book that we kept in contact with one another, and, she came back on a further holiday and became more than friends. And so, during the war I never mentioned this to the crew. But in the book, I’m so concerned about ‘are we bombing her?’ Wondering if she’s alright and what will, what will happen to her. But you’ll, it’s all mentioned in the book.
JM: Tom, thank you very much. I think that would be a very appropriate place to finish the recording. Tom Carroll, thank you so much for sharing with us all your memories so clearly, so vividly, it’s been a very, very interesting interview. Thank you.
TC: Thank you.
JM: Wow.
Dublin Core
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Identifier
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ACarrollT160418
PCarrollT1601
Title
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Interview with Thomas Carroll
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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01:14:31 audio recording
Creator
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Julian Maslin
Date
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2016-04-18
Description
An account of the resource
Tom joined the Royal Air Force as a flight engineer. He did his ground training at Mablethorpe, followed be a course at RAF Locking and RAF St. Athan. Tom speaks highly of the training he received. He went to RAF Lindholme where they crewed up as part of a Lancaster crew, although they originally started on Halifaxes.
Tom was posted to 100 Squadron at RAF Grimsby. He pays tribute to the wing commander and group captain. The former taught them to corkscrew and dive through a searchlight, reassuring them about flak. Shortly after sorting out a problem with the air pressure, Tom became a flying officer. He recounts the crew’s ritual on each flight with a lucky handkerchief.
Tom explains how they were anxious about the Ruhr and how they observed a Lancaster shot down by a Me 109. He also describes the bravery he witnessed. Tom noticed a huge number of ships coming back from a raid on marshalling yards and railway tracks; it was for D-Day. He was involved in Operation Manna, dropping food parcels in Holland.
Towards the end of the war, Tom moved to 626 Squadron at RAF Wickenby. They flew to Ludwigshafen, Dortmund and Cologne.
When war ended, Tom retrained as an air traffic controller in the Air Force. He was sent up to Scottish Command and describes a couple of incidents. He became an author, writing children’s books and about his RAF experiences.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
Germany
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Germany--Ludwigshafen am Rhein
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Cologne
Netherlands
Temporal Coverage
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1944
1945
Contributor
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Katie Gilbert
Sally Coulter
100 Squadron
626 Squadron
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bombing
crewing up
flight engineer
Halifax
Lancaster
Master Bomber
Me 109
memorial
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
promotion
RAF Grimsby
RAF Lindholme
RAF St Athan
RAF Wickenby
searchlight
superstition
training
-
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/227/3372/PCharltonR1602.1.jpg
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/227/3372/ACharltonR160720.1.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
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Charlton, Raymond
Raymond Charlton
Ray Charlton
R Charlton
Description
An account of the resource
Two items. An oral history interview with Raymond "Ray" Charlton (1815764 and 201593 Royal Air Force) and a memoir. He completed a tour of operations as a flight engineer with Squadron 57, from RAF East Kirkby.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-08-05
2016-07-20
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Charlton, R
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
PL: Hello, it’s Pam Locker and I’m in the home of Mr Ray Charlton of ****. So, if I can just start Ray by saying an enormous ‘thank you’ on behalf of the International Bomber Command Memorial Trust for agreeing to talk to us today, and I thought we’d perhaps start by talking a bit about your family and how you got involved with Bomber Command in the first place.
RC: I am one of five children to the Charlton family. I am the middle one. At the time of the war I’d just turned fifteen and then as it crept along to seventeen and a bit I wanted to join up in Bomber Command. My mother was absolutely [emphasis] against it and would not sign the admittance form, agreement form, so she said ‘You can wait’. So I had to wait ‘til I was eighteen and then I went in. I was sent along to London, Lords (Lords Hill I think it is called), flats there that had just been completed for upgrading. And then I was selected to go to Paignton in Devon and enjoyed that from the start, by the sea, living in a bed and breakfast apartment, run by the RAF of course, not by [unclear] the cooks and everything. But the main hotel in the town, in the village, was used as the headquarters where we dined and everything else, meetings. I found my initial test of weather. I could not for the life of me remember one set of clouds so they sent me off to be re-mustered. I finished up at the Isle of Sheppey, just outside London as you know, and then we had interviews one after another and I decided I’d train as a flight engineer and then from there I was posted up to ‒ now I’ve got it down somewhere ‒ and finished up at Bridlington and then from there it was down the west coast, east [emphasis] coast, to, er , ‒ until we passed out. And then, just to make things easy for everyone, I fell ill with pneumonia, about a fortnight before the exams so they had to keep me back until I recovered. After that I had to wait until the next intake to take the exams, which I had to join, to join with them to do the same exam. And we finished up being selected as trainee flight engineers and we were shipped off to South Wales, St Athans, to do a six months course. Twenty-six weeks of subject, each one taking one week except for the engines which was two weeks and, er, now ‒.
PL: So, did any of your other siblings go into the Forces?
RC: Yes. On one of the evenings attending the NAAFI a Canadian recruit who joined the RAF pulled out a roll of notes and in the queue next to us was a chappie with his eyeballs hanging down, so absolutely flustered. There was over one hundred pounds in a roll of notes. Apparently his father sent him ninety pounds a month to help him to live. Anyway, that night we’d all gone to bed the Military Police walked in, shut all the blinds up, and turned all the lights on and said, ‘Stand by your bed and your lockers’ and I said to the young Mo who stood near me, ‘What the matter?’. He said, ‘Shut up’ and in the end he said, ‘There’s been a robbery’. So I said, ‘Oh dear’ so I said, ‘Well. I don’t want to be funny but think of this as my bed, go into the next billet in the same position as this is’ (‘course they’re all in lines). I said [unclear]. Anyway they disappeared and then we were told we could go to sleep. Next morning I was sent for by the station commander, ‘How did you know that chappie was responsible?’ I said, ‘I didn’t’. So he [?] said, ‘I just didn’t like his absolute horror at seeing so much money, sheer delight to hold it’. So, he says, ‘Well, that was the money that was stolen’. So I said, ‘Oh thank goodness’. He said ‘Well, I’ll tell you this, you know the ruling here, if you get 70% you’ll be recommended for a commission. If you get 65% you will have [emphasis] a commission. So, I said, ‘I don’t want one, various personal reasons’. Anyway, he came out at the end of the exams and I’d got 64 ½ % because the day before was the final exam, oral, and the sergeant said to me, ‘You’re a devil. You know the answers and you’ve given me some wrong ones’. He said, ‘Why?’ I said, ‘That’s my reason’. So he said, ‘Well, I don’t know what to give you, so many marks or so many marks’ and I chose the lower, the lower, number he mentioned and that was put on a piece of paper one and a half inches square which I had to take to the station commander’s office and hand it in and I put it on his desk after the normal salute. He said, ‘Is that all you’ve got? Who did this?’ I said, ‘Sergeant So-and-so’ and he bawled down the telephone, ‘Sergeant So-and-so here now’ and he came in and he says, ‘Why did you give this man so many marks?’ He says, ‘Well, that’s what he asked for’ [laughs]. He said, ‘I wanted to give him far more but’ he says, ‘I know he knew the answers but he gave wrong answers deliberately’. Anyway, he says, ‘I want you to alter it. I says, ‘He’s not to’ and refused to let him alter the figure. So I was left and I was ‒, I finished up, as Sergeant.
PL: Can you explain why you made that decision? Or if it’s personal that’s fine.
RC: My family was going through a very financial tight period. My father had lost his farm and prices for what he’d got fetched the lowest you could ever get and he refused to be made a bankrupt. He didn’t want the indignity of being a bankrupt, silly old devil. But anyway, he said he’d pay back every penny he owed and one of his brothers, he owed about £100 and he was the worst one to pay back. He demanded [unclear] until every penny was paid back. Anyway, it stuck and I was posted off to a bomber command, first of all at Swinderby on Stirlings (horrible tumbly things) but then on to East Kirkby where we started our bombing trips.
PL: I’m recommencing with Raymond Charlton.
RC: I’m Raymond Charlton. Now I’ve forgotten where I was. No, I can’t pick it up.
PL: You’ve just gone to East Kirkby.
RC: Well, before I got there I was asked, no, I’m jumping ahead. No, we went to East Kirkby and we were crewed up. Four Australians, the pilot, navigator, bomb aimer, and wireless operator were from different parts of Australia and the mid upper gunner came from Loughborough and the rear gunner came from Norfolk. I can’t tell you no more else. He was the baby of the crew. He was only nineteen. I was an old man of twenty. It was three weeks after I finished flying I became an old man of twenty-one. And then the fun starts. I was sent along to be re-graded for a job but being a VR, not many people know about this, the Air Force could not post you anywhere without your permission or change your job without permission of you. Er, it’s not flowing.
PL: So, tell me about East Kirkby. What was it like there?
RC: East Kirkby was very flat, typical flat Lincolnshire field. When the wind blew there was nothing to stop it. The snow came. The only thing that stopped it was your buildings. Our Nissan hut was completely blocked in one end. We had to use the back end and the floor was lino covered and in the winter months it used to be awash. So how we survived that I’ve no idea. And then of course they decided a very good frost put the kybosh on it. One tap only worked and that was in the cookhouse. Taps all over the camp wash rooms and such like were all frozen. So it was back to ‒
PL: Very uncomfortable.
RC: Very uncomfortable, yes.
PL: And did you share with the rest of your ‒ the rest of your group you were with or with others?
RC: Only the crew. We were put in a Nissan hut which housed two crews. Fourteen of you. And then, unfortunately, it appeared the other crew didn’t come back from a trip and then that happened on one or two occasions so they decided, as the bomb aimer put it, we’ve given everybody the jinx. So they wouldn’t let another crew come back in. They filled that bed up with the instrument repairer. He was a funny chap. Every time an aircraft went out and we were at home he was on his own but when the aircraft ‒, when we were not flying we had to sit up while all of them came back and landed. Well we’d never heard that noise before but he didn’t wake up at all. Then suddenly a tinkle bell went and it was an alarm clock in his kit bag and he woke up. So I says, ‘He never hears the aircraft, only tinkle bells’ but he was a nice chap to work with and did well. Then, of course, when we finished flying, I was posted off to a recruitment camp and they were trying to find us with jobs. First of all it was a young pilot officer still wet behind the ears, then a flight lieutenant, flying officer then a flight lieutnent , then a squadron leader. Then a wing commander came in and says, ‘You are causing trouble’. I says, ‘Why?’ He said, ‘You won’t make up your mind’. I said, ‘I will. I will not take a clerk’s job’. ‘Not even a clerk SD (Special Duties)? ‘No’ I says, ‘I’ll be a clerk when I’m demobbed. I don’t want to be a clerk now’. He says, he went on, ‘Well, the RAF regiment is recruiting officers. Would you be interested?’ I says, ‘Well, I could be’. He says, ‘You’re a funny chap. Three times you’ve refused to have a commission. Now you’re saying you don’t mind’. ‘Well, it’s a different situation isn’t it? When I was flying I didn’t want a commission’. I said, ‘How would I have gone from St Athans as a trainee flight engineer to join a crew, all of them sergeants. How would I feel as a pilot officer?’ I said, ‘That’s one of the reasons why I refused to do it.’ The there was another occasion when three of us were invited to the adjutant’s office to fill in a form. When we finished it I said, ‘Can I have my form back?’ He said, ‘The CO’s not signed it yet. He’s not back ‘til four o’clock’. I said, ‘I’ll have the form now’. So he gave me the form, the adjutant came into the room and I tore it up. I said, ‘This is for a commission and I don’t want it’. Then, of course, oh I forget. What was it? Yes, yes, the pilot said to me one day after muster (while we were flying this is). He says, ‘Can we go for a walk round the perimeter?’ He said, ‘I want to talk to you’. I said, ‘Am I in trouble?’ He said, ‘No, no, no. The CO wants you to change crews and go fly with him, the wing commander.’ I said, ‘Like hell!’ He said, ‘What’ll I tell him?’ I said, ‘Tell him to go to hell!’ Well, apparently he did [laughs]. ‘Cause I met him thirty-odd years later and I says, ‘I don’t expect you remember me’. He said, ‘I do. You’re the one who refused to fly with me. Go to hell!’ He said, ‘Why didn’t you want to?’ I said, ‘I just didn’t want to’. And then I said, ‘I’ve now taken it and come back in the RAF regiment as a Flight Lieutenant so now I’m happy’. I said, ‘Things are straight at home and everything else.’
PL: So, tell me about the relationship you had with your crew.
RC: It was a very, very, very friendly, easy to get along with crowd. Never any trouble. The only trouble we ever had was with the mid upper gunner. He called out one day, ‘My [?] heel was on fire’. His electrically heated suit had set fire at the heel. The connection had so the pilot said, ‘Go and sort him out’. Of course, being dogs body I went down to the mid upper gunner, took his shoe off, his sock off, put a dressing on his heel, ‘cause it was a horrible smell. Burning flesh is not very pleasant. Anyway I put his shoes back on and socks, put him in his perch and I says, ‘Get on with it and shut up’. Anyway, I hadn’t been back many minutes in my position when he said ‘It isn’t half draughty here’. So the pilot in very sharp terms and in terms I’d never heard before, ‘Go and sort him out once and for all and shut him up’. So, I went back and said, ‘What a matter?’ He said, ‘Well, when I sit under this I get a draught on my neck’. So I put my fingers up behind his head and they went straight through a hole. It could only be a bullet hole but I wasn’t going to tell anybody. Anyway, I said, ‘Don’t turn side wards unless you have to, you know, need to move, turn side wards, and you won’t feel it.’ When I got back to the pilot’s position he said, ‘What?’ I said, ‘Shush’, he said, ‘I want to know’. So I went back and said, ‘Bullet in the dome, bullet hole in the dome. Just one in the back’. And then when we landed the bomb aimer knew. He heard me say to the ground crew, ‘You need a new canopy. It’s gone.’ So he says, ‘We’d better go straight back to the hospital ‘cause he’s that bloomin’ thick the bullet’s probably still in his head’. We were really nice to each other normally but that was the worst remark I’d heard about any of them. And we just didn’t bother. But anyway, they changed the thing and, of course, just before then he’d insisted on doing one of my jobs, which was to dipstick the petrol tanks, but on a frosty morning I told him where to walk on the wing. I said, ‘Don’t go to the right or to the left. Keep on that line’. What did he do? He stepped over to the right and then you saw him sliding down the wing. It’s only fifteen feet high and when we got in the aircraft he says, ‘My left wrist hurts’ and I put it in a splint, sat him in a turret and said, ‘Work your right hand and keep your left hand steady’ and I said, ‘You’re all right’. Anyway when we landed we said, ‘We’d better go back to hospital with him’ and they took him there and the wing commander came in and said, ‘You’d better find a new gunner’. He said, ‘We’re a three months repair job - compound fracture’. Now of course sitting there working the turret wouldn’t do any good at all but he had no option. But he was an ex-boxer so you know how intelligent they are [laughs].
PL: So, what about your missions. Tell me a little bit about your tours.
RC: Well, most tours are, most of the tour, were without any remark you can pass. One to Munich once, after climbing Mont Blanc, which is twenty-four thousand feet, we couldn’t go over the top. We had to go round it. While we were getting near to the target the bomb aimer, bomb leader, who controlled where we dropped bombs said, ‘Hold back chaps. Do not drop yet. My boys are down posting the letters in the letter boxes. If anyone drops a bomb you’ll kill one or two of them’. Anyway, in the end he says, ‘Right chaps, boys’. But to get there we’d have to turn out and then back in the crowd. Well you know what it’s like trying to cross a busy road from a side road. You’ve got to wait for a space and that’s what we had to do, wait for a space between all the aircraft going in to the target. We got there, did the necessary, and went home. And then, on another occasion, oh dear, that’s gone.
PL: What did he mean, ‘putting the letters in the letter box’?
RC: They were flying that low to put markers down and to cover any not right, not in the right position to put colour on to cancel it. But they were flying at about fifty feet above house tops. The Lancaster going round and round directing them what to do, where to drop one and he controlled the rest of us. Now, what was another occasion? I had three occasions when the ‒ No, won’t come.
PL: Can you remember where you were sent on your missions?
RC: Well, that was to Munich. And then one day waking up in the morning the bomb aimer said ‘Oh dear, we’ve had it tonight, chop [?] We’re going to chopper [?]. We were shot down over the target.’ Now, funnily enough I’d had a dream myself and it was his remarks that reminded me of it. They always said unless you have a remark, a remarkable namesake you don’t know it, know what the target was, dream was. And I’d had a dream. In fact when we were over the English Channel I pointed to the navigator on his map where we would cross on the way out and on the way back. I said, ‘We shall cross there on the way back’ and I saw every river, every railway line and every forest area in this trip and then when we got over, over the target, I suddenly saw a black spot at, what we’d call ten past two. Look at your watch and look at ten past two. And I said, ‘Now watch it’ and all of us were watching that (the pilot was too busy). All six of us were watching that black spot area and it became closer and I said, ‘Well, that’s it’ and we did the necessary cork screw dive and with that he, this object just flew away. It was a German night fighter, realised we’d spotted him and turned away to look for someone else. But I can’t think ‒ there was three occasions. Never mind, they won’t come.
PL: So, you stayed with the same crew throughout your time?
RC: The crew was with us until we lost the mid upper gunner and then we swapped to Bob, Bob Mott, and he fitted in absolutely marvellous. The pilot and I selected him from the initial conversation ‘cause I said to Tommy, ‘This is the one’. We’d seen one but didn’t like him and then we saw another and then we told the third to go back to duties. And he fitted in as if he’d been with us all the time. We didn’t even realise it was a different man. Just the fact he just had a slightly different voice but the same attitude. We were all keen on doing a job. I’ll always remember one new crew came in to fill up a space, the other space on our billet, and they went out on fighter ‒, fighter affiliation. That’s where a Spitfire armed with a camera attacks you to see what reaction you had. And the mid upper gunner said, ‘He sat on his rest bed telling the pilot what to do’, and I said to our pilot, ‘What do you think of that?’ He said, ‘Not much’ and I said, ‘I think even less of it. How many do we give him?’ And we both agreed one or two trips and then the next night I was put on to fly in his place on their first trip because their engineer had fallen sick and I said, ‘I’m not going to go’ so they threatened me with a court martial.
PL: Why was that?
PL: Lack of moral fibre and I said I’d rather die a coward than live, rather live a coward than die as a stupid idiot and anyway they went off ‒ nobody thing. The next night we were sent on this trip with this same crew to go together in a thing. They didn’t come back. On their first trip they didn’t came back. But what do you expect with an attitude like that in training? We said they didn’t deserve to live but apparently the bomb aimer said we had got a name, putting a jinx on people, because the pilot and I used to say, ‘Give them five trips’, ‘Give them four trips’, and they never went beyond it. You knew by just how they behaved what chance they had.
PL: Was there a lot of superstition?
RC: I think there was a lot of ‒, yes, a lot of people carried things in their pockets, mementos from the family to cover, to guard them. It’s like, we were sent off one day to some oil fields in Poland. Now, on the way out from England all our instruments failed. Of the six main instruments only two worked. We’d got height and speed but not for wing movement or height to ground and we struggled on. The cloud was very heavy. We didn’t see where we were going. When we crossed the ‒, Norway and what not, what do you call that area? I can’t think of the area. Denmark and what not. When we crossed over there not one visible sign of any coastline so we didn’t know where we were. Poor old navigator had to do everything by dead reckoning and we flew off and after a while, flying ages (it was a nine hour trip), the pilot, navigator, said, ‘We must be somewhere near’ and we looked down and we saw some flares about fifty miles behind us. I said, ‘We’ve come too far’. So, of course, we turned back and what we saw my heart jumped because the flak was so dense, looking at a wall of flak, and we had to go in a circle and turn and believe it or not it was an arch like that and we flew under the arch and they said, when we were debriefed, ‘No bullet holes?’ No, not one. He said, ‘You’re the only one’. He said, ‘Have you been on the same trip?’ We said, ‘Well, we’ll prove that when the air camera shot of where the bombs dropped’ and it did give a very clear shot. We were over the target, the oil fields in Poland. Of course Gerry was very short of oil so it was necessary to keep it away from him. But, er, its, we never did, never did solve why the instruments failed. They blamed me, thinking I’d not put on, or removed, the protection of the tube letting the air in. It’s like just a hole in a pipe which told the instruments what to do, air pressure, and everything was registered. It was the six, and there’s two of them, instruments just like those. There was six of them in a block in every aircraft you could see, still is, and everybody accused me of not removing the protection which was on [unclear] the ground. Take it when you go flying, put it in your bag, just a plastic canvas tube cover. But no, that was alright, when we got there, and that was it. Never did find out why it failed. Then there was one funny trip, coming back, just after we’d left the target, I said to the pilot, ‘My oil drum, oil tank, petrol tank, on the wing, starboard side, looks a bit low’. ‘Double check and give me your readings’, so I sat and did all my calculations again. I said, ‘No, I’m fifty gallons short on starboard’. Well, he said, ‘We’ll press on’. Now, we didn’t know what it was. It could have been a hole in the tank and it sealed itself. They did that, they sealed themselves if there was just a small damage, or not. Anyway, I did a ten minute reading every time from then until we landed and as we came into land they didn’t want us to land, they wanted us to go away to some crash ‘drome. The pilot refused flat, ‘Not going, land here or else’. Anyhow, they allowed us in but we had to park somewhere way over, way away from where we normally parked. So, what did they do then? Put an armed escort on it until everything was checked. They recharged the tanks with some petrol and proved that I was very low. I’d only got twenty-six gallons left in both two tanks, which was just about enough to land on. Anyway ‒.
PL: Did they ever find out what the problem was?
RC: No, I still say they didn’t put it in but the petrol boys had a knack, a knack of filling their forms in that nobody could understand. But I don’t think they would do it deliberately. But it never did resolve itself. But the wing commander was very cross over it ‘cause we’d landed that much earlier than we should‘ve done and also not having the petrol right and my form which was normally within fifteen gallons of what it should be was way out. But still there we are.
PL: What was a crash drum? Did you say crash drum?
RC: Crash ‘drome [emphasis]. Aircraft ‒. There’s one in Norfolk. Eight aircraft could land at the same time on the wet. It was a special ‘drome built for crashing on. No aircraft normally use it. You landed and then they pulled you inbetween the trees out of the way so nobody could land at the same spot and it was about six or seven that could land at the same time. It was fantastic really. But he wanted us to go to another ‘drome that was prepared to let us aircraft land if they were not busy. But he refused to even consider it. But having got back it all blew over, but no ‒.
PL: Tell me a little about your job as flight engineer.
RC: Well, it just, my job was to make sure the engines were absolutely lined up with each other, to synchronise all four engines along with the pilot’s help. He’d do two and I’d do two and then we’d join the two inners to make sure they were together and naturally without any [unclear] he was shorter than me. He couldn’t reach all the levers. So if he wanted to, er, put some exhaust, acceleration [emphasis], on he’d have to go down, I’d [emphasis] have to go down and lift it up and hand it over to him to use, to ‒. ‘Cause when we first met he wanted to control all the engine’s controls, but I said, ‘No you don’t. I control those. That’s how I’d been trained’ and after a while he accepted it ‘cause he realised we couldn’t reach half of them. He was too low for him to reach but we never did fall out. My job, well you could say it was getting boring [unclear] ‘cause nothing happened. We never had any false alarms, never any fuses, we just went and we came back and we used to hand the aircraft over to the ground crews. Nothing to report, just clean it up, you know, just check it over. The only time we had any trouble we had to land at an aerodrome called Tarrant Rushton and I said to the ground crew there that had been allocated to our aircraft, ‘I’ll see you in the morning at eight o’clock. Don’t touch a thing’. Well, I got there at eight o’clock and he said, ‘I’ve done it Sergeant’. I said, ‘Have you?’ He said, ‘Yes’. All he had to do was to top up the oil, coolant and make sure the petrol level was right but he said he’d done it all and had checked, it was alright. We took off and I said to the pilot, ‘I don’t like the sound of our outer engine’. I said, ‘She keeps surging and easing off and surge again’. He said, ‘If you want to switch it off I’ll let you switch it off and we’ll go home on three’. I said, ‘No, we’ll keep it running and I’ll keep my eye on it’ and we did. Oh, ah [background noises] and we did, damn you [addressed to a pet?]. Yes, I says, when we got out, I says to the ground crew, our ground crew, he was a sergeant, Corporal Scott. The other one was an aircraft man, he was English, and much younger but he was very keen and very careful. But the engineer, Scott, was absolutely brilliant. I said to him, I said, ‘I don’t like the sound of that engine. She’s surging’. He said, ‘I’ll look at it’. ‘Course, when we went to be looked after he would start up the engine and I went back to him after my breakfast and the engine was out and he was working on the connections of the [unclear]. I said, ‘What’s the matter?’ He said, ‘Some bloody fool has put oil in the coolant and coolant in the oil’. I said, ‘Oh, has he?’ So I went straight back to the wing commander, I said, ‘I want that (and I got his name you see), I want this bloody idiot’. Shh shut up [addressed to a pet in the room?]. ‘I want this idiot. (I called him a bloody idiot.) Charge him’. I said, ‘He could have killed us’. He said, ‘He what?’ I said, ‘He filled up the [unclear] one engine. He put oil in the coolant and coolant in the oil.’ And yet on their lids they’ve got [unclear] of that size and right across it was these letters OIL or coolant CLT. So how [unclear] I wouldn’t know, lack of brain. So he says to me, ‘He’s been suitably dealt with’ and then the wing commander started to celebrate. He wanted to try out a new scheme of what they called formation flying. So, he chose our pilot, my pilot, to fly in the out of position, right on the edge of starboard so, naturally, when you went round right you had to run but when you went to the left you had to put your brake on. Anyway, we were flying out one day over the Wash and another Lancaster, obviously a trainee, a trainee crowd, ‘cause you could tell by the markings was a trainee crew and he circled in closer than what we were to the one [unlear]. We tried to shoo him away but there was no such thing as radio ‘cause we were on a different wave band, see, we had our own special wave band, and all they did was just smile and wave. ‘Go away’ [emphasis]. And suddenly we were flying off and the wing commander said, ‘Start to turn right’ [laughs]. I looked at the pilot and he did nothing. I think he was oblivious to the thing. He hadn’t realised this aircraft was as close as it was but we ‒, I pressed my button, I said ‘Straight ahead please’. The wing commander came back on , he says, ‘Would the person who cancelled my order give his name, his crew, his pilot’s name and aircraft number and the reason why he cancelled my order’. So I briefly explained. He said, ‘I’ll see you in my office afterwards’. Well, of course he finished off his training. He decided not to do any more formation flying and it was the idea of the Americans. You formed a formation from the front and the rest trailed behind. So it gave greater safety. But anyway I went to his office afterwards, ‘The information you gave me was enough to locate who the idiot was.’ He said, ‘You’ll be pleased to know he will not fly another aircraft. He’s been taken off’. He was completely irresponsible so what good was he as a pilot if he was irresponsible. But he circled in that close if we’d moved a foot or two we’d be within an inch of him ‘cause he didn’t know we were going to turn unless I ‒. We couldn’t tell him. But they said afterwards ‘Thank God you were sitting on top fully alert’. I said ‘Somebody has to be’ [laughs]. But I think that’s why we survived, all of us was of the same category of mind. You train to the extent we were still training when we finished and I still say that’s why so many went down. They thought it was a holiday.
PL: Is there anything else that you want to tell me?
RC: I can’t think of anything else.
PL: Just very briefly then tell me about what happened after the war?
RC: After the war?
PL: So the war ended and then what did you do?
RC: Yes, The war ended so when we ‒, when we finished flying we were sent on demob leave. Then when we were on demob leave Germany had had enough, finished. I got letter ‘cause up ‘til then we had seven days indefinite leave, seven days indefinite leave, and every week that was renewed. So I had a month’s holiday at the end of when we were flying and we ‒, then after four weeks, I had a notice to go to um ‒ I went then up in Scotland, just where the RAF regiment is now, funnily enough, it was there. Anyway, he said, ‘We’ve posted you to Grantham for a commissioning course. We’ve accepted your commission. This is your commission. Go!’ He said, ‘If you’d signed when you were on the flying side, all you had to do was sign a sheet and you’d get a uniform. Now you’ve got to prove you’re good enough.’ I said, ‘Good show, I’m another three months in England’. Anyway, I did my training, became a flying officer, no pilot officer, pilot officer. I was posted to Iraq, the Middle East. Iraq in the Iraq levies. I got out there. We had to see the colonel first. We had an army colonel in charge, Colonel Loose [?] and he said ‘I’m putting you with the transport. You can help out on the transport to start with but you may have another ‒, another drop’. Anyway I went to this transport office. There was about thirty or forty lorries or cars and, er, we were sitting one day in the office. This flight lieutenant in charge, he was taking a charge sheet of one of his drivers for some misdemeanour and the phone bell went and all he kept saying was, ‘Yes Sir, I’ll tell him Sir. Yes Sir, he will be Sir’. When he finished he said, ‘The Colonel wants to see you in his office after breakfast’. This was at six o’clock in the morning. He said after breakfast, which was half past seven. Anyway, I went to the office as per appointed and he said, ‘You are the Adjutant as from next week, of No. 1 Squadron’, number one wing, the first top wing, and yet I knew the adjutant of the number two and thought he was a much better chap at the job than me. But anyway he said, ‘I think you’ll be alright’ and four or five weeks after I’d been in the office he was walking up under this shade of the building, and he stopped outside the door, you know, this insect door. He flung that open. He said, ‘I knew I hadn’t made a mistake. You’re doing very well’ and walked on. I didn’t even have a chance to say, ‘Thank you.’ Anyway, things progressed and as I said the other adjutant was better than me. He said, ‘Well, he was here before you. If he’d been my adjutant I would have sacked him a fortnight after he’d started.’ He says, ‘I’m keeping you for months’ [laughs]. So I says, ‘That’s nice to know’ I says, ‘Why?’ He says, ‘You fit in. You get on with your job’ and I progressed very well.
Pl: So did you stay and make a career in the Air Force after the war?
RC: They wanted me to. They offered me extended service for seven years and give me nine thousand pounds at the end. I said, ‘Like hell! I’m not prepared to’. And they thought I was foolish so I often said to Jean I never knew what I would have been if I’d stayed flying with the wing commander or staying on the ground in the ground staff job. It could have been a complete change of life for me but I’ve never regretted it, ‘cause I couldn’t stand the petty indifference and intelligence of the generations of officers coming along. They were petty. They fiddled. They, er, mesmerized you. They didn’t give you a straightforward answer or anything. Yet I’d had to deal with them when I knew nothing. I mean, the person who followed me on had only been sent on a three months course on how to be one, I had one hour. But I fitted in just like that and yet it was absolutely new to me. But I’d see a stack of paper that high every morning but it was mostly, you know, discipline and what not. I had one funny case where there’d been a sergeant shot in the leg and a corporal was up on the charge of shooting him and after I had all the interviews, they’d all ‒, all the people had been sent to the Air Force Ministry in London, came back, no good whatever, please retake, all the questions, you know, all the examinations. So I did it myself and this corporal I says, ‘You’re a fool taking the blame and everybody’s blaming you. You did nothing wrong. It’s the others, the more senior officers, native [?] officers.’ They were commissioned by the CO Middle East. But it rounded off. In the end he got away. Oh yes, ‘cause of course the papers I sent in, they said charge him with about six charges and I looked through the legal book and I found another six, so I put twelve charges on his sheet, went across to his room where he was being held and said, ‘I still say you’ve a fool and you’re being charged with so-and-so and so-and-so so’. I said, ‘You’ll be here for years if you’ve not careful’. Anyway, then I got a phone call, ‘He wants to see you back again’ and the chief native [?] officer, who was a Russian by birth, who had been in the Russian Tsar’s army as a major, he was our senior native [?] officer, said to me, ‘He wants you in the cell again’. So I went to the cell. I said, ‘What do you want?’ He said, ‘I want ‒ ‘. I put a hand on his mouth. I said, ‘Shut up. You’re not going to say a word. You’re not going to blub out what you want to say now. You’ll do it officially.’ I put my hand on his mouth and shut him up. I couldn’t catch a word he said. He wanted to confess what had happened and in the end the AOC Middle East came in and saw the Colonel. The next thing I know the corporal was released. The officer who I thought had been the cause of the trouble had been quietly dismissed. No show, no nothing, political, it was all mixed up with politics, politics from the Iraq people and joining in with the British. The Embassy was hopeless. I’d always got on well with the Embassy but they faded away when that came up. They didn’t want to know. But anyway ‒
PL: Talking about politics then, something I need to ask you, your feelings about how Bomber Command has been treated over the years. Do you have a view on that?
RC: Shockingly. I still say the ‒, what you call it, the clasp [?] it’s a bit of tin painted in gold paint. I say after seventy years it’s disgusting, totally disgusting. As the bomb aimer used to say, ‘They give the pilot the big medal. Why can’t they make a miniature one for each of us? We’re all together in the same crew’. No, just the pilot had to have a big, big, medal thing. We got nothing. And that was the attitude. We were all just the workers, get on with it, and yet he couldn’t do it without us, any of us. We used to say the mid upper and the rear gunner were probably more important than we were. Who could have navigated, dead reckoning navigation over a cloud filled sky all the way to the bottom of Poland and back, and back? And he finished up on the same stretch, when we looked out and saw the state of the coastline and we were going over it. I says, ‘That’s where I’d pointed out, isn’t it?’ He says, ‘Yes, you were spot on within two miles.’ He said, ‘And that was only a dream’. I said, ‘Yes, but we did live, didn’t we?’ I said, ‘Tommy said we’d not, we’d not make it from the trip but we did make it’. And they were the factors that kept you going. Much obliged. I’m going to finish, sorry.
PL: Well, can I say thank you so much. That was a fascinating interview.
RC: I hope that was as good as you want.
PL: Thank you very much for being so generous with your time. So, recommencing with Ray Charlton. So we’ve just been talking about a fascinating story about Wesel ‒ . Would you like to share that with us Ray?
RC: Yes, I just recalled the trip to Wesel, which was on the edge of the river and Montgomery had moved his troops back three thousand yards. And I said to our CO, ‘Tell him as an insult to go back three thousand yards that’s allowing us to make all that much mistake.’ Anyway we were flying over about twelve thousand feet and the flak in front of us was quite heavy. Anyway we pressed on. And suddenly underneath us we heard a rush of noise, a heavy wind noise, and we were looking out watching and we could see anti-aircraft guns being shot out of action. They’d been firing one minute and nothing the next and that’s what had happened. Every time one fired the artillery boys pinpointed the site and aimed [?] it out. Well on one of my initial visits to Salisbury [other], Salisbury, we’d got a packed lunch with us, and we saw Philip ‒, Prince Philips’ regiment. Well I said, ‘We ought to go in here’ (‘course it’s not the present Prince Philip. It’s the previous one). And we had ‒, we were enjoying our lunch on the lawn, and obviously one of their men came and joined us, ‘Were you in the regiment?’ I said, ‘No, no, no, only the RAF regiment’. ‘Oh, I don’t know about those’. I said, ‘We’re all aircrew’, He said, ‘I don’t know much about them’. I said ‘Well, we did bomb Wesel. ‘Did you? You must meet our sergeant’. I said ‒. He went to find the sergeant but he couldn’t leave his post, he was on the door. Oh, he asked us to go to him and when I went to approach him he grabbed my hand and shook it so hard it hurt. I said, ‘What’s this for?’ He said we were told about you boys coming to raid it to help us. We were told to expect to lose two thousand men in crossing the river. He says, ‘And I was to lead the men over and establish and put the machine guns out of action’. He said, ‘When we got there not a single shot was fired at us. We never saw a single German, only dead ones, and he says, ‘How on earth did you do it?’ I says, ‘Just bombed’. ‘How did you get through all that flak?’ I said, ‘You ignore it’. I said to the sergeant, ‘We ignored it. Had to do. It was heavy to start with but it dwindled off to nothing. It was just one gun firing in one spot positon and that kept firing. He must have had a load in and we just thought nothing of it. To us we’d done a job.’ He said, ‘Well I shall never forget it. You saved two thousand men from this company, this regiment.’ He says, ‘That’s something to do’.
Pl: Wonderful.
RC: But he said, ‘And we achieved our objective. We never saw anything. They must have cleared all out, they must have moved out. ‘Cause they expected you’d have to go through every house and route out snipers but there wasn’t one to be found anywhere. The survivors said the bombing was so accurate and so intense that nobody could live through it, so we were quite happy. We did an easy job and that was it.’ And there we are.
Pl. Thank you Ray.
PL: This is Pam Locker and I’m in the house of Mrs Jean Mary Charlton, who was also ‒. Her first husband was called Robert Mott and her maiden name was Gilliatt [?]. And this forms a complement to another interview, with Mr Ray Charlton, about his experiences in Bomber Command. So, Jean, would you like to stat by telling us a little bit about what you were doing at the start of the war perhaps?
JC: I was in training for Nottingham City Hospital. D Day I was at training school [unclear]. Very little idea about what we were going to face. We saw the most horrific things, soldiers coming in still in uniform, covered in blood, just bound up, legless, armless. It was a horrible thing to have to remember really. But on the Saturday at the Goose Fair in Nottingham we decided we’d all go to the Goose Fair, so four of us went together. Four airmen came up and said ‘Come on girls, come and have a ride’. Of course, I was left with the old man, wasn’t I? Which was Bob. That was 1954, as far as I can remember. I think that’s right.
[Other]: ’44.
RC: No, ’45.
JC: ’45, sorry, I had it the wrong way round. We did a tour of Nottingham Castle and left and [unclear] ‘Will we see you next weekend?’ Then when they turned up there was Bob. We married a year later, came to Southampton to live, ‘cause I brought up seven children, that’s the youngest, and I decided to go back to nursing, went to the local children’s hospital and fourteen years in the district [unclear]. In the meantime Ray came down to Southampton and said, ‘Oh, I know someone who lives here and in that road ’ as he passed it, ‘I’ll go and look him up’, knocked on the door, ‘cause I was at work [unclear] and then he opened it, ‘Who are you then?’ He said ‘I’m Ray Charlton, the Flight Engineer’. Anyway, he stayed the night and went off again. A month later we were celebrating Christmas, my eldest daughter was home from Saudi Arabia, and we were going to have a special weekend, and Bob suddenly became ill and he died twenty-four hours later, a heart problem. And so I phoned Ray [unclear] and then, of course, I went on and moved into a flat, didn’t I, on my own? ‘Cause we gave up our house [unclear].
PL: So you moved house?
JL: I went to a flat. I was working for the district, it was this side of town, you see, and I kept in touch with Ray, wrote Christmas cards and things, and my granddaughter, she was at college, I was house-sitting for my son and Ray phoned up, could he pop in and see us, as he was at an RAF meeting in Bournemouth? And he came in, drove round Southampton, and from then on he started phoning me, to go to Leicester for the weekend, and they used to say, ‘We never know where you ae mum’ [laugh], and then we married, it took about ten years to make our minds up, didn’t it? To marry. We’ve been married twenty-three years. So we moved, now, as I say, he married me for my pension fund [laugh]. But we’ve been up to Lincolnshire, to East Kirkby, every year, haven’t we?
RC: Yes, every year.
JC: I used to drive up but in recent years the family would take us. We would miss it, wouldn’t we?
PL: It’s a very romantic story. So, just to be clear for the tape, one of the most extraordinary things about this story is that you were married to two men from the same crew.
JC: Yes, the first one was with me since I was eighteen.
RC: Do you remember when I Bob says to me, ‘Who are you?’
JC: Yes, I mentioned that. I think that’s me finished.
PL: Do you want to add any stories ‒. Have you got any memories that Bob shared with you about his experiences in the war?
JC: Well, not a lot, because he used to say, ‘We never had any problems’. They were all such a good crew together. Had little jokes between them but nothing that was [unclear]. Sorry, my voice isn’t clear.
RC: I think that was the trouble, there was never any ‒
JC: Friction between you, was there?
RC: No friction and no crystal to shine. We just ‒, just went smoothly on.
[Other]: Two crews.
JC: Yes, Bob flew with two crews. The first crew he was going for the aircraft and his knee gave way, so he had to go and have a cartilage operation.
PL: Right.
JC: And that’s how he came to join Ray’s crew, when he came back. We did meet one member of the crew at East Kirkby didn’t we? And I think we were chatting all day long to him [unclear].
[Other]: He thought dad had died. He thought dad had died.
RC: Well, that’s how we feel about the Pantons, isn’t it?
JC: Yes
RC: At East Kirkby. I’ve had some lovely letters from both of them and their wives.
JC: Yes. I miss Sharon [unclear].
PL: So Jean, is there anything else that you want to ‒.recorded for either Bob or Ray you would like included?
JL: I can’t think of anything.
[Other]: He used to say how tired he was mum, how he used to fall asleep standing up on the train.
JC: On the train. He used to come down to Southampton and, of course, he could never get a seat, and he would be stood there sound asleep. You’ve said the same thing about being on the, um, trains coming home and being asleep.
RC: When the parson and four of his parishioners, they wanted me to give up my seat, and he said, ’You leave him where he is’, and he says, ‘Every time you wake up your eyes span the whole window’. So he says, ‘Open your overcoat’ and I did, you see, he said, I knew you were aircrew’, he says, ‘As soon as you open your eyes that window’s searched.’ He said, ‘You do it automatically’. I said, ‘That’s how we lived’, but these women, they were with him, his parishioners, thought I was terribly rude not offering my seat up.
[Other]: What about getting the bacon mum? They used to go into the mess of the sergeants and pinch what was left of the breakfast.
JC: Yes.
{Other}: Do you want to tell that one?
JC: You can tell it.
PL: So, the next person to speak is Vanessa ‒
[Other]: Standley [?]
PL: Standley, who is Jean’s youngest daughter.
VS: Dad used to have supper in the evenings and the one thing that always made us laugh was dad liked everything with brown sauce and he loved cheese. We went to a reunion at East Kirkby a few years ago and bumped into someone who remembered dad from flying at East Kirkby and started to tell us some stories and one of them was that dad and someone else, I don’t know the name, used to sneak into ‒ I think it was the sergeants’ quarters when it was empty in the evening, and if there was some cheese left, ‘cause obviously they were on rations, they used to toast the bits of bread on the electric fire and put cheese on and brown sauce and they’d sneak back, you know, it was their secret. And I thought that was great ‘cause all through my childhood the one thing my dad always had was bread, cheese and everything came with brown sauce.
PL: So, is there anything else anybody would like to add for the record before we close?
JL: No.
PL: Well, thank you all very much. Your family has an extraordinary story with extraordinary connections, so thank you very much for sharing it with us.
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ACharltonR160720
PCharltonR1602
PCharltonR1603
Title
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Interview with Ray Charlton
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
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eng
Format
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01:19:22 audio recording
Creator
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Pam Locker
Date
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2016-07-20
Description
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Ray wanted to join Bomber Command but after going to RAF Paignton, he was re-mustered and went to RAF Eastchurch on the Isle of Sheppey where he decided to train as a flight engineer. He was posted to Bridlington and this was followed by a six-month course at RAF St Athan. He explains why he refused commissions at various times.
Ray was posted to Bomber Command, initially on Stirlings at RAF Swinderby and then RAF East Kirkby. He crewed up with four Australians and two other English men. He mentions the difficult conditions and crews who did not return. The mid-upper gunner faced several issues before being replaced due to injury.
Ray does describe some of the events on his tour: going round Mont Blanc; an encounter with a German fighter plane; instrument failure, going to the oil fields in Poland; insufficient petrol; the ground crew mixing up oil and coolant when diverted to RAF Tarrant Rushton; almost being hit by a trainer Lancaster crew when trying formation flying. He did, however, later find out that they had saved the lives of 2,000 troops crossing the river at Wesel.
When Germany surrendered, Ray was sent on leave, and then Scotland and Grantham for a commissioning course. He became a pilot officer and was posted to Iraq where he was made adjutant of 1 Squadron.
Ray explains how he felt about the treatment of Bomber Command.
Before his death, Ray’s wife, Jean, was married to another crew member, whom she met while training as a nurse.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
Wales
England--Lincolnshire
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
Germany
Poland
Europe--Mont Blanc
Germany--Wesel (North Rhine-Westphalia)
Iraq
Contributor
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Christine Kavanagh
Sally Coulter
57 Squadron
630 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bombing
crewing up
flight engineer
love and romance
military living conditions
military service conditions
Nissen hut
RAF East Kirkby
RAF Eastchurch
RAF St Athan
RAF Tarrant Rushton
superstition
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/262/3410/AGouldAG160708.2.mp3
73437c87dfac06a7e6749cfe5ed84141
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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Gould, Allen
Allen G Gould
Allen Gould
A G Gould
A Gould
Description
An account of the resource
Twenty-seven items. Concerns Allen Geoffrey Gould (b. 1923, 1605203 Royal Air Force). He completed a tour of operations as a flight engineer with 620 Squadron and the Special Operations Executive. Collection consists of an oral history interview, his log book, flight engineer course notebooks, pilot's and engineers handling notes, mention in London Gazette, official documents and photographs.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Allen Geoffrey Gould 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
2016-07-08
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Gould, AG
Requires
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Sgt. Allen G. Gould – 1605203, was born in 1923, after leaving school in Bournemouth at 13, he worked for the Danish Bacon Company until being called up in 1943. Choosing to join the RAF, initially wanting to be a Navigator, he ended up as a Flight Engineer, flying in the Short Stirling Mk. I, II, III and IV variants. Training at RAF St. Alban, then the Heavy Conversion Unit. Allen joined No. 620 Squadron, flying from various bases, RAF Chedburgh, RAF Leicester East and then RAF Fairford. The roles for this squadron were not just bombing missions but Minelaying, Supply drops, Glider Towing and Paratrooper drops. He took part in D-Day, dropping paratroopers from the 6th Airborne Division over Caen, France on the night of 5th June 1944, returning on the 6th towing a glider of heavy equipment. He was also a part of Market Garden, towing a glider on 17th September 1944 and returning on the 19th and 21st on supply drops. There were also numerous drops on behalf of Special Operations Executive (SOE) as well as Special Air Service (SAS) dropping supplies and paratroopers.
Andrew St.Denis
Allen Gould was born on 16 June 1923 in Bournemouth. He left school at fourteen and worked for the Danish Bacon company until he was called up. His father having spent four years in the trenches, in WW1, advised him against joining the Army, so he volunteered for the Royal Air Force.
He joined the RAF on in October 1942 and following basic training he attended the first-ever direct entry, Flight Engineers’ Course at RAF St Athan.
On completion of flight engineering training, he joined up with his crew on 1657 Heavy Conversion Unit at RAF Stradishall, then moved with them onto 620 Squadron at RAF Chedburgh and later RAF Leicester East.
The squadron later relocated to RAF Fairford where they trained to tow gliders. He was billeted with 12 others in a Nissan hut, conveniently close to a trout stream. They often caught trout, away from the watchful eye of the bailiff and cooked them in a tin on the large coke stove that heated the hut. The illicit bounty was a most welcome supplement to the barely adequate daily rations they received.
Direct out of training with no aircraft experience he had to earn the trust of his crew who up until then had only come across experienced flight engineers. On only his second operational trip and flying with an inexperienced crew, they arrived late over Ludwigshafen, where they found themselves alone and under concentrated anti-aircraft fire. The aircraft was being peppered and was full of holes while the pilot was executing extreme manoeuvres trying to avoid further damage. A fuel tank was hit and Allen had to work hard to ensure the engines received sufficient fuel to keep running. At the same time he had to make sure there would be enough fuel remaining to get back to the south coast of England for an emergency landing. As the aircraft approached the runway, the airfield lights went out and the pilot announced he was going to do another circuit. Allen told him, bluntly, he couldn’t as he didn’t have enough fuel, so the pilot made a steep turn and conducted a blind landing with no fuel to spare. Allen bonded well with his crew and in their free time they would often all go out to the pub together.
Throughout his tour his squadron undertook a variety of roles, much of was it in support of the Special Operations Executive personnel, operating covertly in occupied Europe. They also trained to tow gliders and dropped parachuting troops on D Day.
Allen completed 32 operations as a flight engineer with 620 Squadron and he totalled over 460 flying hours on Stirlings. PGouldAG1610.2.jpg (1600×2310) (lincoln.ac.uk)
For his services to 620 Squadron, he was ‘Mentioned in Despatches’ for distinguished service. MGouldAG1605203-160708-13.2.pdf (lincoln.ac.uk)
Post war, he married his wife, Norma, who was training as a mechanic at St Athan when he met her. PGouldAG1601.2.jpg (1600×2412) (lincoln.ac.uk)
Allen was discharged in October 1946 having attained the rank of Warrant Officer. PGouldAG1604.1.jpg (1600×2330) (lincoln.ac.uk)
He returned to the Danish Bacon company where he worked for another 40 years.
Chriss Cann
October 1942: Volunteered for the RAF
January 1943 - July 1943: RAF St Athan, Flight Engineer Training
July 1943 - September 1943: RAF Stradishall, 1657 HCU, flying Stirling aircraft
September 1943 - December 1943: RAF Chedburgh, 620 Squadron, flying Stirling aircraft
January 1944 - March 1944: RAF Leicester East, 620 Squadron, flying Stirling aircraft
March 1944 - April 1945: RAF Fairford,620 Squadron, flying Stirling aircraft
8 October 1946: Released from service having attained the rank of Warrant Officer
Chris Cann
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today is the eighth of July two thousand and sixteen, we’re in Oxford talking to Allen Gould about his experiences flying Stirling’s in the war. Allen what are your first recollections of life with the family?
AG: Well I went to school at Winton and Moordown council boys school in Bournemouth, erm, left when I was fourteen, which irritated my father, ‘cos he hadn’t got the money to pay for me to go to grammar school, there were only two seats allocated to our school, after the erm, eleven plus, and, erm, everybody there failed except for the doctor’s son and the councillor’s son, who both got a grammar school seat, which I would have loved but there you are, because in those days that was the only way you could get to university, grammar school first and then go, [pause] and I left school at fourteen, got a job with the Danish Bacon Company, [pause] a shit house firm right from the start, I was there for, getting on for forty years, after the war I came back there and erm, and then I, my nerves got back to normal when I was, after I had been away from the air force for, ten or twelve years, and erm, I got another job, which I was quite pleased about but they wouldn’t let me take my pension with me which my new firm offered to do and treat it as though I had been there all that time, but they didn’t, they made me take the whole thing out, not the part they paid in, all I’d been paid in, they made me take that out as part of my last week’s wages there, ‘cos the income tax that week would frighten anybody, [laughs] and that was it, and I was there until I got called up, with erm, three other fellas, I was the only one that came back without any damage, two of ‘em got killed, one of them finished up with one leg about three inches shorter than the other, I was the only one that was alright when I came back, and then went on the road and did commercial travelling, up and down the country, and I did that with a new firm I joined, Patrick Grainger and Hutleys, nice firm based in Fordingbridge, [pause] so I was up at half past five in the morning going to work, driving up to Fordingbridge, and picking up one of my drivers along the way [pause]
CB: Ok, so, you started with the bacon company, how did you come to join the RAF?
AG: Well, I rather fancied it you know I mean when I was called up my father had done four years in the trenches and he said ‘no way are you going into the army, my cocker’ so I said ‘ Oh alright I’ll take your advice on that’, so I put my name down for the RAF, and when it came to a choice between this and that and I thought flying, oh wow, let’s have a go at that.So, er, I, finished up in Blackpool getting my uniform and one thing and another, and then erm, posted from there down to St Athans, on this first directory, first direct [emphasis], flight engineers course, because they were losing so many flight engineers who’d taken a long time, a really [emphasis] long time in training and they couldn’t afford it any longer. So we were pushed through, erm, six months and I was out on the squadron, at erm, Stradishall and then in the finish we wound up at Fairford and we were there for years, [pause] the only other aerodrome we flew from during that time was from Hurn, just outside Bournemouth
CB: So, you did your training at St Athan, what was the training that you did there?
AG: Direct entry flight engineer
CB: Yeh, but, what was involved in that?
AG: Well, really all it boiled down to was, looking at pictures of engines and exploring the airframes, and one thing and another, so when we were flying I was always on the move, bouncing up and down on me toes for up to twelve hours if we went down as far as Switzerland, ‘cos flight engineers don’t have a seat [pause]
CB: Ok, so on the training though there’s a lot of aspects of the aircraft?
AG: Yeh
CB: So, what aspects were you dealing with, you talked briefly about airframe, but what else were they focussing on?
AG: Oh, erm, the engines and erm, more particularly the amount of fuel they would be using and heights we were going to, how it objected on the fuel take up and er all that sort of thing
CB: So, on an aircraft the size of the four engine planes, how many tanks would there be on those planes?
AG: Err
CB: Fuel tanks
AG: Numbers two and four, and one, two and three in each wing
CB: So, what was the flight engineer’s job in that?
AG: Well. I had to control that, when the pilot was fiddling about with the controls, I was watching the dials and making sure that everything was as it should be, erm, we only got into real trouble on one flight, erm, when we were still sort of, an inexperienced crew, we had to, erm, join bombers going to Mannheim Ludwigshafen and we were bombing the Ludwigshafen, and being a sprog crew, ‘cos we got there ten minutes late all the others had gone through, so we were going over on our own and we were really getting bashed. Our pilot was doing mad dives and turns to get us out of it, the only thing that we lost was the number four tank in the starboard wing, so I had to run all the engines off that to make sure we used everything we possibly could, and, we did, just save enough to get back to an emergency aerodrome on the south coast, whose name I’ve forgotten to be honest, and we were just going into land and they turned all the lights off, and the pilot said ‘I’ll do another circuit’ and I said ‘ you can’t, you haven’t got enough fuel’, I’m afraid that became a funny word to them because every time he saw me in future he said ‘We can’t, we haven’t got enough fuel!’. So, he did a sweep to the left up on one wing and came straight back in and landed, lights or no lights, he was going in, and we did, I said to the bomb aimer, who was also the second pilot afterwards ‘how did you, er, cope with that ‘? He said ‘well’, he said ‘you know when the undercarriage is down you get a green light’ he said, ‘and if it’s not you get a red light’ So, he said ‘we were as bouncing down the runway and it was going red, green, red, green, red, green, red, green’, [laughs] I said, ‘Oh, thanks very much, cheered me up no end that has’
CB: But, it stayed down?
AG: Oh, yeh, we got down no bother, we just got enough. The pilot came out the following morning and said ‘Look, if we’ve got any fuel left, I’m gonna kick your arse all round this aerodrome’, so I dipped every tank, he and I walked across the wings and I dipped every tank, and it was just enough left in one of them to damp the end of the dipstick, so he shut up after that [laughs]
CB: So, it was reassuring that the gauges were accurate
AG: Well, I wondered if that was what finished up with that MiD of mine, ‘cos they must have made a note of it because we had to abandon the aircraft there and get a lift back to our aerodrome at Fairford, we just left them on this, at this other aerodrome, whose name I don’t remember unfortunately
CB: So, MiD is, mentioned in despatches?
AG: Yeh
CB: Right
AG: Yeh, so somebody must have made a note of it, I expect my pilot went back and said, ‘he was right you know, we didn’t have any fuel’ [laughs]
CB: Saved the crew, effectively
AG: Well, there you are, yeh, so, perhaps that’s what I got it for
CB: So, the reason I asked you about the training is, because clearly, it was focussed on, what in those days was state of the art aircraft, the first of the heavy bombers was the Stirling,
AG: Hmm
CB: but it was different from the other bombers, in that it had electrical circuits for so many things where others would use hydraulics
AG: Oh, yes
CB: In your basic training, what emphasis, was there, on hydraulics and electrics, in the training at St Athan?
AG: Well, skimming over it, as it was a direct entry course they didn’t waste a lot of time, I’ll tell you
CB: How did you come to do flight engineering, because you, had you, when you were working for the bacon company, had you been involved in technical matters then?
AG: No, no
CB: So, how did you come to be selected to train as a flight engineer?
AG: Well, I think they wanted when we were in Blackpool, they wanted flight engineers more than anything because they’d lost so many, and erm, I was automatically put onto that, you know, I’d erm, I think I put my name down to start with for navigation, but never got to that [pause]
CB: So, you finished the training after six months and how did you feel at the end of the training about your knowledge of engineering and aircraft?
AG: Well, I thought at the time that it wasn’t up to scratch, really, I mean, when I thought of the work that previous flight engineers had, had to do, different courses and out on a squadron for six months and then come back and do another course, I mean what we, what they went through to get us out was quick and easy, you know, and that sort of thing.
CB: So, the process for crewing up aircrew, was that at the operational training unit the crew got together, the flight engineer didn’t join until the heavy conversion unit?
AG: That’s right
CB: So, what was the crew like when you, how did you come to join an existing crew that had been on Wellingtons?
AG: Well, they were a bit iffy about having a direct entry flight engineer
CB: Were they?
AG: Because they were told I was one, and they’d never heard of anybody like that, you know, and they thought they were going to get somebody who had been out working on aircraft, on the flights, on the aerodromes, but they didn’t they got me and er, until this second trip, when I got away with this fuel business, after that we were, they relied on me, really, and er, were extremely friendly
CB: As a crew, what were the ranks, was the pilot always commissioned or was he only
AG: Oh yes
CB: Commissioned later?
AG: Yes, the pilot and the navigator and the rear gunner were all commissioned, [pause] and the wireless operator was a sergeant like me when we started flying together [pause]
CB: Ok, so you joined at the heavy conversion unit, where was that?
AG: Stradishall
CB: Right
AG: I do remember that name
CB: And how long where you at Stradishall?
AG: Oh, only about a week [pause], then we went up to Fairford and started ops
CB: Right
AG: Our first one was erm, minelaying, off erm, [unclear] Byrum [?] I think I got the name right, other side of Denmark, going down towards where the Germans were
CB: The far side of Denmark?
AG: Yeh
CB: The Swedish side?
AG: That’s right, yeh, yes, I remember coming back from there, we were flying along and you could see all the Swedish coast, all lit up, the pears, the piers and everything, all the lights
CB: Didn’t do you any good from a silhouette point of view, did it?
AG: No, it didn’t, no that’s true, yes, the only other place, that er, we were worried about the silhouette was erm, we did erm, three or four trips to Norway, supplying free Norwegians, who were up in the mountains, we had to look out for them and then drop stuff to them, funny enough, I see in the paper, that it was only last year, that they found some of the stuff that had been dropped for these people, that they never found and it was still in the snow, but when we were flying over there, we only went up there on a really full moon at night, and we could see our shadow going across the snow, well if anybody had been up, all they had to do was to look at the, moon and our shadow and they knew exactly where we were, and of course the only thing we had to worry about there, was the right up in the north of Denmark was this big German fighter unit, they used to cover the North Sea and out in the Atlantic and all over
CB: So, you were supplying the SOE, the Special Operations Executive in that case, weren’t you?
AG: Yeh, that’s right
CB: So, are you saying that the squadron, 620, had a variety of roles?
AG: Oh yes, we erm, D Day, we dropped parachutes on Caen bridge, and then we had to go back and come over again in the afternoon with gliders, with heavier equipment, down in the same place
CB: So, on gliders, where did you train for towing gliders?
AG: At Fairford
CB: What was the main activity at Fairford then?
AG: Well, the main activity there, was putting us out on raids or supply trips, which went on for years
CB: Rather than bombing you were supplying agents
AG: Yeh, oh yeh
CB: Right
AG: We did bombing raids as well, because I remember we, that, our troops on the ground had got this, surrounded this wood which had got the Germans in it, and we had to go over and bomb these German troops in this wood, and we had a plane going over there about every ten minutes so they wouldn’t get any rest or peace and we just had to keep on bombing this wood
CB: And the effect?
AG: Well, it seemed to work alright, but erm, [pause]
CB: And what about the bombing then, other bombing, what other tasks were there? So, you talked about mine laying
AG: Yeh
CB: Well, let’s just cover minelaying for a bit, mine laying was at a low level wasn’t it
AG: Oh yes
CB: What height were you doing the mine laying?
AG: About five hundred feet
CB: Right
AG: And erm, after that I think, we were mainly doing supplies, down over France, to anyone who needed it, and we did take some paratroops over there, Occasionally we had some odd characters, there was a bloke arrived there, put his parachute on, and he’d got a very smart suit on and a bowler hat, and he was, we were dropping him outside some village, where he had to get in by himself after he landed, and pretend to be the mayor, which is why he was so smartly dressed [laughs]
CB: This was after D Day, was it?
AG: Oh, yeh, yeh, well after, yeh, and then we were sent down, a little while after that, we were sent down to Italy, ‘cos I think they had some idea of us towing gliders from Italy with heavy equipment across to Greece, but it didn’t come to anything, we been there about four or five days, and the whole thing in Greece, came to a grinding halt, so they just said, no we don’t need you and we came back to England. That picture there, is erm, when we were in Italy, Pomigliano, I think it’s a little aerodrome, not far outside Naples, [pause]. Not that we were looking forward to trying to get off there with gliders, because they’ve got these great big heavy power lines right across the end of the runways, we couldn’t see how the hell we were going to get high enough to get the glider over those
CB: Well, it’s the wrong side
AG: Fortunately, we never had to try
CB: Right, it was the
AG: We were a bit worried about that [laughs]
CB: It was the wrong side of Italy to go to Greece anyway wasn’t it?
AG: Oh yeh, yeh
CB: But, the gliders were on this airfield as, well, were they?
AG: Well, no, we didn’t get as far as that
CB: Right
AG: They would have been coming from somewhere else
CB: Yeh
AG: But they stopped it in the end, said it wasn’t necessary, Greece was in a hell of a mess at the time anyway and our troops were in there, so they didn’t need the gliders, so, go on home, so we went, back to England
CB: What was the balance between supplying, agents, in activity and doing bombing raids?
AG: Very few bombing raids, it was mainly, either supply, or erm, taking people over there. I remember we had to go to an American aerodrome and pick up some American paratroops, I was very sorry for them, ‘cos the sergeant in charge said ‘have you got a gun’ I said ‘well yes, of course I’ve got my usual forty five issue’. He said ‘right, well if the first bloke refuses to jump shoot him, I shall be pushing from the back and you go out anyway’ and I thought well that’s a fine way, and I didn’t even unholster the gun ‘cos I had no intention of doing it, but erm, I’m afraid with some of these Americans I was very sorry for them, they were shit scared and badly trained, still
CB: In what way were they badly trained?
AG: Well, they’d never done a jump before, this is why he thought the bloke in front might stick his toes in and refuse to jump out, ‘cos in the Stirling, it was a big hole in the floor and you went out that way, you didn’t go out the door, ‘cos there was always the danger of being caught by the wing, by the tail, plane as it came by, so, the Stirling had a hole in the floor, and erm, these people hadn’t done any jumps at all
CB: How extraordinary
AG: Yeh well this is it, you know, they got in and clipped on
CB: They had a static line to clip on?
AG: Yeh, that’s right, yeh
CB: But, they all went?
AG: Oh yes, they all went out, no bother at all, but erm, I won’t going to shoot anybody anyway, I was very sorry for them
CB: Now, on the supply raids and when your’e dropping, trips, when your’e dropping material and people, this is largely low level is it?
AG: Oh yeh, yeh,
CB: What sort of height?
AC: Particularly with people because you had to drop them from a reasonable low height, it’s no good chucking a parachute out you know, at eighteen thousand or something like that, and hoping he’s gonna get down to where he should, because if there’s any wind blowing he would land miles away
CB: So, what height were they being dropped?
AG: Oh, between five and six hundred most of them I think, as far as I remember
CB: And most of this is in the dark, is it?
AG: Oh yes, yeh of course
CB: How did the navigator find the target for this, because you’re on your own when you do this?
AG: Oh yes, yes, oh yeh. Well, he was told, you know, where to go and miles from wherever, and er, we just had to find it, or he did
CB: Were there electronic devices used to help?
AG: No, no, we didn’t have anything like that, we had an, erm, sort of a semi radar thing, in the plane which was the start of that sort of thing, but erm
CB: Was that H2S or different?
AG: I have no idea
CB: Or other words, a mapping radar, was it?
AG: Yeh, well, it showed up, you know, things like mountains and things like that, but that was all, I mean it was fairly beginning things
CB: So, when did you start, flying with 620 Squadron?
AG: Erm, [pause], oh dear, [pause], well, it was after I’d done my six months at St Athans, so that would be
CB: So, when did you go to St Athan?
AG: Erm, so that would be erm, [pause] when I were called up, I went to Blackpool, so it would be, erm, [pause] beginning of forty-three, I suppose
CB: For six months?
AG: Yeh [pause], or was it forty-two for six months? and then on, [pause] difficult to remember because
CB: So, when in forty-one did you join, what time of year?
AG: Oh, in the September
CB: Ok, so then you went to Blackpool?
AG: When I was called up, yeh
CB: Yeh
AG: I developed scarlet fever, the week I was called up, so the doctor said I’d got to stay there, I was in bed, with a blanket over the door, which had been sprayed by my mother, to keep the germs in the bedroom [laughs] and then so when I got to Blackpool, I had to report sick with scarlet fever, and the bloke said, ‘how long have you had it’? and I told him, and he said ‘no, that’s alright, you can carry on’ [laughs.] Yes, I remember that, I was sitting there and the nurse came round and said ‘why have you come’ and I said ‘’cos, I’ve got scarlet fever’ and I could see these two blokes, either side, go like that [laughter]
CB: Amazing, [pause] so, how long were you at Blackpool?
AG: Erm, oh, must have been about, I was there quite a long time
CB: You did your square bashing there, did you?
AG: Yeh, must have been, what, three months, oh, we were not only square bashing, I was, out digging in some place where they were putting in, erm, assault courses for people to practice on, we were out digging that, while I was there, they didn’t waste us.
CB: So, that would take you to Christmas?
AG: Yeh
CB: So, you went from Blackpool to St Athan?
AG: Yeh, well, I couldn’t tell you when
CB: So, that sounds like the beginning of forty-two, we’ll check it out anyway
AG: Yeh
CB: And you were there six months, so you would have joined the squadron
AG: Yeh
CB: When?
AG: I went from there, straight to Stradishall and joined up with the crew and then we finished up in Fairford
CB: But, you were involved in operations in D Day?
AG: Oh yeh, yeh
CB: How many tours did you do?
AG: Only the one
CB: Right, and how many ops did you do?
AG: Oh, thirty-two, something like that, just over thirty, a fraction over thirty
CB: I’m going to stop just for a mo.
AG: Yeh, right
CB: We are just going to talk a little bit about the crew, we’ve talked earlier about, when Allen sorted out the fuel distribution arrangements and how they were short of fuel, and that got him accepted, but how did the crew gel?
AG: Oh, very well, erm, our pilot had a car, I don’t know where he got it from, but he had a car at Fairford, and erm, we used to go out at night, to one of the local pubs, all of us
CB: All seven of you?
AG: Yeh, oh yeh, I think we meshed very well actually
CB: Right, and how well equipped were the pubs for supplying thirsty air crew?
AG: Oh, very well, particularly the one we used to go to which had a lot of really nice-looking girls serving there, which always started my pilot, [laughs] away [laughs] if he got half the chance [laughs]
CB: Yeh, and did they ever run out of beer?
AG: No, never, never, yeh
CB: So, part of the crew was commissioned, and part of it was NCO?
AG: Yeh
CB: So, what were your quarters like as an NCO?
AG: What were my what?
CB: Quarters, where were you?
AG: Oh, I was just in a billet with, twelve other people
CB: Right, so, what was the billet, a Nissan hut?
AG: Yeh, a Nissan hut, yeh, and at Fairford, we were right down the bottom of the hill, by the stream, where we could go fishing for trout, very naughty, and we knew what time the bailiff used to come round, and make sure there was nobody fishing in this trout stream, and so, we always used to make sure we weren’t down there when he came by [laughs]. No, I used to like trout, done on a coke stove
CB: Is that the coke stove in the Nissan hut?
AG: Yeh, yeh, that’s all the heat we had in there, was just one of these big coke stoves
CB: So, what was the recipe then, how did you deal with it, so you got the trout?
AG: Oh, put it in a tin on the top, after gutting it and chopping it, putting it on, and just standing it on the stove until it was cooked, knowing what the food was like, you know, we was always trying to add to it [laughs], one way or the other
CB: Were you normally hungry or was the normal amount adequate?
AG: Well, it was for me but I don’t think it was for some of them, but er, no, I always, I always, seemed to get on fairly well. The only funny thing that happened down at that Nissan hut that we were in, eh, one of the blokes had gone into town on his bicycle, when he came back, he’d thrown the bicycle over the fence, not realising, that he’d thrown it into a sewerage pit, so he climbed up and jumped in after it he turned up at the back door of the hut covered in green muck, and we threw things at him until he went away and got in the shower with all his clothes on [laughs] we weren’t going to let him in [laughs] Yeh, I can see that bloke standing there now
CB: How many uniforms did you have? He had to dry it out, first did he?
AG: Er, well, you really had one and a spare which you kept, you kept one, you know, for parades and one thing and another, and a spare, and of course when I became a warrant officer, then I was never short of clothes and it was all extremely smart, and I had more spares than I could cope with
CB: At what stage did you become a warrant officer?
AG: Oh, in my third year, because you went up one rank every year, this is why we had flight lieutenant rear gunner, he’d gone [laughs] gradually up [laughs] anyway
CB: So, you, worked well as a crew?
AG: Oh, yeh, really well
CB: And, erm, how did the food come, if you were flying at night, before you
AG: Well, we had to eat before we went
CB: Right, so what was that
AG: If it was a night flight
CB: Ok, what did you get?
AG: Well, anything that was going, you know, I seem to remember a lot of sausages in those days, I suppose they were easy to come by and easy to make so, they were alright, yeh
CB: Did they keep pigs on the station?
AG: No, not that I ever saw
CB: And, when you landed after an op, what did you get for food?
AG: Eh, well roughly the same thing again, whatever was available, you know, but erm,
CB: Bacon and egg?
AG: Oh yes, yes, we always had that, the only thing that I remember about coming back late one night, before we’d taken off, I’d gone out to the aircraft with a bicycle and had a look round like, as I usually did, and er, when we landed I got on the bike and whizzed off back, and, in the meantime they’d put a barbed wire fence across the bloody path and I rode straight into that and went flying, pitch down, and I got barbed wire cuts all up one arm, and of course, we hadn’t been debriefed or anything, so in between take off and being debriefed, I’d been wounded, I was entitled to a wound stripe, and I thought I shall never have the cheek to wear it, so I didn’t, ‘cos it wasn’t my fault they’d put a barbed wire fence up there
CB: Now, you’ve raised an interesting point there, the wound stripe, how was that allocated and then shown on the uniform?
AG: Well, you had an upside down v, a little red v on the bottom of your left-hand sleeve, I mean I’ve seen
CB: On the wrist?
AG: I saw a bloke once, he’d got fifteen of these all up this arm, so I thought, he must be ruddy unlucky [laughs]
CB: So, this will come as a result of aerial combat of some kind, would it?
AG: Oh yeh, oh yeh
CB: So, how often were you hit and by what?
AG: Well, the only time we were hit, hit badly, was when we were so short of fuel, because they’d absolutely peppered the aircraft, it was full of holes all over, up in, down, and underneath, under the tanks in the wings and everywhere. It was our own fault because we’d arrived ten minutes too late, we blamed the navigator, the rest of the bomber crews had gone on by, so we were flying over Ludwigshafen on our own, we were getting pasted
CB: No fire?
AG: No, fortunately
CB: And er, so that’s flak, so what about fighter attack, how often did you have those?
AG: No, we were lucky, we never had one, ever, [emphasis] although our gunners were ready, but we were lucky to get away with it, particularly when we were doing those Norway trips, ‘cos we’d got no cover there at all, and everything was wide open, you could see our shadow moving across the snow, and this German fighter place up in the north of Denmark, was huge, God knows how many fighters they had there, but we were lucky, we got away with it every time we went to Norway we got away with it without seeing one. The only time we got shot at in Norway, going up the creek to Oslo, and we had to go over Oslo and up into the mountains, to drop this stuff, and in the creek was three islands, one there, one there and one there, and they all had German flak guns on, fortunately, we came in so low that we were leaving a wake up this creek, I looked out and I could see it
CB: On the water?
AG: On the water, and this island was firing at us and hitting the other island, which we thought was quite good [laughs] but when we got to the third one of course, we were just taking a chance, round and round and out quick and after that it was just up over Oslo and into the mountains [pause] interesting, it was only last year that it was in the paper that they found some of this stuff up there that had been dropped, and the people up there never found it
CB: Where they able to find out who had, which aircraft had dropped it?
AG: No, no, they couldn’t find out anything about it at all
CB: So, you said, earlier, that the, Stirling was grossly under-rated, and you thought it was a brilliant aeroplane, what was so special about the Stirling in your perception?
AG: Well, the fact that it was solid metal, you know, it would stand up to practically anything, and only get minor damage, and of course the engines were superb, far better than anything on any of the other aircraft
CB: So, what engines were on the Stirling?
AG: Oh, those Bristol Radials
CB: Hercules
AG: Yeh, I know that we started off with two, two banks of pots and finished up with three, and erm, they were really good, far better than these Merlin engines, ‘cos these would take punishment, the others wouldn’t
CB: Going back to your training, looking at your training manuals, books you filled in, erm, exercise books, when you were training, there, there’s a section on everything but, the significance of the Stirling was it was, it had so much electrics on it, so how well were you prepared at St Athan, for going onto an aircraft that had such a large amount of electrics?
AG: Oh, pretty well, I think I never had any trouble with any of it, the only thing I nearly did one night, was to cook the pigeon, they gave us, in case we came down in the North Sea, and we were sat in a dinghy, there you know, waiting to be rescued, they gave us a pigeon that we could put on out last position and send it off, and I put this pigeon on the floor and I didn’t realise until I got back, that I’d stood it up against this heating pipe that was coming through from one of the engines, I thought the bloody thing will be cooked, but it was perfectly alright, thank goodness [laughs]
CB: Just gone deaf
AG: Well, it must have been warm, which was more than the rest of us were on some of these flights
CB: Where was the warmest part on the aircraft?
AG: At the end of this pipe that was coming through from the inner starboard engine
CB: That was the heater for the fuselage, was it?
AG: Yeh, that’s right, yeh
CB: So, what were the things that were electric, driven electrically, on the Stirling?
AG: Well, practically everything, I mean, I’d got a bank of dials in front of me where I was, which were, erm, you know, gave you an indication of how much fuel was in each tank, ‘cos you had one for each tank, starboard and port, and that was all run by electrics, I mean, if you lost your electrics, you’d got no guides at all, that sort of thing, but we never did, fortunately
CB: And, were any of the flying controls electric?
AG: Ah, the only thing that I knew about, that was my job, was the undercarriage, which was electric, down and up, but, erm, if that had failed I could do that by hand take me about half an hour I should think [laughs] ‘cos it was really hard work, but er, that you could do
CB: And, what about the trimmer? so, in the flying controls, were the trimmers electric?
AG: Erm, yes, but that was done either by the co-pilot, the bomb aimer or the pilot, I never had anything to do with that
CB: You said earlier that you had to stand up all the time, but did you have a seat for take-off and landing?
AG: Well, I had to sit on the parachute
CB: Where?
AG: The type of the parachute was the cushion type, with the two, rings at the back, which you just clicked onto your harness, which was there at the front, you just clicked on, yeh that’s right, on the front, [pause] and as it was that sort of thick, and that big, we used to sit on it
CB: Now, thinking now, about the take-off and landing, as the engineer, to what extent, were you involved in helping with the take-off with the throttles?
AG: Not at all, the pilot did it all and I used to watch the dials and make sure that there was nothing I had to tell him
CB: So, were you sitting next to him at that point, or
AG: No, no I was
CB: You were standing?
AG: No, I was either standing, bouncing up and down on me toes or, sat on the parachute looking at all this, wall of dials in front of me
CB: And erm, with most flight engineer tasks, positions, er, logs had to be taken, so,
AG: Oh yeh
CB: What logging did you do and how often?
AG: Well, you had to do one for every flight
CB: But, during the flight, what did you have to record?
AG: Well, if anything went wrong or, we needed something that wasn’t there or whatever, you had to put it in the log, you know, but erm, I never seemed to have any trouble with that, we were lucky really, we really were lucky
CB: From what you have said, fuel management is a key matter, so, of the tanks, in what sequence did you, use for fuel, you’d have one for take-off and then how did you distribute the fuel?
AG: Well, there was two big tanks, number two and number four, in each wing, and you used those for take-off particularly if you were towing a glider because you used a lot of it, and er, once you were up and on a long, fairly longish flight, because we did, we had to go twelve hours sometimes, which took us nearly down to the Swiss border, to supply, Free French that were in the hills there, in the foothills, and erm, as I said, it was, by the time we got back to base again, we’d been out twelve hours
CB: And erm, in terms of the next range of tanks, how did you switch, in what sequence did you use the fuel?
[background noise]
AG: Well, you used the little ones, number one and number two
CB: Which are on the wing tips?
AG: Number one and number three, out, at the far end, you use those first, on both wings, and you tried to keep them going to the engines, you got [pause] like two engines there, and two engines there and you had to keep them going, from the same tanks, pretty well for the same length of time, so you’d know exactly what type of tank was going to be empty, you didn’t have to look at your dial until it went empty, I mean, you had to do it by time, and er, whatever revs were on the engines
CB: And, setting the revs on the engines, and the pitch of the screws, who dealt, did that?
AG: Oh, that was the pilot, did that
CB: Right
AG: And if you didn’t like what he was doing, you had to tell him and he had to alter it
CB: And to what extent was it necessary to synchronise the engines in flight?
AG: Er, not a lot really, we had an extremely good ground crew and normally we found that they’d adjust, perfectly, [pause] because we really relied on our ground crew a lot and we had four really good blokes
CB: And did they come out with you, in the evenings sometimes or did they?
AG: Oh yeh, yeh, oh yeh, we thought a lot of those fellas, in fact I gave one of them my bike, when I left, when I was posted away from the squadron, erm, I gave him my bicycle, which I was sad about, but, he deserved it
CB: So, you come to the end of your tour, and you did thirty, thirty-two operations, what did you do after that?
AG: Well, we only had one flight after that because the officer’s mess had run out of beer, we had to fly over to Northern Ireland and bring back a load of beer for them [laughs]
CB: Must have been an arduous trip!
AG: Oh yeh, [laughs] because we’d have liked to have gone on over there and done something, really naughty, because at that time the IRA were building bonfires in the shape of arrows, pointing, to where the aerodrome was
CB: Oh, for German bombers?
AG: That’s right, yeh, bastards [emphasis]
CB: And, how long had they been doing that for?
AG: Practically, since the war started
CB: And how were they dealt with?
AG: Well, they should have been bloody shot, but we never got around to it! It’s like that bloke McGuiness, I mean he’s in the Irish government now, he was the one that started that Bloody Sunday, he was the one on top with the rifle, firing at our troops what did they think, that we weren’t going to fire back? I don’t know, that bastard should have been shot, and you can write that down and put my name on it [laughs]
CB: So, the arrows bit is interesting, how long did that go on for?
AG: Oh, quite a long time during the war, [pause] yeh, swines
CB: And, what did the beer taste like when you got it back
AG: Oh, that weren’t for us, that was for the officer’s mess, we weren’t allowed to touch it
CB: Didn’t you sample it to make sure it was ok?
AG: No
CB: So, your last flight was keeping them topped up, then what did you do? So, you’ve left the squadron now
AG: Oh, well, I was erm, posted away then, and er, [pause] and finished up at a place called Burnham Beeches
CB: In Buckinghamshire?
AG: Yeh, and erm
CB: What happened there?
AG: Well, nothing really, I don’t think they knew what to do with us, I mean that was where I learnt how to play tennis, one of the blokes there, he’d been champion of Yorkshire for two or three years, and he gave me one of his racquets, and I’ve still got it, I’d still use it, if I played tennis, which I thought was very nice of him, and er, we went rowing on the river there and all sorts of things. As I said they didn’t know what to do with us, we were just keeping out the way
CB: So, we’re after Arnhem now aren’t we, so
AG: Oh yeh
CB: So, what sort of time are we talking about? In the autumn or are we later?
AG: Oh erm, [pause] now, I think I went there if I remember rightly, I went there in er, January, February somewhere like that, fairly early
CB: Forty-five
AG: At Burnham Beeches and we were erm, we’d taken over this big country house that was there, and erm, they just kept the top floor, to live in, and we had the offices all down below, and er, working in there
CB: Doing what?
AG: Well, I was sat in the office there, and it was a most peculiar effort, if they, had a man posted from Edinburgh to Glasgow, an RAF policeman, he had to come all the way down to us, be booked into my office and booked out again, and given travel warrants and away he went, most peculiar efforts, still there you are, you wondered who was running these things sometimes
CB: And then after, how long did that go on for?
AG: Oh, I think I was there for about erm, three or four months [background noise] and then I was posted to Leicester
CB: Leicester East? The airfield, Leicester East?
AG: Oh no, no, no, no, just somewhere in Leicester, erm, and erm, I was there for about a fortnight or so I think, and then I went back to Burnham Beeches and got discharged, and went to London and picked up my civvies
CB: Then what? So, you’re discharged, demobbed, what did you do then?
AG: Well, I went home and had a week off and then I went back to work for the Danish Bacon company, shit house firm
[background laughter]
CB: Would you like to explain why they were like that? What was it that was so upsetting about the Danish Bacon
AG: Well, because I’d
CB: Company
AG: Been here for nearly forty years, until I got another job and I wanted to take my pension and money, put it into this new firm and they were going to treat it as though I’d been there all the time, so I’d have had a really good pension when I did eventually retire, but they wouldn’t do it, they made me take all the money out and it was only what I’d paid in, nothing of theirs, and I had to take it out as my last week’s wages and the income tax was unbelievable, not a nice firm, fortunately, they went out of business after that
CB: Right, so
AG: It went broke
CB: When did you leave them?
AG: Ah, [pause] I’m scratching for the year, [pause] I can’t remember to be honest
CB: So, you left the RAF in forty-five
AG: Yeh
CB: How long did you stay with the Danish Bacon people?
AG: Er, oh another [pause] eight or nine years
CB: Then what?
AG: Then I got this offer of this new job
CB: At?
AG: Patrick Grainger and Hutley’s, at Fordingbridge
CB: What were you doing there?
AG: I was assistant manager and I was also travelling round, seeing some of their customers, and building up trade of course
CB: Ok, we’ll just have a break there, thank you
CB: So, you kept staying, kept with Patrick Grainger, who’d then been taken over by Danish Bacon until you retired after forty years. We are now going back to flying, so when you were flying Allen, as the engineer, you had to log various things because it was important to see how the plane was performing. What were you logging?
AG: Well, if you have a look at this, its erm, oil pressure, oil temperatures and cylinder temperatures
CB: Right, ok, and how often were you doing that? Did you have to do it at a particular time? Every hour?
AG: Yeh, well, this, if you look at the times down the left-hand side, its roughly about every fifteen minutes, I think
CB: Right
AG: But, I had another line, right the way across
CB: Yeh, so, when you got back, you, the aircraft lands, we didn’t get on to debrief, but, you’re the engineer, when you get out of the aircraft, who’s the first person you speak to, is that the Chiefy?
AG: Erm
CB: Your ground engineer?
AG: No, I wouldn’t see anybody until I got back into the debriefing hut
CB: Ok, so at debriefing, what would you be doing?
AG: Well, I had to hand my log in
CB: Right
AG: And erm,
CB: That you’d been completing in the flight?
AG: That’s right, yeh this one
CB: Yeh, ok, and then what, who was the person that looked at that?
AG: Well, they used to take them all away, and erm, if I remember rightly, it was the chap who was in charge of all the, erm, maintenance and all that stuff, he’d go through it, and any anomalies he’d then probably come, and ask you what happened then and [unclear]
CB: This would be the station engineering officer?
AG: Yeh
CB: Who would be dealing with all of that or one of his erm, people?
AG: Well, it was a bloke in charge of erm, all the ground crews
CB: Yeh, yeh
AG: He’d want to see that
CB: Now, would you then join the rest of the crew for the crew debriefing, what would happen?
AG: Oh yeh, yeh, we would all go and sit down together
CB: Where would that be and who would you see?
AG: Well, the CO would be there and a couple of his underlings and erm, they’d just go through the whole thing, right from the take off and erm, and talk to the pilot about what happened here and what happened there, and did he have any trouble, and went right through and made sure that we’d put either the bombs in the right place or erm, or supplied the people that were in the exact same spot that they were supposed to be in, because sometimes all you would get was one bloke flashing a morse letter on his torchP particularly if we were on one of those Norway trips, we used to go miles over the snow, and there would be some poor bugger right up in the mountains, with his torch, and then we would drop all these containers down there, so, what they did with them after that I don’t know, whether they towed them away or what
CB: So, the debrief, covers all the aspects of the flight?
AG: Yeh, oh yeh
CB: And, bearing in mind in many cases, your, you were a special duties squadron, so you were supplying SOE, to what extent were there SOE people there, during the debrief?
AG: Well, we assumed that, you know, there would be one or two officers there that we didn’t know where they come from, so it would have been them
CB: They were the air force officers?
AG: Yeh, it was either SOE or SAS
CB: Right
AG: Yeh
CB: What was the most memorable thing about your operational career, on operations?
AG: Oh, that one when we just got back with hardly any fuel, [laughs] the only thing that stands out in my mind
CB: Now, the aircraft had been peppered, pretty badly, why was it, it didn’t catch fire?
AG: Well, it was the way they were built, this is why we like the Stirling’s, there was nothing there to catch fire
CB: Did you have self-sealing fuel tanks?
AG: Well, up to a certain point but, that time we got caught with it, I mean, it had blown a hole about that big and of course that self-sealing didn’t work, over that size
CB: But the tank was empty anyway?
AG: Well, yeh, I ran all four engines on it, until I could see there was nothing left, and just went switching from one to another, then eking it out as well as I could, until we got back, right [hand clap] good
CB: Finally, where did you meet your wife?
AG: Ah, when I was at St Athans
CB: And what was she doing there?
AG: Well, she was doing this erm, mechanics training course, which she finished up doing, erm, I don’t think she was ever on, erm, an operating squadron, er, she was at this aerodrome down by Exeter, I went down there to see her once or twice, and erm, you know, that was it
CB: Was she on the flight line looking after the aircraft, or in the hangar?
AG: Oh, both, because erm, the only thing she ever moaned about it was the fact that they were working out in the rain, with no cover and erm, the only way they could get dry was to go in and stand with all their clothes on by this coke stove, get it red hot and stand there and hope their clothes dried, which is why she finished up with really bad arthritis in her legs, I reckon, because of that
CB: So, when did you meet her, oh you met her when you were at St Athan
AG: Yeh
CB: When did you marry?
AG: Oh, about er, about ten years later [pause] I can’t remember what year it was that we got married, no idea
CB: Sounds like about nineteen fifty-three?
AG: Hmm, probably, somewhere around there [background talking] yeh, one thing I should remember and I don’t
CB: Thank you very much
AG: Oh, it’s alright sir
CB: On the minelaying, you were talking about, so this is, the other side, having to fly the other side of Denmark
AG: Yeh
CB: How did that raid go, were you high up and then went down or, and how did you do the mining run
AG: Well, it was our first op that was, erm, well it was just a question of relying on the navigator, ‘cos I didn’t know where we were going, and erm, anyway, we had to come down really low, off this island I think it was called [unclear] Byrum [?] and er, drop these mines right across the erm, entrance to the harbour. If anything had come in there, they would have gone off, so, and then we came back, and flew up between the other side of Denmark and Sweden, and watched all Sweden being lit up, lights on the piers and all the way along the sea front, looked beautiful, we ain’t seen anything like that for years
CB: And then you were, we’ve got a picture here, of your, aircraft, on the flight line ready for take-off for Arnhem, so, could you talk us through that one?
AG: Well, erm
CB: What were you carrying?
AG: Well, the first day was alright, we were just carrying supplies, the only thing that buggered up Arnhem was the Americans, again, as usual. Erm, our troops took the first bridge, the Americans were supposed to take the second one, and we dropped our troops on the third one, and they’re the ones we were supplying, and erm, of course the Americans made a cock of it and couldn’t take theirs, which left our blokes on the third bridge sticking out on their own, and unfortunately, the intelligence was so bad, that nobody realised that, just a little way, away from there, there was, a big mass of Germans, who had taken back for a rest from the Russian front, and they had got their tanks and everything there, and our blokes on the third bridge didn’t stand a chance. They were gradually surrounded, erm, we went over there again and dropped more supplies, but the third day when we went over there, we didn’t realise but we were dropping to the Germans, and that we were sitting ducks at that height, fortunately, our pilot decided not to climb away and leave us vulnerable, he went down even further, and went in between the two milk factory chimneys and came out over the sea, clever bloke
CB: At what height were you dropping?
AG: Oh, about five hundred feet
CB: And how much stuff did you drop, it was in containers with parachutes, was it?
AG: No, it was all in, yeh, it was all in containers with parachutes, because we were, the first and second time actually dropping to our troops, it was the third time when we weren’t and didn’t realise it
CB: What was in the containers?
AG: Oh, small arms and food and supplies, and all that sort of thing
CB: Right, anything else? Good, thank you
AG: And we were erm, the planes were being loaded up, for supplies to the French, in some area, and er, we were walking out and one of the containers fell out the plane, and hit the ground, so we all went flat, so we thought knowing what was likely to be in them. Anyway, when the dust had settled and they hadn’t gone off, we walked over and had a look in this container, half of it was full of socks and the other half was full of durex, and I thought the French don’t need those [laughter] and they don’t use them anyway, [laughter] and I thought well, that’s a bloody fine thing, we are risking our necks taking over socks [emphasis] and anyway [laughter] that’s what wars all about I suppose
CB: They’d say that’s what they put in them before they chucked it
AG: Yeh, I’d forgotten, yeh, I’d forgotten about that, and I suddenly thought about this thing dropping down, and we all dived flat, because we reckoned it was going to blow up, but it didn’t, and we walked over to have a look, and that what was in it, socks and durex [laughs]
[Other] That’s the first time I’d heard Dad be angry about the Americans
AG: They were normally shit scared and badly trained
CB: The Americans?
AG: Yeh
CB: Right, erm, thank you.
Dublin Core
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Identifier
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AGouldAG160708
Title
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Interview with Allen Geoffrey Gould
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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01:10:32 audio recording
Creator
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Chris Brockbank
Date
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2016-07-08
Description
An account of the resource
Allen Gould grew up in Bournemouth and worked for the Danish Bacon company until volunteering for the Royal Air Force. He completed 32 operations as a flight engineer with 620 Squadron from RAF Fairford. Post war, he married his wife, who was training as a mechanic at St Athan when he met her. He returned to the Danish Bacon company and worked there for another forty years.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
Norway
Wales
England--Gloucestershire
England--Suffolk
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
Italy
Italy--Pomigliano d'Arco
Temporal Coverage
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1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
Contributor
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Cathie Hewitt
Chris Cann
620 Squadron
aircrew
animal
bombing
flight engineer
mine laying
RAF Fairford
RAF St Athan
RAF Stradishall
Special Operations Executive
Stirling
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/280/3433/PJamesPAE1701.1.jpg
187ab57f99d88437aa4d1126eb42ab2d
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/280/3433/AJamesPAE170705.2.mp3
17c083df420e2e35a0f032f60c0c65b3
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
James, Philip Albert Evan
Philip Albert Evan James
Philip A E James
Philip James
P A E James
P James
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Philip Albert Evan James MBE (b. 1924, 1807170 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a flight engineer with 192 Squadron.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-07-05
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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James, PAE
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
LD: Ok. This is an interview for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Laura Dixon and the interviewee is Philip James. The interview is taking place in Port Talbot on the 5th of July 2017.
PJ: Right.
LD: Hello Philip. Thank you for having me. So, my first question. Can you tell me more about your life before you joined the Bomber Command? Before the Second World War.
PJ: I was working in a place called Margam Castle.
LD: Oh really?
PJ: I was a valet there to a gentleman called Captain Andrew Fletcher. I worked there for some time before I went to the Air Force. They did want me to go to Scotland with them because they were moving to Scotland but I said, ‘No. I want to go to the Air Force.’ So, that was my time just before going to the Air Force.
LD: So, how did you join the Bomber Command and why did you join the Bomber Command but not the navy or the army? Why did you choose the Bomber Command?
PJ: Because my two idols were Captain Scott of Antarctica and Douglas Bader, the fighter pilot with no legs. And I wanted to just go to the Air Force.
LD: Ok.
PJ: And I ended up at St Athans forty minutes away from where I lived and I trained as a flight engineer. I trained to be, to fly Halifaxes. So —
LD: So —
PJ: That’s it.
LD: So you were a flight engineer. So what does a flight engineer do? What’s the, what was your job?
PJ: My main job was to help the pilot, take off and landings. Monitor the fuel consumption. All the specifications for the engines like oil pressure, oil temperature. The temperature of the engines and make sure that I did the correct procedure with the petrol consumption and the correct procedure of using the different tanks. There were fourteen tanks on the aircraft all together and they had to be done in a proper sequence not to put any stress on the wings. Right.
LD: Yeah. Ok. So, what kind of places did you go to? Did you go to Europe or did you go further than Europe?
PJ: Yes. I did. I went to France, I went to Germany and I also flew up right to Northern Norway.
LD: Ok.
PJ: Ok.
LD: Ok. So how long would a mission take? Did you go there and then come back? Was it overnight?
PJ: The one at Norway took us about four days because the weather stopped us from flying back to Norfolk. Yeah.
LD: Ok. So what was your relationship like with your colleagues? With your crew members.
PJ: I think I’ll start the talk about my crew a little bit later on.
LD: Ok.
PJ: Because that’s, that’s how I will start my story then if you’d like to call it that.
LD: Yeah. Ok. Yeah. I’ll come back to that.
PJ: Right.
LD: That’ll be interesting. So, were there any problems with the plane or any injuries that you experienced at any point?
PJ: No. We were very lucky. We did have some slight damage but we’ll come to that later on.
LD: Ok.
PJ: Yeah.
LD: So, what did you do in your spare time when you weren’t flying? When you were on the ground with your colleagues. Would you go out in the evening?
PJ: Dependant on how much time I had spare like. I could have like forty eight hours and I would go in to Norwich and stay in the Salvation Army Hostel for about a half a crown a night. Two and sixpence.
LD: Yeah.
PJ: Two shillings and sixpence. I would also go to the flight engineer’s section and learn a bit more about the aircraft and what goes on in the, in the plane during the trips that we did.
LD: Ok. So, what would happen on a typical mission? What would the procedure be?
PJ: The procedure from where?
LD: Well, from the start and then to the end. From take-off and then to the finish.
PJ: Well, first of all you would have to go to the main briefing where you’d be shown a target and the weather conditions. The red spots on the map would be where the heavy defences were in Germany, particularly in Germany and you were routed usually bypassing them. But that wasn’t always the case. Ok.
LD: So, were you excited to start flying? Because you must have been very young when you started. So, what kind of feelings did you have? Were you excited or was it just something that you felt that you had to do?
PJ: I wouldn’t say that I was excited but you were sort of learning things every minute of the day. How can I say? We’d, the crew would probably get together and have a chat and discuss what we’d done or what we were going to do. It depended a lot on whatever time we were given. Like you could have a day off and you would go in to Norwich then. If you had like forty eight hours pass then you would go into Norwich and stay in the Salvation Army Hostel. Yeah. The crew used to go to Sheffield. They used to stay in a Temperance hotel called the Albany Hotel which is still in Sheffield today and they used to eat in a place called the Athol Bar. That’s where they used to eat. They were also treated very kindly by the master brewer of a brewery in Sheffield called Richdale’s Brewery. Yeah. And they organised them to visit a coal mine. The brewery of course [laughs] So, that’s that. That’s that little bit.
LD: Ok. So would you like to tell more about your little story about the friendship with your colleagues.
PJ: Right. I was at a place called Dishforth in Yorkshire. On this particular day about twenty flight engineers were told get into a hangar and there was about twenty Wellington crews which was, a two engine bomber, a crew of six and now they had to team up with a flight engineer. And the wireless operator of that crew was a Canadian Red Indian called John Yakimchuk. He came over to me and he said would I like to join his crew? I said, ‘I’ll come and have a chat with the crew and make up my mind.’ I went and had a chat with the crew and I decided that I would stick with them. They were all Canadians. So I became part of their crew ready to go flying in Halifaxes which was four engine bombers. So, as we were a crew now it was down the pub in the night to have a drink and sort of celebrate being made up into a full seven crew. So they asked me now what would I like to drink? And I said, ‘Orange juice.’ I was only nineteen at the time. So later on, later on I noticed that the crew were all chatting amongst themselves and not including me so I called John over, John Yakimchuk and I said, ‘What’s all this chatting going on and I’m not involved in it?’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’ll tell you what happened,’ he said, ‘We were looking around at the engineers and we decided that that bloke over there with ginger hair,’ me, ‘And a fresh complexion, he’s a drinking man. So we’ll have him for our flight engineer.’ So of course, that’s how I came to be crewed up with the Canadians. And they were a great bunch. A great bunch of chaps they were. The pilot, George Ward, he was a first class pilot and we had a first class navigator, Bert Taylor. I think the reason we were posted to 192 Squadron was because of the quality of the pilot and the navigator. So that’s as far as I go now. Right.
LD: Ok. So, when the war ended were you relieved? What was the, what was the feeling about leaving the Bomber Command?
PJ: Well, I was lost for a little while. I was given a job after I’d finished flying. I was given a job of clearing RAF stations of vehicles and I had about twenty German drivers and about half a dozen RAF drivers and we used to go around clearing all these RAF stations of vehicles. And we used to take the majority of them to a place called Grafton Underwood which used to be an American base. And I think that change of work style sort of made you sort of forget what you’d been doing for thirty three trips. That’s about it.
LD: Ok.
PJ: Yeah.
LD: So, have you kept in touch with your colleagues after the Bomber Command?
PJ: It was some years. It was about 1982. I was going to London and before I went I had a telephone call and it was my navigator, Bert Taylor. He was in London and I was going to a reunion in London that same weekend. So I told Bert, ‘Just get a taxi and go to an hotel called the Ritz,’ because we were all going to go for a tea at the Ritz. So I met up with Bert and his wife and between the two of us we came up with the idea of having a reunion out in Canada. So Bert got on the phone and we arranged to all meet up at my tail gunner’s farm. They called it a farm. I would call it a ranch more than that. He had five, no seven oil wells on his land. And we had a great reunion there. Aye. Ah yes. We had. I’d been down to Canada eight times. Western Canada because most of the crew came from Western Canada. I did two trips to Eastern Canada as well because I knew another pilot and a radio mechanic Hugh Home And they were two very good trips they were as well. There we are.
LD: Very nice. Ok. So, I know you have an MBE. Can you tell me a bit more about that and how you got it?
PJ: The MBE. I was a welfare officer looking after ex-RAF and I did that for about forty, fifty years and it was decided that I should have an MBE for doing that work.
LD: Oh, ok.
PJ: So we were all getting geared up to go to the palace and the Queen had an operation on her knee. I don’t know if you remember that.
LD: No. I don’t think so.
PJ: Anyway, she had an operation on her knee so we were transferred to Cardiff University and Prince Charles did the presentation instead of the Queen.
LD: Ok. So, when did you get that MBE? When was it? How long ago was it?
PJ: How many years ago, Pete?
[pause]
LD: So, how do you think the Bomber Command is being perceived now?
PJ: What love?
LD: How do you think the Bomber Command is being perceived? Do you think it’s being, do you think it gets the recognition it deserves or do you think it’s not recognised enough?
PJ: Well, I flew with 192 Squadron which was part of 100 Group which was all secret in World War Two. Our mail was censored and no cameras were allowed on the squadron. So, that was —
[recording paused]
PJ: Fifteen years ago, Pete. Goodness me alive. Goodness me.
Other: Time marches on.
PJ: Fifteen years ago.
LD: Ok. Is there anything else you can think of that you’d like to tell me? Anything else?
PJ: When I was at Dishforth we were being converted from a twin engine. The crew, I hadn’t flown with them in Wellingtons so we were being trained there then. It was called an Heavy Conversion Unit and we were flying clapped out Mark 1s and 2s. Halifaxes with Rolls Royce engines. But they say that if you could get through Heavy Conversion Unit you was very lucky but we got through then ok. And it came to the day when the notice board would have then where all the crews that had passed would be posted to. So we had a look and it said George Ward’s crew posted to 192 Squadron. And everybody said, ‘192 Squadron? Never heard of it. Never heard of Foulsham.’ That’s where we were based in Norfolk. So, we thought, ‘Oh well we’ll just have to go.’ So we arrived at Foulsham. Everything was all hush hush. And the first thing that we had to do then when we got to Foulsham was to learn to fly the latest Halifaxes. A brand new Mark 3 with Bristol Hercules engines. Radial engines. In your car your engine is inline. You know like the cylinders are inline. But with a Bristol Hercules engines they’re in a circle and they’re air cooled. Rolls Royce engines are liquid cooled. Hercules are air cooled. That was another job that I had to watch was the temperature of the engines. There was cowls which you could open and decide where the setting would be to keep the engine at the right temperature. So the first thing we had to do we had an Australian pilot and his flight engineer who came with us to an aircraft. A brand new Halifax. And the Australian pilot did two or three [pause] the Australian pilot and his engineer did three or four circuits and bumps. That means taking off, fly around and come back down and land and take off and go around again. And then he said to my pilot, ‘Are you ok now?’ My pilot said, ‘Yes. I think I’m ok now.’ [overhead plane noise] So he did a take-off and coming in to land one of the tyres burst and we slewed off, off the runway on to the grass and then the undercarriage at one side collapsed and the plane tilted and finally stopped on the grass. Anyway, that was sorted out and then we were allocated a brand new Mark 3 Halifax called DT-O. DT was the squadron and O was the aircraft. All the aircraft were numbered DT-O or A B C D. That’s how they numbered the aircraft. With letters. So we were allocated DT-O. So now do you want me to go and talk about a couple of trips or something like that?
LD: Oh yes. That would be great. Ok.
[pause]
PJ: The first trip that I’ll talk to you about we were sent somewhere near Saarbrucken. Just us. Just one aircraft and we had to do a patrol there. In other words fly back and forth. So when we got back you were interviewed by the intelligence officer and we told him we had seen vertical vapour trails and he said, ‘What you saw was the new German fighter. The jet engined ME262,’ I think it was called. And he said, ‘Yes. That was the ME 262 that you saw.’ But they found out later that what we were doing, we were monitoring the V-2s. Do you know what a V-2 is?
LD: No.
PJ: It was a rocket. The first few were radio controlled. All the rest were just fuelled up, pointed in the direction of London or where ever they wanted to send it and they were shot up and they would go up into the atmosphere. I forget how high they used to go. Then they would come down, usually on London faster than the speed of sound. They would explode on the ground and then you would hear it come in after it had blown up because it was travelling faster than sound. That was one trip we did. Another trip although we didn’t do it we found out about it. We used to use the two engine aircraft that we had on the station. They used to go down to the Bay of Biscay and monitor a wavelength that the Germans used to send out into the Atlantic so that the U-boats could home in on it and go to the French ports that had the U-boat pens with twelve foot thick concrete roofs. The only bombs that could get through that were the twelve thousand pounders. Anyway, I said, ‘Why have we got to keep monitoring this wavelength?’ ‘Because we use it as well.’ Our submarines and our ships would use it as well. But of course instead of going into the French ports they were quite near home now and they would come up the English Channel or the Bristol Channel whatever. And we had to keep monitoring it because the Germans used to change the wavelength and we had to keep tabs on it to make sure we had the right wavelength all the time. And that’s what the Wellingtons used to do. Some of the Halifaxes used to do it as well. The most important trip I think that we did we were based as I said in Foulsham in Norfolk, up in the corner of Norfolk and we were sent to an Air Force base called Lossiemouth which was right at the very top of Scotland. I don’t know if you know that. It’s right at the top of Scotland and we flew from there under a thousand feet to avoid being picked up by the German radar. We flew over the Arctic Circle and we came to a certain spot. The navigator and the pilot would probably know where this spot was. And at that spot we went up to five thousand feet and by doing that the German battleship the Tirpitz, Germany’s finest battleship, its sister ship called the Bismarck they’d already sunk that but this Tirpitz would put on its radar. But unknown to them we carried a special operator and special equipment that was recording the gaps and the weaknesses in the Tirpitz radar stream. And the reason why there was gaps and weaknesses? It was the lie of the land up in Norway. Steep sided fjords etcetera. And that information then was sent to planning and they sent the Lancasters in to Swedish air space, they rendezvoused at a Swedish lake and flew out and sunk the Tirpitz with twelve thousand pound bombs. That trip took us nine hours five minutes, hence two bloody hearing aids [laughs] excuse that [laughs] and about two and a half thousand gallons of petrol each plane with four planes doing this. And that’s the longest flight I ever did. And I did thirty three trips altogether. End of my story.
LD: Ok.
PJ: Life. Life style.
LD: Thank you very much. That’s very interesting. Thank you. I’ll end it there.
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AJamesPAE170705, PJamesPAE1701
Title
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Interview with Philip James MBE
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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IBCC Digital Archive
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Sound
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eng
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00:31:23 audio recording
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Laura Dixon
Date
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2017-07-05
Description
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Philip James was a valet to Captain Fletcher at Margham Castle before joining the Royal Air Force. At the age of 19 he trained as a flight engineer at RAF St Athan, working on the Halifax. At RAF Dishforth in Yorkshire crews were formed and Philip joined a crew of Canadians. At the Heavy Conversion Unit they were flying Mk1 and Mk2 Halifaxes before being posted to 192 Squadron based in RAF Foulsham, Norfolk, to fly Halifax Mk 3. During his service Philip flew to France, Germany and Norway. When he had a 48 hour leave he would sometimes stay in the Salvation Army Hostel in Norwich or go to the flight engineers section to learn more about the aircraft. The crew also occasionally went to Sheffield, staying in the Albany Hotel and visiting a coal mine and a brewery. Philip recalled a trip near Saarbrücken when they were monitoring the V-2 rocket. He also mentioned a posting to RAF Lossiemouth in Scotland. He had done 33 operations with the squadron. When the war ended Philip worked clearing stations of vehicles to be taken to RAF Grafton Underwood. In 1982 Philip and the navigator, Bert, arranged a reunion in Canada. Philip received the MBE for his work as a welfare officer working with ex RAF personnel for over 40 years.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Canadian Air Force
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Great Britain
England--Norfolk
England--Northamptonshire
England--Yorkshire
Scotland--Moray
Wales--Neath Port Talbot
Wales--Port Talbot
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
England--Norwich
England--Sheffield
France
Germany
Germany--Saarbrücken
Norway
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Sue Smith
Julie Williams
Carolyn Emery
100 Group
192 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
crewing up
First nation
flight engineer
Halifax
Halifax Mk 1
Halifax Mk 2
Halifax Mk 3
Heavy Conversion Unit
RAF Dishforth
RAF Foulsham
RAF Lossiemouth
RAF St Athan
Tirpitz
training
V-2
V-weapon
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/283/3439/AJonesPWA171207.2.mp3
b1161008fdc7ccbc2058d73a7d2e684d
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Title
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Jones, Thomas John
Tom Jones
T Jones
Description
An account of the resource
62 items. An oral history interview with Peter William Arthur Jones (b. 1954) about his father Thomas John Jones DFC (b. 1921, 1640434 and 184141 Royal Air Force), his log book, photographs, correspondence, service documents, aircraft recognition manuals, medals and a memoir. He flew operations as a flight engineer on 622 Squadron Stirling and 7 Squadron on Lancaster. <br /><br />The collection also contains an <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/2566">Album</a> of 129 types of aircraft. <br /><br />The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Peter Jones and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2014-12-04
2017-12-07
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Jones, PW
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today is the 7th of December 2017 and we’re in Lincoln talking with Peter Jones about the career and life of his father Thomas John Jones DFC. I think just first of all it’s interesting to reflect that in this case Peter didn’t elicit much information from his father, which is exactly the same with my father, and also Jan’s, in that they might have touched on trivialities, but they didn’t talk about what actually happened.
PJ: That’s very true.
CB: So Peter, how does that fit with your feeling of the background?
PJ: [Sigh] I feel very sad, that he, that he didn’t talk to me about it, about what he actually did and had to put up with, and when I did find out, I was immensely proud.
CB: I can imagine.
PJ: But also, as I only found out twenty four hours after he had died, it was an absolute maelstrom of emotions, of reading the memoir that he’d written fifty years after the war, secretly late at night, when my mother had gone to bed - I wasn’t living there at the time - and he’d put all his memories in a WH Smith notebook.
CB: Had he, really.
PJ: And when he’d finished them, he just hid them with all his personal papers I guess knowing I would eventually find it, after his death.
CB: What do you think prompted him to write it? What age was he when he wrote it?
PJ: He was in his eighties when he wrote that; he died in 2004. I don’t know, was he trying to exorcise his demons? Was he conscious that he hadn’t been able to tell me what he’d done and how he actually felt about what he’d done? I really don’t know.
CB: He was awarded the DFC.
PJ: He was.
CB: So clearly he’d had some really horrendous experiences which were rewarded. Do you think that it, to some extent, he felt he didn’t want to look as though he was in any way building on the background?
PJ: Yes, I think he did. He was a very modest man; he was a very modest, self-effacing gentleman. He was a lovely dad.
CB: But never got on to anything to do with wartime.
PJ: Only the very light-hearted stuff. [Microphone noise] He would talk about that, I mean he relates various stories of some of the capers the crew got up to, but when it went to operational, no. No details.
CB: What were the most dramatic capers they got up to would you say?
PJ: Um, I’ve got a lovely photograph taken at Mildenhall when he was flying with 622 Squadron and it shows my dad and three or four of the other crewmen dangling one of their colleagues out of a first floor window. By his legs. [Much laughter] I think that would probably be one of many stunts like that in the day, you know, it, obviously it would be quite a safety valve, and they would thrive on the black humour, but it was a lovely photograph.
CB: This is out of context in the sequence, but I think it’s worth just talking about – how do you think they dealt with the stress?
PJ: Certainly black humour. I think everyone deals with stress differently. So, I don’t know. My father was a smoker. When you, I’ve noticed that a lot, so many photographs of airmen back in the day, and airwomen, of course, they’re nearly all smoking. I think they enjoyed going down the pub as well.
CB: I mean we’ll get on to your father in a minute, but you, as the archivist here, are covering a huge range of different situations and they, there are two things that come out of that in a way, one is the release from the stress, and the other is, we’ll touch on later, is the LMF, the lacking moral fibre bit, which comes up but is largely buried, but the release of the stress is a broad one and in practical terms, what was the main safety valve would you say?
PJ: High jinks. I think that it was the high jinks. We at the archive have got so many photographs of, wonderful photographs of crew, both aircrew, ground crew, WAAFs, having a really good time, it was an adventure. They were young people. And when you look at the photographs of them having a good time, and then just look at the, look at the face, and then look at the rank, they really don’t go together. You’ve got a very, very young man or woman, with a very senior rank and again that must have, must have really weighed heavy on their shoulders.
CB: There was a notion, there is still I suppose a notion, that what the war did to people in the RAF, but particularly Bomber Command, was make them grow up really quickly. Do you reckon you see that in some of the pictures that have been submitted?
PJ: Definitely. Yeah. Certainly some of the more senior officers, you can see it in their faces: they’ve aged. They’ve aged. I mean my father when he, in 1944, he was twenty three. He looks older. And I think they did go through the mill, and I think it did age them, certainly mentally and probably physically as well with some, particularly the rear gunners who had to endure such cold. It must have been pretty dreadful.
CB: And constant flight, fright.
PJ: Yes. Of which they never spoke.
CB: No. I mean my CO in the Reserve had a mental breakdown after being chased by a Ju88 and then shot down, and so the stress there was huge. But what would you put down to the fact that almost, very largely, people in all of the Forces failed to talk about their experiences in the war? What do you think was the background of that?
PJ: We’re looking at a different decade, aren’t we. It was the stiff upper lip decade. It was the decade where men feared to shed tears, other than in private. I think that’s got a lot to do with it. I don’t, would they share it with the rest of the crew? I don’t know whether they would. In fact I don’t think they would, share their fears with the rest of the crew.
CB: No. I just get a feeling, having talked to people, that the LMF bit actually destabilised the crew so there was a very good reason for getting rid of them quickly, but if, and if they spoke about it, the crew was destabilised.
PJ: Yup. I think it was a fear of letting the crew down.
CB: That’s it.
PJ: Definitely.
CB: And that’s bombers, so we’ve got wider scopes than that, which is difficult to fathom.
PJ: [Pause] Mm. One of the things that my dad talks about, is a particular incident where, I can’t quite remember the details of it now, the nearest he actually came to being killed, and he actually quotes - this is in a, in his notes that he wrote fifty years after the event - he actually writes in there and describes this event and he describes himself saying, saying aloud, ‘don’t cry when you get the letter, mum’, and then he suddenly realises that he may be on an open mike, and thinks oh, maybe I shouldn’t have said that, but he wasn’t. You know, so I think that’s an example of again, fear of letting the crew down.
CB: Well I think we know, don’t we, that it’s clear from the four engined bombers but also from the, [throat clear] excuse me, two engined bombers, that the crew was the family.
PJ: They were. My dad describes them as being like brothers, rank didn’t matter.
CB: And they superseded all other relationships.
PJ: Indeed. Yeah, yeah. And because of the nature of the role that they were dealing with, they never made friends with other crews. They felt unable to, because they didn’t know how long they would know them for, and no thought was given to who had been in your bunk before you got in it. That must have been quite difficult to deal with.
CB: So in the Nissen huts there were two or three crews, and when one was lost then everything was picked up quickly, for replacement with another crew. Who they didn’t know either.
PJ: No. It must have been a terrible time for the ground crew, who saw so many come and go.
CB: Yes, and on ground crew, there are two aspects to that. One is losing their crew and their aeroplane, the other one is when the aeroplanes come back bent, or with horrors in. So what’s your perception of the ground crew reaction to that?
PJ: Well of course the ground crew always thought that the aircraft was theirs [emphasis], and they loaned it nightly to the aircrew and lo, you know, god help anyone that bent it, you know. But there was a lovely relationship between the flight crew and the ground crew, and I would imagine there was great banter. I know that my father thought the world of the ground crew. I mean they worked on his aircraft in the most appalling [emphasis] conditions sometimes, to keep it in tiptop condition and to keep the aircrew as safe as possible, or as safe as they could possibly be. But the ground crew must have gone through such terrible times, when their aircraft didn’t come back, you know. And it must have been there in the back of their mind that was it something that we missed? It’s terrible times.
CB: And the link between the aircrew and the ground crew would be the pilot and the engineer would it? Or what would be the main link – just the engineer?
PJ: I think pilot and engineer, yeah, but there would be camaraderie with the whole crew. I don’t know whether the ground crew actually were involved with trying to install the rear gunner in his turret because of course they struggled to get in there on their own.
CB: Yes, ‘cause moving on from there is the aftermath of an attack and removing crew who were injured, or dead. What was your perception of that?
PJ: Pretty grisly business. Very often it, I mean the rear gunners’ odds of survival were so few, so low, and it was quite common that the rear turret just had to be hosed out. Pretty unpleasant job.
CB: And the bits taken out as well.
PJ: Yes. One of the early things that my father talks about in his notes was when they first went to Mildenhall and they saw their first operational aircraft, and it was a, if I remember rightly, it was a Stirling, outside the Flying Control and it was absolutely riddled with holes. And as they walked round, round this aircraft, they got to the rear gunner’s turret and it was just a shattered mess of just shattered Perspex and bent metal, with lots of blood in it, and uniform, bits of uniform and hair, it was at this point my father actually quotes in his notes, ‘it was this point we realised we’d got to pay back the cost of our training,’ and it all became very real.
CB: Yes. Let’s just. That’s a good phrase, I think, that’s appeared in many cases, probably, which is the payback, so how did you perceive the crews’ attitude to that?
PJ: They were professionals: they were dedicated. They were airmen, trained. They were young men, it was an adventure, it was a job and they were young men under orders and they would obey those orders.
CB: Hm. And in a way they were completely detached, if they were at twenty thousand feet, that’s four miles above [throat clearing] where the effect of their ammunition, their bombs, is felt.
PJ: Yes, they’re kind of divorced from it.
CB: Detached.
PJ: Yes, all they see is fires, and explosions and then of course the flak, the searchlights, et cetera and the ever-present fear of fighters.
CB: On a slightly lighter note then, there’s if they make a mess inside the aeroplane, there’s a fine attached to this.
PJ: There was. My father actually flew three hundred hours, three hundred flying hours, before he got rid of his air sickness and squadron lore had it, that if you threw up in the aircraft you had to pay a fine to the ground crew and clear it up yourself. He actually, he mentions that his bank account was saved by a member of the ground crew who gave him any empty biscuit tin. [Chortle] I think that’s another reason why he liked ground crew!
CB: Then there’s the other aspect which is the filling of the Elsan, [clears throat] or not. [Laughter]
PJ: Exactly, or not! Yes, I would think so, or not. A filthy piece of kit, back of the aircraft, just near the rear turret which must have been pretty unpleasant for the gunner. They’d use anything rather than have to use the Elsan, including milk bottles or peeing down the flare chute or even into the bomb bay. But you know, it was desperate measures to have to go and use the Elsan.
CB: See how long it was before it froze!
PJ: Not long, at eighteen thousand feet! [Laughter]
CB: Now [throat clear] what about the interpersonal relationships of the crew? How did that work?
PJ: They were, as I’ve said, they were like brothers; rank didn’t matter. However, once they were operational, on an operational flight, it came into play. The rank did matter then and the skipper’s order was to be acted on, there was no messing about, when they were on ops, there was no, there was no overuse of the communications at all. Everything was spot on. They were professionals.
CB: I think one of the interesting things, looking at the log book and your details of the crew, is that they, the pilot was Royal Australian Air Force.
PJ: He was.
CB: And you also had a wireless operator who was the same, but you had two, he had two Royal New Zealand Air Force and two RAF, three RAF Reserve, RAF Volunteer Reserve. So how did that interaction go?
PJ: It seemed, looking at my dad’s notes, it seemed to work really well. There was no, they were a crew and it didn’t matter where they were from or what their backgrounds were. They were a crew.
CB: I’m going to stop just a mo. Now your father did a lot of ops, but we’ve talked about the aircrew, what about the hierarchy? So, there was a Flight Commander and a Squadron Commander, did you get much out of the notes on that, the relationships?
PJ: No, he does, it’s humour, in some of it. He doesn’t talk much about the squadron commanders although he does talk about when he joined 7 Squadron, that they’d just lost their CO on operational flying. He was replaced and within a fortnight the replacement had gone; had been killed as well.
CB: This is a Pathfinder Squadron.
PJ: This is 7 Squadron at RAF Oakington, yeah. Thinking that, looking back you think was the policy of the squadron CO flying ops a good one? You have to question it really, don’t you. It can’t have done the morale any good, when the boss cops it.
CB: Well presumably the Flight Commanders were Squadron Leaders and the Squadron Commander, ‘cause there’d be thirty aircraft, would be a Wing Commander, would that be right?
PJ: Yes. The quote that my father gives it was three Wing Commanders that were lost.
CB: Oh was it? Oh, I see. In sequence.
PJ: In sequence, yes.
CB: Any indication of whether the Station Commander flew with them occasionally, because Group Captains did sometimes.
PJ: Um, in his logbook there is one: Lockhart. He was, he flew, my father was Lockhart’s flight engineer for one op, other than that it was Fred Philips, DFC and Bar, who was my father’s pilot.
CB: I mentioned earlier the topic of LMF – the lacking moral fibre - did he, in his notes in any way refer to that, either by experience or hearsay?
PJ: He did. And he speaks, and he speaks with warmth about those that just had reached the end of their tether and couldn’t do it any more, and he says he felt sorry for them, but they were still airmen; they weren’t to be ridiculed.
CB: Any indication of their fate, fates?
PJ: Nope. No.
CB: Just stop a mo. I think, in restarting, it’s worth just exploring a couple of things and putting it into context. A lot of these things are written up and in this case there’s a lot from Thomas’ recollections, but the key is the being able to listen to the narrative that you’re delivering. And there are two topics: one’s LMF and the other is the Guinea Pigs. So on LMF, what’s he say there in his report? Notes.
PJ: In his notes he writes a paragraph about LMF in it and he writes: ‘some unfortunates, through no fault of their own, reach the point where they can no longer carry on. Irrespective of how many ops they’d completed, they were deemed lacking in moral fibre. I never knew or heard of any member of aircrew that had anything but sympathy for them.’ And I think, I would like to hope that was a general feeling amongst the airmen, they had reached a point where they couldn’t go on.
CB: Yeah. For whatever reason.
PJ: For whatever reason, yeah.
CB: What do you know about their fate, after they were removed?
PJ: He doesn’t mention a fate at all, he doesn’t mention it.
CB: Okay. And then the people who were badly injured, burned or amputees, what’s he got on that?
PJ: He says, ‘I remember some of the lads who had a tough time: the empty sleeves and trouser legs of the amputees, there were lads with no faces, noses and ears no more than shrivelled buttons, and heavy, newly grafted eyelids, their mouths were little more than slits in a face rebuilt with shining tightly stretched skin grafts, some had hands shrivelled and clawed like eagles talons. They sought no sympathy or favours, but carried on doing a job they could manage. When they went drinking with us, their laughter was as hearty as ever, their spirits unbroken,’ I’m sorry.
CB: It’s all right, we’ll stop. They carried on doing the job they were trained to do.
PJ: Yeah. And he goes on to say when they went drinking with us, their laughter was as hearty as ever, their spirits unbroken and no sign of bitterness. I do find it very difficult to read some of my father’s notes. Even though it’s now, what, thirteen years since he died.
CB: But it’s intensely personal for you.
PJ: Very.
CB: Which it was for all these individuals.
PJ: The notes that he wrote, he wrote in the first person, so it is as though he’s actually speaking to me from the page. Which he is.
CB: Of course, yes.
PJ: That was his idea.
CB: Well the Guinea Pigs, we’re talking about partly there, of course, we’ve interviewed as a group of people, I’m sure we’ve interviewed a number of those, and seen the effects of them and even these years later, some of them brilliantly mended shall we say, but always obvious that they’ve been injured in one way or the other, and McIndoe did an amazing job.
PJ: Fabulous man. And his team.
CB: And of course, there is now, indeed, not just him. There is actually a museum, isn’t there, down in East Grinstead now.
PJ: Yes, I really must go.
CB: In the County Museum, in the Town Museum, and there’s a memorial as well of course. There aren’t many left, but there were six hundred and fifty, in total.
PJ: Yes, it’s sad that we are losing so many of our ladies and gents now.
CB: Shall we now go specifically on to your father’s situation. Here, if we start with earliest information about him. So, he was born in 1921.
PJ: He was.
CB: In Birmingham, is that right?
PJ: Yeah. He was born on the 19th of April, 1921, at 35 Wrentham Street in Birmingham 1, right in the very city centre of Birmingham. The house that he was born in was a back-to-back property on three floors, and a cellar. I think now we would class these properties as slums; they were dreadful places. On the ground floor was a living room and a small scullery, the bedroom above was where his parents slept and then the bedroom above that was where the children were. My dad was one of three. They were, Edna was his, his older sister, and she had a bed of her own, whereas Dad and Ron, his brother, shared a bed. He would talk to me about these sort of things, and he always said that it was cold, bitterly cold, in winter, and they would snuggle up together and there were times when they actually had to sleep under coats. Another thing he would talk about was the fact that it was shared facilities for houses and I think it was six families shared two toilets, which would have made mornings rather interesting, I think.
CB: Out in the garden this is.
PJ: Out in the yard. Yes.
CB: In the yard.
PJ: My father’s parents were William Jones, and Amy Jones, neé Roberts. His father had served with, in the trenches in the First World War, but after the war he became a metal presser. His mother, obviously my grandmother, was a housewife. The family before my dad was of school age, thankfully moved south to Hall Green, which is quite a nice, leafy suburb, and certainly things got better for them down there and he went to, I think it was Pitmaston Road School, and he actually says in his notes that he rather liked school and, but I don’t know what age he was when he left school. I know certainly that he, when he left school he started an apprenticeship with the BSA, in Small Heath, in Birmingham.
CB: Well school leaving age in those days was fourteen wasn’t it, so apprenticeships tended to pick up from there.
PJ: Yeah. When war broke out he was too young to enlist, really. He joined the Home Guard, but I don’t know a lot about that, and I think he was determined to serve, because he was just fed up with sitting at night in the air raid shelter and watching his city burn. He describes in his notes how Edna would sob in, at the very back end of the shelter, frightened as, frightened stiff, as the bombs whistled down. But he was always the boy in the doorway, watching what was going on. Eventually he applied for service, and he applied for service in the Royal Air Force. Why he chose the Royal Air Force I don’t know. Was it the nice uniform? Was it the chance of flying? Why didn’t he choose the army? I think possibly why he didn’t fancy the army was because his father and his grandfather had both served in the army. His dad had served in the trenches and Walter, his, my father’s grandfather, had been out in the Boer War so maybe he’d heard grisly stories about life in the army, on the front line. One memory that I have of my dad when I was growing up, was that he wasn’t a good sailor. In the 1950s and 60s we would go on holiday to the East Yorkshire coast, or the East Riding coast as it was then, and we’d go to Bridlington, and during the holiday it would always, there would always be a cruise on the Yorkshire Bell or whatever the other ones were called, in Flamborough Bay, and I remember my father was always very quiet and rather green around the gills, [chuckle] so I think that was probably the reason he didn’t volunteer for naval duties. Um, I think, I need to go through his log book, but I’m pretty sure he went to Cardington first, in September ‘42 for aircrew selection. And interestingly, when I got hold of his service record, he was turned down - for aircrew - and I think he must have been pretty, pretty brassed off about that. What changed their mind, I really don’t know, because he ended up as aircrew and successfully carried out sixty four ops with main force and Pathfinder Force, so something must have impressed them. I think I have a very vague memory of my dad talking about the flight engineer’s position on Stirlings, which is the aircraft that he started on, as being very poky. My dad was five foot one, so maybe they changed their mind because they wanted small flight engineers! I’d rather think that they saw his potential rather than his size [laughter]. But I guess, like all of the trades, they needed engineers and here was an enthusiastic young feller who wanted to fly. Anyway, from Cardington he was posted to Padgate for his induction and that’s where he was issued with his service number, and like all servicemen it was a number he would never, ever forget. From Padgate he went to the Initial Training Wing, 42 ITW, at Redcar up on Teesside, and there he was billeted with Mrs Thatcher on Richmond Road, Redcar for six weeks and he talks about the capers he got up to with Ken Battersby and Chaz Curle, but most of all he remembers how icy cold it was doing drill on the sea front with the howling north, north wind and the spray from the North Sea. Must be pretty unpleasant. But anyway, he got through that. In December ’42 he then went to RAF Cosford, and there he, a quote from RAF Cosford, he actually said, ‘everything involved muck and mud down there.’ He says that in the first week of every entry it was spent on fatigues, peeling four foot high piles of vegetables and after every meal the floors and tables of the huge dining hall had to be cleared and polished. There was also guard duty but they didn’t mind it because everybody else had to do it. I suppose they’d all gripe but it had to be done, it’s just how it was. From there he went to start his engineering course at St Athan, by this time he was what, twenty two. I’ve got a lovely photograph of him at the age of twenty two, taken at St Athan, where he looks like a very, very young sergeant. He was a natural engineer. It never left him, he was a perfectionist in everything he did in later life. He drove my mother batty because he was plan, plan and then do, whereas my mother wanted plan – do, or just do. [Laughter] But he was a great planner. He was a perfectionist in everything he did. I think that comes from his RAF training and it was instilled in him how important it was. A lot of the people that he’d been at Redcar with were also at St Athan and he writes, most of the lads that had been on the ITW were at St Athan. He records in his memoir lots of names, Tommy Meehan, MacMeehan, John Mullins, Jimmy Cruickshank, Albert Stocker, Arnold Hurn, Jack Walker and John Gartland. And that they would be killed. Taffy Lightfoot and Roy Eames would go down over Bremen and that Billy Currie was shot down whilst still training. It was pretty terrible, and it was a relatively small group to start with, at the ITW, that so many would be killed, and so quickly. From there he went to 1657 Heavy Conversion Unit at Stradishall, and it was here that he experienced his first flight in a Stirling. He’d never been higher than a first floor window in his life and he really didn’t know how he was going to cope with it. And his description, I think, of his first flight is fabulous. It’s just something that you don’t think about unless you’ve done it yourself, in an aircraft of that generation, which sadly I haven’t but would love to. And he describes taxying to the runway and, ‘hesitating for a few seconds before beginning the mad dash to the other end and how the aircraft’s thirty tons lifted off the runway and it promptly began to sway from side to side and up and down. Looking back down the fuse, the wings actually flapped, the huge engine appeared to be nodding in unison, looking back down the fuselage the whole structure was twisting back and forth,’ and he says that the height didn’t bother him but after ten minutes the motion caused him to be sick and here he says it took three hundred flying hours before the airsickness settled down. Quite remarkable. I can’t imagine flying in an aircraft that’s doing that, but. It was at Stradishall that he was crewed up, and it was the same process that they all went through: all met up bumbling around in a hangar and sort of someone would come up and say fancy being my flight engineer or I need a rear gunner, and it’s a kind of odd way of doing things; but it worked! You know. I think it’s quite remarkable that a skipper could have, I don’t know, almost a special sense of who he’s choosing and certainly with Fred Philips’ crew, they gelled straight away. I mean the crew was Fred Philips who would become, was awarded DFC before he was twenty one and was awarded Bar before he was twenty two. He was an insurance clerk from Punchbowl, Sydney. Dave Goodwin was a New Zealander, he was the navigator, another Kiwi was Clive Thurstan who was initially bomb aimer, and he had an interesting nickname: he was known as Thirsty Thurston - I wonder why! The wireless operator was an Australian, called Stan Williamson. Ron Wynn who was RAFVR was the mid upper gunner, he was from Stockport. Joe Naylor, again RAFVR was the rear gunner, and interesting he was known by everyone, sorry, it was John Naylor, and he was known by everyone as Joe, or maybe I’ve got that the wrong way round and they did their first flight together on the 29th of September 1943. I can’t imagine what it was, what it would feel like, I really can’t. But having read the memoir, they became instantly, a crew, and gelled as a crew, immediately. And it was after thirty four flying hours at Stradishall that they were declared fit for operations and as I said earlier, that was when it suddenly became very real. On the 2nd of September ’43 they joined 622 Squadron at Mildenhall. They were flying Stirlings. The squadron converted to Lancasters in November ‘43. That’s where his log book starts to get very interesting. Whereas he’d logged his operations in quite detail with additional information added after the op, I think later on. He’s quite detailed, he notes targets and also notes the, sometimes notes, tonnage of bombs and the aircraft that took place and the losses. Having looked through a lot of log books they are all very different. They’re all of the same format, but every airman had his own way of putting things in. I love the fact that you rarely, rarely see a scrappy log book: the writing is almost identical in them all. Whether it was something that was taught at school, or whether it was something that was taught during their training, that they all seemed to have the same handwriting. They’re beautifully readable and they are fascinating books to look through. His first op was a gardening op, a minelaying op, on Skaggerat and he mentions that they had an extra man, for gardening ops, they had a naval, a member of the Royal Navy that would arm the mines before they were dropped and then it just goes on with I think, next we’ve got two ops to Hanover, the first of which they had to turn back due to engine failure, and then it was gardening again, but this time at Kattegat. And just, it’s not intense, the flying, really, right, having said that, I’ve just turned the page, [paper shuffling] and I’ve gone the wrong way round. Er, yup. He’s going to Ludwigshafen, Berlin, Berlin, Stuttgart, Schweinfurt, Stuttgart again. His last op with 622 was on the 1st of March, the Stuttgart. And it was there that they, went, after that they went to Warboys and this is where they each learned a little bit of each other’s role so that should anything happen someone else would be able to carry out your role and not let the crew down and hopefully get home.
CB: Now Warboys was the night flying unit, so what were they there to do?
PJ: A lot of it was circuits and landings, obviously like the initial training but they were learning night navigation I believe as well, using a bubble sextant and things like that and that was the second sort of hat that my father wore. That he, he learned to do the, now what is it called, the navigating via the stars?
CB: The star shots.
PJ: Star shots, thank you. Yes. It was after that, that on the 4th of April 1944 they transferred to 7 Squadron, Pathfinder Force, at RAF Oakington in Cambridgeshire. Their ops started on the 9th of April with an attack on the railway yards in Lisle. This was ’44, so a lot of the ops here are French. This was running up to D-Day, and interspersed with German ops as well, but there’s an awful lot of operational flying on Normandy. [Paper shuffling]. Get these the right way round. On the 1st of July they start doing day ops, or daylight operations again it’s all French and they’re hitting communications, flying bomb sites, railway yards, oil plants and then he goes night flying again, over Germany, and then it’s back to France. Interestingly some of these ops they were flying two ops a day. On the 18th of July ’44 they did a French op, a flying bomb site, flying three hours fifteen minutes in the morning, then at night they were up again for three hours thirty five minutes attacking an oil plant in France. A lot of these French ops now in July, Fred Philips had been promoted to Master Bomber with 7 Squadron, so I guess it would have been even more intense with the crew than it had been in the past because I guess they weren’t dropping bombs and markers then scarpering: they had to hang around. Must have been pretty stressful. Going on to again, July. On the 30th of July, my dad’s log book shows that they were bombing the Normandy battle area. That’s followed by more flying bomb sites. On the 6th of August they were observing the artillery firing, 7th of August it was the Normandy battle area again, and it was the enemy strong points were being bombed, back to oil depots and then fuel dumps. The 12th of August 1944 there were two ops: in the day it was a fuel dump, four hours five minutes, and then in the evening they were stemming the enemy retreat. Then it’s back to flying bomb sites on a daytime raid. 29th of August 1944 was the longest flight that they ever did, and that was to Stettin in Poland, a total of nine hours and ten minutes, and my dad refers to this op in his notes by saying that it was the coldest he had ever been on an op and he felt so sorry for the rear gunner, because my father was in a heated cockpit and of course there was little heating for the rear gunner and of course many of them had a clear vision panel although they punched the panel out to see, so he must have been incredibly [emphasis] cold on that raid.
CB: Just before you go on from there, in his notes, what does he say about the bombing of the V1 and V2 sites, because they were difficult a to find and b to actually hit?
PJ: He doesn’t actually mention them, he doesn’t say much about them. It’s all in his log book with just a little note, he doesn’t actually describe physically attacking the V1 and V2 sites, and most of his descriptions are of Berlin and the Ruhr, which were of course the bread and butter targets, and nasty targets as well.
CB: Yes, so how did he feel, in his notes, about Berlin?
PJ: Like them all, he hated it. It was the big city. It was the place that Hitler did not [emphasis] want hit, but.
CB: So what was the significance of them being an unpleasant place to go? Was it more flak, was it fighters or combination of both?
PJ: It was a combination of both. I mean Berlin had massive, massive flak towers didn’t they, and the flak was intense. Um, he describes the noise when the curtain went back, in the briefing, when they followed the red line and at the end of the red line was Berlin and he just describes it was a loud groan. Really, no one wanted to go to the big city.
CB: So as the Pathfinder, now on 7 Squadron, the most accomplished ones would drop the reds, the newer ones would drop the greens, if Fred Phillips became the Master Bomber did that mean they ended up dropping reds?
PJ: Er, I don’t know, he doesn’t describe that. He does remember graphically being extremely uncomfortable circling the target for so long, on an open radio, you know, and he was very aware that they were the sitting duck, the aircraft that had to be shot down.
CB: And what height would they be flying then? Does he give any indication of that?
PJ: He talks about eighteen thousand feet. Whether they dropped for the target, I don’t know. He does describe flying over enemy territory at ten thousand feet, when they were, they’d been severely shot up over the target and they experienced severe [emphasis] airframe icing and the only way that they could gain height was to make the, was to jettison anything and they ended up throwing out all of the ammunition and the guns and they flew back to the UK at ten thousand feet, over enemy territory. Eventually, there was no way they were going to get back to Cambridgeshire, so they diverted to the first airfield available which was West Malling in Kent, fighter station, and ran out of fuel and piled into the runway. They wrote the aircraft off completely. And he describes having to get back to Oakington, from Kent to Cambridgeshire, on the train, in flying gear. [Laughter] There was no taxi in those days. No, but that was just one of the dodgy moments he had.
CB: Did the aircraft become unserviceable or a write off because he landed without undercarriage, or what happened exactly?
PJ: He doesn’t go into great detail, but it was written off, completely written off. I don’t know at the time whether West Malling had a concrete runway or whether it was still grass, I don’t know. But I can’t imagine the CO of West Malling being impressed as a Lancaster drops in very heavily. But they got away with it. They were, at Oakington, Fred Philips’ crew were known as the lucky crew. They’d been flying on a lot of ops by then and they were probably seen as one of the more senior crews on station and they were invariably late back, and usually peppered with holes and my dad describes in his notes, once, the fact that they were so late back that he later discovered they’d been written off and marked up as missing and he describes how they eventually landed and they were debriefed and then they went into the dining hall for their post-operational bacon and eggs and he said there was one of the, there was a WAAF in there and soon as they walked there in she burst into tears.
CB: And the relationship with the WAAFs, was that regular or how did it pan out?
PJ: I think it was, yeah, again, they had great respect for the WAAFs and many a young amorous airman could be put down by just one stare from them [chuckle].
CB: Does he make any comment, it’s an interesting point though I think, about the experience of the WAAFS who had relationships with the aircrew and constantly losing that person?
PJ: He doesn’t mention it, but I’m aware that it must have been very difficult. And I mean some of the poor girls got the reputation as being the chop girl because they’d lost so many boyfriends, or well, airmen who they’d had relationships with, and they got this dreadful reputation and that must have been really hard to live with.
CB: Absolutely.
PJ: And yet there are so many lovely stories about the relationship between the aircrew and the WAAFs. Stevie Stevens’ story is absolutely fantastic, in that, I can’t remember where he was flying from, he, he really enjoyed, loved the sound of the WAAF controller’s voice and then she suddenly just disappeared off the radio and she was never heard of again at that station. I think it was Scampton that he moved to and lo and behold, there it was, the same voice as he was requesting permission to land and he was so intrigued by this WAAF’s voice that he actually went to the Control Tower to see who she was and of course the upshot of that was that they married!
CB: Never looked back.
PJ: Never looked back and are still happily married to this day. Yeah. Some lovely stories.
CB: I think one of the interesting ones that emerged from interviews is the occasions where the WAAFs lined up at the end of the runway to wave off. Does he refer to that in any way?
PJ: He does. Yeah, he does, he said there would be a row of them, or a row of people on the Control Tower balcony and there would be, and he said invariably there would be, I think he calls it a gaggle of WAAFs, that would wave their handkerchiefs to them, but another person that he talks about was a little girl and he talks about this, a family that lived next to the perimeter track in a farm cottage, and he describes how the squadron would taxi round the perimeter tracks from their various dispersals, describing, and he described the aircraft as being like a row of ducks and he said just this roar and spit and hiss of brakes and he said there was this little blonde girl would appear at the back, at the garden gate, every time there was an aircraft on the perimeter track and she would wave to them, every evening. And he said without fail each aircraft that passed this little girl, the crew would wave back and the gunners would dip their guns at this little girl and he said he would love to know who she was, and after my father died I was researching his notes and I found out who she was.
CB: Did you?
PJ: Her name was Clara Doggert, if my memory serves me right, but sadly she died, but it would have been so nice to have met this lady.
CB: Yes. On a lighter note, looking at the log book, [bump on microphone] I think it’s quite interesting to see the entry that says NFT – Night Flying Test - and the timing. What do you know about the choice of timing?
PJ: Um, I hadn’t spotted that one.
CB: So the idea is that you take off at twenty three hundred hours, and you do your night flying test which takes an hour and ten minutes and why is that?
PJ: I think it would be because they would get their breakfast?
CB: They would get their fry up! [Laughter]
PJ: Good for them!
CB: After midnight! And I think this is one of the intriguing things there. I mean on ops obviously they were coming back because they were flying at night, but to do the night flying test.
PJ: They had a cunning plan!
CB: Yeah! Some of them had to be in the day so that didn’t work. Same title, but different time.
PJ: Yes. I think they’d become a pretty savvy crew by then, knew how things worked.
CB: So how many ops had they done when the crew left 7 Squadron?
PJ: Sixty four.
CB: Oh, right.
PJ: They had, by then they had an extra crew member because Fred was Master Bomber so they had a specialist map reader, of course H2S had come along by then so they were an eight man crew. The eighth man was a guy called Steve Harper who hadn’t done as many ops as the rest of them, so when the crew split up he wasn’t tour expired, and Steve kept on flying with 7 Squadron for a bit longer and he was very, very seriously injured by flak on an op. He survived, but he was seriously injured. Their favourite aircraft was PA964 and in less than a month after them, the crew splitting up, the aircraft was shot down and the entire crew were held then, as POWs. So the name ‘Lucky Crew’ was pretty apt. They got away with it. They never saw each other again.
CB: Didn’t they?
PJ: A couple of the Australians and the New Zealanders did, but the RAFVR chaps didn’t. And in my dad’s notes he does actually mention that and he asks the question, would I want to meet them again, and he actually makes the point of saying no. And the reason he wouldn’t want to meet them again, because he wants to remember them as being young men. He doesn’t want to see a load of old men, he wants to remember them as, how they were.
CB: I think that’s a really telling sentiment, as to why some people don’t want to open up about what they’ve done: it’s a memory that’s hurtful, in some ways, it’s pleasurable in others. But there’s a mixture of emotions, isn’t there.
PJ: But there is, and again in his notes, he hints [emphasis] at the, the difficulty he had with the number of civilians and children that were killed. I think he took comfort from being, with his role as a Pathfinder, that he was marking targets as accurately as possible to cut down on the losses, but he was, I think one of the reasons he couldn’t talk about it, were the civilian losses.
CB: Any reflection on the British civilian losses being on the opposite, receiving end?
PJ: No. The only thing he mentions in his notes is the, when he was a teenager in the air raid shelter and he also mentions walking from Hall Green to Small Heath one morning after an op the night before, after a raid the night before on Birmingham, and he actually mentions being fascinated by the effect of the bombing: that one house was a shell and yet the house next door was perfectly okay. One had no windows, the other one was intact, with an alarm clock still ticking in the window, and he describes a double decker bus, sitting on its nose, in the middle of the road. And he just describes this as being absolutely fascinating in an horrific way, and he couldn’t, just couldn’t work out why it wasn’t all flat and yet why would one building remain intact, as though it’d not been touched at all and yet the one next door was completely devastated.
CB: Just on that tack, what do we know about the composition of the German bomb load, in dropping bombs on Britain.
PJ: Well they were using twin-engined aircraft and certainly the bomb load that was dropped on this country was far less than was delivered to Germany.
CB: I was thinking of the composition of the load itself. So they’ve got high explosive and they’ve got incendiary. Because the RAF learned from that.
PJ: Yes, um, it was the incendiary that would cause the, the devastating fires, then you had also, certainly from an RAF perspective, specialist bombs for, that were used on specific targets. Like the Grand Slams, et cetera.
CB: Had father got to the stage of dropping those as well?
PJ: No. No, by the end, by the time he was on Pathfinders he was mostly dropping markers with a basic payload as well.
CB: ‘Cause his job was to make a mark, marking.
PJ: Yes. Primary job was to mark, mark turning points and targets for main force.
CB: So at the end of the tour, tours, two tours, effectively.
PJ: Two tours.
CB: What did he do then?
PJ: When he left, when he left Oakington, I think, I’m sure he went to Northern Ireland to, er, looking at.
CB: To Nutts Corner.
PJ: To Nutts Corner, 1332 Heavy Conversion Unit, and he was there from the 28th of December ’44 to April ’45. One of the things that he talks about is the warmth of the people of Northern Ireland. And he describes that when he arrived in Belfast he was kind of adopted by a family and given a late Christmas lunch by this family because he was a young lad; you know, sort of, he wasn’t that young by then, but he was so far from home, from his, from Birmingham. 1332 Heavy Conversion Unit moved to Riccall in the East Riding of Yorkshire. It was an airfield to the south of York and just sort of north of Selby, and as a teenager I used to cycle out there and it was all still there, which was wonderful, knowing that my dad had served there, but that’s, I digress, and it was whilst he was serving at Riccall – he was the adjutant of the Engineering School there - he went to a dance in Selby, which was a little market town, and the dance was at Christy’s Ballroom, above a shirt factory, of all things, which I think was how they were in the day, and he met the girl who would become my mother. And she was a farm worker’s daughter, who was at the time working in service, as a maid for a quite a wealthy timber family that ran a wealthy timber business and actually where she was living at the time, working, was on the perimeter track of RAF Burn and later my mother would tell me how, as a young working maid, she would also go to the bottom of the garden, in the evenings. But anyway, my dad would cycle to Burn or to Hamilton, where my mother’s home was, and that’s four miles south of Selby, on his service bicycle. That wasn’t too bad, but then 1332 HCU moved to Dishforth and his weekly trips then were a hundred and twelve miles, on a service bicycle, in all weathers. I guess he was in love! [Laugh] Mad fool!
CB: Amazing what motivation there can be in that! What were they flying, 1332, that was a Heavy Conversion Unit, but.
PJ: Initially, they were on, at the time they had a mixture, I think, of Lancasters B24s, certainly the last aircraft my father flew in was B24.
CB: But what was their role? It wasn’t bombing.
PJ: I think, I think they’d gone over to transport by then, or certainly they were heading that way. But when his time was up at Riccall he went to Bramcoats, and there he was the Station Armaments Officer, and this is where his RAF career is kind of taking a spiral because he’s not flying, he hates it. He really [emphasis] wanted to stay in the RAF and pursue a flying career but my mother wasn’t having any of it, so that was the end of his dream of serving round the world and spending his days flying. From Bramcoats he ended up going to Uxbridge and after a medical and signing lots of papers he was given a cardboard box with a suit and hat in it. And he was demobbed.
CB: When was that?
PJ: Oh, I think ’46, I think. I’d need to look at the log book. But my parents married in February ‘46.
CB: And he was still in the RAF then.
PJ: Yes. His wedding photograph is in uniform.
CB: How did he feel about moving from operations, which were very intense and specific, in terms of being a Pathfinder Force, to an OC, to an HCU? What did he feel about that in his notes?
PJ: Um, I wouldn’t say he was bored. But -
CB: Frustrated?
PJ: Yes, frustrated probably. He did have the odd bit of excitement. I mean he talks about [bumps on microphone] one particular incident at Nutts Corner where he was a flight engineer for a young Canadian pilot. He said that this young Canadian was a flying boat pilot and he said lovely chap, really eager, and loved it, he said they were on final approach to Nutts Corner and my father kept looking at this pilot and the pilot kept nodding excitedly much as ‘I’m doing all right aren’t I’, and my father looked at him again and then looked down at the switch gear and looked at him again, and my father just gently leaned over and pushed the full throttles wide open to force an overshoot because he’d forgotten to put the undercarriage down! So the eager Canadian airman was having too much of a good time. Apparently his expression was one of hang dog!
CB: This was on a Stirling?
PJ: Yes, er no, it was a Lancaster actually. Because of course he wouldn’t have been on flight deck for a, with a Stirling. Yes, I can imagine the poor Canadian’s face. He thought he was doing really, really well.
CB: Amazing!
PJ: But I think he was disillusioned, my father was disillusioned: he didn’t want to be on the ground, he wanted to be in the air.
CB: So when he left the RAF, what did he do?
PJ: I really don’t know. As I say, my parents married in February ‘46 and initially they moved to Birmingham and also to Bath because my grandparents, my maternal grandparents lived in Bath for a very short time and then moved back to Birmingham, and then my parents ended up settling down in Selby and my father started working for John Roster and Son which was a paper mill. They were a Manchester based paper company and they had a satellite factory in Selby, and he worked there for years [emphasis]. I came along in 1954 and as I was growing up I remember that my dad was hardly ever at home. He, for years and years and years he worked six and a half days a week and he would always cycle to work and he cycled to work in all weathers, and I can still see him in winter with his RAF greatcoat with plastic buttons on it, he’d taken the brass buttons off, and he used his old gas mask, service gas mask bag, for his backup and there’s a really endearing image I have of him, cycling off in his greatcoat. Um, having said that he was never there, when he was there, he was a great dad. He always had time to read stories to me, and we would read things like the usual 1960s classics that every little boy read: Moby Dick and Treasure Island et cetera, and I have lovely memories of him reading those. Again, going back to his practicality, he used to build me all sorts. He made stations and tunnels. He made the tunnels out of paper pulp, from the paper factory, from the paper mill. So I always had a really good train set.
CB: A type of papier maché.
PJ: An early type of papier maché. Yes. It was very smelly as well!
CB: He worked as an engineer, presumably, at the paper mill.
PJ: He did, he did. Yeah, and he was there until I was in my teens and of course I changed from junior school. He was brilliantly supportive with my homework and he would spend hours helping me with homework and I remember one for some reason I was struggling with the coffee trade in Kenya and I now can’t forget it and he just sat down and we just went over it. He was an incredibly skilled artist - self taught - and sadly I never inherited those genes, although my daughter has. He produced some fabulous sketches.
CB: Amazing!
PJ: And watercolour paintings. [Paper shuffling]
CB: [Indecipherable] in 1979. Amazing, yes.
PJ: He started from nothing with his art, you know. He just used to doodle and then he just got better and better and better. An example I’ve got here today is the, this, his lionesses head and it’s incredibly [emphasis] detailed isn’t it, you can almost see every hair.
CB: Yes. As an engineer did he go into design engineering as well do you think?
PJ: I don’t think so, I don’t think so. I think he was possibly a bit of an innovator, when problems arose, which of course he would have had to have been back in the war, he would have had to have been very self reliant and that carried on with him. He became a model maker as well, and he produced a model that I still have at home that sits in my sitting room and it’s a twin engined compound engine. Stationary steam engine.
CB: Oh really!
PJ: And it works. It probably, well it worked. It probably doesn’t any more because I haven’t kept it serviced. But it has pride of place.
CB: Brilliant.
PJ: Yeah, it’s a lovely thing.
CB: So, you were a teenager when he left the paper mill. What did he do then?
PJ: He got a job as a maintenance fitter at Danepak Bacon, in Selby, and it was then that he actually started to only work five days a week, which you know, I suppose was luxury, really, but sadly he didn’t work there for a very long time because he was, the company got into difficulties and he was eventually made redundant. I think that [emphasis] had a big effect on him [pause] and after his redundancy he never had a job again, and he was made redundant before [emphasis] retirement age.
CB: So what messages did you get from his [emphasis] experiences and advice as to what career you would follow?
PJ: He wanted me to go in the RAF, and follow his footsteps, but I didn’t. [Laugh] My mother didn’t want me to. So I headed off in a different direction altogether.
CB: What did you do?
PJ: I went into acute healthcare. Well after a while, I went into acute healthcare. I had numerous, numerous sort of jobs first. Nothing too serious.
CB: Did you have some kind of vision of what your career was to be?
PJ: Initially no, not at all and then I met up with a few people who were working in healthcare and I thought yeah, that sounds interesting.
CB: So what did that involve?
PJ: It involved a thirty four year career working with anaesthetics and airway management.
CB: Tell us more.
PJ: I trained as an operating department practitioner and specialised in anaesthetic support and ended up working mostly with emergency patients. I specialised in emergency work in the end.
CB: Doing what exactly?
PJ: It was airway management. I used to work in, I was based in operating theatres but I worked in Intensive Care Units and then the resus rooms in A and E departments. It was the A and E work that I really did love. I worked all over the country. I started in Kettering and from Kettering I went to, um, where did I go from Kettering? To East Surrey Hospital in Redhill, then I went up to London and worked at Moorfields Eye Hospital, the Western Ophthalmic Hospital, Great Ormond Street. Then I worked in the St Mary’s Group, which was St Mary’s in Paddington, Mary’s West 2, St Giles West 10, Samaritan Hospital for Women, and then I got a little bit disillusioned with living in London, or maybe it was my then girlfriend who got disillusioned and wanted to move. So I got a job in Lincoln and a month later my then girlfriend who would be my wife and now my ex-wife [laugh] followed and I moved up here to Lincoln in 1987 and I’ve been here ever since. I took early retirement in June, July 2012 because I was just so disillusioned with how the NHS management worked, messing things up, and I really didn’t want to be part of it any more. I had two years where I didn’t do anything, really, and I saw a post, I think it was on the internet or something like that, about the International Bomber Command Centre and I read this post and thought that sounds really interesting. And lo and behold it was based in Lincolnshire, and so they were looking out for volunteers. So I thought well, I spent two years sitting on my bottom doing next to nothing, or once a week walking up the pub and I could be doing something a little bit more worthwhile and something that would reflect what my late father had been doing and I started on the project as a data checker. I was working with the, with Dave Gilbert who was doing a fabulous job recording at the losses and it was one of my jobs to check the accuracy of the information against the data and make sure that what was going to be put on the IBCC records was accurate. And it was fascinating but shocking, as well, going through the losses and looking at the ages of those that had been lost and also looking at the fact that an awful lot of those aircrew that had been lost were lost in training before they’d even got on the squadrons, and I was really shocked because I was, at the time, I’d been given a whole load of Canadian names, I’d been given about a hundred and fifty Canadian names, and the losses in training were higher that the loss, operational losses, for this particular group of airmen, and I thought, and I’m thinking where are these poor sods remembered. They’re not. Not really. There’s the odd little memorial in a hedge bottom, somewhere, which I think are wonderful, but there were so many lost in training that aren’t recorded. They’re not in Chorley. Mind you, Chorley was the record of the aircraft not the crew, wasn’t it.
CB: Absolutely.
PJ: And this is one of the reasons why I got so hooked on the project, and I think it was in January 2015 I had a phone call from the Bourne office asking me if I’d like to come on board as a paid member of staff, to work on the archive, and I bit their hand off. We were based initially at Witham House on the University of Lincoln’s campus. We were in a portacabin which I think my colleague describes as the nearest thing the university had to a Nissen hut, at the time.
CB: We remember.
PJ: You remember it well, [laugh] with the flexi floor, but in August 2015 we moved off the main university campus out to University of Lincoln’s Riseholme Campus, which is where we are today, and we work in the most beautiful country house and I think it just lends itself so, so nicely to the project. It looks, I [emphasis] think it looks like a Group Headquarters and when I first saw it I thought, yeah, I want to work there. But there are two things missing on that house: it doesn’t have a flagpole and it doesn’t have an RAF Ensign fluttering from the top of it. But um, beautiful house. Beautiful grounds and I am very fortunate that I’m now working with a fabulous group of people. Working with some amazing [emphasis] facts, figures, and dealing with amazing stories and artefacts and literally every day is like Christmas Day, when I open the post I have no idea what’s going to come through the door. But it’s also every day is an emotional rollercoaster, you go from the Christmas Day of opening a parcel and seeing these amazing artefacts and these wonderful memories that are sent in, or I’m listening to other recordings of fabulous stories, or heartbreaking stories that come through and it’s those stories and reading the letters, that a young airman wrote, hoping that no one would ever have to read it and of course I’m reading it because his parents did. And I remember reading one of those, it was from a young Canadian airman from Vancouver who had just started operational flying and he’d written the [emphasis] most beautiful letter. I found it remarkable that a nineteen year old could write such a mature letter. I was, I read this letter late on a Friday afternoon and I couldn’t get rid of it, and it haunted me all weekend. I mean, those letters were wonderful. But also we deal with the other side of it, in that I got into the archive about two hundred letters from a young airman who, before he joined up, had worked at Park Royal, in a printing works, and the letters that he was writing weren’t to his family, they were to his workmates, and so they weren’t sanitised and they were laugh out loud funny. My colleagues here will tell you that I was laughing, out loud, at some of these letters, and this particular airman was the Eric Morecombe of his day and I got inside his head and I got to know this man and reading these letters and he’s describing one where there’d been an influx of two hundred WAAFs on station and he actually says ‘the chaps are getting choosy’, with the WAAFs [chuckles] and you know, these were lovely letters and then I got to the last letter in this pile and I rang this chap up and the donor, the owner of this collection was from Bridgewater in Somerset, and I rang him up and said ‘I’ve just read the last of Peter’s letters’ [banging] and I said ‘what happened to him? Have you got any more letters?’ [Steps] And he just says, ‘well you’ve read his last letter.’ He didn’t come back. And that really hurt, because having read all his letters I thought you know, I’d got to know this man, he was a very funny man, and he must have been fabulous to serve with. But the project’s going really well. I’m in receipt of some amazing [emphasis] stuff and I do it in my dad’s honour.
[Other]: Yes.
PJ: Well, I hope he’s smiling down on me.
[Other]: I’m sure he is. You’ve given us a fantastic insight into your father’s experiences. Absolutely.
PJ: He was a remarkable man. He was a lovely man.
[Other]: Yes.
PJ: As I say, it’s been thirteen years since he died and, [pause] I still miss him.
[Other]: Course you do. I’m going to the loo. [Whisper] [Laughter] I’ll turn this off.
CB: It’s running. So Peter, thank you for what you’ve done so far. I think, in summing up we could cover a few other things, but what was your parents’ reactions to your career choices after the experiences of their parents, and your father in particular, in the war?
PJ: As I said, my father, I think, rather fancied the idea of me joining the RAF, as I did, but my mother put me off that. I don’t think my father was disappointed at all, in fact he was quite proud of the career path I chose, but interestingly, another career path that my mother put me off: I gained a Deck Officer Scholarship with Shell and my mother put the kybosh on that as well. [Laughter] She was quite, quite, um, she tended to get her own way.,
CB: What worried her about going to sea?
PJ: It was being away from home I think. Actually she was probably right because of course the British Merchant Fleet has gone. So I’d probably be redundant.
CB: As a Captain! [Laugh]
PJ: I doubt it! [Laughter] More like Pugwash! But no, my dad was proud of where I ended up.
CB: Of course. Well I mean it’s a very good thing to do.
PJ: And I really think he would be very proud of what I’m doing now.
CB: I bet, yes.
PJ: It’s a great project. I think that we are trying to turn back history, because Bomber Command and particularly those that flew were demonised and we want to tell the story of the whole of the bombing war, not just from British perspective, but we were an umbrella over the whole of the war. We want to hear the experiences of people on all sides and we are getting remarkable stories: we’ve got fabulous inroads into Italy with amazing stories from there. And, you know, going back to Bomber Command, I can’t, I really can’t imagine what it was like in 1945 when everyone was huddled around the wireless, waiting for Churchill’s victory speech and everybody was mentioned. Except Bomber Command. And I think that must have been a terrible blow to everyone that served with Bomber Command; a body blow. So many had been killed and what recognition had the government given them? None. What is a life worth? What was a life worth to them? You know, I think it was a terrible thing to miss them out.
CB: Did your father ever mention this matter?
PJ: I think he did once. I can’t, I wasn’t that old, and I’m pretty sure it was a conversation he was having with someone else, but he was pretty hacked off about it, he’s, I think his opinion of Churchill had gone from being very high to being very low. He was hurt by it, very hurt. Because he’d lost so many, many friends.
CB: Yes, you mentioned them.
PJ: Well that was just a few I think.
CB: Yes, that was just from his early days.
PJ: Exactly, it wasn’t from the later days.
CB: What was do you think his overriding memory was, of his service during the war?
PJ: I can tell you – it’s in his memoir, if you -
CB: I’ll pause while you look it up. Right, we’re re-starting now.
PJ: I can quote from my father, I remember him saying that all in all he felt he’d had a good war, he’d had a relatively easy war, he’d come out unscathed and that in a way I think he felt guilty because he had survived and so many hadn’t, but he then, in his notes, he reflects and he reflects asking what made them do it? What made them go on ops, over and over and over again, and he says was it the patriotism, was it the pride of volunteering being greater than the butterflies in the stomach, was it the fear of letting down the crew, or of the lifelong stigma of lack of moral fibre? And he says perhaps it was one or all of them, who knows? And then he follows that with what I think a lovely sentence.: ‘And what do I have to show for it? My discharge papers and identity discs, my flying log book and a few medal ribbons – and a thousand memories.’
CB: I think that’s extremely touching, it, it in a way, glosses over an important point which is not unusual for him, people like him to miss, which is: he got a DFC and nobody crowed about that but why did he get a DFC, what was the origin of the award?
PJ: I’ve never found the citation. I think possibly, of course, he was on a crew that carried out a lot of ops. I’ve found Fred Philips’ citations for both of his DFCs, for his DFC and his Bar.
CB: Which were earlier.
PJ: Which were earlier. Of course by 1945 they were dishing out quite a lot by then, weren’t they.
CB: What was the date of your father’s DFC?
PJ: I can’t remember.
CB: But it, was it a similar time to his pilot, his second one?
PJ: No, it was later.
CB: Later, exactly.
PJ: Which makes me think possibly the number of ops, or -
CB: Nothing specific. Could have been the end of the tour, the second tour.
PJ: Yes. That’s what I think.
CB: Would be nice to be able to get the citation though.
PJ: It would. I would like to see that.
CB: Right, we’ll pause there for a mo. Now we’ve already talked about the DFC and also the crew gelling together, but what sort of conversations did they have, in these circumstances?
PJ: One of the conversations that my dad did tell me about, and that was a conversation he would have with the mid upper gunner, Ron Wynn, when they were coming back, leaving the target on every op as flight engineer it was my dad’s role to walk the length of the fuselage doing a damage control walk, to see how badly damaged, or if [emphasis] they were damaged. And my dad would always use a shielded torch and Ron Wynn would always say, ‘Oi, you’re lighting me up like a bloody lightbulb up here, turn that torch out!’ And my dad would always reply, ‘If there’s a hole in this bloody fuselage I’m not falling out of it for you!’ [Laughter] And it would be the same conversation, every op, but there must have been more, there must have been more. Even in the, even in the sort of, the terrible times of the operations the humour was still there. Like in the breakfast before the op there was always somebody who’d say if you don’t come back, can I have your breakfast, wasn’t there, you know. There was always that, that lovely, lovely dark humour.
CB: Yes, it’s a trait where you deal with the danger, at the threat, and the horror of it, with humour.
PJ: Yes, but since my father’s death, I’ve spent over eleven years researching his notes and of researching his crew, or the crew that he served with, and I was fortunate enough to have made contact with Fred Philips in, who was living, still living in Sydney, and interestingly, when his flying career with the Royal Australian Aircraft, Air Force came to an end he joined Qantas and he eventually became the Chief, the Senior Training Captain, with Qantas and he was the first Qantas pilot to fly a 747 to Heathrow. Now sadly Fred died in October last year. The other one I managed to get in touch with was the mid upper gunner, Ron Wynn, still living in Stockport. After the war he’d been an instructor at Cranwell and I managed to speak to him on the phone and it was quite an emotional encounter I think, for him, talking to the son of someone he hadn’t seen for so long, but after the initial emotion he was very chatty. And after the conversation I had an email from one of his sons, saying how much his dad had enjoyed talking to me and hearing what my father had gone on to do, but then he said that the conversation had brought back a lot of memories and he wouldn’t want to talk again. I do hope that wasn’t too upsetting for him. But you know, I’ve gone through the crew and I now know what all but two of them did, after the war.
CB: One of the reasons was it, the link between the mid upper and the flight engineer was both were acting as lookouts, during this, but what was father actually doing as a flight engineer in his role?
PJ: In his role?
CB: So, start with take off.
PJ: At take off he would take over throttles so that the pilot could use both hands on the stick, for take off. During flight he would be constantly making fuel calculations et cetera, trimming the engines, shifting fuel between tanks et cetera, just to keep the stability and also keeping records, and as I say doing calculations because they didn’t rely on instrumentation for fuel, it was the engineer’s calculations, and woe betide if he got them wrong. My father could, could fly, he, it was again, going back to the Warboys experience where they did a bit of each other but I think it would have been straight and level flying, it wouldn’t have been landing, take off and landing, that sort of thing. Looking back at his, reading his memoirs, I think he did have a good time. I once went to the 7 Squadron reunion in Longstanton and when my, when his tour was up and they were going their separate ways they took their ground crew out, to the pub, The Hoops, in Longstanton, where they wouldn’t let the ground crew spend a penny. In his notes, my dad said it was worth the twenty four hours of hangover. And I dearly wanted to go and have a pint in The Hoops but it’s been knocked down.
CB: Oh dear.
PJ: But I did walk the streets of Longstanton, in the rain. One of the things that he talks about as well, is once on an aborted op they were returning to Oakington in a really vicious side wind and they had a sudden gust of wind and bounced badly on touchdown and went round again, and as they were roaring off, off the runway, the wind had sent them across the village at very low height and he can vividly remember seeing people staring up and people running away and he can clearly remember a lady running out of a house and grabbing a little girl, or her child, and pulling her into the house, out of the way. My father describes how they, they very narrowly missed All Saints Church in Longstanton and that when they touched down, got out of the aircraft, the rear gunner came, wandered around, and said to Fred Phillips, ‘if you’d have told me you were going to pull that stunt I could have taken that weather vane off as a souvenir!’ [laughter] But thinking as I was driving into Longstanton, it’s a long straight road into the village, the hair almost stood up on the back of my neck when I saw that, the spire of the church and realised that’s it! That’s it.
CB: In conclusion, because this is fascinating and it’s covered so many aspects of your experiences, and your father’s experiences. But thinking of father’s experiences with the research that you’ve been doing, and what he had written, what’s your overriding feeling about the story?
PJ: My father’s story or the story of Bomber Command.
CB: Your father’s story.
PJ: My father’s story. [Sigh] The little lad from, [pause] from the slums of Birmingham did all right.
CB: Can I translate that into a feeling of great pride?
PJ: Indeed.
CB: Thank you, Peter Jones.
PJ: You’re welcome
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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AJonesPWA171207
Title
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Interview with Peter Jones
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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01:49:58 audio recording
Creator
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Chris Brockbank
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-12-07
Description
An account of the resource
Peter William Arthur Jones (b. 1954) speaks about his father Thomas John Jones DFC (b. 1921, 1640434 and 184141 Royal Air Force). Peter Jones discovered a memoir written by his father, Thomas Jones, a flight engineer, just after he passed away. Peter talks about his father’s life and service during and post-war, some of the details in the memoir and memories of their time as a family after the war. There is much discussion about operations and post-flight details, how emotions, injuries and fears are dealt with, including non-flying personnel as well as those who flew. Peter’s own life and work, particularly on the IBCC Digital Archive is also talked about, and the way the stories of others are so emotive.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-09-23
1944-04-04
1944-08-12
1944-08-29
1945
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
England--Birmingham
England--Cambridgeshire
Germany--Berlin
Northern Ireland--Antrim (County)
Wales--Glamorgan
England--Warwickshire
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Civilian
Second generation
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Anne-Marie Watson
Carolyn Emery
1657 HCU
622 Squadron
7 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
flight engineer
ground crew
ground personnel
Heavy Conversion Unit
lack of moral fibre
Lancaster
McIndoe, Archibald (1900-1960)
Pathfinders
RAF Mildenhall
RAF Nutts Corner
RAF Oakington
RAF St Athan
RAF Warboys
Stirling
training
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/306/3463/AMooreR160727.1.mp3
6916342becb8f2ec899823178f5b9e73
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
Moore, Raymond
R Moore
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with Raymond Moore (1609170 and 179383 Royal Air Force).
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-07-27
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Moore, R
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
IL: Ian Locker. I’m interviewing Ray Moore at his home in Sowerby, Thirsk. Right, so Ray, um, tell us a little bit about your early life.
RM: Early life — where, where from?
IL: From you, you, you were born in Sussex?
RM: Yes.
IL: Tell us a little bit about your family and how, how you came to join the RAF.
RM: Well, I’ll only repeat what I said.
IL: Absolutely.
RM: Exactly what — again, I wasn’t thrilled by the war. I remember it very distinctly because my father and two brothers — my two brothers were in the — they called it the —
Sarah: Home Guard? No?
RM: Well, my father got — had been recalled for the covers [?] in other words, he’d done about fourteen years’ service in India and then he went to, he was posted to Gallipoli. He was wounded in 1915 and came back to England and he was in hospital, hospital in Esher, in Esher. That’s in Surrey and that’s where he me my mother but that was just at the beginning. And then he went in the Territorials. They joined in 1938 so they were the first up and the last picture, the last thing I remember of them, I was — they were all at home this particular day, and the last thing I remember I went into the dining room and they were all stood with their arms around one other. It was very moving, was that. And, um, then — so that passed and you didn’t — there was no reality to it even then. And then on the Sunday morning at 11 o’clock on — when Chamberlain said — it still didn’t ring a bell. I still wasn’t — it, it didn’t mean anything. I remember that Sunday morning and hearing Chamberlain and my mother was sat weeping, as they did in them days I suppose, I don’t know, but she was, I remember she was, she was crying and I thought, ‘Well, it’s a war.’ You know and, and honestly at that age, and I was fifteen, at that age you didn’t, you didn’t say, ‘Oh, there’s a war.’ It’s Hitler. It’s Germany. It’s Nazi Germany and I didn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe that we were at war but my father and brothers had already gone but it didn’t ring a bell until about, let’s see that’s 1940. I’m trying to think of the dates. In 1941 there were three of them gone and in 1941 my, er, brother that was older than me — no. A sister that was older than me, Joan, she decided to join the WAAFS. Because at some period of time, you know, women had to sign on as well and she was eligible. She was about twenty-two, twenty-three and so she was the next one to go and to me it was, ‘Ta-ta Joan.’ You know, that was — and then life set again. You started to — some of the things that happened. Because we never had a daily paper because I think the Daily Herald was on the go in those days and so, um, and being a mixed family of, of politics — my father was a conservative and my brothers when they came out, two of them had turned and flying the red flag. That was hilarious was that after the war. But — and so, er, and then it went on and then a brother went and I sort of looked round and instead of eleven of us sat down at that, in that, you know — and it was a fairly big dining room Sarah, wasn’t it? And the dining table, instead of there on a Sunday it was suddenly, suddenly empty and that was when it struck me that something was wrong and that was the time when I really thought about joining up but the age was eighteen and I was damn sure I wasn’t going in the Army or the Navy and I, I’d made up my mind. But as I say there was something by the Government that if you had — you know, there were a lot of big families but if you had so many in that were in the Services you, you were exempt and I should have been exempt. And that rattled my mother more than anything and so that was, you know, I joined up like and that’s when it started. All of it started. I have to admit I was leaving home and the Army didn’t appeal to me in as much as that I’d lost brothers and sisters and my father were all in the services. Because we had a good family life.
Sarah: None of them were killed.
RM: Never lost one of them, no.
IL: Remarkable isn’t it. So had you left school?
RM: Oh, I’d left school.
IL: So did you leave school at fifteen or —
RM: Fourteen.
IL: Right. So, so were you working on the family farm? Or —
RM: No, no, no. I did that, er, I did —
Sarah: What was your first job?
RM: First job, riding a bicycle, pushing — I worked for a butcher, just delivering, just an ordinary menial job. And that was the first, yeah, that was the first year and going to work then nine to five. [cough] I’m trying to think how old I was as well. And about a year or it might have been —
IL: I’m going to move that a little bit nearer to you.
RM: Sorry.
IL: No, it’s OK. [unclear]
RM: It might have been, um, [unclear] I think with there being, when the war was on, 1939, and there was, er, Joan was at home and Frank and so there were those at home so really I hadn’t much care, no idea. I was a good scholar as well. I was a good scholar, even if I say myself.
Sarah: And that’s where your engineering background —
RM: It was. It was really because, um, when I was in, when I joined up, and I was mixing with engines and airframes and things it seemed to — it was something that I wanted to do, wasn’t it? And to come top of the class at the end of thirty-six weeks I thought it was pretty good going. Anyway, er, fifteen and I got to know one or two. I, in that respect I was a bit of a loner, in respect of mixing and things like that and not bothering to look for the future, and I say I couldn’t have cared less and my father was in the Army so he couldn’t boot my backside and tell me to get a job. There, was there and then I went to a Jim Feasts [?]. I even remember his name and they were a greengrocers and all I was doing there was delivering green groceries, groceries and whatever you’re talking about. No, it was greengrocery wasn’t it? That was Jim Feast and that was awful but I suppose I was mixing with different people and Worthing’s a very snobbish place, you know.
IL: I’ve been.
RM: Pardon?
IL: I’ve been.
RM: Oh, you know Worthing.
IL: Not well.
RM: I finished there. I shouldn’t be — and then I worked for Jim Feast until, well, I think he told me to beggar off and, um, they were menial things, weren’t they? And then across The Broadway there was, they called them Fletchers [sound of aircraft]. Now that can go down. They called them Fletchers, the butcher, and so I was riding around then. And I became very friendly with a chap and he was the same as I was. We were the same age and doing the same jobs, riding around and delivering errands, and he said to me one day, he said — and it was time to come up when we were coming up to seventeen and then around that area and he said, ‘By the way.’ He said, ‘I’m going to join, I’m going to join the Navy.’ He said, ‘What do you think?’ I said, ‘I wouldn’t join the Navy if you paid me.’ I said, I said, ‘I don’t want to go.’ He said, ‘Oh, I’m going to join the Navy.’ And just up here they call it Teville Road. He said, ‘Up here are the Naval Cadets.’ But it’s ridiculous isn’t it? Because when he said Naval Cadets I thought to myself, ‘What do you do?’ He said, ‘Well, we learn the Morse code and with your arms and hands.’ And I thought — ‘And march and do things like that.’ And bearing in mind there was also a junior Air Cadets but I didn’t even think about the Air Cadets because — and then he was telling me, he said, ‘Why don’t you come up?’ I said, ‘I don’t want to join the Navy.’ He said, ‘Oh, come on.’ He said, ‘It will just be a bit of fun.’ So, I said, ‘Oh, right.’ So, I went up this particular time and went into this hall and I saw these, er, do you know what I mean? There was all these things to learn the Morse code, with di, di, di, da, dat. And I looked at them and I thought — because a friend of mine had joined the air crew and he’d gone as a wireless op and I thought, ‘That’s not a bad thing. There’s a place here I can learn the Morse code and be one in front.’ So, he said — anyway, I thought it would be interesting, sat down and they had about six in a line. I sat down and I got interested, listening to it, and I thought, ‘This will do.’ But this mate of mine, he kept saying, ‘Join.’ He wanted me to join the Naval Cadets and I didn’t want to join and that was when really that I made up my mind. That was about the time that I’d gone down to the recruiting office to join the, to join the Air Force and that was really at the beginning where I made up my mind that I wanted to be air crew and that, that was the last job I think, driving around. They called him Fletcher, that butcher, and that’s, that’s all I did but I think if my dad had been home he would have pushed me because, as I say, I was fairly good, I was fairly good at school. I was. I can wrap anything up, you know, and it seems a shame really. You know, I don’t I mean that I was wasted or anything like that but I know that had I’d gone on I would have gone on to Worthing High School but nothing appealed to me. There was a war on and honestly, that’s the honest truth, there was nothing appealed to me. Nothing at all appealed to me in — accept when it came for the service time to join the Services. That’s all it was.
IL: OK. So when you joined you were seventeen but there was problems because you had to have your mother’s permission I understand.
RM: That’s right.
IL: So, what happened?
RM: What happened?
IL: Yeah. What happened?
RM: Well, I did tell you.
Sarah: But you’re being recorded now dad.
RM: Oh, I see. Oh, well. Well, we didn’t fall out of course not. You can look at that. That’s my family. Oh well, we had a few words of course but nothing, there was nothing dramatic. There was nothing dramatic about it because my mother was a loving woman wasn’t she? I mean, it was her family, her life, but to — but I don’t think even to this day, looking back, that she ever thought that, um, it would come to me signing up. I don’t think she ever thought that I would join up until I left and I got on the train from West Worthing to Victoria. I mean, to be out of, to get out, to go out of Worthing was when I played football. I used to play schoolboy international, um, yeah, I played schoolboy international. We lost —
Sarah: Where did you do your final?
RM: West Ham. No, we didn’t play. We got knocked out, Sarah. West Ham beat us in the semis at — where? What’s the name of their ground?
IL: Upton Park.
RM: Yes. That’s it and it was an absolute sensation because to play schoolboy international was actually a very good thing because when you ran on the pitch and there was six thousand boys there and we ran on the pitch at Upton Park and these boys — you get six thousand boys, six thousand boys there and I can understand — it was absolutely wonderful. Anyway I was thirteen at the time. But going on to where, talking about my mother, it was, it was very disturbing but on, not from my point of view because I knew what I was going to do. It was something. It was something. There was a blooming war on but the papers and you could hear them give the news out. It, it didn’t strike me as being anything. All I wanted to do then was be in the Air Force and to fly. That was my only ambition was to fly and I failed the first time. What did they call it? I failed. I put in for a pilot and I failed as a pilot. I wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t just good enough. That was all there was to it. I know that looking back. I think if I’d genned up on it a bit more and waited maybe a couple of months.
Sarah: How did they sort out who was going to be a flight engineer and who was going to be a wireless operator?
RM: By what I had to do. By what you had to do. And you talk about square pegs and round holes, Sarah, and that was what you had to do. I went up to, ah, North London. It’s where they, where the Lord’s Cricket Ground is, somewhere up there, and you go before the — oh, I forgot to tell you that. That’s what happened when I was called up, before I was called up rather, that’s what happened, and you sit down. You go into this classroom and that as well, I had a medical, of course. I mustn’t miss that out, of course you did, and you sat down and it was sort of noughts and crosses, you know. I can’t remember a lot, but you sat down and with a — now I’ve got to just try and think. Anyway I failed as a pilot and so the next best thing —
IL: But at this time you were still only seventeen? This was —
RM: Pardon?
IL: This was between signing up and being called up you had this, like, kind of selection.
RM: That’s right, exactly. I’d forgotten, yeah, of course I did. And as far as I think now I was just put down as air crew. I can’t seem to think that I was classified then because as an air gunner — I knew I wasn’t going to be an air gunner because the air gunners were in and out. They had a six month course. They were up in — they had a very short course, did an air gunner, a rear gunner and a mid-upper gunner. They had a very short — you know, it was awful really. They just learned how to shoot and they put them in, put them in a bomber. And honestly, it was as simple as that.
IL: You also, you also had this thing with your mother, um, she had to sign something, I understand?
RM: Oh yes, yes. She did, oh yeah. Well, I got this paper from — I went down to the recruiting office — and I thought — there again, I knew nothing about it. And I thought you could just sign on the line and they took you but when they came to the ages bit, um, it struck me as not being right, but you, you could not get into the Services. You could get in [emphasis] into the Services, before you were eighteen, but not flying. You could not get into air crew unless you signed up. That’s what it was with me anyway. And to get her to — she just said, ‘You’re not going.’ And that was it. And in practice she’d made her mind up that I wasn’t going to join the aircrew. But my mother then at that time I don’t really think that she knew what air crew was. Honestly I do. I believe that. She didn’t know what air crew was in that respect.
IL: So, how did you get round your mum not signing?
RM: Um, oh, oh well, I waited for a bit, oh yeah, when she wouldn’t sign it. I mean, she was my mother and what could I do? I can’t, even in those days, I mean, well, in those days you had to do what your mother and father said, as far as I was concerned anyway, and she was, um, she was up in arms. I knew she held it — she sort of realised that I’d made my mind up. That’s, that’s what it was all about. And I wanted to, I wanted to join and I she — I can’t tell you what the paper was. It was a sheet of paper with — that you had to sign and I, I forged her signature. Yeah, I did. I practiced writing Clare Moore and, um, I don’t think to this day that she knew what I’d done except when my papers came. I mean, I don’t think she was aware that, I don’t think she was aware because I didn’t turn round to her and say I’d done it. I wouldn’t have done that. Well, I wouldn’t Sarah. And, er, as I say I took it back to that, down Chapel Road, that recruiting office there and just handed it in and, ‘We’ll let you know.’ Sort of thing.
IL: So, what happened when you eventually got called up and had to leave?
RM: And had to leave?
IL: Had, had to leave home. What did your mum do?
RM: Oh, well, that — well, my sister Dorothy, we were good friends, as brother and sister, and she still does to this day. She thinks I’m marvellous. You know, that sort of, her brother, and, um, well, I packed a little suitcase and all I packed in was probably a razor and whatever, you know, things you need, I suppose. I know at that time my mother was very reluctant to pack anything in. You didn’t need anything. You just had, I just had this little case and I guess she packed in soap, a flannel and things like that. That’s all there was, you know. Said, ‘Cheerio.’ And she said, ‘You can beggar off home.’ I remember that. And then when I got to the bottom of the road I looked back. Waving. And I got on a train and went to Victoria, Victoria across to — no, the RTO met us at, um, at Victoria Station. You went into the, what they called, the RTO, that’s the Railroad Transport Offices, the RTO, and I went in there and told them, like, and they took us by coach then to Cardington. And from Cardington — was there two days. That was awful really at Cardington because there were thou— there seemed hundreds, hundreds of airmen milling around in civvies, you know, and it was a funny carry on and it really surprised me, in as much as, over the Tannoy (they had a Tannoy) and it was like a homing thing and it called out on, on the microphone, ‘Is there a,’ and I’ll never forget this, ‘Is there a Raymond Moore here?’ And amongst all the hubbub, you know, I didn’t take a lot of notice and I hadn’t met anybody but I heard it again and again and I thought, ‘That’s me.’ Anyway, er, I found out where it was coming from and what it was — I can’t explain to you how they found out — but what it was somebody more knowledgeable than me and up to date and what it was you could go to and find, there was a list of some sort you, you could go and find and look down this list, like, anybody from Worthing? With their names on it and my name was on it and what — and they called in — oh, I can’t think of it. No good, can’t think, and what happened was, he called in. He was calling, ‘Raymond Moore.’ And I found him and found him and of course he came up and he said, ‘Oh, good. Thank God. There’s somebody here from Worthing.’ And he was a horror. I never liked him because, well, because it weren’t so much — I’d met him through the football and he came from a school called Sussex Road and I came from St Andrews and so there was a bit of competition of the boys from St Andrews and the boys from Sussex Road and I never liked him. And he said, oh, he said, ‘Oh, what school?’ I said, ‘I was at St Andrews.’ And, you know, St Andrews was a bit of a snobbish school. Well, it was a bit of a snobbish school, it was honestly. St Andrews it was. We thought we were a cut above Sussex Road and it was true and, um, but I didn’t want to be with him somehow and I sort of edged away from him and I never met him again. He was posted somewhere else you see. I was posted to Skegness to do — I was there about eight weeks — square bashing and that was good. There again, it was something new wasn’t it, you know? Marching up and down. I even remember the corporal’s name, Corporal Passant, P A S S A N T, Corporal Passant. And we were billeted in houses on the seafront. It was marvellous, weren’t it? Home from home. And he was a very nice corporal, marched us up and down then and I then — we was just thrilled. We didn’t — there was no rifle drill or anything like that. We just had to learn. Well, I knew how to march but he was a professional and he taught us how to march properly. I’ll tell you this instance. I don’t know whether it matters, whether it goes on there or not, but it’s an incident and it struck me because, being brought up Church of England and fairly religious, church parade on a Sunday morning. There was a great big, seemed to me dozens of us, and each one was a platoon with thirty two men in and so this corporal then, as it come down the line, and you had to stand to attention but he’d call out then, ‘Fall out all Roman, fall out all Roman Catholics and Jews and other denominations.’ [slight laugh] Honestly, that’s the gospel truth, as true as I sit here. So I’m stood there and I thought — and of course, all those that were Roman Catholics and Jews and other denominations (what the other denomination was would be Methodist I suppose or something like that) and I’m stood there like and one or two — I saw one or two — falling out and I thought, ‘What’s goes on here?’ I thought there was only one religion, or two at the most. That would be Roman Catholics and Church of England.’ And that’s the honest truth. That’s how, that’s how I was educated, although that the school I went to, St Andrews, they called it a higher — there’s a name for it.
Sarah: Church School? Or a —
RM: Yes, they called it — and it was high church. It was between Roman Catholic and Jews [?]. It was in between but that didn’t make any difference to religion but you know what puzzled me? Every Sunday morning that corporal used to say — and it was a common thing and it caught on. Suddenly all the Church of England suddenly became Roman Catholics or Jews, whatever. It was a peculiar carry on and that is the truth.
Sarah: So they could fall out.
IL: Yes. So, they didn’t have to go to church parade?
RM: Yeah and they just wandered off and that, that is true that, and from — of course when I finished at square bashing I was sent to Cosford and that was eighteen months’ course on engines and that was hard. That was really hard. That was a hard course because when you’re — it’s like, taking maths. If you take maths at school it’s hard if you don’t concentrate and, taking the course on Merlin engines and Hercules engines, it struck me as being — seeing a massive engine there — and you had to learn the theory of it. I knew nothing. I didn’t even know what it looked like and to be thrown into something like that it was hard and I had to work hard if I wanted to — I did. I worked very hard, very, very hard.
IL: So, was that classroom and practical based?
RM: Yes, it was. It’s true. The practice, I was absolutely useless. Even now, right throughout my married life, and I was married for sixty-six years, and I’m telling you, I couldn’t knock a nail in without hitting my thumb. Now, it’s a standing joke in the family. Sarah knows. Don’t you Sarah?
Sarah: My mum was very good at decorating.
RM: The girls decorated and the lads. I could never ever learn anything in the house. It didn’t matter. Now, I don’t, I think it wasn’t, I think I lacked the knowledge of even knocking a nail in. I could never and of course my wife was the opposite. She was marvellous, you know. She had to be.
IL: I have a similar arrangement. [slight laugh]
Sarah: Very capable, was my mum.
RM: Yes, she was. And then from Cosford, I did eighteen weeks there and was posted to Halton, which was, it was the — from going from a lower form of AC1, AC2, LAC you went up then a bit higher because at Halton you had to finish off what you did at Cosford, you know, you know what I mean? It was a bit higher class if you got through and Halton’s in Buckinghamshire and Halton was the sound, it was the grounding for the regular Air Force. RAF Halton it was and that was nice there. We got marched about to a band there. They had their own band. Marched up for our dinners, from classrooms, marched back down again. It was quite good actually.
IL: How long were you there for?
RM: How long? So that was eighteen weeks, so four and a half months. How long was I? Oh, sixteen weeks.
IL: Right.
RM: Sixteen weeks at Halton, yeah, and that was another grind. It was, because, as I say it was a bit, it was harder.
IL: And did you get any leisure time in these places?
RM: No. It was just — well, only if you put in — well, just as an example was, we were billeted in huts and the — it was quite good really. It kept you on your toes. I was never lazy in doing them things but there was about — how many would there be? About fourteen beds in the hut and every Friday night it was bull [?] night and you had to dust your, all around your bed, and I seemed to get a lot of fluff round my bed [slight laugh] you know and then you had to polish the floor and that [emphasis] was the main thing. And you had to polish the floor because you got marks and the sergeant, the flight sergeant, would come round and he’d come round and look and if your, if your hut was good you got a mark of, I don’t know how they worked it, nine out of ten or something, and so after a couple of months your hut — and you worked hard and polished and all the bull you put in to it, and if you came top of the class you could put in for a weekend pass but they weren’t daft were they? You imagine thirty-six hours. Forty-eight hours from Friday until 23.00 hours on the Sunday night and they called that forty-eight hours. In the meantime — and you had to pay your own fare. So, I was living in Worthing and to get to Wolverhampton you had to do an awful lot. It was awfully quick because when my dad used to come home on leave and my mother would say, in a letter, she’d say your father will be coming on leave on such and such a day and he was billeted not far away up at Balcombe Tunnel [?] and, um, he was — so, I got information then so the idea was then if our hut was up on the list and a lot of them, bearing in mind, they lived farther away than that and so you couldn’t afford it. You couldn’t afford it. Your, your pay, you got three shillings a day or something like that, and so if you wanted to go on a weekend you had to save up to get your train fare. And so I would then write a letter and it was a dodge with me because when I wrote a letter to, to which you just had to write a note, ‘Dear Sir.’ Your commanding officer, ‘Dear Sir, I may request, can I request a pass because my father is coming home?’ It was a, it was a squid [?] wasn’t it? And put it in and to put a letter into the orderly room, ‘Dear Sir.’ I, I used to have it off pat saying that I was, um, how did I put it? Dear, Sir, Dear Sir. Oh, it was, it was a mushy letter and I always used to put in as my father is coming home on leave, and that was it, and because if you had a relative like that, you know what I mean? And so, any, any leave that I got that was the letter that I used to put in to the commanding officer, ‘Dear Sir, please may I put forward an application for a forty-eight hour pass to see my father who’s home on leave.’ And I used to put he’s a sergeant major in the eighth battalion of the Royal Fusiliers or something and I it went off pat, of course you did, and I got a forty-eight hour pass and it was the only time I screwed them [laugh] well, I did, you know. It was that little bit that — it was good was that.
IL: It’s not bad to get some time off.
RM: And then — but after I finished a Halton, that course there, I went down to St Athan and that was my final course and of course that was, that was a hard one there because for six weeks or eight weeks you had to write down the theory. It got down to the theory part of flying, the theory of flight, your engine power, and you didn’t even know what you were going to fly actually in them days. And there was another interesting thing that is worth putting down that I, I came top, or we’ll say I came nearly top. I know I was, I know, but at that time of course I was going to be a flight engineer and that was all there was to it. I was going to fly and that meant to finish it off I was going to be good and I intended, that was what I intended. Anyway, we were waiting, I’d got my tapes and braiding [?] that was good sewed it on and it came through then, we were in the billets one night and a corporal it was, the corporal came round and he said, he read four names out and my name was among them and where, where I was at St Athan, um, he said, he read four names out and he said, ‘Now then.’ He said, ‘This is optional.’ Have you ever heard of a Sunderland Flying Boat? No? Have you?
IL: I have, yes.
RM: Well, you know, well — and four of us were picked out then and this was a bit of excitement and they took us down to the, er, Solent on the Southampton waters to give us a trip in a Sunderland Flying Boat to see whether we liked it or not. And, oh boy that, you know, and to fly for the first time. But they were massive. To me they were massive. To be inside one of these things and they carried a crew of thirteen, you know. And, anyway they ferried us out to this Sunderland and, um, we climbed aboard and all the time, you know, I was very nearly messing myself because of the size of it and going up the ladder to get inside it and it was sort of going — it was a lovely gentle — on the Solent, you know, and I thought, ‘There’s something wrong. I don’t know what I’m doing here.’ And I could have refused. It was just something that being in the first four that it was a little present for those that were doing it and, er, I admit, I must admit I didn’t want to go then. And anyway we get inside and it was massive. I’ll never forget it. I mean, where they cooked they had a stove and everything and where they cooked it was as wide as this was. It was massive inside it. I was lost. I remember sitting there. We didn’t have a harness. They didn’t give us a harness. I was just sitting there and I was looking round. And they started the engines up. They were Hercules, no, no, Pegasus, they were Pegasus 16s and, er, then they started up and we were rolling forward and, do you know? I’m not kidding you, bump, bump, bump, and, and I couldn’t see out. All I could see, like, the pilot was up here but the, the feeling of going on, on the water in this blooming great flying boat. And, er anyway there were four of us there and none of us were very — I think all of us looking a bit green. Anyway, we took off and we just circled Southampton and Portsmouth, down there, and we come into land. Well, coming into land was the same as taking off virtually that was but, of course, if you got used to it like everything else — and we landed, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump. Anyway when we went, they took us back to, um, we got back to St Athan and well, straight away, like, and we had to sort of say in front of those that were in charge of us down there, they had to say then, ‘Did you like it?’ And I said, I remember saying like, I said, ‘Is that what we’ve got to fly on?’ I said, ‘I don’t want to fly.’ Because honestly the take-off and landing on a Sunderland, honestly you could not understand, and when you look at Southampton, you know, when you look at the, look at the water. It all looks lovely and calm, you know, and you think — but by Jove I’ll tell you it did frighten me. Anyway, we got back and then we got back we were posted and posted then up to Yorkshire. That’s the first I saw of it. Posted to Eastmoor and there we landed at York and we got a truck there and there was thirteen of us. Thirteen flight engineers. And that was the hard bit. Do you know, out of those thirteen there was only about four of us finished. That was, that was hard.
IL: So, did you get to know those people?
RM: Well, when we went to the squadron we — well, Eastmoor was where they put all the crews in a hangar and there was a pilot, and he’d have his navigator, and the pilot would walk round and if you liked, er, like, if, if you liked a fella or you saw him and he saw [unclear] the pilot would go up to them and he’d say, ‘Have you got a crew?’ And this is gospel truth. They were — and some of the Canadians of course they knew one another from school, coming from Canada and things, so they weren’t so bad and I — and of course, when I was, went there it was awful. Well, those billets up there, the blankets were wet. We broke a table up to light the fire. It, it was about midnight when we got there from York and we spilt up and there was about six of us into this hut. It was awful. There, there was no fire. The blankets were wet. Anyway, um, it was awful to move in there. Well, in the daytime, as I say, we went into this big hangar where we were crewed up. And I remember I was sat there and I thought, ‘Nobody wants me.’ And it’s true. I was sat on a table. I was just sat there swinging my legs like. I was looking round, and I thought, I was hoping somebody would come up to me and say, ‘Have you got a crew?’ Or something. Anyway, I sat there and I saw them keep disappearing and I felt very lonely and I thought ‘Nobody wants me.’ Anyway, this, this pilot officer comes up to me and he tapped me on the shoulder and he said, ‘Have you got a crew?’ And I thought — I could have embraced him. I said, ‘No, I haven’t.’ He said, ‘Would you like to join my crew?’ I said, ‘Yes, I would.’ Well, he said, ‘I’m Pilot Officer Bryson.’ And he said, ‘Come with me and I’ll introduce you.’ And he introduced me. And I was the last one in the crew and he said, ‘This is Peter Lewinsky, navigator, Alex Trench was the bomb aimer (he was the Yank that did that book), Peter Lewinsky, er, Alex Trench was the bomb aimer, er, Reg Galloway was the wireless operator. Mid-upper gunner was Ralph Revlin [?] and the rear gunner was Harold Bowles.’ And that was how I was introduced to them.
IL: And so were they all, were they all, were they all British or —
RM: No, they were Canadian.
IL: They were all Canadian? Were you the only non-Canadian?
RM: Yes.
IL: Right.
RM: Yeah, they, they sort of — well, I was the youngest in the crew. The rest were twenty-one. The navigator was twenty-five and the wireless op was twenty-five. They were two of the eldest. The rest of them were twenty-one and I was just nineteen but they, they were marvellous really. They very nearly fostered me, you know. It was true. It was. Well, it was marvellous really accept I wasn’t their friend. When we were coming back they all smoked and so, when we were coming back and when I —
Sarah: Do you mean when you were setting out, when you were doing a, a return flight when you dropped bombs? When you say when you were coming back —
RM: Oh, we were coming back from — yeah, well that’s another story. They — what is was I was in charge of the oxygen and I didn’t smoke at the time (I did on occasion) and the skipper didn’t smoke but all the rest of them, it was like being in a factory. When we were flying, when we were — funnily enough they used to shout out. The rear gunner used to shout out and we’d be at eleven thousand feet and I used to take — and so I’d turn the oxygen off at ten thousand feet, you see, but I was in charge. But we’d be coming down, coming back, that was the worst bit because those that smoked needed a fag. That’s all there was so all they needed was a cig and so, we’d be at eleven thousand feet and then it started, the rear gunner, ‘Ray, Ray. How about turning the oxygen off.’ And we’d be at eleven thousand feet and it was the law but a flying law that you didn’t turn the oxygen off until you were down to ten thousand feet. That was the oxygen height, about twelve thousand feet, ten thousand feet, and so I used to turn to the skipper and I used to tap him because he would hear on, you see, and I used to tap him on the shoulder and he just used to sit there and he used to do just this and so I never answered them because, well, it was silly and then you would hear another one and the wireless operator, he was real — he was like a father, and he used to say, a bit subtler, ’Ray.’ [sound of aircraft] You know, and we’d be down then, coming down then, ‘Ray, Raymond, Raymond.’ And more sympathetic, ‘Turn the oxygen off Ray, Raymond. Turn the oxygen off.’ And so I used, used to turn to the skipper and I used tap him on the shoulder, and he was a bugger was old Bryson, the skipper. He was really stuck to it. At ten thousand feet turn the oxygen off, like, and they can — and it was like a furnace in there, you know, the cigarette smoke. They all smoked.
Sarah: Did they not swear at you occasionally?
RM: Oh, oh yeah. Yeah, it come to being not being pleasant, you know, ‘Turn that — turn that oxygen off. Turn.’ And, er, yeah, it was good fun.
IL: So, once you were crewed up you went to Linton?
RM: Yes.
IL: OK. So was this — so what was Linton?
RM: Linton was the — there were two squadrons at Linton: 408 and 426. That’s about it. There was sixteen to a squadron there so there was about thirty, thirty-two, thirty-two bombers all to take off and land.
Sarah: And you used to stay at Beningbrough didn’t you?
RM: Ah, well we were, we were billeted. We weren’t billeted at Linton. We were billeted at Beningham.
Sarah: Beningham.
IL: Oh, Beningham Hall. Very posh.
RM: Ah, well —
Sarah: We went there a couple of years ago didn’t we? Had a re-visit.
RM: Yes. Sarah took me there. There it is, look. That was when we were — yeah, there were six of us there. That was when we were old. 1987.
Sarah: It was a reunion.
RM: And it was a reunion, yes. They came all the way from Canada. 1987 that was. Oh yeah, they came over two or three times didn’t they, Sarah?
IL: So, when you, so you when you moved, when you first went to — so what, what year was it and what, when did you first start operations?
RM: Linton, we were at Linton in the November ‘43. I did my first trip on — to Berlin. That was a Berlin and I did my first trip to Berlin with Flight Lieutenant Brice. I flew spare. One of the — his engineer — on the 28th of January. That was my first trip to Berlin. That was one of the most unpleasant I had because they all the crew were new, weren’t they? And his engineer, he’d gone, you know, LMF. You know what I’m saying?
IL: Yep.
RM: And his engineer was Australian and poor chap he’d gone. He’d done seven trips and he just, he just packed it in, like, and so me, being clever, I had more flying hours in than any other flight engineer, being clever and the CO, Squadron — no, er, Jacobs at that time, said, Wing Commander Jacobs and said (you didn’t have a choice), ‘You’re flying tonight with Flight Lieutenant Brice.’ And that was my first trip.
IL: So, between November and January what were you actually — was this sort of — you were training as a crew?
RM: Yes. Oh, yes. We did a lot of flying. Well, we only flew if weather was on. I mean, between November and December that year, um, we didn’t do a lot of flying. It wasn’t until after Christmas, into January, that we concentrated on flying. Flying — I don’t mean operational because well, we weren’t, just weren’t on the list to operate and then that was January the 28th. That was my first Berlin with a new crew. That was not very pleasant because I was new to the crew. Mind, he give me a good recommendation. He told my skipper that I was a very good flight engineer and that, that meant a lot to me, er, and so, and then a couple of days later, couple of nights later, all the crew went. That was their — it was my second but their first. It was the 30th of January and we all flew as a crew. That was our first and that was another Berlin, another biggie, the big city, and from then on, you know, every other night, whenever they decided to fly us operationally, you know.
IL: So, so how many, how many operations? Was it a tour of thirty or —
RM: Thirty-one. I did thirty one because I put in that — I should have been screened at thirty but the rest of the crew had to do an extra one so I flew, I, I said I would fly the last one. That was to Cannes I think it was. That was —
IL: Did you have any, um, did you have any, um, interesting experiences or narrow escapes when you were over Germany on, on operations?
RM: Did we ever?
IL: Did you have any, um, narrow escapes? Did you have any, anything you’d like to tell us?
RM: Oh, I’d have to look in there because when you — like the first op I did with Flight Lieutenant Brice. We were both strangers to one another but every movement in that cockpit he relied on me. I’m not bragging. Every movement that that pilot had to do to that plane he had to do it through me, operationally, whatever it was. I don’t mean flying. To do appertaining to the air force, aircraft but flying, when we were flying, and you’re cruising along and you have to be prepared, especially when you fly, you get over the coast and you’re flying to France, flying over France. And the first Berlin that we did, I could never understand it because when you went into briefing there was a map that big, and then the CO used to come in, and there was a curtain and he used to pull the curtain, and you knew by the tone of the crew — there’d be all the crews in the briefing room — and you could hear them, ‘Oh, God. Another, another big city.’ You know. And of course, I was still a sprog wasn’t I? Going in with the crew, this new crew, and so when the curtain was drawn back all you heard was the moans, you know, ‘Oh, God. The big city.’ And I was sat there. I remember sitting there with the crew that I was with and they’d had seven operations between them so I was just a sprog but and so — but I knew my job. That’s what I was going to say. I knew my job as a flight engineer. I knew that I knew my job. That’s what I’m trying to say. I did know so that when we were, when we first started up and things like that I knew how to start everything up, I knew what tanks to be on before take-off, I knew what flaps to put down, the undercarriage and everything like that before we took off and, and so all he did was fly. But don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean that with any belittling sense because they were, they were magnificent machines and they needed good men to fly. That’s what I’m saying and they did and that’s how the crew, that’s how, that’s how you, that’s where the camaraderie came from, no doubt about that. And so when we, we taxied round the perimeter and then we were ready for take-off and you had to do pre-flight preparations before he opened the throttle and the take-off the same. He never said a word, didn’t the pilot, because I did everything for him in that respect accept he flew it. He was, he was the man. He flew it and he was a blooming good pilot as well.
Sarah: Were you excited on your first trip?
RM: Pardon?
Sarah: Were you excited on your first trip?
RM: Yes, I was [cough]. Well, there’s not much you can do, you know. We took off and at a thousand feet the pilot would say to the navigator, ‘Can you give me a course?’ That was just first course out and the first course — and what puzzled me was, what I was going to say was, what puzzled me was, looking at the map, I thought, ‘That’s funny. We’re going to Germany. We should be going to Germany.’ And Berlin is, Berlin was down there and I thought, ‘That’s funny. We’re going up here.’ And we flew over Norway and Den— and, and Sweden. That was how we went, up there, went up there like that and across there, and I thought, ‘What the hell are we flying up there? Why can’t we fly straight to Berlin and back again.’ But you’d blooming soon find out why they did it because you avoided all these little — I can show them to you on there, like, um, Bremen, one or two hot spots just, just inside there, all the big German ports there, and they were hot. They could shoot you down like a, you know, if — so the idea was to take us across to Norway and Sweden and you went, we went across like that and we turned, we took a turn to starboard. So, I suppose we’d be flying east, 2.40 or something like that, and then come down to Berlin, come down like that, and bomb Berlin and then another. All the routes are in there, you know, going to and from the target, and — but that first trip, the first excitement I got really that was excitement because you were looking out for fighters weren’t you and things like that. You were, and the fire over Berlin that fascinated you, there’s no doubt about it. You couldn’t, you weren’t supposed to look, you see. All the aircrew, once you got used to it you weren’t, you weren’t, you weren’t forced to, you couldn’t help, you saw this massive area that was alight and you couldn’t — in my blister (there was a blister in the Lanc) and I used to — I was looking down like that and my skipper give me a punch on the shoulder. He said, ‘You don’t really want to be looking down there.’ He said, ‘You ought to be looking up there for fighters.’ And just, just, the fire in the front of us, it could have been — I could never estimate up there how near we were and all of a sudden there was a massive explosion and a Lancaster or Halifax I think, I don’t know what it was, had been blown up in front of us. Now that brought me to realise that I was we were in the middle of the war, you know what I mean? There was nothing on the way and all of a sudden before the target this, this aircraft blew up and I knew, I realised then, you know, that that was war and we lost thirty-five aircraft that night. And so we lost four on the way so when you got back to briefing, um, that was the hardest part, when you got back to briefing. I’m not saying so much on that trip. And then there was a big board up and it said ‘late’ er, whoever it was, name Frank or any, any one of them down there, ‘late’, ‘arrival’, ‘depart’, ‘arrival’ and, and the time to put down and if you knew who your mate, we’d call him, was flying with you you looked for his pilot. His pilot’s name would be on the board, missing, and so you’d wait. If, if one of them, they called him Rodman [?] and he was — Harry Gilbert was his flight engineer and he should never have been flying because this is what happens and when he used, he used to come up to me because we were good friends. And I’d been through a course with him and I’m not saying I wasn’t frightened, it was ridiculous, but when I met him and he come in and his skipper was Flight Lieutenant Rodman and he used to come up to me and he used to say, ‘How are you Ray?’ And he’d light a fag and he was like this and I thought to myself — and he did, he got the chop, after he done about ten, but he was like this and, ‘How are you Ray?’ You know, ‘You alright?’ And I said, ‘For Christ’s sake Harry, give up.’ And I, I used to do, ‘For Christ’s sake.’ I said, ‘I did have a rough trip but I’m here and so are you.’ And it was the only way you could talk to Harry. He should never have flown, never have flown. Every time he come back and he used to make for me in the briefing room and, I mean it wasn’t as I was brave or anything, but I knew him and he was like this. He come from — he was a Lancashire lad, old Harry Gilbert but he was like this, lighting a fag.
IL: So what’s your definition of a rough trip?
RM: A rough trip?
IL: Yeah. A rough trip. What would have happened on a rough trip?
RM: Right. It was called “The Tale of Strong Winds”. I can go right through that with you because it was the worst trip I ever, it was [emphasis] the worst trip that was. I can talk to you right from there until we came back. Berlin, it was the last one, 24th of March 1944, and the take-off time would be in there. It might have been 4 o’clock in the afternoon. [sound of aircraft] Yeah, it would have been about 4 o’clock. It was March so, yeah, so we go to briefing [sound of aircraft] and, as I say, look at the map and hear the groans, big city again, and it’s a long way. It was an eight hour trip there and back and that’s a long time.
Sarah: Eight hours there?
RM: No, eight hours. Oh, no Sarah. There and back. And we took off, and Met, Met hadn’t said anything about anything. It was just an ordinary. We took off and on that route up there, we went over, going over the North Sea, and it was fine but we had a tail wind going over the North Sea and we did nothing. At that time of the year you did often get what they call a, a southern wind. It was like a south wind and the, the way we were taking off on that runway, we had nearly a tail wind. It was north and south runway as we called it and we took off. It was all fine. Settled down. What I noticed was we were going over Norway and Sweden again but that meant to say it was fairly — and we had a nice tail wind and our ground speed was about hundred and fifty which was pretty fast when you’re on climbing power and it was pretty fast was that and I thought, ‘That’s funny.’ And the skipper said to me, he said, ‘Jesus. We’ve got a tail wind.’ Well, the wireless operator had what they called an aerial and you let out an aerial and it gave us the wind. [background noise] It was like a wind sock and it told you the wind and he, he come back and he said, ‘That’s funny.’ He said, ‘The wind was about fifty or sixty.’ Which was a bit above average. When we got up to the top and turned to Norway, turned over to Norway — I mean, they were all, all these clever fellas in the crew, were talking about winds. You know, I wasn’t a bit interested to be honest. All I was only interested in was the aircraft we were flying [loud background noise] and so, you know, the winds increased, the wireless operator called, ‘The winds increased up to eighty.’ And, oh Jeez, you know, I heard them go round, the pilot, it was [emphasis] fast at eighty miles an hour and as we turned round and, and come down to Berlin I heard the navigator shout in that funny language, ‘Jesus Christ.’ The winds had blown on a what they called a reciprocal so that when we’d reached there and all of a sudden — you can see them on the maps — and the wind had blown literally where we were right up in the north there and turned down to Berlin and the wind had blown us, so instead of — and we had a tail wind. We had a tail wind to take-off and a tail wind going down to the target, Berlin. Our, our ground speed was something like three hundred and odd miles an hour. That was what our ground speed was and that, believe you me — and we had that tail wind up our backside — and what had happened was it blew us past Berlin, about fifty miles. We’d no control. And winds, as I heard some of them bragging about winds being a hundred and fifty miles an hour, and I, I think ours was, we recorded about a hundred and twenty-five, hundred and thirty and it blew us straight past Berlin. So, you can imagine, nearly all the bomber force being blown past Berlin and we had to turn round then, in the face of all these aircraft coming down, and we had to turn round then to go back and bomb Berlin. In other words, it, it sounds ridiculous, but that’s what happened and so when we turned round — and we lost seventy-five that night — and so when we turned round and, and air ground speed had dropped down to forty. That’s how heavy the wind was and it was horrendous really, because when you come to think, you turned round and you had a head wind and it was like standing still, and the pilot kept saying to me — now as an engineer I did know that much, that we were flying [ringing sound] we were flying at engine speeds of climbing speeds and, and flying into a wind, so I knew then — and our maximum power, we could only put maximum power on at about twenty-eight fifty revs plus eight and a quarter pounds of boost so we could only put that power on. I knew that and he kept saying to me, ‘We want more power.’ And it’s a wonder he didn’t strike me and I wouldn’t do it because at that power you could only do it for five minutes otherwise you’d have burnt, you’d have burnt — you know what I’m saying and it was elementary that. But — and air ground speed had been reduced to about forty miles an hour but that wasn’t the point doing that job. Can you imagine half the bomber force coming up and half of it coming down? I mean the aircraft, you could see them. You didn’t know what to do. It was horrendous, it really was, and you just stood there, and poor old Brice, the skipper, he just had to fly straight and level unless you saw something coming towards you. To turn round — well, we would have been blown down and so, and us flying back up and we bombed Berlin. Right, we bombed Berlin and glad to get away and we turned — the navigator gave us a course and it would be, well, I’ll make a figure. I think it was about 090, which was west, flying west, and was fine. We turned round and came back. Now, briefing, they said keep away from Roscos, Roscop —
Sarah: Rostock.
RM: Rostock, Rostock and Bremen, which were — we knew you had to miss them on the way out so you had to miss them on the way down. But with all the excitement that had gone on, and it wasn’t the navigator’s fault because all the wind up there, and we got a bit blown a bit off course. But we were cruising along nicely and all of a sudden bang! And they had then, they were clever you know, were Jerry, they knew we were bombing and they had their defences [clears throat] and it was, what they called a ‘blue searchlight’, and it was a master searchlight, and it hit us like that and what had happened was we had drifted to Rostock and Bremen and that nasty bit of an area down in that quarter there, and that searchlight, he cooked us and he hit us, and it was a blue, it was a blue, and within five minutes, maybe less than that, and there was about twenty searchlights coned us like that. Now, it, it was one of those experiences where you couldn’t see, you couldn’t see nothing, you just had to — he was there and all of a sudden he, he started to what we called ‘corkscrew’ and he shoved it, shoved the nose down, of course as he did it, he didn’t tell anybody he was doing it. He was the pilot and he stuck the nose down and, of course, gravity and as he stuck the nose down like that we went down about five thousand feet in a flash and he stuck the nose down. He screwed it round and stuck the nose down. I went straight up. I went straight up and the, and the bombardier, like, in front he was laid down. He was laid on his back and he was laid down and the language because he wondered what was up because he was in mid-air and that was the first time and navigator was cursing. He was on, he had one of those wheelie seats, he could move around in that little bit of space and, of course, he had his knees underneath the, his desk and his papers, er, as I say, as I went up and all of his nav papers and bits of his machinery was, was flying up in the air. The wireless operator was the only one of us who had any sense. Of course, poor rear gun— gunners, you know, were really thrown about because you can imagine what it was like to be thrown about like that and not knowing where you were and, and the audio was over the intercom, bad language and what was happening? And where are we? And that went on. I mean, for a pilot, and we, we both weighed the same. He weighed nine and a half stone and so did I so you imagine he was skinny, he wasn’t very big. Did you ever meet him Sarah?
Sarah: No. I didn’t.
RM: He wasn’t very big. He was about nine stone and he was five seven and a half in height so there was nothing and that was a big aircraft to throw about, something like twenty-two tonnes, even though it was tear [?] weight and, and anyway that was on the way down. On the way back that was when you felt G. Come back up from five thousand feet, pulling up, and he shouted out to me and I was all scattered brained and he shouted out to me, ‘Ray, Ray, Ray. Give us a hand.’ And so I went and got hold of the stick with him and we were like this and put me feet against that to pull. There was two of us pulling, pulled it out, but that wasn’t it. The searchlights were still on us. They would not let go and we were like that and then down the other side. I bet we were like that. He was flying up and down and trying to get loose from them, lose, lose them, and they were there. But they were there, that master searchlight, and it was an awful experience. It was a dreadful, dreadful experience and, anyway, just in the distance our, our rear gunner called out — they’d, what they done was, as we’d been flying and corkscrewing all over they copped onto another Lancaster and you could see it in the distance, this Lancaster. But they, they’d turned, they’d got hold of him. We just managed to get out of that because what happened after that was fighters. As soon as they, as soon as they — what used to happen was they would suddenly stop and so you were in complete darkness and that’s when the fighter boys used to come in. I think it says there we were attacked by fighters and anyway that wasn’t the end of the story. We were just levelled out and, and he grabbed hold of me, did the pilot, and he got hold of my intercom and he pulled out my intercom and he plugged my intercom into his intercom and he said, and he, he stood up and he said, you know, ‘Get into my seat.’ And, er, he sort of half dragged me, plugged it in. Well, as I passed him, as we were passing the seats, I saw him and he looked, even in the light that there was there, the sweat was literally pouring out of him. I never realised and never thinking like what he’d done and he’d been doing this for about twenty minutes, and that’s a lot in a Lancaster, going up and down and trying to — and, and so there I am, I’m sat in the cockpit. Well, bloody Lancaster, halfway across Germany and I’m sat there and the navigator said, ‘Alter course.’ And I just leaned forward and set the compass [cough] the old — and just set it and just set a bit of rudder, that was all, just to turn it on to whatever it was (I’ve forgotten) and flew it and not a sound, nobody spoke, nobody said anything and poor old Brice, he’d literally had it. And there I am, all quiet there, flying along there. Nothing to flying an aircraft, you know, it’s like driving a car up the M1. You just have to just sit there and hope that there’s no fighters and then it occurred to me I thought, ‘Christ what happens if, if we get attacked? What am I going to do? How am I going to corkscrew out of this?’ And Brice was just stood at the side of me and he kept patting me on the shoulder [slight laugh] and I thought, ‘There’s no good patting me on the shoulder if anything happens brother.’ Anyway, we was flying along. We must have been flying for about half an hour and nothing happened and that is — you, you couldn’t believe really, honestly, after all those experiences that I should be allowed to fly and I flew halfway across Germany. We weren’t far off the French coast and that’s how far I — I didn’t fly the thing. It just flew on its own. All I did was steering it. That’s the honest truth but nobody spoke and the only thing that upset me was nobody else in the crew knew what had happened, that I flew that aircraft. I thought he would have mentioned it, that when we sat down at briefing, ‘My flight engineer did this.’ And he never said, he never told none of those crew and from that day to this that I flew that aircraft back except when we were— well, they didn’t know and when we were coming up you know and the navigator, I think it was the navigator at that time, he tapped me on the shoulder and I got out. But I’d flown but that was the worst experience, one of the worst, and we hadn’t see anything really but —
IL: And that was your last —
RM: No, no.
IL: Sorry, I thought you said it was your last, sorry.
RM: No, no, no, no, no, that was Berlin. That was 24th of March and they called that the “Night of the Winds”. We lost seventy-five that night.
IL: My goodness.
Sarah: On, on a little lighter note do I, do I remember something about bomb doors not opening?
RM: No, I can’t — not bomb doors.
Sarah: No?
RM: No. Oh, we were attacked by night fighters, we got hit by flak, attacked by night fighters. That was the things that happened.
Sarah: Did you not have to come back once because you couldn’t drop some bombs? On a lighter note.
RM: Oh, right. This trip was Dortmund. Dortmund – Emms Canal they called it.
Sarah: There. We got it there.
RM: Dortmund, Dortmund Emms Canal. Right, and that was another, that was a hot spot, Dortmund but, um, experience, yes. We got into B-Baker and I started, I started the engines up, routine, er, before we left, before we left — what do you call it? Well, before we left where they were parked, like, we got in. The idea was to start the engines up, rev them up a bit, and I started the, the starboard engine up, one of them, and I just checked them, what they called a mag drop because, er, luckily it had two mag and what you had to do was run them up to a fifteen hundred and switch one of these mag drops. If you got a mag drop over three or four hundred revs there’s something wrong, you got a — anyway, I was testing them and called, I said to the skipper, I said, ‘It’s not right.’ I said, ‘This starboard inner. There’s too big a mag drop.’ And he said, ‘Oh.’ I said, ‘I’ll open it up again.’ Anyway, I reckoned to open it up to clear anything and give it a good boost, like, and, and no, it didn’t work. So, we stopped the engines, called up control, starboard inner US. Fine, we thought. Every— everybody in the crew thought we’re going to have a night off. Come over from control, um, ‘Bryson, Flight Lieutenant, Flying Officer Bryson there’ll be transport. They’re going to take, they’ll take you to C-Charlie.’ Oh, so we’ll have to go after all. Transport comes along. And imagine having to getting in and out of a Lancaster, across the old spar there and it was hard work. You’d have to take off all your, your, um, parachute like and your harness and things like that. So the transport comes, broom, broom, across to C-Charlie and it was cold and it didn’t feel like your aircraft and straight away there’s a bit of, ‘Who did this aircraft belong to?’ ‘Oh. It belongs to —.’ ‘Oh Christ, its cold.’ And you heard them moaning like and as to what each department they got into, they’d say, ‘Oh, it’s a dirty place.’ You know, the gunners were saying. And anyway we get in, starts the engines up, everything’s fine and navigator — and this is navigation equipment I’m going to tell you and it was called GEE and H2S. Anyway, he’s fiddling about and there’s Bryson and I up front giving it some boost to clear the oil and do all this sort of thing before take-off. We hadn’t left dispersal and navigator calls up, ‘Jesus Christ,’ he says. He said, ‘The GEE’s not working and H2S.’ So we sat there waiting. ‘Are you sure?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘Oh.’ We knew then we were going to have a night off. That was the second aircraft. Not on your Nelly. So, they send somebody over and well, to repair anything like that — they were fantastic machines, you know, you’re able to navigate a lot easier, let’s put it that way, with these machines, like, they were operating. Called up control. We thought for sure we were going to have a night off, um, ‘Flying Officer Bryson within C-Charlie. We’re sending out transport that’s going take you to Z-Zebra.’ So, you can imagine us, like, us and that belonged to Flight Lieutenant Franklin. So, transport comes along. What date was that Sarah? Dortmund?
Sarah: Dortmund? 22nd of Feb ’44.
RM: Feb? February?
Sarah: Oh, It says at the side, ‘abort, ice’.
RM: Right, so, we then had to be carted, miserable, returned to miserable then, the crew, ‘Jesus. What the — what are we doing? We should be in York by now.’ Gets into Z-Zebra, same procedure, and we knew the skipper of this aircraft. He wasn’t flying that night. Get into it. This is the third time and tempers were really flaring because, because they were all taking off. Didn’t wait for us, and so they were all taking off, and so I was following to see if we could get in and Bryson, my skipper, and me we never had a wrong word. I did everything he said. All he had to do was fly. And I mean, that’s the way we were. You had to work like that. And anyway, everything was fine and we starts off, and by that time we had to get a move on. It was half an hour since the rest of them had gone and that was bad. That was bad. That was really bad because you wanted to be with the main group, you see. You get over Germany and there’s one of you, you’ve had it. You’ve had it. There’s no doubt about that. [sound of aircraft] Anyway, we took off and we had to get a move on. There was a front, what they called a ‘front’, moving over the North Sea and I was giving him all the power that we could and we weren’t climbing, we were climbing about a hundred and sixty, I suppose, hundred and seventy or something, and the old Hercules engines there, they powered us up there. We were climbing and this front. We got a, what was it? A QDM or QFE saying this front was in and we had to climb above it because it was, excuse me, we was up at ten thousand feet and we had to climb above it. It was forty miles into the North Sea and he knew, did the skipper that I wasn’t going to push it anymore, because there’s always something at the other end of it, in my opinion. That’s how I worked it out. If we’d had pushed it we would have gone up to maximum power and it wouldn’t have done the engines any good. And we were trying to climb and all of a sudden I looked out and there was ice on the main plane like this and you could hear it, the props, straining again the plane, you know, and I looked out and I thought, ‘Oh dear.’ I really thought that we’d had it because we were struggling to move and I, I think our air speed, our air speed [emphasis] had been reduced to hundred and thirty, hundred and forty, and stalling was about ninety, ninety-five, something like that, and — but we plodded on and he called up did Bryson and he said, ‘Well, what are we going to do fellas? Are we going to turn back or are we going to press on, press on regardless?’ And all of a sudden as he said that the old Lanc give, gave a lurch because the ice on the, on the main plane, I’m not kidding, it was about six inches. It was that thick and we could never — we were struggling and all of a sudden it gave a lurch and he had the common sense did Bryson (well, he was a good pilot) and he, he all of a sudden, he stuffed the nose down and give it some starboard twists and we were going straight down. And all, then all of a sudden, as we got down a bit normal, like we were going down, and our air speed is about three hundred and fifty I think going down, but we were at ten thousand feet, eleven thousand feet, and, as I say, stuck the nose down and we just had to hope and all of a sudden as we hit warmer air, warm, warmer air, it flew off and it was a marvellous sight to see, because it flew off the plane did the ice and rubbish, you know, and also you couldn’t see because all the windows had, had, er, snowed-up. We couldn’t see out, couldn’t see where we going, and — but fortunately I had a little bit of knowledge and I remembered that in all those — never had to experience it — and there was a little what they called an alca— what did it contain? That fluid that we used to, they put in engines to stop them — coolant.
IL: Anti-freeze?
RM: Pardon?
IL: Anti-freeze.
RM: Anti-freeze.
IL: Ethylene glycol.
RM: And I was fiddling down as we were going down and I was fiddling down, around. It was down near his bloody rudder, and I remember I said, ‘Get your leg out of the way.’ Because it wasn’t a pump like that and what had happened was if you released the spring it pumped as it came up, not as you went down, and all of a sudden it cleared. The windows went just like that and it cleared but it didn’t make any difference. We were going down and then it started and then of course the weight. We had — it will tell you in there how much, how many bombs we, what we had and we’d have about fourteen thousand pounds of bombs on going straight down. I think we had a cookie that night. It will tell you there somewhere Sarah. Dortmund. Look down the left hand side.
Sarah: Yeah. I’ve got Dortmund there.
RM: And look across. No.
Sarah: I’m not sure. You know where to look. I don’t, dad.
RM: Well, here look. Where’s Dortmund?
Sarah: There.
RM: Right.
Sarah: There.
RM: Right, here look. What number is it? Seventeen.
Sarah: Yeah. Oh, there. Sorry, I’m with you.
RM: Eleven one hundred pounders and five five hundreds. And that’s a lot of bombs.
IL: A big load, yeah.
RM: That’s a lot of bombs. We could carry fifteen one thousand pounders, eight thousand pounders, twelve, twenty-two. Anyway, he says, as we were going down, he called out to the — he said to the bomb aimer, he said, ‘I’m opening the bomb doors.’ Talking to the bomb aimer, he said, ‘Trench. Drop the, drop the bombs.’ Now, protocol. You weren’t allowed to drop your bombs less than forty miles out to sea in the North Sea. Now that was law [emphasis]. That was what they told you to do and you had to be forty miles. Well, can you imagine? We’re out in the North Sea and I remember he called up and he said to the navigator, ‘Where are we nav?’ Or something like that and the navigator says, ‘How the bloody hell do I know if we’re forty miles out to sea.’ Because we’d gone through all this procedure and he called out to the bomb aimer, ‘Trench, I’m opening the bomb doors.’ And when he — well, that’s what I must have said to you Sarah about the bomb doors and he, he selected the bomb doors to be opened and they, with all the frost and they jammed and we were still going down you see and, and he kept pumping up and he said to me, ‘What do I do Ray?’ I said, ‘I haven’t a clue. I have nothing to do with the bomb doors.’ And he’s here, this side like, and all of a sudden they opened and we were going down and that was a nasty [emphasis] experience because you didn’t know what was going to happen. You were hoping then, and a wing and a prayer, and all of a sudden the bomb doors opened. You felt them jar because of the drag and all of a sudden we slowed down a bit, down to — I don’t know and old Trench called out, ‘Bombs gone.’ And we dropped all those [slight laugh] dropped all those bombs into the North Sea and that was a great relief. And so, back to base. When we got back to base, instead of taking us back to briefing, there was no debriefing, and instead the CO told us that he had to see the CO did the skipper so we drove round in this, er, in the wagon. We were inside the wagon and he stopped outside flight control, where the skipper was, where the CO was, and you wouldn’t believe it but our skipper got a rocket because we, we’d, um —
Sarah: You returned safely but you’d not done —
IL: Jettisoned.
Sarah: You’d not done your job.
RM: What did we call it? You wrote it out.
IL: Aborted.
Sarah: Aborted.
RM: Aborted, yes, and we’d aborted, and he got a right rocket did our skipper. He should have done this. He should have done that. And we couldn’t fly. You were literally came to a standstill. I mean, I was up there with him and it was impossible. You know, I really thought we’d had it. When I looked out and saw I really did. I thought — and you know he give it up as a bad job because you, he couldn’t do anything. There was no control. We were just flying forward, like, as slow as we could possibly could and fancy, and so out of spite, and if you look in there, out of spite the following night they sent us to Stuttgart and that, that was another eight hours and we always said he’d taken it out on us, the skipper, because we’d gone, we’d aborted, and that was an awful experience. There’d be, there’d be another one. There were lots of things that happened. I dare say, apart from three or four, you know, do you want me to go on talking? Because I could tell you of an experience, it wouldn’t take long, but of an experience more spiritual.
IL: Please.
RM: It’s interesting but it’s something, this, I’d done twenty-eight trips and that was coming to the end of it, this tour, and I’d done twenty-eight, and we were all a happy crew except this particular morning. I was always the first up in Beningbrough Hall. I was always the first up. There was only one wash basin, out of all those men there, wasn’t there Sarah? There was, well, there may have been more like but there was one on our floor and I was always first up. I was one of those who was embarrassed because I only shaved about twice a week [laugh] I did and so I was always first there and washed and this particular morning, and this is true, this particular morning I woke up and I laid there and it was always half past seven and I laid there and laid there and old Bowles, the rear gunner, he always followed me and he came over and he’d been to the ablutions, ablutions and he come and stood by the bed and he said, ‘Come on Ray.’ He said, ‘What’s up?’ And I looked up at him and said, ‘Oh, I’m alright.’ He said, ‘Well, what’s up?’ I said, ‘Nothing.’ And he said, ‘Oh.’ In between times, the while crew was billeted in this one room (they’d lock us in) Beningbrough Hall. And he said, ‘What’s up?’ Anyway, by the time I’d I just closed my eyes and all I wanted to do was — I can’t tell you what it was like. It was awful. I felt awful and I thought, ‘This is it. We’re going to get the chop.’ That’s all that went through my mind. It was — I was so desperate. I thought, ‘We’re, we’re going, we’re going to get the chop.’ And it was 8 o’clock when I got up and I thought — and these buses used to come, you see, and take us to Linton for breakfast to the sergeants’ mess and they came at regular intervals and I remember and I thought, ‘Oh, I feel awful.’ I felt dreadful and I knew that night if we were flying at some time we were going to get the chop. I had that feeling and it was an awful feeling. Anyway they’d all gone and I caught a bus, caught the bus and ended up — and, er, but I couldn’t, I still couldn’t do anything. I didn’t even go to breakfast and I went down to the hangar where the engineers were and I couldn’t, I didn’t seem to want to do anything. All I wanted to do — and I thought, ‘Shall I tell the crew?’ This is true, Ian, it’s true what I’m telling you. I didn’t know whether to tell the crew that not to fly that night. I hadn’t — I wanted to tell them that this was going to be our last trip. That was the feeling I had in me and, oh it must have been getting on, and I thought, ‘I’ll have to get something to eat.’ And I went down to the mess and I had my breakfast and then, from then, I had a walk. I walked, I started to walk to flights and on the way down we passed their chapel (we had a chapel at Linton) and we were going — I’ve got to stop [pause] I had a job. I’ll stop.
Sarah: You want to stop?
RM: Well, it’s a story, so I’ll have to carry on and tell you what happened. I’ll have to carry on.
IL: It’s up to you. I don’t want to make you —
RM: No, no, no. It’s alright. I’ll get over it.
IL: I don’t want to upset you.
RM: No, I’ll get over it. I promise you. I went into church and I said the Lord’s Prayer. It came out and I thought I’d feel better. That’s what I’d done it for, hadn’t I? And I thought I’d feel better and I went back to the, the crewing room, and it was all better then. It did seem better but at the back of my mind there was still this thing and, anyway, the skipper came round and he said, ‘We’re flying tonight.’ And he said, ‘I’ll pick you up Ray.’ As he did every time. He said, ‘I’ll pick you up Ray.’ And he came round with the jeep and, of course, that was what we did every morn— every morning before a flight and we went out to the aircraft and it seemed alright. You know, you run it, I did the checks, you went round and checked everything, and run the engines up, and it was in the back of my mind and it seemed to — it was there and I still I couldn’t tell you why but it was there and, um, anyway — but I still wanted to tell the crew that it was going to be our last one. I had it. Anyway, er, and we got out to flights and we get into the aircraft, and pilot always went first and I followed him, and I was going up the ladder and our old Bowles, he bumped me up the backside going up the ladder. He said, ‘Come on Ray.’ And as I got to the steps my knees gave way and they were trembling, they was literally shaking, and I thought, ‘I’m mad. Why don’t I tell them I’m not going?’ And I thought that, that was there on the twenty-ninth, Sarah. Look on twenty-nine. You’ll see. It was a duff target. I don’t think we lost any of them.
Sarah: Was it Criel?
RM: That’s it. Criel. And, er, he bumped me up the backside. He said, ‘Come on Ray. What’s up?’ And with that I thought, ‘That’s it. Got to go. Got to go now. I’m inside and it’s everything.’ And as, as we were walking up, even the last minute, I was touching things, the old dinghy, the dinghy handle, and I looking round and I knew I’d done it before in the morning and, anyway, we gets off like but all the time I couldn’t — it was there whatever I did, you know. I set the petrol pumps and turned on the right tanks to be on and I had to do something to be — and I remember getting my log, my log, my log card and sort of wanting to do something. Anyway, we took off and everything but I was waiting all the time. I was waiting, waiting for something to happen and anyway we flew out. It was Criel and it was, it was nothing. So we flew out there and I don’t, I don’t think — we didn’t see a fighter, there was hardly any ak-ak fire, I don’t think there was hardly — there was nothing. We turned round and come back and do you know all the time we were coming back I had it in my mind, landing, when we were landing I was waiting [pause] waiting. We landed. Nothing happened and it were really interesting, looking back, it was the best trip I’ve ever been on. I wouldn’t have got back and I thought that I’d been, and what I’m trying to say is had I not been to church, do you understand that?
IL: I do.
RM: Had I not been to church or what would have happened? Was the good Lord on, on our side? But, believe it or not, I would sooner have gone on a trip and been shot at than gone through that experience again. You can’t understand. I couldn’t describe to anybody really and that was on my 29th trip and that was — and I never mentioned it to anybody but I do remember coming out of briefing, um, old, our Bowles, the rear gunner, he put his hand on my shoulder and he said, ‘We done it Ray.’ I don’t think — I think it was about the thirtieth wasn’t it Sarah, Criel?
Sarah: It was your twenty-ninth.
RM: That, that’s what I say, it was the twenty-ninth.
Sarah: How did you feel for your thirtieth then?
RM: Pardon?
Sarah: How did you feel going for your thirtieth?
RM: Nothing.
Sarah: No?
RM: It had gone Sarah. No, no. I was happy as Larry. No, that didn’t even occur to me. All, all of it suddenly when old Bowles came out of the briefing and old Bowles he put his arm on my shoulder and said, ‘You know Ray we done it.’ But what he meant was we were so near to completing and, I mean, one trip there and it says losses and we didn’t lose an aircraft. I mean, it was probably an easy target but that, but that particular time it was awful. It was awful. I had this feeling. But the other thing, of course, you had to have faith. You had to have faith in the rest of your crew and they were a wonderful crew, they really were, and you had to have faith in what they did and, and it was being selfish, thinking of myself, thinking it was me I was worried about and not thinking about them, except I wanted to tell them, and didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to go. And that was awful. I would have been LMF. No I wouldn’t. They wouldn’t chance me going. They would screen me. But it was awful you know, I can’t — so I say, I’d rather go to Berlin any time than go through that experience again. It was dreadful and, I mean, you can think what you like about it.
Sarah: How old were you then?
RM: Twenty, nineteen, nineteen.
Sarah: Nineteen. Wow.
RM: Yeah, I was nineteen Sarah, yeah.
Sarah: I think you had every right to have a wobble in your knees. [slight laugh]
IL: Absolutely. So, you finished your, you finished your thirty, thirty-one in your case, and then you — did you keep in touch with your crew after that?
RM: No. That was another thing, um, because something happened when I was at Lindholme. Here, I’ll tell you who I flew — I flew with Pat Moore, you know, the astronomer.
IL: Oh, right.
RM: Yeah. I was billeted with him.
IL: And where was that?
RM: At Lindholme.
IL: Right.
RM: I’ll have to tell you this. This is, this is the brighter side. I was posted to Lindholme. This was from Transport Command.
IL: Right.
RM: And, er, this is a little bit in between. Patrick Moore, tell ‘em, Patrick Moore posted to, er, Lindholme and we formed — what it was I was at it again. We formed a squadron, 716 Squadron, and we were to fly to Manila to bomb Japan. I never heard such rubbish, rubbish. That was what it was but of course Ray Moore put his name down in the orderly room, oh, I’ll volunteer. Yes, I’ll volunteer. Where’s Milan? Where’s —
Sarah: Manila.
RM: Manila. I didn’t even know where it was. My geography wasn’t that bad but I didn’t know where Manila was. It’s true. So we get posted there and the—
Sarah: A bit south of Worthing?
RM: Pardon?
Sarah: A bit south of Worthing.
RM: yeah. So the jeep drops me off and there was houses at Lindholme and all the pilot officers and flying officers were upstairs and all the flight lieutenants were downstairs. That was snobbery wasn’t it? Honestly, truthfully. That’s how it was. Anyway, I get my kit bag and walking up the stairs, and they were big houses, and the front room, there was two of us in the front room upstairs and two in the back room. Anyway, ‘The one on the left is yours.’ Right, and the door was part open, and I walked in, and there was this chap sat on his bed, and I walked in and I turned round and I said, ‘Oh, hello.’ I was feeling good I suppose and I said, ‘Oh, hello.’ And he, he stood up and he said, um, ‘Flying Officer Patrick Moore.’ And I looked at him and said, ‘Flying Officer Raymond Moore.’ And do you know and he had a quizzical look, you know, his eyebrows.
IL: He was famous for those.
RM: Pardon?
IL: He was famous for those.
RM: Yes, that’s it? Well, he gave me this look and he said, and he thought I was pulling, pulling his leg. I know that when I looked at him and I said, ‘Oh, hello.’ Especially when I said, ‘Flying Officer Raymond Moore.’ And I went and slung my kit bag on my bed. And he stood up and he said, ‘Are you from, areyou Irish?’ I said, ‘No I’m not.’ I thought, ‘I’ve got a queer one here.’ You know. I said, ‘No. My parents came from Norwich, Norfolk.’ ‘Oh. Oh, righto.’ And we came very good friends and we visited him down at the Farthings down at —
Sarah: Billericay.
RM: Pardon?
Sarah: Was it Billericay?
RM: No, no. Down on the south coast, um, down on the south coast, Sarah. That lovely big house. Oh yeah, we visited him and he was, he was quite an eccentric, you know, but —
IL: He did have a bit of a reputation.
RM: He did and, um, he did, but we got on fine, famous, we did really. We went and visited him and he was always angry at me because when he started to talk about astronomy — and all I knew was there was a lot of stars up there, and there was the sun and the moon, and I wasn’t a bit interested. He taught me how to use the, um, what did they call it? Sextant. He taught me how to use that on the road that was, at Lindholme. Hehe showed me how to — and afterwards he was absolutely disgusted because after he’d shown me how to use it and I wasn’t a bit interested and he said to me after he, he’d worked out his shot he called it, after he worked out the shot, I was about a hundred miles off target, and he didn’t like it one bit. And that’s a letter, look, he wrote to me after we’d got, after I’d — I wasn’t really a bit interested in. We had family and family life, that’s all, that’s all I wanted was family life so anything in between. And we finished, we retired at sixty, June 28th it was, and he says, ‘Great to hear from you.’ Now, this is all those years after, this was 1987, but, um, we used to play, Bet and myself and another girl called Joan Walters (she was our bridesmaid) and we used to play a foursome at badminton, and he was a keen sportsman, and we got on well together, and I could have kicked his backside because we were stood outside Flying Control after the war was over and he said to me, well we were talking, and he said — but I still had a year’s service to do and after I finished flying — I packed in flying. I did that for moral reasons. That was another thing. I said, ‘I don’t know I’m going to do.’ He said, ‘I’ll tell you what you should do Raymond.’ He said, ‘Why don’t you go in Flying Control?’ He said, ‘It would suit you down to the ground.’ I said, ‘Flying Control?’ I said, ‘No. I don’t want to be [clears throat] associated with aircraft Pat.’ He said, ‘Well what about as— what about —.’ What do they call weather, you know?
IL: Metrologist.
RM: Metrology. He said, ‘Why don’t you take up metrology?’ I said, ‘I never thought much about it.’ I said, ‘No.’ And I took admin and I became an adjutant, for Christ’s sake, after all that. Worst thing I ever did. They were what I call — I’ll repeat it on there — I called them, ‘Hooray Henrys.’ Because that’s what they were, ground crew, what I considered they were. It was an armaments depot and I’ve never had such twelve miserable months in all my life in the service, with all the fact that I’d been aircrew, I was a — they treated me like dirt. They never even thought — and I’m not — it’s the honest truth. I know where they put me, right at the bottom of the list, and I could have fought them. I know I could in the mess, in the officers’ mess. I could have had many a row with them when they talked about air crew and how they — they snubbed me. I was the only member of the air crew there, you see, and I was the assistant adjutant and I couldn’t have cared less. I lost a lot of interest but, er, but I always said that old Pat Moore, although he was trying to do — and I should have done what he did. I should have gone in Flying Control or, er, he says, ‘It’s great to hear from you.’ You can read it.
IL: I’d love to.
RM: Yes. He did. Yes.
IL: Just, just because I’m conscious of that we actually and I don’t want to tire you out but I would like to hear what, what you were telling me earlier about when you went to Dalton and you had sort of an interesting time leaving Dalton. [slight laugh]
RM: Oh that. Oh yeah. Well, I mean, first and foremost, what I must tell you is, when I was sent there as an instructor, I mean, I remember there with old Scot. He finished a tour. Squadron Leader was his skipper, Hailes [?] I think it was, and but we were, we were like buddy buddies you know all the time we were flying and, you know, what are they called? Those two comedians. They’ve both died. The other one —
Sarah: Morecambe and Wise.
RM: No, the other, one was fat and the other a little chubby fella. They died.
Sarah: Oh Oliver Hardy and —
RM: No, no.
Sarah: No?
RM: No. It’s goodnight to him and it’s goodnight to him.
IL: Oh, the two Ronnies.
RM: Two Ronnies.
IL: Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbet.
RM: Well, Ronnie, the shortest one and he looked, he was his twin brother and he was, he was, um, well, Scottie to me. I called him Scottie, but he was very short and when he wore his cap, when he wore his cap he was only about five foot six and he was, he didn’t look right, you know, somehow. He was thin and didn’t look right and [clears throat] we both got posted to Dalton as instructors. Well, you know, it was a joke, I mean for me to be an instructor and when I went into this hut it was about twenty-eight foot long it was. I remember it distinctly and there were two engines in there and they’d been cut in half and all the component parts had been painted different colours. And anyway when I looked in through the door old scot, old scot, he took the air frames and I took the engines. So he was in another part of the building. But we were sent there to be in charge. They’d been opened up as a depot, you know, for training purposes to teach pilots. The airframe and engine of a Lancaster, that was what it was and we’d both been sent there to be in charge to open it up as a training centre, you know, and I’ll never forget I walked inside the door there and I saw this Lanc there, and this Lanc, you can imagine the size of it. It’s a massive thing like this, and all of its components, like red — I can’t tell you, the different colours they painted it, and all you had to do really, apart from the instructing part, which was a major part, you know, what happened to this and what happened to that but I was good. I knew every part of the engine, er, originally but when it came to standing up there and there was a blackboard at the back there and I thought, ‘This is not for me. This is not for me.’ And I hadn’t a clue and what it meant was that I was saying this, that and the other, blackboard, a bit of this, a bit of that. There were six of them, six pilots. Anyway, I got to know them and I told them exactly I was useless as an instructor. I was useless because — and I couldn’t really have cared less. I’d finished flying. I’d done my bit. Anyway Scottie got on fine. He was a crawler, like. He wanted to be in charge and I couldn’t have cared less. He could have run it for me. They could have promoted him. They did do but — and so that’s how it was and so what happened was there was a bit of friction between us. He wanted to, he wanted to be in charge and if he’d have said to me, you know, if he’d have shook his fists and said to me, ‘I’m going to be in charge.’ I would have said to him, ‘Help yourself.’ Anyway, it started off with me instructing, um, and I wasn’t very good. I wasn’t very good at conveying anything. I knew everything that was there, every part of the engine and what it did but when it came to what I — the theory and what happened — so, of a morning, this was my idea, found out that this little café in Topcliffe, you see, which is — you know where Topcliffe is?
IL: I do.
RM: Right, and up one of the sideways there, where it says no entry coming down, and on the right hand side there in them days there was a little old bicycle shop. And they were a lovely couple. They were elderly and we got to know of it and we all had bikes. Everybody had a bike there and every morning I got to find out and just across, as you went through the gates, just across there, there was a NAAFI wagon, er, for a wad and a cup of tea as they called it, a wad and a cup of tea, and it was just across there and all you had to do was walk across there and it used to be there half past nine every morning but I thought, ‘A cup of tea and a wad.’ It was alright but it didn’t seem — it wasn’t up my street. I was a bit more adventurous. We found out this little café in Topcliffe, you see, so the idea was — there was just four of us (there was a couple of them who didn’t go) — and the idea was to get through the gate and I knew them couple on the gate, those red caps, you know, and they in them days — I wasn’t an official man. I was one of them and so I got to know these. There were two of them and [clears throat] go through the gate, pedal to Topcliffe. True, they used to have it very nearly ready for us, a lovely cup or mug of sweet tea and gobble your old spam sandwich. They were beautiful those spam because that spam used to come from America and it was the best spam I’ve ever tasted. So, anyway, then bike back again and Scottie didn’t like this. It wasn’t to his liking because I should have been instructing, you see, and when it struck 10 o’clock I should have been back there. Well, we only, we had half an hour to get there and half an hour back again. It didn’t seem far to me but we used to be late going or late coming back. It never used to bother me. This particular morning, gets the old bike ready, going out, and all of a sudden Scottie appears and he stood in front of this bike. He, he’s just stood in front of me with, with my bike in and grabbed me and, ‘Morning Scott. Morning Scottie, how are you?’ He said, ‘Mr Moore, Mr Moore.’ He said, ‘I’m forbidding you to go.’ He was only a pilot officer same as me but he was trying to throw rank, and he said, ‘Mr Moore.’ He said, ‘I forbid you to go.’ I looked and said, ‘What?’ He said, ‘I forbid you to go.’ He knew that we were going you see. He said, ‘It isn’t right.’ He said, ‘You’re not. It’s not right.’ He said, ‘You shouldn’t be going out.’ All this stuff and I said, ‘Get out of the way Scottie.’ He said, ‘I forbid you to go.’ So, and all I did was, I had the handle bars, and I was like this with the handle bars, I said, ‘Get out of the way.’ And he was stood there and what happened was he, he sort of, the bike wheel as it was, and he sort of stumbled on his back-side. I wasn’t even bothered. I just said, ‘Come on fellers. We’ll go back to Topcliffe.’ And I get back. I still, well, that’s how it was. Went back in to the instructing part of it and all of a sudden over the Tannoy, ‘Will Flying officer, would pilot officer Moore report to the orderly office at 12 o’clock.’ I thought, ‘What the hell do they want me for?’ And anyway I didn’t bother. I went on like. At 12 o’clock I wandered over to the orderly room just up the road inside the camp and I went in and there were two, two MPs there, red caps ‘Hello.’ I thought what’s up. Anyway, they stood to one side and, er, I never thought any more about it. I went inside and in fact the squadron leader, I knew him, not as a friend but I knew him as, you know, sort of, not so much this but, um, squadron leader and in the mess and anyway when I went inside like he had a stern looking face on and he had all my folders in front of him with all, all my bumph. ‘Now then.’ He said, ‘You’re in real trouble.’ I said, ‘Why? What have I done?’ He said, ‘You struck a fellow officer.’ I said, ‘I didn’t strike anybody.’ He said, ‘Oh, yes you did.’ He said, ‘You were seen by two members of the military police.’ I said, ‘I didn’t strike him.’ I said, ‘I pushed him.’ I said, ‘I pushed him.’ I said, ‘That’s all I did and said ‘Get out of the way.’’ He said, ‘What? What was it all about?’ [cough] ‘What was it all about?’ I said. ‘You must know, Sir, that bicycles were disappearing of a morning and biking up to Topcliffe.’ I said — he said, ‘Well, you must have known you were in the wrong. You were breaking out of camp.’ I thought, ‘Oh dear.’ And I thought what? The first thing that went through my mind was, what would my dad say if I’m, um, if I’m —
Sarah: Discharged.
RM: Discharged. Well, what it meant was I wouldn’t be discharged. They would have stripped me —
Sarah: Well, yeah.
RM: And put me on — anyway he said, ‘What did you think you were doing?’ He said, ‘Look at your record.’ I said, ‘Honestly.’ I said. He said, ‘I believe you.’ You see on record he said you did strike a fellow officer I said, ‘Sire, there’s no, there’s nothing?’ He said, ‘I’m sorry.’ So, I said, ‘What’s the score?’ He said like, ‘I wanted him to go down to see the MO.’ And I thought, you know, ‘What have I done? What have I done?’ All I did was a friendly get out of the way, you know. If I’d — I couldn’t have hit him. He was about two inches shorter. He was only a little chap and a breath of wind like me, he was — and anyway, he said, ‘I want you to go down to the MO.’ And a very friendly chap, a Flight Lewie [?] and I went down to see him and he said, ‘I’ve just had a phone call from the squadron leader CO.’ And he said, he said, ‘What it is, you’re being posted to Brackla.’ I said, ‘Brackla.’ He said, ‘It’s a joke.’ He said, ‘It’s, they call it the ‘demented air crew’ of Brackla.’ And he said, ‘That is where you’re going.’ He said, ‘I’m going to put you on venal barbital.’ And he said, ‘You have to take these. Here’s a packet.’ And I don’t know if it was in a bottle or what it was and he said, ‘I want you to take one of these in the morning.’ And I thought — I couldn’t believe it. I might have been a bit screwy if you know what I mean, finishing ops. I’m not saying I wasn’t — I’m not saying I was perfect or anything like that. I, I was a bit erratic. I do remember that. I remember getting drunk at the Jim Crack in York, you know, and that was after we’d I finished flying, and where I went — years ago Sarah.
Sarah: Betty’s?
RM: It was something Arms.
Sarah: Oh, I don’t know.
RM: And I remember getting drunk there like but —
Sarah: I know you used to go to Betty’s when —
RM: Oh, Betty’s Bar in York. Oh, well. Betty’s dive. Oh, yeah. A few times back —
Sarah: My, how things have changed.
IL: Yeah.
RM: Where what?
IL: I said ‘My. How things have changed.’ It’s not Betty’s dive any more is it?
RM: Oh, no.
Sarah: No. You pay twenty pounds for afternoon tea.
IL: It’s very up market, Betty’s.
RM: When you went downstairs there you couldn’t see above the smoke. But, um, yes.
Sarah: That’s where you scratched your name.
RM: [cough] The — oh, down inside there. If ever you go inside you want to go downstairs and as you just look round the corner there’s mirrors there and all of — my name’s on there.
IL: Oh, I’ll look.
RM: Scratched, scratched with a diamond ring and there there’s book there with all the names that’s on the glass, on the mirrors.
IL: Oh right.
RM: Yeah. And if you want to and actually if you wanted to see it and you, you’re met at the top of the stairs where they queue for their tea and cakes. If you met up the top of the stairs and you met any one of those girls they would take you down there and they — and you say, ‘Excuse me. I don’t want anything to eat. I just want to look at the glass and the mirrors.’ There’s hundreds of them down there and then there’s a little book. There used to be a little book. Yeah, my name’s on there. The whole crew’s on there, yeah.
IL: Fantastic. So —
RM: Anyway, going back to Brackla, demented air crew, and he said — and it, and was a joke but I thought, ‘Oh to hell with it. I’ve finished flying. They can do what they like with me.’ And it didn’t bother me. It honestly didn’t bother me. I didn’t say — I wasn’t belligerent or anything and I accepted it and he said — our billet’s were further down — he said, ‘Be outside your billet.’ And, yeah, in the morning he said — now I could have gone — there was a station at Dalton and he said — this jeep. That was the beauty of it, wasn’t it? ‘This jeep and it will take you to York, like, and from York you change for Edinburgh, Edinburgh to Inverness, Inverness.’ And look at that, look what I did then. I stayed at that big hotel at Inverness. It’s a beautiful hotel, you know, attached to the station and that’s where I spent the night there. It was marvellous and after the war [cough] there was a cheap trip going up to inverness by train and I took my wife there. And I said to Bet, I said, I said, er, ‘We’ll go to Inverness.’ It was a two day or three day trip to Inverness and it was a cheap one or whatever. [background noise] And — oh, it’s her phone and I think she’ll get fed up with it — and I said, ‘We’ll go back up there Bet and it’ll be an experience. We’ll go up all the way up by train and we’ll stay at this hotel.’ Anyway, fair enough, we get up there, carrying our suitcase, I went up to the desk all — I was feeling on top of the world to treat my wife, to go back to recovery, to this spot. [cough] I went up to the desk and I said, ‘I’d like to book a double room for two, three nights.’ Whatever, and she said, ‘Oh right.’ And I said, ‘How much is it?’ She said, ‘It’s a hundred pound a night.’ This was in 1960, 1975. [clears throat] I’d retired but it was one of those retirement things, wasn’t it? You know, to treat my wife and I said, ‘How much?’ She said, ‘A hundred pound a night.’ I said, ‘I was here in 1944.’ I thought I was going to flannel her, you know, try to get a bit out of it, like, try to get it a bit cheaper, and I said, ‘Excuse me.’ I said, ‘Is there? Haven’t you got any?’ I said, ‘I’ve seen brochures. My wife—.’ She said, ‘It’s a hundred pounds a night.’ I can’t mimic, and she said, she says, ‘It’s a hundred pounds a night.’ I said, ‘So, a hundred pound a night.’ So, I said, ‘From Monday to Wednesday.’ She said, ‘It’s a hundred pound a night.’ I said, ‘Forget it.’ I didn’t know what I was saying because we’d, we’d gone up there by train. It was a cheap train ride up there. So we went outside the hotel and, of course, in them days, like, [unclear] there was always a policeman — did you know that? — at a railway station, nine times out of ten. Are you alright Sarah?
Sarah: Yes. I’m fine dad. Yeah.
RM: Have you got to go?
Sarah: No. It’s alright. Don’t worry.
So went outside and there’s this policeman there. He says, ‘Are you alright?’ Nice and friendly. He says, ‘Are you alright?’ I said, ‘No.’ I explained to him what happened. ‘We’ve come up here.’ He said, ‘Oh, [unclear].’ I said, ‘We can’t afford it.’ I guess we could have if we’d pushed it, don’t you?
Sarah: I think you could have, father.
RM: And, er, anyway I went outside and your mum was outside and I said, ‘It’s a hundred.’ She said, ‘We aren’t staying here.’ So, this policeman, he said, ‘Oh, don’t worry.’ And there was a taxi rank outside and this he said, like, ‘Fred, here.’ So this chap come over and he said, ‘I’ve two wanderers here.’ He said, ‘Can you find them digs for the night?’ ‘Oh, aye.’ He said, ‘Get in the car.’ He drove, we went straight round to this, this lady, bed and breakfast. We went in and it was marvellous. Three night’s bed and breakfast. I, I don’t know how much it was but it was marvellous and we had a lovely three days up there and I didn’t have to spend a hundred pound a night. It was a colossal amount. But it is a beautiful hotel, it is honestly, it is a beautiful hotel.
IL: I don’t know if it’s still there actually.
RM: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I know somebody that — yes it is. And so that was it. That was the hotel I was posted to and I thought it’s be nice to go back. And the following morning there was a jeep. What the devil did they call it that place? It was Brackla. Anyway he knew where to go. It was an RAF jeep and we drove across country and it’s all, all cross country, you know, from Inverness to the other side. I wish I could remember the name. It, it’s fairly popular but, um, that was on the coast and then gets sent to this demented aircrew. It was a joke. I wasn’t, I was no more demented — I might have been, I might have been scratching the door, as I say, I might have been [unclear].
Sarah: Who wouldn’t have been?
RM: I might have been — I was under a psychiatrist when I come out. Pardon?
Sarah: Who wouldn’t have been after that?
RM: What?
Sarah: Scratching the door. I said, ‘Who wouldn’t have been?’
RM: Oh, yes Sarah. Yeah, I realise that.
IL: And all the time and you were there for six months and just sort of —
RM: Oh no, no, no. After I’d seen what was going on and I saw the sergeants’ mess —
IL: Oh, I see. Sorry. I was getting a bit confused, sorry.
Sarah: [unclear] six months.
RM: I tend to go from one thing to another. No, no. I should have gone there for six months. It was a rest camp for demented aircrew. It was very popular. Nobody thought anything about it.
IL: How long were you there for?
RM: No more than two months.
IL: A couple for months.
RM: It might have been — do you what Sarah?
Sarah: You asked to leave didn’t you?
RM: Oh yeah, yeah. I saw the, as I say, I laid in bed and watched the sergeant’s mess burn, watched it burn. Well, I couldn’t understand. I laid in bed and saw these flames and I took no notice until the following day. They burnt it down to the ground. It was burnt to the ground. They were wooden you see.
IL: And all the time you were there you were taking the venal barbital, so did you have to have medical clearance to leave or did you —
RM: Now you’re asking me a question. I would say [clears throat] don’t forget when I went — when you got posted to another station I would say that my medical records would have followed me. That’s what I, I — I shall be honest, I cannot put it to mind. I don’t think, I think I stopped taking them when I got to Ireland. I think I thought what do I — I’m sure I did, I don’t want to take these things any more. I didn’t feel like taking them. That was, that was probably what I thought, you know, but I couldn’t help thinking about them. It was —
IL: Because it would have been an interesting, you know, as a doctor, um, you would think you wouldn’t want people flying who were taking them. But if there was no, if there was no, you know, medical, you know — I think people thought they weren’t particularly — I think people thought they were fairly innocuous drugs in those days, barbiturates.
RM: No. When I came out and we came back to you, we came back to Yo—, we came back to York, came back to Thirsk, came back to live at my mother in laws. Now then —
Sarah: Were you married to my mum then?
RM: Where?
Sarah: When you were in Scotland?
RM: Yeah. Oh no, not during the war.
Sarah: I didn’t think so.
RM: Oh, no, no, no.
Sarah: Then you went to Ireland.
RM: I went to Ireland on Transport Command via — oh gosh, I hated it.
Sarah: But then what, where did you go from Ireland?
RM: I went back on Bomber Command. I told him — well, I won’t tell you about that. That was really truly self-inflicted. Something happened. I went without leave. I buggered off with old Darkie Thorne, my very dear friend, and we went down to Belfast and stayed at the — it wasn’t very — this friend of mine, he got shot down and he walked back, and I met him in Ireland. We were like brothers. We were, and he was a beggar, and he come back and I remember him. And he saw me and we ran to one another. Oh, he said, ‘We’ll have a good time.’ And of course, it was Darkie Thorne and me and it was on the squadron. He said, ‘Look at this.’ And in those days, of course, you got paid in cash and he’d been a prisoner. He had been a prisoner of war and he’d been shot down but he’d was rescued by a French family and he, what we called, walked back. He’d got the caterpillar and it was what we called — he’d walked back. And we met him in Northern Ireland and he said [laugh], and, ‘Look.’ He said, ‘We’re going to spend this.’ I mean he’d been gone about six months and when come back like he’d been to get paid and they didn’t have a bank. You took your money as you were paid and he said, ‘Look. We’re going to have some fun. We’re going to have some fun with this in Belfast.’ And we were, it was about ten miles from Belfast, isn’t it? That international airport?
Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. It will be.
RM: Yeah, and, er, I thought, ‘Well, I daren’t get into any more trouble.’ I’d been de-commissioned once. I’d lost six months seniority with, you know, getting into a bit of trouble like and I said, I thought, ‘I’d better slow down here.’ Anyway, we were snowbound over there. It snowed from — I was over there in the October I suppose and it snowed and snowed and snowed. We didn’t do a lot of flying and so we were grounded. And when you were grounded you were at school. You went to school. And, anyway, it was one of those times when you got — you couldn’t get bored on the squadron but being there with all this snow and this time he come at me and said, ‘Do you fancy a trip down to Dublin?’ And I said, ‘We can’t Darkie. We can’t. We’ll be interned.’ And, he said, ‘I’ll fix it all up.’ He was a wide boy. He was a Cockney [laugh] and his mum and dad and his sister had been killed in an air raid in London so he was one of those. He, he didn’t just hate the Germans, he detested them. He would have shot every one of them if he could have done and that was his attitude. But he was, he was a Cockney, he says, ‘Would you like to go down to Dublin?’ I said, ‘We can’t Darkie.’ I said, ‘We can’t. We’ll be interned.’ He said, ‘Leave it with me.’ He said, ‘I’ve been looking around.’ He said, ‘There’s a second hand shop in Belfast and we’ll get some civvy suits and we’ll have a rag round and I’ll get, I’ll get two passports.’ And he was going on and I said, ‘Forget it.’ I said, ‘I haven’t got a very good name Darkie.’ And he said, ‘Well you’re alright. You’ve got a commission.’ And poor old Darkie hadn’t even got his flight sergeant. He was still a sergeant he said, ‘Oh, don’t worry about that. I’ll fix it up.’ And I wasn’t really keen to go to Dublin because the Irish are a different people and there was a lot of, as you know as I do, the IRA were still floating around at that time. [clears throat] Anyway, time went by [clears throat] he said, ‘I’ve got your suit.’ I said, ‘You’re joking.’ He said, ‘No. I’ve got your suit.’ He says, ‘A nice brown suit.’ [laugh] He said, ‘I’ve got your suit.’ He said, ‘A nice brown suit.’ I said, ‘What about passports?’ ‘I got them.’ He said, ‘Yes. There’s a place in Belfast where I’ve gone.’ I said, ‘You must be joking.’ ‘No.’ He said, ‘Money and I’ve plenty of it.’ And he has I’m not kidding you. He had a roll. And he said, ‘You don’t pay for a thing so don’t question it.’ [unclear] and the snow in them days, it seemed to stay. We seemed to get snow over there from October right through to February and we did. Very rarely we take off and so you seemed to be in the same spot. Anyway, went to Belfast, got on a train, about halfway down — I don’t know how far we were — and the gendarmes got on, whatever you called them, checked out passports. Have you been to Dublin, Sarah?
Sarah: I have.
RM: Have you? You know the big bridge there then and, and the hotel Ma— it has a Canadian name, Ma—
IL: Montreal?
RM: [unclear] So we go, go and stays at this hotel, books in at this hotel. Well, for four days I can hardly remember, honestly, and I’m not a, I was never an alcoholic, but we drank Guinness chasers. That was Guinness and whisky. And we were drunk from — the only thing we thought about was an evening meal and that’s the honest true. We’d have breakfast. Anyway, it comes to about four days and I says, ‘We’ll have to be back.’ The weather seemed to be lifting and I said, ‘We’ll have to be back Darkie.’ ‘No, no, no, no.’ He said, ‘We’re all right.’ And I gave in and said, ‘Just one more night then.’ He said, ‘Yeah. It will be alright. Went back to camp, walks into the camp, first thing, ‘Flying Officer Moore report to the orderly room. I thought, ‘Oh Jesus.’ I said, ‘This is it, Darkie.’ He said, ‘Oh, tell them to — off.’ But I was commissioned and I respected that commission. Don’t get me wrong, I did, I respected it and, anyway, I went down to the orderly room. I thought they were going to put me in irons, honestly. Went before the CO. There again, the old documents come out and he says, ‘I don’t understand it. I’ve been looking at your documents.’ And he said, ‘How do you feel?’ And I thought ‘Christ. I’m not going back to — no way am I ever going back to — no way am I going back to that camp.’ I said, ‘I feel fine.’ And he said, ‘What are you doing?’ And what had happened was, my crew had crewed up and flown to Karachi with Transport Command and he said, ‘Well, your crew went without you. We had to find another flight engineer, didn’t we?’ And I said, ‘Oh.’ You know, I expected it. No good saying I didn’t and he said, ‘I don’t really know.’ He said, ‘But you see we don’t want fellas like you in Transport Command.’ He said, ‘We don’t want officers like you in Transport Command.’ And all of a sudden I thought, ‘Bugger yer.’ And I turned round to him and I said, ‘Well, I’ll tell you something. I don’t want to be in Transport Command.’ And he stood back and I said, ‘I don’t want to be in Transport Command.’ And he got hold of my papers and hit the desk and he said, ‘What do you want to do?’ I said, ‘I want to go back to Bomber Command.’ He said, ‘Idiot.’ I said, ‘I want to go back.’ I said, ‘That’s where the camaraderie is.’ And he said, ‘Right.’ He said, ‘Be outside your billet at eight.’ Again, you know, he said, ‘Be outside your billet.’ And he said, ‘There’ll be a jeep to take you to Belfast.’ He said, ‘You’ll get on a train.’ He said, ‘You’ll get on a train.’ He said, ‘You’re posted to Lindholme.’ So that’s when I got back to Lindholme to Bomber Command.
IL: So, did you fly any more operations from Lindholme?
RM: Not from Lindholme. We were non-operational. Well, we weren’t non-operational because we were flying and we — they flew the backsides off us. I told your mum. She was always playing hell because my wife was a WAAF on the same station and I was courting her, you know, and fortunately I caught her, didn’t it? And what happened was the — as I say I put my name down, 617, 67, 76 Squadron and that was where I went back. And I said to him, I said, ‘I don’t want to be with Transport Command.’ And he stood back, you know, one of those stiff upper lip chaps and he said, ‘Be outside your billet at 8 or 9 o’clock.’ And said, ‘They’ll take you to Belfast Station and you’re posted to Lindholme. Idiot.’ And I just walked out. I didn’t even turn round and salute him. I thought, ‘Beggar yer.’ But it was another experience wasn’t it, you know?
IL: Oh, absolutely.
RM: Yeah, it was. Another court martial. Dear, oh dear, but —
IL: Were you actually court martialled for that?
RM: Pardon?
IL: Were you court martialled for that?
RM: Oh, no, no, no.
IL: No?
RM: Oh, no, no, no. That’s was how, really and truthfully, I’ll be honest with you, I know I got away with it because I’d done thirty-one trips. I was a hero and they knew it. I’d done my bit, hadn’t I? That was it in a nutshell, I can tell you that now. That was why when he turned to me and, you know, he said that, and I knew he meant it, but at that time I thought, ‘Why should I lick his backside and pretend?’ It was no good pretending. I hated Transport Command. I hated it while I was there and for him to turn round to me and tell me he didn’t want my type. He didn’t want my type in Transport Command and I was as good as any of them. In fact, I was better than them because I’d come from Bomber Command.
IL: Absolutely, absolutely. I’m going to switch this off now, Ray.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AMooreR160727
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Raymond Moore
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
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Format
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02:49:26 audio recording
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Ian Locker
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-07-27
Description
An account of the resource
Raymond Moore flew 31 operations as a flight engineer with 408 Squadron. He describes initial training at Skegness and then further training at Cosford, Halton and St Athan. He describes the crewing-up procedure at Eastmoor and describes the accommodation at various RAF stations including Linton, where he was billeted at Beningbrough Hall, and at Lindholme. He also gives vivid accounts of difficult trips, including high winds on a Berlin operation on the 24th of March 1944 and being coned by searchlights in the Rostock and Bremen areas and being thrown about as the pilot did a corkscrew manoeuvre.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Canadian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Bremen
Germany--Rostock
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Christine Kavanagh
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944
408 Squadron
426 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
crewing up
faith
fear
flight engineer
lack of moral fibre
military ethos
military living conditions
military service conditions
RAF Brackla
RAF Cosford
RAF East Moor
RAF Halton
RAF Lindholme
RAF Linton on Ouse
RAF St Athan
recruitment
searchlight
sport
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/184/3574/LSandersDS1869292v1.2.pdf
c6d8981948ad019c01c5ab80b2140bb0
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
Sanders, David
D S Sanders
Description
An account of the resource
19 items. The collection contains an oral history interview with Sergeant David Stuart Sanders (1925 - 2022, 1869292 Royal Air Force), his logbook, engineering documentation, operation schedules, a personal record of all his operations, a Dalton computer, a number of target and reconnaissance photographs. David Saunders was a flight engineer on 619 Squadron and 189 Squadron at RAF Strubby and RAF Fulbeck in 1944-45.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by David Sanders 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
2016-03-05
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
Sanders, DS
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
David Sanders's flying log book for navigators, air bombers, air gunners and, flight engineers
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Belgium
Germany
Great Britain
Netherlands
Norway
Poland
Wales
Belgium--Brussels
England--Lincolnshire
England--Nottinghamshire
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Flensburg
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Karlsruhe
Germany--Munich
Germany--Sassnitz
Germany--Steinfurt (North Rhine-Westphalia)
Germany--Wesel (North Rhine-Westphalia)
Netherlands--Veere
Norway--Bergen
Norway--Tønsberg
Poland--Gdynia
Poland--Police (Województwo Zachodniopomorskie)
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1945
1944-10-06
1944-10-11
1944-10-14
1944-10-15
1944-10-28
1944-10-29
1944-10-30
1944-11-21
1944-11-22
1944-11-26
1944-11-27
1944-12-09
1944-12-12
1944-12-18
1944-12-19
1945-02-02
1945-02-03
1945-02-08
1945-02-09
1945-03-03
1945-03-04
1945-03-05
1945-03-06
1945-03-07
1945-03-08
1945-03-12
1945-03-14
1945-03-15
1945-03-20
1945-03-21
1945-03-22
1945-03-23
1945-03-24
1945-04-23
1945-04-25
1945-04-26
1945-05-06
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One handwritten logbook
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
LSandersDS1869292v1
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
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Description
An account of the resource
The log book covers the operational career of flight engineer David Sanders from 5 July 1944 to 29 May 1945. He joined 619 Squadron at RAF Strubby on 28 September 1944, from where he flew Lancasters on two daylight and three night time operations before being transferred to 189 Squadron at RAF Fulbeck in November 1944. From 21 November 1944 he flew a further four daylight and 14 night time operations, again in Lancasters. The majority of the targets his operations were over Germany, plus two to Poland, two to the Netherlands, and two Norway: Bergen, Bohlen, Braunschweig, Bremen, Dortmund, Flensburg, Gdynia, Hamburg, Heimbach, Karlsruhe, Lutzkendorf, Munich, Police, Sassnitz, Steinfurt, Tønsberg, Veere. His pilots on operations were Flying Officer Carter and Flight Lieutenant Barron. Later log book entries are about Operation Exodus (Brussels).
1661 HCU
189 Squadron
619 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
flight engineer
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Operation Exodus (1945)
RAF Bardney
RAF Dunholme Lodge
RAF Fulbeck
RAF St Athan
RAF Strubby
Stirling
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/186/3583/LMarshallS1594781v1.1.pdf
8560cff2a1aae43ff2cda4b6080884ba
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Marshall, Syd
S C Marshall
Description
An account of the resource
Ten items. The collection contains two oral history interviews with Warrant Officer Sidney Charles Marshall (1924 - 2017, 1594781 Royal Air Force), his decorations, training notes, photographs and a photograph album. Syd Marshall was a flight engineer with 103 Squadron and flew operations from RAF Elsham Wolds.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Syd Marshall and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-05-08
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. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AMarshallS150508
Access Rights
Information about who can access the resource or an indication of its security status. Access Rights may include information regarding access or restrictions based on privacy, security, or other policies.
Permission granted for commercial projects
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/.
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
LMarshallS1594781v1
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.
Atlantic Ocean
Denmark
Germany
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Atlantic Ocean--Helgoland Bight
Atlantic Ocean--Kattegat (Baltic Sea)
Denmark--Ebeltoft
Germany--Aschaffenburg
Germany--Bochum
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Essen
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
Germany--Hannover
Germany--Karlsruhe
Germany--Kleve (North Rhine-Westphalia)
Germany--Koblenz
Germany--Ludwigshafen am Rhein
Germany--Mannheim
Germany--Merseburg
Germany--Munich
Germany--Pforzheim
Germany--Stuttgart
Germany--Ulm
Germany--Wanne-Eickel
Germany--Wiesbaden
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
Germany--Freiburg im Breisgau
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1945
1944-10-14
1944-10-15
1944-10-19
1944-10-20
1944-10-23
1944-10-24
1944-10-25
1944-10-28
1944-10-30
1944-10-31
1944-11-04
1944-11-05
1944-11-06
1944-11-09
1944-11-11
1944-11-12
1944-11-22
1944-11-23
1944-11-27
1944-11-28
1944-11-29
1944-12-03
1944-12-04
1944-12-05
1944-12-06
1944-12-07
1944-12-15
1944-12-16
1944-12-17
1944-12-18
1944-12-22
1944-12-23
1945-01-05
1945-01-06
1945-01-07
1945-01-08
1945-01-14
1945-01-15
1945-01-16
1945-01-17
1945-01-28
1945-01-29
1945-02-01
1945-02-02
1945-02-03
1945-02-04
1945-02-05
1945-02-07
1945-02-08
1945-02-15
1945-02-16
1945-02-18
1945-02-19
1945-02-20
1945-02-21
1945-02-22
1945-02-23
1945-02-25
1945-02-26
1945-02-27
1945-03-01
1945-03-02
Title
A name given to the resource
Syd Marshall's flying log book for navigators, air bombers, air gunners and flight engineers
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
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
The log book covers the training an operational career of Flight Engineer Syd Marshall from 28 July 1944 to March 1945, with occasional notes added through 2008. He joined 103 Squadron at RAF Elsham Wolds on 27 September 1944, from where he flew in Lancasters on 8 daylight and 28 night time operations either over Germany or minelaying in the seas around Denmark: Aarus Bay, Helgoland, Kattegat, Ebeltoft, Aschaffenburg, Bochum, Cologne, Dortmund, Duisburg, Essen, Freiburg, Gelsenkirchen, Hannover, Karlsruhe, Kleve, Koblenz, Ludwigshafen am Rhein, Mannheim, Merseburg, Munich, Pforzheim, Stuttgart, Ulm, Wanne-Eickel, Wiesbaden, Heimbach. His pilot on operations was Flight Lieutenant Morgan. Payload details are shown for some operations.
103 Squadron
1667 HCU
aircrew
Anson
bombing
C-47
flight engineer
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
mine laying
RAF Elsham Wolds
RAF Hemswell
RAF Sandtoft
RAF St Athan
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/356/5771/AFirthJB160706.2.mp3
5b178253d70f57f1c2b6516ac6eff4bd
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
Firth, John
John Firth
J B Firth
Description
An account of the resource
11 items. An oral history interview with Warrant Officer John Bernard Firth (1924-2016, 1850441 Royal Air Force), his logbook, a home-made prisoner of war Christmas card, and seven photographs. John Firth was a flight engineer with 50 Squadron at RAF Skellingthorpe June to August 1944. He was shot down in August 1944 on his 20th operation and became a prisoner of war at Stalag Luft 7.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by John Firth and catalogued by and 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
2016-07-06
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. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Firth, JB
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB. My name is Chris Brockbank and today is the 6th of July 2016 I am in Slough with John Firth who was a Flight Engineer on 50 Squadron and he is going to talk about his life and particularly his RAF Experiences. John what are the first things that you remember?
JB. Well, well after leaving School?
CB. No the first things you remember in life with your Parents where were you born and what did you do?
JB. Oh, I was born, I was born in Yorkshire in a little village called Thurnscoe and, and we moved down when I was five years old to, to Slough. Em, and we moved down because my Father got a bit of a chest problem with the dust and that and so we moved down here. He did quite well then afterwards em, in the building trade. I personally left school at, at fourteen and eh I got a little job for the Co-op as an errand boy and I, I had that for about eighteen months. After which I went into a factory em it’s called Sweeties and eh I, I stayed in there until I was called up at eighteen. And so when I went into the RAF I went to Padgate where, where we got introduced to all the rights and wrongs and legal side of things and I done about three months there. Then I went to, “where was it?”
CB. You went to Locking.
JB. Locking it was Locking, I em which was a Flight Mechanics course, that took about three months and then “what did I do then” I have lost my bit of paper.
CB. What were you learning at Locking?
JB. Engineer, Engines mostly other, other, other fellows were aircraft, that’s the aircraft em [pause].
CB. That was all types of aero engine was it?
JB. Any type whatever was fitted to the aeroplanes. So we took that, that didn’t last very long and I, I was, I went to “where was it?”
CB. To Colerne.
JB. To Colerne.
CB. To the MU at Bath at Colerne, yeah.
JB. And from Colerne I went to. I went to, I was posted to.
CB. To St Athan.
JB. To St Athans, St Athans.
CB. What did you do there?
JB. I took on the Flight Engineers course.
CB. What did that involve, what was involved in the Flight Engineers course?
JB. That involved more Engineering knowledge, more then for Airframes as well but that, that, that’s took about three months.
CB. And how broad was that, what other things Airframes, Engines what else?
JB. Airframes and Engines.
CB. What else, hydraulics?
JB. Hydraulics and whatever is going to be in the near future for me. Em from there I got, I went to Scampton waiting for me Crew and was there a few weeks when I got posted again to Wigsley where I picked me Crew up and then, which they had been flying on Blenheims for a number of weeks and months and eh, and so with a four engined bomber they had to have an Engineer.
CB. They’d been on Wellingtons.
JB. Sorry.
CB. They had been on Wellingtons.
JB. They had been on Wellingtons, yes. Where were we?
CB. So from Wigsley, what were you flying at Wigsley?
JB. Flying Stirling’s at Wigsley and had a very short course there to contradict what we had already learned on the Lancaster, every thing was electric on Stirling’s, electric undercarriage, flaps and that sort of thing.
CB. And this was and HCU?
JB. Yeah at Wigsley.
CB. Then what?
JB. And once we done that we, we, we moved Crew then, we were all satisfied with the Crew, they seemed to be satisfied with me.
CB. How did you Crew up in the first place?
JB. Well we met, well I met the NC, the NCOs in the Sergeants Mess and they introduced me to the two Officers who were the Pilot and the Bomb Aimer so from there we went to Syerston didn’t we?
CB. From Wigsley you went to Syerston.
JB. To Syerston, where we did a short course on sort of Affiliation sort of thing.
CB. That was the Lancaster again, that was the Lancaster Finishing School.
JB. Yes that’s right and then.
CB. So when you were at the Finishing School what did you do then at the Finishing School in the Lancaster?
JB. Well we got, we immediately went to 50 Squadron and early June was our first Op.
CB. Which year are we now, which year 1944 and the first op?
JB. It was Stuttgart, woof, we didn’t get there, it got cancelled so we turned so we missed a little bit of something. Em and from there on we, as a Crew we gelled very well together and eh.
CB. So you went to Stuttgart on your first Op why was that abortred.
JB. That I never found out but it just got aborted by radio.
CB. How far were you on the trip?
JB. It was well over the North Sea so we turned back, we turned back and from then on like I said the Crew gelled very well and then [background microphone noise]
CB. Keep going.
JB. Until the last OP.
CB. So what other trips did you do?
JB. Stuttgart, Keil, Gelsenkirchen and a lot, a lot of them were in France helping the, the Soldiers that were on the ground because we just invaded we just went into France that was what we were doing.
CB. They were daylight raids,
JB. Pardon.
CB. They were daylight raids was they over France.
JB. No some was night time, most of them was in night time in Germany and there was a, one trip we went to was the [hesitant] Les Desaurant[?] I think it was a Marshalling Yard south of, south of Paris we went for two days running there because we didn’t do the first job and the second job, the second time we were on went. We got shot up there, there was a big hole underneath the [unclear] turret, the Skipper couldn’t hold the kite, hold the aircraft steady because it was too, he had no help. The trimmer, one of the trimmers had gone. So my job, I had to go and repair it, which I did.
CB. So this is on the tail plane, the trimmer on the tail plane?
JB. That’s right.
CB. So how did you repair that?
JB. Well with the eh dinghy, there is a certain amount of eh space when I pulled the wires together which had been cut. So I doubled them back and, and tied them up with the tail plane and every time I moved, like this, it moved the trimmer. And the Skipper kept moaning at me [laugh] but it worked, it worked anyway. So when we landed, we crashed because one of the, one of the tyres were flat and dug in and shot over and we. I think it was a right off but we all got out.
CB. Can you just us through that, so you come in, did you know the tyre was punctured when you were on approach.
JB. No I didn’t ‘cause it only looked exactly the same as a good wheel, well it, it had a slice in it.
CB. The Pilot had no idea he was going to experience this inbalance?
JB. No he didn’t.
CB. Ok, so what happened, as soon as he touched down?
JB. As soon as he touched down it, it swung, dug in like.
CB. On the runway, on the concrete runway.
JB. It shot us off the runway and but em.
CB. Which way?
JB. Port side, Port side and that was it, well the Ground Crew told me the following morning we was very, very lucky because after the trimmers and all that, they had these rods that worked the elevators and the, and the rudders one of those was split almost in half. So it was very lucky that didn’t bend otherwise we would have been in trouble.
CB. So the under, the tyre, the wheel dug into the runway did the undercarriage collapse, what happened?
JB. No not really it just dug in, the damage the shells hit it with damaged all the tailplane so we was very lucky on that one.
CB. So on these circumstances what did they do, take the tail of and change it?
JB. I don’t know, I don’t really know, we didn’t fly in it again [unclear] it was a right off.
CB. So you had to have a new aeroplane?
JB. Well I suppose, yes.
CB. Was it new or did they just give you another one?
JB. I don’t know, don’t know.
CB. So which flight, how many raids was this. How many trips had you done at that stage?
JB. At that stage?
CB. Just roughly.
JB. Let me look in me book. [pages turning]
CB. We are just looking at the list,I’ll hang on.
JB. Something after that was an NFT.
CB. Right.
CB. So this seems to have been the sixth Op that you went on, and eh so what happened after that?
JB. Eh, everything went well we did a few [unclear] and another Stuttgart and so forth. I say we gelled very well until August the 8th, 7th and 8th.
CB. What happened then?
JB. We got shot down.
CB. Ok can you take us through that. So was it a Fighter or flak?
JB. It was a Fighter.
CB. What was your target that day?
JB. It was a raid on Sepperaville [?] and when we got there [unclear] we had a wireless confirmation to stop bombing, or they stopped bombing. So we carried the bombs and we were going to sort of drop in the South of England, not on England [laugh] and we got the Navigator to give us a route between Le Havre and Lauren it would take us where we wanted to be and it was about midnight and we was, we was, the Gunners decided, warned us we had, had a visitor which was a Fighter and they. It was round about eight or nine hundred yards, or feet I don’t know. Then he started getting closer, and closer until the Rear Gunner said do a Corks, Corkscrew Skip put down to port ‘cause he is on the port side and down we went quickly, I had, I was standing then and eh [laugh] I had nothing to hold onto and so gravity through me to the ceiling of the canopy and when he pulled out I dropped down onto me knees. I got up and this Fighter had opened fire and strafed us right across the wing tip, or wings from wing tip to wing tip. One shell went through in between the Skipper and I and broke the front, front glass and that and a fire started, fire. The Skipper said we will try and put this fire out, I pressed all the buttons that were required. Then he said “abandon aircraft.”
CB. Where was the fire?
JB. The fire, right along the wings, wings. I was coming out of petrol which was spread out obviously and wings well on fire he said “is that it” I say, [unclear] he said “abandon aircraft.” I stayed there with him, because it was my duty to look after him as well as me. I found his parachute, gave it to him, but he took it off, he hardly put it on. He put it alongside himself because he was trying to hold, hold the aircraft in a steady position for people.
CB. So people could get out?
JB. Yeah, so some got out the back, I, and then he said to me, “go on get out John.” And I went down into the Bomb Aimers place where the trap door was and I couldn’t believe, this is true, but the hole you get out of was halved because the cover had been drawn back by the slip stream and jammed in this hole. I kicked it, I pushed it [laugh] I couldn’t move it. So I started to be a bit concerned. I didn’t quite know what to do at that time but well I thought half of that is not too little for me because I can get through that. So I had my ‘chute on of course, had me back to this thing that stuck up inside and em, I slid down, well I couldn’t get out because me ‘chute had trapped because I didn’t allow that in sorts. But there I was, the plane was going along and I am out, with me legs outside and you want to know what I feel like. I felt I was going to loose me legs, frightened me to death, this is true. And I, and I pushed and I kicked me legs and me boots went and, and I panicked but suddenly me brain stopped, started working and the straps on the parachute harness is only held on by a thin cord so that it gives you the height, the height when the ‘chute opens. So I gave it a good clout and I went out and I held this parachute with one hand and pulled the cord with the other, pulled the ring with the other and it opened but it took me a little while no sooner had it opened and I suppose about a hundred feet and I touched down. It took me a little while, that’s why I, I was out I was landed pretty near the aircraft. I say that it was within a mile or two, it got in very fast. I got down stuffed my ‘chute around as best I could, got out round to this road or lane, like a country lane and then I was caught because three Germans were in, came along with their guns and all that and picked me up. They took me back, took me back to the Headquarters in this em, in this bike and sidecar. They gave me a seat in the car and one was on the front of the, the car and the other one was on the pillion and the other was the driver. The one on the pillion had a gun at me head all the way back just in case I suppose he thought I might, and that was it for that night.
CB. So were you the last out of the aircraft or?
JB. I think I must have been.
CB. What happened to the Pilot?
JB. He got killed.
CB. He didn’t get out?
JB. He didn’t get out, the Navigator didn’t get out and the Wireless Operator I don’t know what happened to him because after the war I met my Mid Upper Gunner and he filled me with a bit of things that I missed, He said he spoke to Don Mellish at the back door and he walked back, he went back in.
CB. Mellish went back in?
JB. Yeah
CB. To do what?
JB. He probably didn’t want to.
CB. To get out?
JB. It’s a I don’t know.
CB. So Don Mellish was the Wireless Operator.
JB. Yes that’s right and as I say the Mid Upper Gunner spoke to him and he said “I don’t know what he went back for” he went back and of course he went out himself.
CB. How did Arthur Meredith the Rear Gunner get out?
JB. That I don’t know, I was too busy up the front.
CB. I wondered if you found out afterwards.
JB. No, no they just went.
CB. But the only person killed, there were three killed were there?
JB. There were three killned.
CB. What about the Navigator what stopped him getting out?
JB. I don’t know, because, I don’t know.
CB. Wither he tried the back or not I don’t know, I don’t know because routine was Bomb Aimer, Me, Navigator or other way round, he didn’t pass me so I don’t know what happened to him. Is this, all this going down.
CB. We are all right. These are the realities of those things aren’t they.
JB. It’s, it’s.
CB. It is an emotional experience.
JB. Yes it is I am the luckiest man in the round, I should have been there with my mate.
CB. I know what you mean.
JB. Now they have gone.
CB. You done a brilliant job getting out just holding, you held the parachute. It wasn’t attached to you, you just held it?
JB. No it was attached.
CB. It still was attached.
JB. Yeah, attached, it’s like a board it’s, the whole ‘chute is planted on this board.
CB. Because it is a front parachute.
JB. Yeah.
CB. Chest parachute.
JB. That’s right.
CB. And what, what type of parachute does the Pilot have does he have a chest parachute or he normally?
JB. Yes he has a chest parachute he preferred instead of the sitting on one ‘cause he is a tall man.
CB. Ok
JB. So that is probably the reason, that’s why I had to find his ‘chute for him or look after him.
CB. So on the Lancaster there are three escape hatches are there? One at the front where the Bomb Aimers position is, the other through the lid where the Pilot is, is that right?
JB. He think he got out the top, yes but.
CB. And the other is the door at the back.
JB. There is a door at the back.
CB. Is there any other.
JB. No [unclear]
CB. And the Rear Turret pivots so the idea is the.
JB. Sometimes they could.
CB. Roll out backwards.
JB. Yeah, go out backwards. Wither that is true or not I don’t know.
CB. So when the aircraft was hit, what happened to the controls, the Pilot was struggling by the sound of it to keep control, why was that.
JB. He was struggling, yes, because we was well on fire, when I got out. I looked up the flames was the, the width of the aircraft or the wingspan and it was amazing, amazing.
CB. The Lancaster had self sealing fuel tanks but with the level of damage presumably that wasn’t going to work.
JB. Yeah, they had all that but they must have had a leak somewhere.
CB. Did the Rear Gunner get a shot at this Fighter or not?
JB. Apparently from what I was told by the Mid Upper Gunner, they, they had it confirmed that they shot it down.
CB. Oh did they.
JB. Yeah but that I wouldn’t know.
CB. But the Squadron record perhaps confirms that?
JB. Yeah.
CB. So now you have landed, the German Soldiers have taken you in the side car to the Head Quarters, then what?
JB. Yeah, the Head Quarters Em, oh there, em.
CB. That’s the picture of.
JB. That’s me and my wife when we went back to France.
CB. Right, that’s a sort of Chateau.
JB. That’s it, that’s where they held me but not in there, there is a little shed next to it. They said put me there and they put a Guard sort of thing. And in the morning, they kept, all these soldiers kept coming in and having a look and all that and I “what they looking for” you know and eh when I got out and had a look ‘cause they let me, I had to have a bit of fresh air. What that was, was a urinal was there just by this window [laugh] and they was having a gaze at me while I was having one, it wasn’t funny but.
CB. No, so what did they do, they gave you food and water?
JB. Yeah they gave me, they gave me some gruel or something for lunch, for breakfast.
CB. What is gruel?
JB.Something like porridge, something like that. Em, they gave me a pair of clogs suffice, they did suffice ‘cause I couldn’t get on with them and I took em off and eh.
CB. Because your flying boots came off before you jumped.
JB. Yeah they came off because I was kicking them away, trying to sort of get out eh it frightened me to death.
CB. What sort of height do you think you were at before you actually got out.
JB. I don’t, I should think when I went out which would be about fifteen hundred or two thousand feet. Not very high enough to have a good swing, you know? We was flying at ten thousand feet anyway.
CB. Oh were you, that’s quite low.
JB. Then we had this dive and a cork screw, down one way, down the other and so forth.
CB. And then pull up again.
JB. Yeah, yeah.
CB. So after they have given you the gruel and something and water and then what.
JB. Oh they took me to Luanne em I was interviewed by a eh an Officer of some description he told me off for not saluting him. I said we don’t salute people with no head dress. I can remember that actually he got onto me about the Bombing doing Bombing and hospitals and all about that sort of thing. Told me off and then he took me back through em Luanne into this it looked like a, I don’t know I was on the [unclear] covered in wire netting it was a building but several shelters, sheds a brick building, this wire netting at front. I could look across and there was dormitories and that’s where these soldiers was in this dormitory. It looked as though it was in something like a Church business that church eh eh College or something like that, I don’t know quite what it was. I was there for a few days and they put me on a train to sort of don’t know this place where I got interviewed again by the, by the people there.
CB. Were they Air Force people or were they?
JB. This one that they took me to at first, there were a lot of soldiers there and eh I walked through this, this marquee where these soldiers were lying on that, you know, looking for bed space and somebody shouts “Johnnie Firth” and it was one of my class mates at school. He had been in the, what do you call it Troopers.
CB. Paratroopers.
JB. Paratroopers, yeah but they had been caught and they took me then from there on the train, it took a little while to eh Stalag Luft 7.
CB. Where is that?
JB. Where I ended up.
CB. Yes where is Stalag Luft 7?
JB. Its in [unclear].
CB. Czechoslovakia.
JB. I’ve got the name of the eh here the village there, but I don’t know where it is now.
CB. Ok just going back a bit what was the questioning that the Captors did so you, at the first em interrogation, what did they ask you?
JB. All sorts of thing you know but all I could answer was number, rank, name they didn’t threaten me with anything much. I was taught, or some bloke said they threatened to shoot them if they didn’t tell us. I didn’t go through any of that.
CB. And the second interview, interrogation further along, what was that?
JB. That was that sort of thing, sort of where he started mouthing on about being a you know criminals or something like that, but that didn’t last either [unclear] I got to sort of Silesia or Stalag Luft 7 A friend, a friend of mine was there, that I had done an Engineers course, but he had failed the course and I got on a bit further you know than he and he was shot down on his first trip, another Yorkshire man you know [laugh].
CB. Had he been recoursed to something other than Flight Engineer or did they put him through the course again?
JB. No he did the course eventually he passed yes.
CB. OK. So what did you find out what happened to the rest of your Crew.
JB. No, I the Mid Upper Gunner who eh told me, filled me in about what was happening.
CB. Bill Johnstone.
JB. He died the year Christmas the year I saw him, I didn’t know he was going to die. Because somebody organised this, this eh trip back to France for me and my wife and we went back to see the eh the graves, it’s one grave with three people in it.
CB. Oh they did have the Pilot, Bomb Aimer and Navigator they had.
JB. Yes they did.
CB. Sorry Wireless Operator not the Navigator who got out, it was the Bomb Aimer was it?
JB. The Bomb Aimer yes Eddie Earnest.
CB. So the Pilot, Navigator
JB. Eddie Earnest made up our Crew that night, the Bombing Leader actually. He ended up, oh he ended up in India in charge of the eh Squadron out there. I met him afterwards of course at a reunion only once. I went to Lafrenaise twice you know to pay my respects. The people, the French people were very nice, very good.
CB. What, did the aircraft disintegrate or did it land in tact and burn out on the ground.
JB. No it blew up.
CB. So the Pilot was never found, was he, was he in the plane.
JB. No the three, they had three bodies that what it.
CB. And they did, right.
JB. [Unclear] so the Navigator didn’t get out either.
CB. No.
JB. We had a time bomb on that went off at seven o’clock in the morning and I was that close. Well I heard it eh you know. The thing, it landed in some sort of a wood.
CB. You are talking about the main bomb. The Cookie went of.
JB. Yeah it might have been the cookie, I don’t know about that, don’t know. I thought it was timed, I thought it was timed.
CB. So that would be a free fall.
JB. I don’t think we had a Cookie on at that time, about a thousand pounder because we were so close to our Troops we were.
CB. Of course, you wouldn’t want the bombs to spread out.
JB.The German Troops were so close, [hesitates] there is a map of it as well, now just recently, I don’t if it was on line is it Peter?
Peter. Yeah there was a local paper did a story about it didn’t they when you came back.
JB. On.on line there is what I have just been through again.
CB. If we could call that up that could be really useful.
Peter. Pretty sure it was to do.
JB. After that on line there is a map which shows you Shepeville [?] and, and the Forces that were there.
CB. It would be useful to sort of pick that up, so can we just go now to Silesia to Stalag Luft 7 so how big was that, how many people?
JB. About eight thousand I think something of a rough guess.
CB. And what Nationalities were there?
JB. Mostly British, mostly British.
CB. ‘cause with the title Stalag Luft in theory they were all Aircrew but were they.
JB. Yeah well yes.
CB. Were they all Aircrew?
JB. Yes in my experience and we knew about the audacity thing where they shot all those Aircrew.
CB. Stalag Luft 3.
JB. We got a bit of news about that.
CB. You did? And what was the mix of Prisoners there, was it the whole range of ranks?
JB. Em NCOs
CB. Only NCOs was it.
JB. More or less, yes. There were one or two that were eh, the Camp Commander for instance.
CB. What was he?
JB. He was eh, eh Second Lieutenant something like that.
CB. He was an Army man was he?
JB. Yeah we did have one Army bloke there, I think anyway, can’t remember now.
CB. How were you housed in what sort of buildings.
JB. In the first instance, there’s pictures somewhere, never mind, eh little huts, there was all these little huts with about ten blokes in each hut something like that but then they was building the, built this one outside, outside, outside the Camp.
CB. The wire.
JB. Along side of it and they were like dormitories, they had rooms in there and there was about thirteen to a room that sort of thing; just thinking back now. Got a picture of the em the, the sort of bedding is on bunks it is, it is twelve bunks in one block. They got three on the floor, three in the middle and three on the top and then you have the same thing alongside of it, they had sort of twelve to a block. You could get farted on from up there and farted on from down [laugh]. It wasn’t very pleasant.
CB. And what were you lying on was it planks, bare wood or what?
JB. Bedding.
CB. Oh there was bedding, what was the bedding made of?
JB. Hard stuff just like packed straw, something like that and blankets that’s all we had.
CB. What about heating?
JB. Heating, for heating we had, what heating or eating?
CB. Yes the heating as well as the eating but for heating in the rooms was there any heating?
JB. Either really we in the, in the rooms there was these little stoves but it was getting the fuel for them you know, that was difficult but the big, where the big eh other was no heating because it was getting, when I was there anyway, that, of the picture I have, I think was taken at eh Stalag 3a because that is where we ended up after the long march at Stalag 3a. It was an Army Camp and the weather was picking up then, it was getting warmer, it em.
CB. Where em, what about the food was there a big Mess Hall or how did you get the food dispensed?
JB. I have got a picture of that as well actually, it em eh, they used to fetch it round and it was soup in big bowels you know and that one bowl would have to feed two hundred men and you would have bread sometimes. They gave you bread or something like that. The meat was, was in these soups what, what meat there was. We used to look at these in a strand, it was stranded, “I’ve got a bit” [laugh].
CB. What did you eat in, because you didn’t have mess tins of your own, so what did they give you to eat from.
JB. Oh they gave us something, I can’t remem. You would pick up a tin or something you know? And things like that, but, but I made a cup out of mine, created a thing you know, sort of little handle made a thing of and you tightened a piece of string. Made it out of a little eh.
CB. Ingenuity.
JB. Yeah ingenuity. [laugh].
CB. Now what about Red Cross parcels?
JB. They were, they few and far between one another yeah eh but when we did get one sometimes in the beginning it was shared by sort of that half a dozen blokes what is shared with what is in there. Which was tinned, tinned stuff what em, cigarettes, I suppose meat and that sort of thing. A bit of cheese a tin with a bit of cheese in or something like that. But you would have to cut it up into bits to share it out.
CB. Did you get tinned milk?
JB. Tinned milk, can’t remember actually to tell the truth I can’t remember much about it.
CB. What was the date on which you were shot down.
JB. Eh seventh or eighth of August Midnight.
CB. Nineteen forty four.
JB. Nineteen forty four.
CB. So you were in Stalag Luft 7 for more that six months.
JB. Oh yeah, yeah.
CB. And as the end of the War came, what happened to you then?
JB. Em well we was at, we was at Stalag 3a.
CB. How did you come to move from Seven?
JB. First of all the, the em, the American Army released us or wanted to release us and we all run out, a lot of us got on their lorries and all that, they come to fetch us and they, then the Germans managed to a Machine Gunner and said “better get down otherwise you will get that.” So we all went in and they wouldn’t let us come. They didn’t agree with what the Americans was doing.
CB. The Russians wouldn’t let them do it would they?
JB. Yeah.
CB. Who was it/
JB. The Russians was there.
CB. So who was it who came?
JB. They just crossed the rivers there eh, they just crossed this river.
CB. The Oder was it?
JB. Sorry.
CB. The Oder.
JB. The Oder yeah, the Americans had got down as far as the Oder and they hadn’t crossed it, or they had crossed it ‘cause they came with their lorries to take us, but they went of without us. Because they was going to shoot us anyway.
CB. So who was going to shoot you, why didn’t they, if it was Germans, why didn’t they deal with the Germans?
JB. Well I don’t know, I think maybe it’s.
CB. Or was it the Russians who wouldn’t let you go?
JB. They still held us as Prisoners and told us all to get back in and we all went back to where we inhabited. The Russians did “Thank you Bert I am glad you came.” But the Americans came first, then the Russians took over, they came and with them coming all the Guards disappeared. They didn’t want to get hurt did they? Yes the Russians released us and they took us down to this river and we crossed by foot into the sort of the American Section if you like. The River Oder was that [unclear] but the Americans were that side of it and the Russians were this side of it. And that’s I suppose, but the Germans were still in there with us, you know, holding us at one time.
CB. So how did you come to leave then?
JB. The Russians took us to the river and we got of there, crossed the river and got on with the Yanks who took us from there up to, I don’t know what it was then just another sort of camp which was taken over now by the Allies.
CB. So you don’t, I was just trying to establish the sequence because you were in Stalag Luft 7, you then got to Stalag 3.
JB. Yeah.
CB. 3a so how did you get between those two?
JB. Walked.
CB. How far and how long?
JB. Three weeks walk.
CB. And what effect did that have on most of the Prisoners?
JB. Starvation, worst, snow and it was terrible, yeah, dead horses on the side of the road and what have you yeah [pause] I had forgotten all this.
CB. Was it one long column of prisoners or was it several columns doing different routes?
JB. It was one long column of us from Stalag Luft 7, there are, there were other columns like Stalag Luft 3 they were the closest to what we were apparently. They crossed, they were going one way we were going another way but eh this was and we were still with the Germans, the Germans was making us do this, they had dogs as well.
CB. They were forcing you to go towards the west. So how did you get food and water?
JB. How did we get food?
CB. How did you get food and water?
JB. How did you get food.
CB. How did you get food and water?
JB. Oh well they gave you at night, they would probably find you in a stable or something like that and they, they thery would have a field kitchen with like I said food or soup or that sort of thing. If you wanted to go to the toilet there was always one place where you could go sort of thing. That is in the yard and it was piles of this all over the place.[laugh] It was not very hygienic.
CB. So when you got to Stalag Luft, sorry Stalag 3 then what?
JB. Well we got put up, the soldiers put us up we was in, we was on the floor, sleeping on the floor to start with and eh, they moved us into another building that had these, these bunks and that, and eh one of the, one of the buildings was made out as temple by the Russians because we had some Russians in that Stalag, there were some Russians as well yeah. They got, what we heard was when they got released or we got released, they were straight back to the front where they were going to soldier on again. So many days, so many things, I can’t remember.
CB. So in the, in the March from Stalag Luft 7 to Stalag 3 what happened to peoples health and strength?
JB. Eh er there were three of us Jack Sidebottom and Bill Steiner and me self knitted together oh [unclear] Jack got a touch of the runs and he went right down the, right down the drain sort of, they had a sort of Hospital eh building but that was on the floor. I remember I sort of I washed off Bill eh Jacks’ trousers for him, he couldn’t do it.
CB. This was dysentery was it?
JB. Yes it was there was a lot of that.
CB. And what prompts dysentery, what makes it happen?
JB. Well there was little food and eh and if you eat anything that was rotten it was there. They had toilets there where you could have a chat with the next bloke ‘cause it was only a building. There was all these eh trenches covered with seats, toilet seats and you could have a fair old chat with people, I think that’s. I am ranting on, on.
CB. You are not, no it is the reality isn’t it?
JB. Yeah I suppose it could be.
CB. So you reached Stalag 3 and the Americans are looking after you there. What did they do about food because you do not want to eat too much as soon as you get in.
JB. When the Americans, they, they transported us to Brussels and we got flown home from there, from Brussels.
CB. Mm by whom, who flew you.
JB. RAF
CB. And you flew from there, Melsbroek was it and then into where?
JB.Eh; around Crewe around that area and then all we had on was burnt and the dressed us in that hospital blue, do you remember that? Just a blue flannel trouser and a blue flannel cover at the top[laugh] Then it blue, typical sickness thing.
CB. So for the people who had dysentery and other things how did they treat those?
JB. Well it,it just had to put up with it until it went away it was yeah.
CB. You come, when you land back here, what, what plane did you fly back in?
JB. Lancaster.
CB.Right, how many people in a Lancaster.
JB. Oh there was quite a lot, I would say , I don’t know, down the fuselage from, from the main spar down to the back, I would say about sixty peole, fifty or sixty people and then we would [unclear].
CB. And so you got back, what did they do as soon as you landed.
JB. Well they fed us and we was inspected for diseases and that sort of thing in a hanger, obviously if you got a lot of food, a bit difficult to eat, drink, stomachs went like that so you couldn’t eat much anyway.
CB. It is not good to have too much food when you haven’t been having it. So they kitted you out and then what?
JB. Once we got kitted out we went on leave, about six weeks I should think.
CB. And then after the leave where did they sent you because you were still technically in the Squadron.
JB. [Unclear] Eh I, I got posted to 71MU, “thank you, that’s all right” 71MU Slough,[unclear] and or the RAF had taken over the premier garage on the Bath road as a Camp, during the war and they, and they and I got posted there. I was obviously in the Sergeants Mess so I didn’t do a lot of work.[laugh] But eventually they decided to move. They moved from Slough up to the other side of Aylesbury.
CB. To Westcott.
JB. Westcott, yeah probably yeah that was one thing to the other side of, yeah.
CB. Or Bicester.
JB. Yeah.
CB. It was an MU was it?
JB. It was an MU.
CB. It went to Bicester 71.
JB. 71 and I went there as a, I was in charge of a gang [unclear] we went for dismantling aircraft and I wasn’t doing a lot of work, I was just making sure the lads got the eh themselves with a bed and that sort of thing. And then and that was at; Brize Norton they did a lot of work there.
CB. Was that an MU or was that an OTU?
JB. No that was, there was a Squadron there wasn’t there but as the MU people taking all these jobs.
CB. Yeah.
JB. They take the wings off and that sort of thing and then load it onto a Queen Mary and said good bye to it you know.
CB.The Queen Mary being the very big lorry.
JB. Yes that’s right [unclear]
CB. So now we are in 1946 aren’t we.
JB. Yes I haven’t come over then [?]
CB. When did you get demobbed?
JB. Eh; I’ve got it here, demobbed 1946.
CB. What time of year?
JB. What month, I don’t know.
CB. Summer, Winter, Ok then what did you do?
JB. Well what everybody does, have a good time. [laugh] I went back to Lincoln.
CB. What did you do there?
JB. I got a job with an aircraft factory just outside, Ah Woodford was it, Woodford.
CB. No at Lincoln it was Bracebridge Heath.
JB. Bracebridge Heath, that’s it. I got a job there working on aircraft that were still flying, not the big heavy bomber stuff but the[stops] Then I decided to come home again so I left and I come home and got a job at Hawker Aircraft at Langley and eh.
CB. You had been there before the war.
JB. No,no.
CB. You hadn’t?
JB. No before the war wa, I was at a factory called [unclear] engineering factory. The firm had another outlet at “what was that”
CB. White Waltham.
JB. White Waltham yeah but I wasn’t working there but that firm had another factory there.
CB. So how long did you work Hawker?
JB. At Hawkers, a couple of years and they moved over to London way from Combrook, it was Combrook they moved over from Combrook.
CB. They went to Kingston.
JB. And then I went to a firm, I forgot the name of it, sorry, I was there nineteen years. I went to British Airways, I was there seven years.
CB. At British Airways, at British Airways?
JB. British Airways, yeah and then I retired, I think. This is hard work.[laugh].
CB. Well we are resting now, thank you very much.
JB. Is that it?
CB. How did you come to meet Catherine, your wife, your future wife?
JB. The pub.
CB. Where was that?
JB. Good Companions, Slough.
CB. Slough ok and when were you married?
JB. 1961, 1961 I don’t know.
Unknown. When you got married must be 1951 was it?
JB and Unknown. [discussion as to when married]
CB. How old are your children?
JB. I have got no children.
CB. So that saved you a lot of money didn’t it?
JB. [laugh] a lot of heartache.
CB. Right ok so that is really good, thank you very much indeed.
CB. So we are just restarting to recover after the Bomber crash, then you had some links with the area, so what did you discover.
JB. Well there was a; this Gentleman that I met there, this Frenchman he, he had a little brother a brother younger than himself and that em when, in the explosion on the morning at seven o’clock his brother was sorting out something on the aircraft or something on what was left of the aircraft and the bomb went of and this man, “what’s his name” I was looking at it, [pause] he carried his lad or his brother from em from La Frenaise where we were to the nearest town which was Le Havre which had the Hospitals, but he died and carried him that far.
CB. So what had happened, the Bomb went of and what had happened to the boy?
JB. He died.
CB. Yes but what happened to him, did it blow him a long way away or what did it do. Do you know, what caused him to die in other words?
JB. No like I say he, he, within, with the explosion and then his brother which was this Gentleman that said or suggested at this time that I am taking the place of his brother friendly wise, but somebody else had told me he had carried his Brother to Le Havre.
CB. Le Havre, Hospital.
JB. Yeah, I’ve got a picture of him and he is sitting amongst the, a bit of, a bit of the engine, it’s all, none left of it, bits all over.
CB. They are all very distressing things these, because the aftermath of a crash, the unexpected.
JB. Yeah, but he is quite, and we; up to this year, last year, last Christmas we, we both swapped cards at Christmas from this fellow, Gentleman, fellow, I can’t think of his name.
CB. How did you come to meet him in the first place?
JB. Well I went to a, I went to a, not a reunion, I went when I went to Le Frenaise to pay my respects to the grave.
CB. At the cemetery?
JB. I met him there ‘cause they had made this ‘cause going there the had this little party sort of thing, plenty of people there, just as well. They were very nice to us.
CB. John how many times did you bale out?
JB. Well we baled out twice.
CB. Did you?
JB. Yes.
CB. What was the first reason?
JB. The first reason was everything stopped on the, on the Stirling and what was put to me before one of these things was because the, the oil filter on the Stirling was on the outside and just below the engines outside and they could easily freeze up and with all the engines stopping at the same time that is what happened and the Skipper said bale out but eventually he got it back going again. So I baled out, the two Gunners baled out and the Navigator didn’t go because I was, in the Stirling my position was in the middle of the aircraft not next to the Skipper and so I went out the back and we landed on the, then I heard this whistling and it was the Wireless Operator that was whistled me. He said “what do we do now” I said “go and see if we can get a telephone to get help.”
CB. Where were you?
JB. Sorry?
CB. Where was this?
JB. Lincolnshire, em and so we did walk to someone’s house and we got on the phone [unclear] through to the Police and I had no boots, so this Gentleman loaned me his slippers and having got to go back to Camp, they were nice slippers and I never sent them back. But I was brought up in front of the CO and he gave me a right nasty bollocking and he said.
CB. For having the slippers on, or for getting out of the aeroplane?
JB. No, for not sending the slippers back and “now” he said “you will go and pack them and you will write a letter of apology and you will fetch it to me and I will read it.” So I had to do it and took it back and he said “be careful in future you.” He said.
CB. So you did send back the slippers?
JB. I did send them back yeah, but that under threat wasn’t it.
CB. Right, so the aircraft returned?
JB. Yeah, so the aircraft returned and when he returned he returned with,with a Senior Pilot and I heard no more after that. I suggested that and the Skipper took it disgusted with his seniors.
CB. You are talking about the fault being the seizing up of the oil cooler?
JB. Yeah Unlicky wasn’t we, I was lucky, we was all lucky that one but I, I say I am the luckiest man in the World that was it twice.
CB. While we were on the Stirling just talk us through what your role was as Flight Engineer, first on the Stirling then on the Lancaster.
JB. Oh the Engineers job was to assist the Pilot every way you can, is to, you have to write a log, or keep a log of petrol, oil pressure, oil temperature, it all had to go down on the log. Do it every half hour or so or every hour and whatever else. You might get a fellow who can go back and eh join two bits of wire together[laugh] and cause lots of trouble for the Skipper then it is just not quite right, oh well.
CB. So here you are, your position in the Stirling was further back but on take off where would you be?
JB. In the Stirling on take off, I would be in the middle of the aircraft I’d be putting back the priming ‘cause when you start the engines the prime, the Engineer used to prime the engines from inside the aircraft where as in the Lanc they do it from the outside, don’t they? That’s what I would be doing, tidying up again.
CB. And how were the engines started with a trolley acc or cartridges?
JB. No trolley acc, the same as eh, the same as the Lanc.
CB. And then on take off the Pilot is controlling the throttles not the Engineer.
JB. He is not?
CB. In the Stirling on take of who is controlling the throttles, the Pilot or the Engineer?
JB. Em on the Stirling I don’t know but on.
CB. You weren’t anyway.
JB. I wasn’t but on a Lancaster I was. The Skipper would get it so far, he had four levers and, and until he got it running straight and then he would ask for full power and I did the business then because when you are on full power he can’t twiddle;
CB. And you are sitting on a, next to the Pilot on a Lancaster?
JB. Yeah it is a moveable seat and a lot of the time I would be standing, but the seat felt as a strap, it wasn’t a very comfortable seat.
CB. So you stood a lot?
JB. Yeah.
CB. The reason you got caught out on the corkscrew was because you was standing at the time, was it?
JB. Yes that right yeah.
CB.Talking about engines again, so to clarify on both aircraft all the throttle levers, all four of them were next to each other. When you run up the aircraft engines before take off how do you synchronise the engines and who does it?
JB. Well the Pilot does it.
CB. Ok so how does he do that?
JB. He does it for steering, steering purposes and so if he wants to sort of go this way he will give it a little bit of power on this engine and so forth and then when he comes up to the point where he’s got it ready for take off, two thirds of the way down the runway then it is up to the Pilot or the Engineer to sort of put it onto full power.
CB. You put your hand on it, left hand on the throttle and push them through the gate?
JB. No he used to have his hand on that and I had it underneath, likewise.
CB. Right,your left hand pushing it?
JB. Yeah I put ‘em up and tightened the what’s its name down, you loosen it off for him when he wants to come back and get the flying side, getting his flying in, so it is synchronise.
CB. So he is synchronising the engines in the air not on the ground is he.
JB. Not on the ground, no that’s for steering.
CB. Right and what about the pitch how did you deal with that?
JB. The pitch of the aircraft.
CB. No the pitch of the propellors?
JB. Eh I think you could only do, I don’t think.
CB. You would take of in fine pitch wouldn’t you?
JB. Fine pitch, going back now [pause] You take of in flying pitch, you leave it in flying pitch if you could possible get it there. Well you could do once you got on flying. On course stuff, they don’t go so well on course, do they?
CB. So in the cruise you are not going to be in fine pitch are you. You have got fine pitch for take off, so when do you change for cruise and what pitch do you put it in.
JB. [pause] I don’t know, I wouldn’t know that, I’ve forgotten what that sort.
CB. Ok it just comes out of the use of the throttles.
CB. Thanks
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with John Firth
Creator
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Chris Brockbank
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-07-06
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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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01:30:01 audio recording
Language
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eng
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AFirthJB160706
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending OH summary
Description
An account of the resource
John Firth was a flight engineer with 50 Squadron at RAF Skellingthorpe June to August 1944. He was shot down in August 1944 on his 20th operation and became a prisoner of war at Stalag Luft 7.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Poland
England--Lincolnshire
Poland--Tychowo
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1945
Contributor
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Hugh Donnelly
50 Squadron
aircrew
bale out
fear
final resting place
flight engineer
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
prisoner of war
RAF Skellingthorpe
RAF St Athan
RAF Syerston
RAF Wigsley
sanitation
shot down
Stalag 3A
Stalag Luft 7
Stirling
the long march
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/283/6700/PJonesPW16010013.1.jpg
54ebb32fc122b8b6abb4c93eb9b8cf90
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/283/6700/PJonesPW16010014.1.jpg
9654be2d5ab3cdb1b5d12491f58f9997
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, Thomas John
Tom Jones
T Jones
Description
An account of the resource
62 items. An oral history interview with Peter William Arthur Jones (b. 1954) about his father Thomas John Jones DFC (b. 1921, 1640434 and 184141 Royal Air Force), his log book, photographs, correspondence, service documents, aircraft recognition manuals, medals and a memoir. He flew operations as a flight engineer on 622 Squadron Stirling and 7 Squadron on Lancaster. <br /><br />The collection also contains an <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/2566">Album</a> of 129 types of aircraft. <br /><br />The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Peter Jones and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2014-12-04
2017-12-07
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Jones, PW
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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Sergeant Tom Jones
Description
An account of the resource
Three quarters portrait of Sergeant Tom Jones., captioned on the reverse 'Tom Jones Aug 1943 RAF St Athan'.
Date
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1943-08
Format
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One b/w photograph
Language
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eng
Type
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Photograph
Identifier
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PJonesPW16010013, PJonesPW16010014
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Publisher
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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.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Wales--Glamorgan
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-08
aircrew
flight engineer
RAF St Athan
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/377/6709/LDawsonSR142531v1.1.pdf
6abbc58e3bc5bd55a8c78eafc9746dec
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/.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Identifier
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LDawsonSR142531v1
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One 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
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Description
An account of the resource
Pilots flying log book for Stephen Dawson, covering the period from 11 June 1939 to 30 March 1942. Detailing his flying training, operations and instructor duties. He was stationed at RAF Southampton, RAF Hastings, RAF Hatfield, RAF Little Rissington, RAF St Athan, RAF Cottesmore, RAF Finningly, RAF Lindholme, RAF Swinderby, RAF Upwood and RAF Swanton Morley. Aircraft flown were, Cadet, Tiger Moth, Anson, Hampden and Oxford. He flew a total of 31 night operations with 50 Squadron. Targets were, Dusseldorf, Hannover, Bordeaux, Brest, Berlin, Keil, Lorient, La Rochelle, Copenhagen, Duisberg, Soest, Cologne, Bremen, Hamburg, Karlsruhe, Magdeburg and Frankfurt.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mike Connock
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Denmark
France
Germany
Great Britain
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Atlantic Ocean--Bay of Biscay
Denmark--Copenhagen
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Gloucestershire
England--Hampshire
England--Hertfordshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Norfolk
England--Rutland
England--Sussex
England--Yorkshire
France--Brest
France--La Rochelle
France--Lorient
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Bremen
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Hannover
Germany--Karlsruhe
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Magdeburg
Germany--Soest
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Düsseldorf
France--Bordeaux (Nouvelle-Aquitaine)
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1939
1940
1941
1942
1941-02-04
1941-02-10
1941-02-11
1941-02-15
1941-02-21
1941-03-12
1941-03-13
1941-03-14
1941-03-15
1941-03-18
1941-03-20
1941-03-21
1941-03-23
1941-03-24
1941-04-08
1941-04-09
1941-04-10
1941-04-11
1941-04-13
1941-04-14
1941-04-15
1941-04-16
1941-04-20
1941-04-21
1941-04-24
1941-04-25
1941-06-02
1941-06-03
1941-06-11
1941-06-12
1941-06-13
1941-06-14
1941-06-15
1941-06-21
1941-06-22
1941-06-24
1941-06-25
1941-06-27
1941-06-28
1941-06-29
1941-06-30
1941-07-04
1941-07-05
1941-07-16
1941-07-17
1941-07-20
1941-07-21
1941-08-05
1941-08-06
1941-08-08
1941-08-09
1941-08-12
1941-08-13
1941-08-29
1941-08-30
1941-09-02
1941-09-03
Title
A name given to the resource
Stephen Dawson's pilot's flying log book. One
14 OTU
25 OTU
50 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
bombing
Flying Training School
Hampden
Initial Training Wing
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
pilot
RAF Cottesmore
RAF Finningley
RAF Hatfield
RAF Lindholme
RAF Little Rissington
RAF St Athan
RAF Swanton Morley
RAF Swinderby
RAF Upwood
Tiger Moth
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/407/6865/LAnsellHT1893553v1.1.pdf
edfc366bd5e7a30081d45f021fab8420
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
Ansell, Henry
Henry Ansell
H T Ansell
Description
An account of the resource
28 items. The collection concerns Sergeant Henry Thomas Ansell, DFM (b. 1925, 1893553 Royal Air Force) and contains his logbook, his release book, a school report, two German language documents and several photographs, his medals and other items. Henry Ansell served as a flight engineer with 61 Squadron and 83 Squadron Pathfinders.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Vicki Ansell and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-07-30
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. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Ansell, HT
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Harry Thomas Ansell's flying log book for flight engineers
Description
An account of the resource
The log book covers the training and operational duties of Flight Engineer Sergeant Harry Thomas Ansell, from 14 April 1944 to 24 May 1945. He trained at RAF Torquay, RAF St Athan, RAF Stockport and was stationed at RAF Wigsley, RAF Syerston, RAF Skellingthorpe and RAF Coningsby. Aircraft flown in were Stirling and Lancaster. He flew 34 operations with 61 Squadron, 15 daylight and 19 night, and 18 night operations with 83 Squadron. Targets in Belgium, France, Germany and Norway were Limoges, Prouville, Vitry, Doullens, Chalindrey, Villeneuve-St-Georges, Caen, Revigny, Courtrai, Kiel, Donges, Saint-Cyr, Lyons, Stuttgart, Cahienes, Joigny-Laroche, Pas de Calais, Bois de Cassan, Saint-Leu-d'Esserent, Secqueville, Châtellerault, Bordeaux, Rüsselsheim, Königsberg, Rollencourt, Brest, Le Havre, Darmstadt, Boulogne, Bremerhaven, Rheydt, Munich, Heilbronn, Glessen, Politz, Merseberg, Brux, Karlsruhe, Ladbergen, Dresden, Rositz, Gravenhorst, Bohlen, Horten Fiord, Molbis and Lutskendorf. His pilot on operations was Flight Lieutenant Inness.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Belgium
France
Germany
Norway
Great Britain
England--Buckinghamshire
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Devon
England--Greater Manchester
England--Lancashire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Yorkshire
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
Atlantic Ocean--English Channel
Atlantic Ocean--Bay of Biscay
Atlantic Ocean--North Sea
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Belgium--Kortrijk
France--Boulogne-sur-Mer
France--Brest
France--Caen
France--Calais
France--Chalindrey
France--Châtellerault
France--Creil
France--Doullens
France--Joigny
France--Le Havre
France--Limoges
France--L'Isle-Adam
France--Paris
France--Saint-Nazaire
Germany--Bremerhaven
Germany--Darmstadt
Germany--Dresden
Germany--Heilbronn
Germany--Hörstel
Germany--Karlsruhe
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Merseburg
Germany--Munich
Germany--Rheydt
Germany--Rüsselsheim
Germany--Stuttgart
Germany--Wettin
Norway--Horten
Russia (Federation)--Kaliningrad (Kaliningradskai︠a︡ oblastʹ)
Germany--Böhlen
France--Lyon
Russia (Federation)
France--Bordeaux (Nouvelle-Aquitaine)
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One 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
LAnsellHT1893553v1
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
1944-06-19
1944-06-20
1944-06-23
1944-06-24
1944-06-25
1944-06-27
1944-06-28
1944-06-29
1944-07-12
1944-07-13
1944-07-14
1944-07-15
1944-07-18
1944-07-19
1944-07-20
1944-07-21
1944-07-23
1944-07-24
1944-07-25
1944-07-26
1944-07-27
1944-07-28
1944-07-29
1944-07-30
1944-07-31
1944-08-01
1944-08-02
1944-08-05
1944-08-07
1944-08-08
1944-08-09
1944-08-10
1944-08-11
1944-08-12
1944-08-13
1944-08-14
1944-08-26
1944-08-27
1944-08-31
1944-09-05
1944-09-10
1944-09-11
1944-09-12
1944-09-13
1944-09-14
1944-09-18
1944-09-19
1944-09-20
1944-11-26
1944-11-27
1944-12-04
1944-12-06
1944-12-10
1944-12-21
1944-12-22
1945-01-13
1945-01-14
1945-01-15
1945-01-16
1945-01-17
1945-02-02
1945-02-03
1945-02-06
1945-02-07
1945-02-08
1945-02-13
1945-02-14
1945-02-15
1945-02-20
1945-02-21
1945-02-23
1945-02-24
1945-03-20
1945-03-21
1945-04-07
1945-02-08
1945-02-09
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1944
1945
1654 HCU
61 Squadron
83 Squadron
aircrew
Bennett, Donald Clifford Tyndall (1910-1986)
bombing
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
bombing of the Pas de Calais V-1 sites (24/25 June 1944)
Distinguished Flying Medal
flight engineer
George VI, King of Great Britain (1895-1952)
Heavy Conversion Unit
Initial Training Wing
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Pathfinders
RAF Coningsby
RAF Skellingthorpe
RAF St Athan
RAF Stockport
RAF Syerston
RAF Torquay
RAF Wigsley
Stirling
tactical support for Normandy troops
training