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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/571/10320/BFraserDKFraserDKv1.2.pdf
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Title
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Fraser, Donald Keith
D K Fraser
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IBCC Digital Archive
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Fraser, DK
Description
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12 items. Two oral history interviews with Warrant Officer Donald Keith Fraser DFM (1924 - 2022, 1566621 Royal Air Force), a memoir, his log book, photographs and service material. The collection also contains an interview with Sylvia Fraser, his wife. He flew a tour of operations as a flight engineer with 101 Squadron.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Donald Keith Fraser and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Date
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2016-11-04
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. 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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Transcription
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WO DONALD KEITH FRASER
DFM 1566621
101 SQUADRON
JULY 1943 – MARCH 1944
CREW NAME: WL EVANS
[photograph of Donald Fraser]
[page break]
[photograph of Bomber Command Memorial]
[page break]
Contents
Page
Chapter A Introduction. 1
Chapter B Prior to World War II. 3
Chapter C Joined RAF 23rd July 1942. 7
Chapter D 101 Squadron Base Ludford Magna. 11
Chapter E 101 Squadron Operation Dates and Targets. 15
Chapter F 101 Squadron Notes on Various Operations. 17
Log Book and Battle Orders. 34
Chapter G Christmas 1943 and Christmas Dinner Menu. 41
Chapter H After Operations posted to Heavy Conversion Units. 45
Lindholme. 45
Bottesford. 47
Cottesmore. 51
North Luffenham. 52
Chapter I Advances in Technology. 55
What if? . 57
Chapter J Aircrew Bomber Command. 59
Wartime Bomber Squadrons. 60
Bombing of Berlin. 60
A Day in the Life of a Squadron. 61
Clothing Worn on Operations by our Crew. 62
Contact made with Two Crew Members plus information on others. 63
Chapter K The Lancaster Story. 67
Further notes relating to Black Thursday including information given by Len Brooks our Rear Gunner. 73
[page break]
[four photographs of author and Avro Lancaster]
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INTRODUCTION
Over the past 50 to 60 years I have enjoyed reading many books about bomber crews who flew with Bomber Command during World War II especially during the period from mid July 1943 until the end of the war. These books contained many accounts of true grit and heroism carried out by crew members. There are, however, a few experiences recalled which appear doubtful, a number of reported instances which are far-fetched or quite ridiculous to have suggested could have occurred.
Crews of the heavy bombers normally consisted of seven crew members all of whom were well trained to carry out specific tasks and as a team made up a competent crew capable of carrying out the various operations asked of them.
Operations were normally carried out over Europe (mainly to Germany) targets being the main industrial areas, factories, railway junctions and yards and eventually towns and cities, such as Berlin, Hanover, Hamburg, Leipzig, Frankfurt to name a few, all of which by 1943 the inhabitants were heavily involved in production for the German war effort.
The Bomber crews objectives were to carry out the operations they flew on to reach the target, drop their bombs and return home safely with their aircraft undamaged. Remember all these young men were volunteers, highly trained with the Pilot usually the “Skipper” and Captain, this was not to say that he gave all the orders and that no crew member acted until he gave that order. The Flight Engineer and Wireless Operator were the most mobile within the aircraft, therefore, if a situation occurred within the fuselage either or both could intervene by giving a quick call to the “Skipper”, or should a fault occur with the engine, the Flight Engineer would usually be the first to notice and carry out the essential remedy while informing the Pilot of the situation with procedure carried out. For a crew to be efficient and confident they had to be alert at all times, watching, listening and acting immediately. Survival required a highly trained crew team with loads of confidence in one’s self and in the other crew members and in the aircraft, so giving them a very strong attitude to press on.
A dedicated, loyal and skilful ground crew, a strong reliance in the Almighty (or what faith one had) and with very importantly more than normal, good luck, having lady luck on your side.
I have therefore put on paper a few experiences which happened to our crew while flying over Germany during mid 1943 to mid 1944. The following are not from diaries – they are what I recall after a long time. The experiences are genuine, the timing may be a little out, but to the reader it will still show the excitement, the pressure, sometimes fear, but above all the confidence and determination the crew had to carry out the task involved and return back to base with a full crew still intact.
A question I have been asked many times “why did you enjoy flying and with such odds against staying alive?” My answer, I loved flying, I enjoyed the excitement and I volunteered. I also liked the thought of coming back to base to a good meal and I felt safe and secure in my sometimes cold bed with its nice white sheets, compared to the Army personnel who
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worked under much more difficult conditions not knowing when they would eat or sleep and under conditions just as dangerous as ours, in fact, in many, more so.
By the end of writing I hope that I provide you with some idea of what these then young crew members of Bomber Command endured when flying over Germany for 6 to 7 1/2 hours at a time in a Lancaster bomber with around 2,000 gallons of fuel stored in tanks in the wings and with up to five tons of bombs slung under their feet along the fuselage, travelling at 250 miles an hour in the dark at 20-21,000 feet in height with temperatures of from -10 to 20oC below zero and with German fighters trying to shoot them down and with anti-aircraft guns (which could be very accurate) also trying to blow them up, just to make our journey a little more scary at times to find that on returning when we reached the English coastline that it was covered in thick cloud and dense fog making it almost impossible to find somewhere to land. Some of the words most suited to express the emotions of the crew in certain situations could be excited, interesting, scary, fear, relief, apprehensive and difficult.
I think, however, that the Brylcream boys done a very good job all these years ago.
Happy days!
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CHAPTER B
PRIOR TO WORLD WAR II
1919-1939
The First World War ended in 1919 after four years of fighting and with a very heavy loss of life on both sides. Those who were lucky enough to survive and return home found it extremely difficult to find employment.
The Government had created some opportunities by forming the Forestry Commission with the role to establish over the coming fifty years a supply of timber sufficient to make the UK self sufficient in wood requirements. This was to be created by the purchase of large areas of land, mainly in Scotland and North England (cheap less productive land) then cultivating and planting this land with conifer species. To achieve this management had to be trained and forestry workers had to be recruited.
Forestry schools were established throughout England and Scotland to educate and train management staff. One such school was opened at Dunkeld in Central Scotland where a Mr Simpson received his training and he afterwards took up the post of Nursery Manager at Tulliallan Nursery, Kincardine on the Forth.
During the war the larger estates had suffered from the lack of gamekeepers and staff to carry out the maintenance and control of vermin etc, therefore there were many vacancies for people interested to fill these posts. My father and two of his brothers did just that, they became keepers on some of the very large estates in Scotland.
My father and mother were married shortly after the war and he took up an appointment as a game keeper on a large estate near Stirling, where my sister Jean and elder brother Sandy were born. In 1923 he moved to take up Keepering on Tulliallan Estate near Kincardine. The family lived in the East Lodge which was situated adjacent to the main road from Kincardine to Dunfermline and next to the land belonging to the Forestry Commission nursery. This is where I was born on 24th August 1923. Two years later the family again moved, this time to take on the position of head keeper on Donibristle Estate and lived in the small village of Auchtertool, Fifeshire where my two younger sisters, Betty and Mary were born. These were from what little I can recall, were happy times, the family did not have much spare cash but had sufficient to satisfy the family needs.
Mr Simpson lost part of his right arm during the first War and had an artificial part fitted. In 1949 I joined the Forestry Commission Research Branch and guess where I was stationed, at Tulliallan Nursery and Mr Simpson was still there. He told me that when my father left the East Lodge in 1925 he bought his hens and chickens from him. In 1950 the Forestry Commission built around 20 houses for its staff some 400 yards west of the East Lodge and Sylvia and myself were lucky enough to have one of them. Mr Simpson played an important role in our lives over the next 30 years, however this is another story.
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Moray estate during the winter months arranged a number of pheasant shoots to which a number of friends and associates of the Lairds (The Earl of Moray) were invited to attend.
The 29th January 1929 was one of those days and the shoot covered the area which my father was responsible for. The morning started with rain, however the shoot commenced and the guns and beaters started with good success. A good number of birds were raised and shot, as the day continued the weather became worse and by lunchtime, thunder and lightning had started so it was decided to call the shoot off. During the morning a few birds had been shot, but had not been collected by the dogs so my father with his two spaniels decided he would retrace the morning route and see if he could collect lost birds. The weather continued to deteriorate, while he was crossing a fence he was hit by lightning. As the day went on and he had not returned the other two keepers decided they would go and look for him. They found him where he lay by the fence with his two dogs nearby. This was a terrible and tragic day for all concerned, my mother with five children all under the age of 11, no house and little money coming in to support the family. My mother did have two sisters who stayed in Edinburgh and who visited fairly regularly and helped all they could with the family. The estate owner, the Earl of Moray and the Estate Factor were very helpful and within a week or two, arranged for the family to move to Aberdour where they gave us a house with a fairly large garden (this became quite a good asset especially when the War came).
I was told when I was much older that at the time there was much talk about what should happen to the family the suggestion being that the family should be split up with the three girls staying with mum and the two boys (Sandy and myself) being placed with other people possibly with a relative or with other people. Our mother strongly disagreed and said none of the family would leave they would stay together. I believe that my mother made the right decision, had the family been split up, our lives would have been totally different and not for the better in my opinion.
These were hard times for our mother (in those days there was not the same support or financial assistance available to call on as there is today) however somehow our mum managed to sort things out and keep all the family together. Unfortunately we as children were too young to contribute in the way of bringing in money to the home, our mum was a very likeable person and soon made friends and was extremely capable of working to earn money, she turned her hand to doing housework and helping people in their homes and for two days each week helping in Donibristle Estate house, which meant a fairly long walk to get there (one mile each way).
She and her sisters were always very happy smiling people always ready for a joke, this helped to make life much better for everyone. She still had friends on the estate and the whole family occasionally in an evening would take a walk of around three miles to visit Mr and Mrs Linton, he also was a gamekeeper on the estate.
Our mum was also a good Christian and attended church fairly regularly and also enjoyed attending some of the concerts and meetings held in the village hall, she also was a member of the WI.
The estate was very good to the family we received twice a year a load of fire wood, which myself and Sandy would chop up into suitable sizes to use on the fire. In the Spring the estate workers would come to dig over the garden and planted potatoes which helped greatly, this meant that all we (Sandy and I) had to do was keep the garden free from weeds and hill up the potatoes and plant some vegetables.
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As time moved on and we the children grew older all by the age of eight or nine years managed to find jobs. Sandy and myself delivering milk before going to school and then delivering groceries after school and at weekends Jean our oldest sister assisted in the Cooperative grocery shop. This of course all helped to bring in some money.
The school leaving age at that time was 15. We all attended Aberdour school initially. At the age of 11 the choice was either moving to Burtisland school which was a technical college or go to Dunfermline high school, both schools were a distance away from Aberdour and required travelling by bus. All the girls, Jean, Betty and Mary enjoyed Dunfermline High, while Sandy and myself went to the technical school. We all got excellent grades in the exams. I left school in 1938 at a time when the job situation was very limited with little choice. I had two interests, first to be a forester, my dream being to see all the high elevation land covered with trees as it was during much earlier times and take part in that operation. Secondly to become an Engineer.
I applied for two jobs, one on the Moray Estates to become a trainee forester, the other to become an apprentice mechanic with a garage company in Kirkcaldy.
Both replied and I decided to take up the forestry appointment. This proved very enjoyable and I loved the variety of jobs and gained volumes of experience working with two brothers, Bob and Will Ewan. Will Ewan was foreman and took a liking to me and gave me all the encouragement and opportunities to carry out everything which was available. The Second World War commenced on the 3rd September 1939 and when I was 17 1/2 years old I volunteered to join the RAF on flying duties and became a flight engineer. So in the end I got both my dreams to come true. After the war being demobbed in 1946, I took up an appointment to become a probationer at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh. In 1948 I joined the Forestry Commission Research Branch.
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CHAPTER C
JOINED RAF 23RD JULY 1942
The Second World War started on 3rd September 1939. I’m not going into details regarding the reasons why Britain thought it necessary to do so as I believe most people know the reasons.
Prior to the war during the summers of 1937 and 1938 the Territorial Army held their camps on the outskirts of Aberdour on grass fields owned by Mill Farm, which was situated adjacent to the Sheriff Road. To us as youngsters it was exciting and interesting to see double rows of horses tethered along a single rope and the troops living under canvas in large tents. To see the different tartans depending on which regiment was resident in camp at the time, such as The Black Watch, The Camerons or The Gordons.
They were the first troops to be called up for service followed by people from certain professions and the general public of different age classes, one had to be 18 years old before being recruited.
All three services required recruits and there was a certain agreement of allowing people to join the service of their choice, however, if one service was short of personnel then recruits had no choice but to go where sent.
I was sixteen years old when the war started and when my time came to be called up I wished to join the RAF and, if possible, to fly on reaching my 17th birthday. I decided I would volunteer for the RAF on flying duties. Volunteers usually were given the opportunity to serve in the service of their choice.
I recall discussing the war with a few of my colleagues and suggesting that this war would change the face of Europe, and would also change all our lives completely if we survived.
I was called up on 23rd July 1942; my orders were to report to Warrington Recruitment Centre. My stay there was for two days where I, along with many more of my own age were fitted out with uniform and all other necessities. We then travelled to Blackpool to commence our training and embark on a flight mechanics course.
Blackpool like many other seaside resorts had many private residences available (usually used as holiday accommodation or bed and breakfast), these were now being used to accommodate RAF recruits.
I with others was billeted in Montague Street, South Shore near to the South Shore beach. This turned out to be excellent, the landlady treated us extremely well, and we each had our own bedroom and facilities. She had to supply us with breakfast and evening meal, and normal washing facilities. In fact for all the time I was in Blackpool, which was just under a year I stayed there, the RAF supplied our towels etc. In fact two evenings a week we had what was called ‘shower parades’. In total there was near 10,000 RAF personnel billeted in
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the town, so through the town certain buildings such as baths or swimming pool areas were converted into showers, rows and rows of showers with dressing accommodation alongside.
The recruits such as ourselves were divided into groups of between 40 and 50 and each group had a corporal in charge, he was in charge of all our activities such as the shower parade. We had to assemble at a point near to our billet on certain evenings each week. The corporal would march us to the showers then afterwards march us back, he was also responsible for us on all other activities.
The course of flight mechanic was a very intensive course covering both theory and practical work. This was carried out at Squires Gate near St Anne’s, three miles east of Blackpool and was originally a small airport. The hangers were converted to workshops for training purposes.
We were transported in bus convoys daily, morning and evening to and from the base with our same corporal, Lofty Clark, in charge. We also carried out the usual training and skills necessary to be a good soldier including physical training, assault course, rifle drill and route marches. Most of these were carried out on the area around the South Shore pleasure ground. The mechanics course lasted for five months. At the end of each fortnight we had verbal exams and after six weeks written exams, each exam had to be passed before one could move on. If I remember all our group passed their exams.
After the mechanics course we were given two weeks leave and on return commenced on a fitters course, which lasted a further five months, the same routine as previously. What I forgot to say, we had a break in the morning and afternoon when the NAAFI vans arrived serving a bun and a cup of tea.
By the end of the further course we were capable of dismantling an aircraft engine and reassembling it with success. We also had a basic knowledge of the aircraft workings at this stage before moving onto the next stage of our training, the flight engineer course.
We were divided into those who would be flying on Halifaxs [sic] and those who would fly on Lancasters, fortunately I was selected to fly on Lancasters.
Blackpool was a fairly good place to be stationed at, as with its many parks there was always plenty of opportunity to play sport, which was very much encouraged by the RAF. I spent most weekends playing either football or rugby; in fact for the 1942‑3 season I played rugby for Blackpool’s third team. There was little time in evenings for anything, as I said two nights were taken up with shower parade, then most weeks a further two nights for other activities. Every Sunday there was a church parade, one had to attend the parade but not the service if it was not your religion. Most places in Blackpool were closed, however, the lower levels of the tower were still open and I remember the organ was still being played and the ballroom was open at certain times.
For the flight engineers course those of us that were to fly on Lancasters were transferred to St Athans, South Wales. The course was originally intended to last eight weeks however, on arrival we were told that flight engineers were in such short supply that the course was being crammed into two weeks. To enable this to happen we worked a 12‑hour day, seven days each week, however, the course was a success and we all knew the basics about the Lancaster workings, although we still had not flown in a Lancaster.
At the end of the course we were split up into groups of six and told to report to a certain Air Training Unit. I had to report to Lindholme near Doncaster, where other members of crew which included pilot, navigator, bomb aimer, mid upper gunner and rear gunner were already
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at Lindholme operating as a crew for a period of four weeks awaiting for flight engineers to become available.
On arrival we were introduced to our crews and the following day we were flying as a complete crew, however, not on Lancasters (Lancasters were too scarce to be used on training duties). We flew on Halifax, this was a heavy bomber and gave the pilot the opportunity and experience of flying heavy aircraft. We continued training and flying at Lindholme for a further week.
As a complete crew and along with one other crew from the same course at Lindholme we were posted to 101 Squadron which was based at Ludford Magna seven miles west of Louth Lincolnshire. This was a recently built airfield; the runways and perimeter roads were complete along with the aircraft stand pods. Accommodation was nissen huts as were the messes. Roads and paths around the areas were still not laid; Wellington boots were the order of the day.
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CHAPTER D
LUDFORD 101 SQUADRON
Ludford Magna
Ludford Magna, a small village situated on the main road between Louth and Market Rasen, was to change dramatically as the area was chosen to be the site for one of the new warfare RAF bomber airfields. Work commenced in spring 1943 and by May the airfield was ready for occupation however, as with many other war built sites, many buildings were far from being useable.
The airfield had three runways with the main runway, which was two thousand yards long from north to south. The other two runways were 14 hundred yards, one of which ran east to west. They were all connected by a narrow perimeter track of which there were 36 standing pods. All personnel accommodation was nissen hut type buildings and erected on the north side of the main road running through the village, some distance from the main airfield.
101 Squadron took over occupation of the airfield in late June but even then there were no hardcore paths leading to the billets or the ablution blocks. This meant that travelling to and from billets or airfield, the only serviceable footwear was rubber boots. We as a crew arrived in late July and I remember squelching in the mud around the base and when it rained circumstances were even worse, and it did rain quite a bit during the autumn and winter hence the airfield got the nickname of Mudford (instead of Ludford) and was well deserved.
On days when operations were planned the routine was briefing which was held at a certain time when all crew members met in the briefing room where the CO (Comanding [sic] Officer) addressed the crews stating which crews were flying and which if any were on standby in case any crew members were unable to fly.
The CO would then open the curtains on the wall covering the maps and the target, after which the various heads of section gave details of weather expected on route over target and on return, also bomb load, fuel load and any other relative information such as height levels expected to be flown at by the different aircraft. Lancasters usually flew at one or two thousand feet higher than the Halifax, which would be flying at around 19,000 feet.
It was most important for 101 Squadron to keep strictly to the timing and height levels as with ABC (Airborne Cigar equipment) on board, 101 Squadron crews task was to cover the rest of the bombers flying on the operation, along the route to the target, through the target and on the return route. Example, if the target time was 20 minutes for all aircraft to pass through the target and if 101 Squadron had 22 aircraft flying, each aircraft would be allocated a time through the target of one minute apart.
This put considerable pressure on the navigator and pilot, the route was always discussed among the crew members such as pilot, bomb aimer and engineer in order to help and assist the navigator to stay on course such as any landmarks, heavy barrage of ack ack or search
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lights, as these would usually mean certain industrial areas, towns or cities. Also if weather conditions were good possibly a certain bend on a river or railway, or road crosses, these markers were always very helpful to the navigator to keep him on course and on time.
All crew members had different personalities we all, however, accepted that we were professionals and some of the best in our trades, and that belief and the fact that we worked extremely well as a crew. We trusted each other’s judgement and carried out the requirements without question.
The crew (our crew) was organised similar to a football team we had a captain in our pilot Wally and with a few key team players who had the ability to carry out other members’ duties. They were Navigator, Jimmy, could act as bomb aimer, Eric our bomb aimer had sufficient knowledge of navigation to bring the aircraft home, and myself as engineer could in an emergency takeover and fly and land the aircraft. The gunners were the crewmembers most out of touch with the others. In my position I could watch their turrets for movement and could keep in touch with them, and if for any reason their turrets were not moving I could give them a call. I could easily see the mid upper gunner Bill and see the rear gunner guns Len when they turned to port.
Eric our bomb aimer lounged in the front compartment of the aircraft on lookout for other aircraft and to aid the navigator, his map reading was spot on, and he liked to give a commentary of what was happening leading up to the target – such sayings as men it’s bloody marvellous, we are bang on time over the target, then this was his time he was in control, he was very precise with his left slightly, right a little, hold it there, left a little. I would be watching for other aircraft and for fighters, and as he said on this occasion that it was over Berlin I said hold it Eric another Lanc is just passing immediately beneath us. He said: “I have missed the target we will have to go round again”. In this situation Eric was in control and Wally our pilot even with a few strong words said to Jimmy our navigator “give us a new course to bring us round again”. There were the occasional shouts from the gunners such as “fighter on port, eleven o’clock” or “watch that searchlight” or “collision between Lanc and Halifax – no parachutes, poor bastards”. The wireless operator Norman (Nobby) was good at his job he never panicked. Nobby could obtain bearings when others couldn’t. I think he did naughty things on the frequencies to get priority. He had the warmest place on the aircraft.
Jimmy our navigator was superb, conscientious, every course had to be accurate and everything he did he gave a reason for his decision. Wally our pilot would discuss with him the situation for the change of course and automatically changed course. Wally was an excellent pilot, steady and a good captain and we worked well together, we the crew called him our taxi driver. Taking off with a full bomb load and possibly two thousand gallons of fuel was the most nervous part of the trip, after receiving the green light he would taxi onto the runway, line up, test the engines remembering we had probably some waiting for five to ten minutes, with slow engine revolutions which could overheat the engines. We together would open up the four throttles when the engines were screaming he would release the brakes and the aircraft would start rolling along the runway. When we reached the 90+ speed he would require both his hands on the controls and I would push the throttle controls fully forward, keeping the port engines throttles slightly ahead of the starboard engines throttles, as I found that the Lancaster tended to veer to the port on take off or nearing the end of the runway. If we were still on the ground I would push all four throttles through the barrier, this gave the extra power we only used this in extreme cases, as it was hard on the engines and used extra fuel. Once in the air Wally would say “undercarriage up” then “flaps up” and we would start climbing on a spiral course until we reached the height of around ten thousand
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feet before setting course on our operation. I would adjust engines to obtain speed required with minimum revs.
As I previously said 101 Squadron operated ABC, which meant we carried an eighth member of crew. A specialist, his job was to jam German radio transmissions to the night fighters’ ground based controllers, his operating place was just behind the main part of the port side about 6 ft square with no external vision. It was said that these members had no one crew to fly with and were allocated a crew on an operation base, this maybe true however we were a very organised crew and this arrangement did not apply. We therefore were allocated Ken as a crewmember and he flew with us during the remainder of our tour.
101 Squadron radio call was for aircraft ‘Bookworm’, control tower ‘Bookshop’.
Returning to after briefing was completed we returned to the mess where a meal was always arranged which consisted of a main course of egg, bacon and chips. We then dressed into our flying kit, collected our parachute and made our way to the crew room where we collected our flying rations, these consisted of sandwiches, Horlicks tablets chewing gum and a flask of coffee or tea. If you wished wakey wakey pills to help keep you awake while flying (none of our crew ever indulged in these) we also collected a package containing money and maps of the countries over which we would be flying on the chance that we may be shot down.
After a few operations, the crew was allocated our own aircraft, for us X² the dispersal point was quite a way round the perimeter track and close to the road. The aircraft was parked facing away from the road and perimeter fence so when Mac our ground crew sergeant in charge of X² and his colleagues required to clean their dirty, oily boilersuits they would wash them in a can of fuel and hang them on the fence behind the aircraft, then when the engines were tested the slipstream would blow dry their clothes.
There was usually four or five technicians allocated to each aircraft with either a corporal or sergeant in charge. They were a grand bunch of lads, dedicated and had to work in the open under all various weather conditions from high summer temperatures to severe cold and winter weather conditions. They also had a remarkable collection of spare parts hidden away in their crew hut, which they built up over time from broken Lancasters. This enabled them to carry out repairs and patch up any enemy damage that had been inflicted on the aircraft. This meant that the aircraft could be kept serviceable and ready for action without delay and not having to ground the aircraft while waiting for spares from the stores.
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CHAPTER E
OPERATION DATES AND TARGETS
[photograph of author]
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Operations 101 Squadron 1943-44
Operation – Date - Place
1 - 20th August 1943 - Leverkusen.
2 - 30th-31st August 1943 - Munchen Gladbach.
0 - 31st Aug-1st Sept 1943 - (Abortive) Berlin. Starboard outer feathered, landed on three engines.
3 - 3rd-4th September 1943 - Berlin. Held in searchlights for five minutes.
4 - 23rd-24th September 1943 - Mannheim.
5 - 29th-30th September 1943 - Bochum.
6 - 2nd-3rd October 1943 - Munich. Shot up over Amiens landed Tangmere.
7 - 5th-6th October 1943 - Hanover.
8 - 20th-21st October 1943 - Leipzig. Electrical problems.
9 - 3rd-4th November 1943 - Düsseldorf.
10 - 10th-11th November 1943 - Modane. Fuel shortage, landed Tangmere.
11 - 18th-19th November 1943 - Berlin.
12 - 22nd-23rd November 1943 - Berlin. Rear turret frozen up.
13 - 26th-27th November 1943 - Berlin.
14 - 16th-17th December 1943 - Berlin. Heavy losses fog on return. Many fighter flares around target area.
15 - 20th-21st December 1943 - Frankfurt.
16 - 24-25th December 1943 - Berlin. Rear turret u/s starboard outer feathered.
17 - 29th-30th December 1943 - Berlin.
18 - 1st-2nd January 1944 - Berlin.
19 - 2nd-3rd January 1944 - Berlin. Mug passed out through lack of oxygen.
20 - 5th-6th January 1944 - Stettin. Best photo in bomber command.
21 - 15th-16th January 1944 - Brunswick.
22 - 27th-28th January 1944 - Berlin.
23 - 28th-29th January 1944 - Berlin.
24 - 15th-16th February 1944 - Berlin.
25 - 19th-20th February 1944 - Leipzig. Heaviest losses in group.
26 - 20th-21st February 1944 - Stuttgart.
27 - 24th-25th February 1944 - Schweinfurt. Best photo in group.
28 - 25th-26th February 1944 - Augsburg.
29 - 1st-2nd March 1944 - Stuttgart.
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CHAPTER F
101 SQUADRON
NOTES ON VARIOUS OPERATIONS
In late July 1943 after completing my flight engineer course and joining the other crew members at conversion unit Lindholme near Doncaster, with two other crews we arrived at 101 Squadron based at Ludford Magna. The crews were always known by the name of the pilot and out of the three crews that arrived, two crews had the name of Evans; W L Evans and A H Evans. I was the flight engineer assigned to W L Evans’s crew and had flown with them at conversion unit, however, the records had been mixed up and showed me as flight engineer to A H Evans’s crew. The simplest method of resolving the problem would have been for me to join A H Evans’s crew and the other flight engineer to join W L Evans’s crew. W L Evans, however, said definitely not, I was his engineer and in no way was I not flying in his crew, the records were therefore corrected.
For the next three weeks we worked as a crew getting to know each other and familiarising
ourselves with the aircraft. When we were told that we were to be on operations we had
flown 33 hours in total, 12 of which was night flying.
Both crews flew, our first operation was on 22nd-23rd August 1943, the target was Leverkusen. There was of course much excitement among us and especially when at briefing the curtains covering the maps on the wall were opened and we saw the target, we were the new bods not knowing what to expect. We listened carefully to what was being said by the various Heads of Section regarding the weather, hot spots to miss along the route, where fighters could be expected and where flak would be very heavy.
Leverkusen was a German town situated in the near proximity of the Ruhr Germany’s main industrial centre, where a high percentage of their heavy equipment was made. The Ruhr had been visited many times and considerable damage carried out which helped delay their war equipment this was an operation to attack specific targets, which would further upset and delay their war effort.
After briefing we returned to the mess for a meal, which usually consisted of egg, bacon and chips. Takeoff was scheduled for around 21:30 hours so before that we had to collect our parachutes rations and packet containing money, maps etc to cover the countries over which we would be flying in case we had to bail out.
We then changed into flying kit before catching the crew bus out to our aircraft. The next task was to carry out the pre-flying checks on the aircraft, then start the engines.
Wally then taxied the aircraft along the perimeter track towards the takeoff runway, waiting in the queue for the aircraft in front to obtain the green light to takeoff. Then our turn, green light given, we turn onto the runway, line up at the end, carry out the formal checks between pilot and engineer. Wally our pilot and skipper then holds on the brake as I open up the four
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throttles, pushing the port two slightly ahead of the starboard two, let brake off and feel the aircraft rush along the runway increasing speed rapidly (this was the most exciting part of the operation as far as I was concerned).
As the throttles are fully opened and as the end of the runway is nearing, the heavy aircraft laden with fuel and bombs leaves the tarmac behind. Relief. Pilot: “undercarriage up” engineer “undercarriage up, brakes on off”. Pilot “flaps up”, engineer “flaps up”. As the undercarriage and flaps are raised you could feel the plane sink a little before starting to climb. Pilot to navigator: “course and speed, and height”. I would then reduce throttle to minimum revs to produce power sufficient to keep climbing at the speed asked for, then as far as possible synchronise the four engines to cut out unnecessary noise. The noise from four Merlin engines was a noise that you never forget.
Taking off and managing to get this large aircraft off the ground safely while possibly carrying two thousand gallons of fuel stored in the wings and a full bomb load under your feet, as I said previous, was always the most exciting part of the operation as far as I was concerned and I always marvelled at Wally’s skills in achieving this without any mishaps. I was always relieved, happy and knew that everything would be all right until we had to do it all again on the next operation.
We had no troubles with our landing at base on return from Leverkusen, taxied to our parking space, caught a crew bus which took us to the debriefing room where we received a nice hot cup of tea or coffee with a spot of rum in if wanted. The debriefing consisted of an Intelligence Officer asking a number of questions about what we saw on route, anything unusual, searchlight positions around built up areas, flak, fighter activity. Did we see any planes being shot down and did we see any parachutes appearing and anything else, which may be of interest.
We were then able to return to the mess for breakfast. While having breakfast, A H Evans and crew arrived, we had a few words regarding the operation and made our way back to our billet for a few hours sleep, luckily it was coming up to high moon period so for the next ten days there were no operations.
The second operation, which both crews were on, was to Munchen Gladbach on 30th and 31st August, we had another fairly quiet trip without any problems and landed safely on time at Base. We heard that two planes were late, one of which was A H Evans, we held on at breakfast hoping to hear some news. News came through that a SR Lancaster had landed further south due to fuel shortage, it turned out not to be A H Evans and crew. The following day we heard the dreaded news that A H Evans’s crew was reported missing and presumably shot down. This was later confirmed.
This was a new experience for us to know that seven young men who we had been friendly with, even for a short time, were no longer around. The engineer had come through the same training as myself – mechanic course fitters course at Blackpool – followed by flight engineers course at St Athans, then crewing up at Lindholme. He was slightly older than myself therefore not in my squad although I did know him on the course to say hello, and as you know both crews joined 101 Squadron on the same day and I almost changed places with him.
The same routine was followed each time we took off and continued to be the most anxious time and possibly the most scary and nervous moments of each operation. We soon realised that each operation was different with its own hazards and that flying over Europe for however short or long a period, it was a very dangerous and frightening place to be.
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The normal procedure for all aircraft after takeoff was to start to gain height, circling the area until reaching a height of around 10,000 ft before setting course for the target. Around the Lincoln area there were at least 20 airfields, each with at least 20 aircraft flying on each operation, that was why the residents living in the area knew when operations were on by the noise of 400 planes all circling to gain height. Once a course was set we tried to reach a height of at least 15,000 ft before crossing the enemy coast.
There were certain things that we had no control over such as the weather, the conditions on route could be quite different from that forecasted. Increased wind speeds, a tail wind instead of a nose wind, these affected the navigator greatly who was trying to stay on route and be at a certain point within the time space of the operation. More so with 101 Squadron, responsible to give protection by using ABC over the full length of the operation. Thunderstorms and heavy clouds could also cause icing up of the engine air intakes and front edge of the wings (remember temperatures could be as low as -20°) and if not dealt with could cause engine failure.
Fog, however, was the most serious problem, thick fog in the UK on return. Blanket fog so thick it was impossible to see anything from the air or the ground, this caused heavy losses of aircraft as returning from flying with low fuel levels, trying to find a landing ground was impossible, for many resulting in heavy losses in aircraft and crews. Conditions improved slightly when FIDO was installed on some runways.
There were hazards from conditions which crews did not expect as the Met weather forecasts had given much more favourable conditions, otherwise we should not have been flying. As soon as we flew over the Dutch coastline we expected to be greeted by flak and if ground conditions were good by enemy fighters, depending on the operations route, flak could be very heavy and accurate especially round the towns and cities. Searchlights then also came into play especially those with the strong blue coloured lights. If caught by one of these it was almost impossible to lose them they were also radar controlled by anti-aircraft guns, which were especially accurate and many aircraft became casualties.
There was also a fair risk of collision bearing in mind that on the route to the target there were possibly between 400 and 600 large aircraft (100 ft wingspan) all travelling in the same direction at the same time, making for the same point and expected to be over the target all within the space of 20 minutes or less (granted there would be a range of heights between some, possibly within a band of 2,000 ft). Think of it as 600 cars travelling along a motorway all doing 70 miles per hour, all expecting to pass point ‘A’ at between 01:00 and 01:20 hours. If congestion occurred the car driver would see and would slow down, there was no way of changing lane or slowing in an aircraft. It was therefore very clear to us as a crew early on that flying over Europe was a very dangerous and frightening place to be and if we were to succeed we had to work as a team, be alert all the time whether for two hours or eight hours. This we managed fairly well, we recognised that the safest place to be was in the middle of the concentration along the route. It was usually those who had strayed off course that were picked off by fighters or became casualties by flak.
Our navigator Jimmy was therefore a very important member of the crew (he was an exceptionally good navigator) the rest of the crew could also help him which we did if conditions were clear telling him of certain markers, such as there is heavy flak ahead to 11 o’clock, or we are just passing over a river with a railway line and road alongside or such like information.
He could then take action if necessary and give a change of course to Wally our pilot, or if we had a strong tail wind ask me to reduce speed slightly. So we had two-way conversation
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between key members such as navigator, bomb aimer, pilot and engineer but only with reference to the operation in hand.
The rear and mid upper gunners role was to continually scour the sky by rotating from side to side in their turrets, with one turning to starboard the other turning to port, the bomb aimer controlled the front myself had the only view to watch the gunners and watch ahead and to the sides, while the bomb aimer carried out his other work such as dropping window or preparing for his bombing run, therefore we were fairly well covered. If another aircraft came close or overhead, or below us on our bombing run a crewmember could give the alarm. If a fighter was seen and showing interest then mostly the gunners gave the alarm “fighter starboard, 2 o’clock, dive now!”. Wally would dive immediately and carry out a corkscrew manoeuvre then return on to normal course, this usually worked. If for any reason I could see the gunner’s turrets not moving I would give them a call, only once was it necessary to take further action (this is recorded later) usually they were just having a short rest or such like.
Fuel was also a concern, petrol was rationed throughout the UK as most of the supplies had to be imported, therefore fuel for aircraft was also closely regulated on Lancasters to 200 gallons per hour flying time. Therefore if the estimated time for an operation was seven hours, fuel allocated was 1,400 gallons plus 200 extra, a total of 1,600 gallons.
The flight engineer therefore did have some control; it was dependent on how efficient he was in regulating the engines (similar to driving, there are good drivers and not so good drivers). The Lancaster had six fuel tanks, three in each wing with the small tank on the outside of the wing which could only be pumped into the middle tank, the other two on each wing could be used in tandem or individually to feed the engines.
It was the engineer’s responsibility to use the fuel distribution the most successful way so that whatever happened the maximum fuel was available to keep the engines running. To such ends I fully used the centre tanks each fuelling the two engines on port and starboard when sufficient was used pump tank fuel into tank two, then using fuel evenly from the other two tanks to supply the port and starboard engines.
If anything unforeseen happened such as a tank being damaged from enemy flak or fighter guns, the minimum fuel loss would occur and I could re-adjust my method of usage by opening and closing valves.
All engines could be run from one of the four tanks, this meant keeping a log and recording every ten or fifteen minutes. It was also necessary to record engine temperatures and oil pressure and with experience listening to the noise of the engines could give a good indication of how efficient they were running. Fuel could be saved by making sure that, when possible, the engine revs could be reduced and that other control on the aircraft such as flaps, etc were being used at optimum levels. This saving in fuel could be the difference between touching down safely or not, on the odd occasion when fuel loss occurred from a leaking tank or when on reaching the base area it was under thick fog and extra flying was necessary to find a suitable landing site.
Life on the base was very mixed, flying on operations was usually carried out during the dark nights of the moon and these two weeks could be hectic, operations could be on two consecutive nights resulting in our crew getting to bed at around 05:00 hours and then having to be ready for pre-briefing and head of section meetings, followed by main briefing at 15:00 to 16:00 hours and once again ready for takeoff by 21:30 hours. Other times operations could be scheduled and then cancelled because of possibly extreme weather
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conditions over the UK or over the target area. The dark nights were therefore a continual case of being ready to fly when called upon.
The period of high moon was more relaxing. Training and practice still had to be carried out such as bombing practice for Eric; this was carried out on targets set in the North Sea a few miles off shore. Gun practice for Len and Bill carried out on a moving target towed behind a small plane off the coastline.
The station had an excellent gym where one could keep fit which was essential and a very good library of general reading material and technical information. I also spent a considerable amount of time on the simulator improving my flying skills and landing procedures, also the period when crews could have some leave. I always travelled home on these occasions.
We were on base during the autumn (harvest time) as a crew we decided to help the local farmer with stocking and collecting his grain crops as our accommodation Nissen huts were situated near to the farmstead, in return he offered us a pile of fire wood to keep our stove lit during the colder nights as the coke ration was rather limited.
Ludford Magna was a small village supporting two pubs, a post office and a small but very nice church during the 11 months, which I spent at the base. I had never been in either of the pubs. I had attended the church service on a number of occasions.
The Women’s Institute also ran a small unit situated on the main street where one could obtain a nice cup of tea and a cake, also within a mile radius there were two small cafes which crew members frequently visited during the day for a tea and a bun.
During off flying periods we as a crew fairly regularly visited the Kings Head Hotel in Louth where we had a meal. Crewmembers also received generous leave, seven days approximately every 6‑8 weeks depending on weather and operation timing. We had extra rations of chocolate, vitamin tablets and cigarettes. On leave from Ludford I always travelled home to Aberdour in Fife, Scotland. It was a long, slow journey, going on leave we usually managed to go by transport from the base then catch a train at Louth to Grantham where we could catch the train on the main line travelling between London and Edinburgh. This was usually an overnight train and usually very packed by other military personnel doing the same. The train usually reached Edinburgh during the night or very early morning then another wait to catch a train to Aberdour. The conditions occurred on the return journey unfortunately the train reached Louth early in the morning when no such transport was
available; it was then a seven mile walk back to base.
Leave was a time to catch up with family and friends and especially to catch up with sleep and to chill out and rest. I said earlier that we did have good rations of sweets, chocolates and cigarettes which I usually was able to take some home.
During the winter 1943/44 we had several days of heavy snow and naturally this added to the mud when it melted, it also meant that to keep operational the runways and perimeter tracks had to be cleared of snow, every available person, air crews and ground crews, armed with spades and shovels turned out to clear the snow. We were treated with the odd drop of rum to keep the cold out and our spirits up, and to keep us digging.
Our billet nissen huts had snowdrifts around them, these Nissen huts were unlined and in bad weather there was considerable condensation inside and this used to run in the corrugations of the sheeting and if the temperature was cold enough, it would freeze. We did have heating in the form of a round pot stove with chimney from top of the stove up through
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the roof. Coal or anthracite was the main fuel, it was of course rationed and in short supply. There were raids between huts to obtain extra supplies. The odd chair went missing along with any spare pieces of wood to help out. If you were lucky and had sufficient supply to completely fill up the stove and get it and part of the chimney extremely hot then it would keep the hut warm until the next morning.
During the summer the problems were different, it was earwigs that would climb up the inside of the huts and occasionally drop into beds. I remember one of our crew members, I can’t remember who, while sleeping an earwig crawled into his ear and he had to pay a visit to the MO to have it removed. Field mice could also cause annoyance.
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NOTES ON VARIOUS OPERATIONS
Operation 3
3rd/4th September 1943
Target: Berlin
We had a reasonably quiet trip keeping clear of the various hot spots on route and staying well on course, searchlights were many on the approach to the target with some very powerful blue lights. As we prepared for our bombing run we got caught by one of these powerful lights and no matter what we did we could not lose it, and if we did a further light caught on to us. We were flying at 22,000 ft; Wally decided the best manoeuvre was to put the aircraft into a power dive and loose [sic] height quickly.
After four minutes we were down to 18,000 ft and still dazzled by its glare just then a Halifax, which was flying at a much lower altitude, drifted across under us and the light caught on to it, then the Halifax completely exploded. It had received the full blast possibly intended for us. These blue searchlights and guns were radar controlled and worked together.
We reached the target and bombed at the lower level then set for home and had a quiet trip back to base. We were a bit shaken up by what had happened to the Halifax and in future made a mental note to keep well clear of blue searchlights. The navigator noted in his log the position of this light so if possible it could be targeted for special attention.
Operation 6 (705 hours)
2nd-3rd October 1943
Target: Munich
Takeoff time for the operation was 18:45 hours. For us as a crew this was a quiet trip, we had no problems with enemy fighters, searchlights were few and by keeping strictly on course found no problems with ack-ack. We reached the target on time, bombed and started on our way home still without any troubles, then as we thought we were doing well without warning we were shot up by anti aircraft guns near the town of Amiens which caught the underside of the body of the aircraft and along the wings. From this we developed a fuel leak. In trying to evade further damage from the anti aircraft guns Wally put the aircraft into a power dive at around 21,000 ft, trying to pull it out took Wally and myself great strength pulling on the control column, we were down to 5,000 ft when we finally levelled out. On inspecting the aircraft at Tangmere we found that many of the rivets on the lower side of the wings had been stripped open owing to the strain on the wings caused by the speed in diving, and counted over 80 holes of various sizes along the body and wings however after refuelling the following day we decided the aircraft was airworthy and safe enough to fly back to base where we could have repairs carried out quickly. Mac was not amused when he saw the Lanc X not X² but was pleased that we had brought it back safely for his team to repair it.
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Operation 8
19th/20th October
Target: Berlin
During the week previously I had been told that more new Lancasters would be arriving at base and the one with X² as its recognition number would be allocated to our crew and from then on for our use on operations. Up until that date we operated on whichever aircraft was available. Mac, a ground engineer (Sergeant) had arrived on the station in July, until now he was a spare engineer, X² became his charge for all servicing and repairs. We struck up a great relationship between us and after each operation, as soon as possible I would contact Mac and tell him of any problems which we had experienced during the flight. I was thrilled to think I would be the only person operating these engines and I could nurse then [sic] whenever possible and be reasonably sure that they had not been misused for no good reason. Mac had warned me that because of the lack of time, the aircraft had been checked and was serviceable, however, he and his team had not yet had the time to check all electrical and hydraulic circuits.
Takeoff was 17:30 hours and all went well until I retracted the undercarriage, it appeared to lift ok but the warning lights indicated that it had not fully locked. We proceeded to circle and climb and as we reached the Dutch coastline Nobby, our wireless operator, was having problems with his equipment, I then had a temperature gauge on one of the engines reading an excessively high temperature. The engine appeared to be working satisfactorily, however, we were still only a short time into our operation. I was concerned what may continue to happen and without radio contact we could have a problem.
We still had a full bomb load on board and high levels of fuel, under these conditions we could not return to base and land without losing our bombs. Wally was in agreement with Jimmy our navigator, they decided that they would set course for Texel and drop our bombs on the installation there. This we did then returned to base. As we had no contact with ground control we landed without permission.
On return before landing, however, we dropped our undercarriage and as the lights were not showing we did do a shallow dive with a quick pull up, this jerked the undercarriage down and all was well. The problems were resolved, the pressure gauge was faulty, meaning the undercarriage was not fully engaging because of limited pressure on the hydraulics.
Operation 10
11th/12th November 1943
Target: Modane
Normally as we have said previously operations were usually carried out during the nights when there was no moon. This was full moon; a beautiful bright night with clear skies which meant that aircraft flying could be seen for great distances. We had no trouble in reaching the target with little or no opposition from enemy fighters, searchlights or flak. Even on the way home it was trouble free and we could see and watch the marvellous sights of the high mountains as we passed over them and then without notice flying over Amiens a blue searchlight ‘coned’ us, immediately followed by heavy and accurate ack-ack fire which burst very close to us, causing some damage to the underside of the aircraft and to one of the fuel tanks, luckily no crew member was injured.
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This was not a great problem it only meant isolating the tank involved, eventually causing a fuel shortage. I said we would not have sufficient fuel to reach base, so Jimmy (our navigator) gave Wally a course for Tangmere in South England where we landed. On checking we found that the aircraft was not too badly damaged around 50 holes of various sizes along the underside of the fuselage and two holes in the side and front window where a piece of shrapnel entered in and out again, as well as cutting a hole in the sleeve of my flying jacket. This I did not know until I was removing my jacket.
The following morning we refuelled and returned to base.
Operation 14 (Black Thursday)
16th-17th December 1943
Target: Berlin
This was supposed to be a very quiet trip as reported at briefing in the late afternoon. The weather was so bad over Europe that no fighters would be able to fly therefore the route would be straight to the capital Berlin, and straight back out – should be a very easy journey, unfortunately things did not turn out this way.
As we crossed over the Dutch coast the weather took a dramatic change and instead of cloud and thick fog, conditions were good for flying and the fighters which were supposed to be sitting on the ground were flying on strength and interrupting the bomber stream, and we noted a few running battles and a number of aircraft being shot down. Within a short time it was clear that this was going to be a night to remember. The attacks continued all the way to the target, fortunately we remained clear of any trouble except for seeing the odd fighter going in the opposite direction.
There was the usual heavy concentration of searchlights and heavy activity of ack ack over the target creating a heavy barrage. We bombed on target and set on our route for home, this proved uneventful for us although we did see a few fighter battles being continued.
The weather by this time was beginning to close in with much more low cloud as a result Wally decided to carry out a gentle decent, reaching the coastline at around 2,000 ft and by this time we knew that there would be trouble with low cloud and fog. We were alerted by base that Ludford was fog-bound and that we should proceed to Driffield, this was when it became very difficult. By now all the crewmembers were active in trying to find any ground markers all with little success, Eric who was still in his front position shouted “pull up Wally – I’ve just seen a barrage balloon”. Jimmy quietly informed us we must be over Hull, I’ll use this as a reference check.
By now we had been in the air for 7 1/2 hours and from my calculations our fuel was becoming in short supply. Nobby (wireless operator): “I’m picking up a signal” RT messages from Dishforth and Catfoss but they could see no lights through the fog.
Then Catfoss offered to put a light on for us, they, however, realised that we were very low and put the beam aimed parallel to the ground.
Presumably, because of the light what Wally and I saw was a farmhouse and buildings, we both acted simultaneously, Wally pulled the control unit full back, I slammed the throttle fully open, luckily I had been flying with the engine booster pumps on so there was no delay in the engines producing full power. As the power emerged we somehow managed to lift the aircraft over the buildings we must have been only feet away from the ground because as the
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aircraft pulled up the tail wheel clipped the farm entrance gate, I think that it must be true to say that the beam of light from Catfoss saved our lives.
Wally: “How much fuel have we left?” My reply, ”Very little, what should we do?” Jimmy: “Take course for base and try to land there”. We decided to return to base and as luck would have it Eric caught a brief glimpse of something he recognised followed by a few sodium lights of the outer ring lights and as we circled round Wally said “I think I will go round again as I will then have a better chance of landing”. “No” I said, “we do not have the fuel for that”. So with some quick manoeuvring he managed to bring the aircraft back on course. Unfortunately, as I have said previously there are so many airfields in Lincolnshire that the outer perimeter lights cross over each other and this is what happened to us because we were flying so low we managed to pick up the occasional light expecting it still to be the lights for Ludford. Unfortunately we had crossed over and unbeknown to us were travelling on the lights for Wickenby. On having a glimpse of the runway lights Wally turned in and asked for permission to land thinking it was Ludford, Ludford control said yes but we can’t see you. We landed safely part way down the runway the fog was still very thick. Wally to control: “We have landed but fog too thick to see”. Control: “You have not landed where are you?”. Wally and I looked at each other “Wally we have haven’t we?” Then a further voice came on, this is control Wickenby we think you have landed here “who are you?” Wally told them and asked them to give directions. Leave the aircraft where it is, we think it is still on the runway, we will send transport to collect you when we find you. After 20 minutes a crew bus collected us and eventually dropped us off at the mess where we had a meal and it was Wickenby.
Wickenby was a wartime base similar to Ludford and with similar living accommodation. We were given a nissen hut where we had a cold bed. As we were extremely tired after our ordeal we had a good sleep.
We woke up to a much better day and there on the runway was Lancaster X² just where we abandoned it. I arranged for fuel and a starter trolley to be delivered, prior to refuelling Wally and I started the engines, carried out the pre-flying checks.
The engines fired up and ran for 2 to 3 minutes then began spluttering and then stopped. We had run out of fuel, the decision not to go round again was the correct decision.
Mac our ground engineer and his staff were there to meet us on our return and gave hand signals in order to park up on our parking point. Mac said: “where have you been” and gave me a big hug. “I think I heard the old girl last night and we came running out hoping to see her, I’m sure it was her she has a noise all of her own, a sweeter, quieter noise”. However, when we checked the time we thought that we must have been mistaken because we were sure that she did not have the fuel to last that time. Then we heard that a Lancaster had crashed on the rising ground hear [sic] Louth so we then went to bed – none of our aircraft landed last night, apparently they are scattered across the east side of England as they are from all the other bases round about.
“Is she ok?” Mac asked. “Yes” I say. “You might however check over the engine booster pumps as they were used a lot last night”. Mac: “What’s happened to the cowlings around the tail wheel?” Me: “Oh, give the tail wheel mounting a good inspection Mac”. Mac “Why, what happened, surely Wally didn’t do this on landing, he usually lands on the main wheel first”. Me “No, we hit a gate”. Mac “You what? You hit a gate, why didn’t you open it first!” Mac: “Yes, will check her over and make her ready for tonight if required”. Fortunately the fog again returned with poor visibility, it was 4 days before we flew again and then the operation was Frankfurt.
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We found out later that out of the 483 Lancasters that flew that night 25 were lost over Europe from a combination of attack from night fighters, flak and collisions. Another 29 Lancasters from crashes, which occurred due to the thick fog conditions experienced around the airfield on returning home and trying to land.
Mac also confessed that he and his engineers were completely fed up with the time they had spent working on the carburetting on the engines, ensuring that the fuel taken up by the engines was the least possible and me insisting that they check the volume over and over again until no more could be done.
He now agreed that all the effort made now paid off as if not there was no way that she could have kept flying for that period of time (8 hours 30 minutes) and he said thank you.
Each aircraft carried seven crewmembers, 101 Squadron aircraft carried eight crewmembers. On the attached page there is a paragraph which Len Brooks, our rear gunner told his recollection of the night’s events due to the fog.
Considering the events of that night in a rational way it is difficult to believe what happened could have happened with a satisfactory ending.
We had travelled across Europe direct to Berlin and back escaping enemy fighters, flash lights and enemy ack ack fire without mishaps, only to arrive back in Lincolnshire to find all the eastern side of the UK that the cloud base had almost reached ground level. Base diverted us to Driffield and we found ourselves over Hull and among barrage balloons. We were flying low to try to find some marker which we could relate to such as outer ring lighting or runway lighting, as there were a number of airfields in that area.
Nobby our wireless operator said I’m picking up RT messages from Driffield, Dishforth and Catfoss but they could not see us because of the fog. Catfoss offered to put a light up for us realising we were so low, their beam was almost parallel to the ground. How was it that the beam came on at that precise moment? How was it that we acted so quickly with the control column and obtained such a quick response from the engines? The aircraft must have climbed at 40‑45% because as the power took over the tail wheel caught the gate leading into the farmhouse, meaning that the aircraft was at most four feet from ground (travelling at 150 miles per hour), this meant covering the ground at 88 ft per second. The time we had to clear the farmhouse and building was less than one second, how could that happen?
We know what Len Brooks said, he felt the power from the engines and looked down and saw the chickens in the farmyard scampering away from their coupes denoting that the aircraft had climbed exceptionally quickly. How did the aircraft pull itself up and over a two storey building in such a short distance? What would the consequences of been had the aircraft not made it? How many people were in the house; farmer’s wife and family? How many children? In fact what was their experience of it, did they sleep through it or were they very scared? We don’t know. How many animals were in the steading, was there a milking herd of 20 to 30 cows? The destruction could have been tremendous, as it was no one was injured as far as we know.
We gained some height; Jimmy gave Wally a course back to base. Why was it just at that precise moment that the fog thinned to allow Eric to recognise an object followed by the sodium lights of the base outer circle? Wally saying that he thought he should go round again, I say no we haven’t the fuel, Wally doing an unconventional manoeuvre to bring the aircraft back on course and immediately picking out further lights of the outer ring. However, by this time we had left Ludford outer ring and crossed over onto Wickenby outer ring. We kept on circling round very low to keep lights in sight and luckily spotted the runway lights
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and landing part way along the runway thinking we had landed at base surprised to find it was Wickenby we had landed at, then being told to abandon the plane where it was on the runway. Had we been directed to taxi off the runway and round the perimeter track to a conventional parking area I think the engines would have cut out on the way giving all the crew a complete shock. As it was it was only myself and Wally who realised the seriousness of the situation when we started the engines the following morning.
As I said earlier this was supposed to be a very uneventful operation, in and out of Europe. The average trip to Berlin was around 7 1/2 hours flying time, fuel 1,750 gallons, this I consider could have been estimated at around 7 hours maximum flying time, 1,700 gallons.
I realise that I was always considered better at conserving fuel than most engineers however, how did our aircraft manage to stay airborne for 8 1/2 hours and give out as soon as we touched down. This turned out to be a very exciting but frightening night, how was it that we managed to avoid the various objects we encountered and still managed to bring X² back safely. This was an episode that as a crew we never talked about.
Operation 16
24th/25th December
Target: Berlin
Takeoff time if I remember correctly was early evening in order that we should reach the target before midnight. On board each aircraft was a mix of various bombs, high explosive, incendiaries and delayed timed bombs triggered to explode on Christmas Day.
It was an uneventful night for us, keeping our place on route, seeing some ack-ack activity
aimed at those aircraft, which strayed off route and seeing the occasional night fighter gun tracers streak across the dark sky.
We reached the target on time and Eric was preparing for his bombing run when I noticed that the oil temperature gauge on the outer starboard engine was reading very high. I had to decide the best action, normally on the bombing run I would be on lookout watching for other aircraft approaching us from above or below us and was all the other spare members of crew, it was critical to have maximum look out because of the concentration of aircraft all making for the same point. Many collisions occurred in these situations; damage could also take place by aircraft flying above by dropping their bombs without watching what was below.
I said “Wally, feathering starboard outer”. Wally to Eric: “Cancel bombing run, engine feathered, have adjusted revs on other engine”. Jimmy: “Wally take course so-and-so and go round again”. This was a very difficult and dangerous decision to take as our aircraft would be on an entirely different direction from all other aircraft and exposed to enemy fighters.
We as a crew had previously discussed what we should do in the event of something like this happening, the conclusion was that after flying all this way to the target our first priority was to put our bombs on the target, so any distraction must be remedied first before the bombing run was made. Hitting the target was the only reason for being there. Eric carried out his bombing and the result was that the bombs scored a direct hit, this was confirmed from a self-operating camera situated in the bomb bay and rolled when the bomb doors were opened.
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Afterwards we set off on our return run on three engines but because of limited power instead of holding our 20,000 ft altitude Wally and I decided to make a gradual descent, passing over the enemy coast at 5,000 ft and making our way direct to base on the instruction given by Jimmy our navigator.
The engine proved to be suffering from a faulty gauge, this, however, we had no way of knowing and had it been an engine seize up and possibly resulted in an engine fire, we could have been in serious problems being an easy target for enemy fighters. Wally made a very professional landing on three engines, of course he always did make a good landing in the dark, it was during daylight that he always had a few Kangaroo jumps before rolling along the runway.
Operation 19
2nd/3rd January 1944
Target: Berlin
I would expect that everyone would experience fear on a number of times during their lifetime being frightened is nothing to be ashamed of. Fear can be brought on instantly by such things as an explosion, a fire or such like, then fear can turn to panic. Controlled fear can be felt when one expects that they are likely to die, on the motorway getting caught up in an accident when cars are travelling at speed.
Our crew experienced such emotions once when on operations over Berlin when our Lancaster was hit by ack-ack fire, which exploded very close to us and caused severe damage to the fuselage from shrapnel, also causing loss of all communication. After checking all engines and fuel supplies, and assessing for any further damage I realised that Bill’s (our mid-upper gunner) turret was stationary with no signs of movement from him. I knew that something must be wrong so I touched Wally gave the thumbs up and pointed towards the rear. I collected a portable oxygen bottle and on the way through the aircraft I touched Nobby on the arm and signalled him to follow me. True enough Bill was not in his turret, with the light from my torch we found him trying to open the fuselage rear door and in his panic he had no parachute with him. He seemed very strong and determined to leave the aircraft. The only way to prevent this happening was to hit him with the oxygen bottle. We were able to man handle him back to the rest bed. When giving him the oxygen bottle he began sucking
it like a baby, we made him comfortable with a blanket then returned to our positions.
This episode had taken over 30 minutes at probably the most dangerous period of any operation over the target with lights being shone from the torch and loss of lookout crewmembers (mid-gunner and myself). Luckily the aircraft was not too badly damaged between 40 to 50 holes along the fuselage.
In early January Bill reported sick, which meant that we required a mid upper gunner, Dave who had lost his crew was looking to join a new crew, so he joined our crew and flew with us until we completed our tour of operations.
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Operation 28
25th-26th February 1944
Target: Augsburg
I have little recognition of what happened on this trip, it however was of great importance because this was the first time on any operation that Lancasters had been fitted with 2 x 0.5 guns in the rear turret instead of the 4 x 0.303 guns. Furthermore it was only 101 Squadron who had them.
These turrets were made by a small local company from Gainsborough and designed in conjunction with 101 Squadron’s technicians; this gave the Lancaster a much greater firepower.
At briefing it was announced that six aircraft, which included our X², were fitted with 0.5 guns and that crews should take the initiative and attack fighters rather than take evasive action.
All I remember of what must have been relatively quiet was that the 101 Lancasters that were carrying the new turrets and firing at the fighters, it was the fighters that were taking evasive action and as the fighters were unaware that only a few aircraft were fitted with these much more effective guns. Over the next few operations there was much less fighter activity which was much less effective.
On a number of operations as well as dropping window we also dropped leaflets, the leaflets were typed in German and gave information as to how the war was progressing (propaganda information).
All operations were usually carried out at twenty thousand feet plus for Lancasters, other types of aircraft would bomb at slightly lower heights because of the thin air at above 10,000 ft. Oxygen had to be taken through masks and also because of the altitude temperatures could drop to as low as -20o, so much so if you touched any metal part of the fuselage with your bare hand it could stick to the metal and because of condensation one had to free the ice from your mask frequently.
Operation 29
1st-2nd March 1944
Target: Stuttgart (8 hours 10 minutes)
During the 1930s and 40s the winters could be very severe with long periods of frost and snow. March 1944 commenced with heavy and prolonged snowfall resulting in Ludford runway being covered in over 8 ft of snow which had to be cleared before flying could continue. At that time there was no heavy snow clearing equipment available, only the normal tractors that were on site, therefore to move the snow every person on the station not on duty was put on snow clearing. The aircraft standing points were cleared first so that ground crews could operate then the task of clearing the main runway commenced spades and shovels were the tools of the day. Generally I think everyone enjoyed it with plenty of high jinks and laughing, many snowmen being made along the runway edges.
Operations were ordered for that night 1st March therefore the runway had to be ready for takeoff by 16:00 hours. It was crucial that 101 Squadron was available because we were the only Squadron operating CIGAR a jamming device which prevented German radar from
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contacting their fighters to give them instructions. Bomber Command refused to fly without 101 Squadron’s aircraft.
It was determined that the runway would not be fully cleared, however, if four hundred yards were ready aircraft could take off with a light fuel load, fly to the neighbouring airfield Wickenby, fully fuel and bomb up there.
Briefing took place mid afternoon; flying was laid on for 16:00 hours. We were the first plane off without trouble, a further two followed, the fourth didn’t make it on the cleared runway part, ploughed into the snow and skidded off the runway closing it. This meant that four of 101 Squadron’s aircraft carrying CIGAR were available. On the operation the aircraft were spread out along the route covering the period of the raid. (ie approximately five minutes apart)
Our aircraft was fuelled and bombed-up at Wickenby and took off among the planes from Wickenby. The operation as far as we were concerned was quiet, with few fighters, no troubles. We bombed on time and returned for home crossing the Dutch coast at around 10,000 ft, then continued to base Wickenby, then de-briefed, had breakfast and then to bed. We stayed at Wickenby for two more days before we could return to Ludford.
On our return our Squadron Commander told us that we had completed our tour of operations and since the squadron moved to Ludford we were the only crew that had achieved that, so he didn’t want to test our luck any further.
The following two days were spent testing the new rear turret with the 2 x .5 guns under various flying conditions, including high level flying at 25,000+ ft and it proved to be equally good under all conditions.
Five days later we all went on leave, this was the break up of the crew after which none of us met again, during the war that’s how things happened.
Before going on leave I went to see Mac to tell him the situation. “Can’t you stay?” he asked “where are you being posted to?”. “I think I may be posted to Lindholme as an instructor”. “Why can’t you stay here then and instruct here? I will miss you, you’ve taught me more about carburettors and how they work. I know I told you you were a pain in the neck to my chaps, you demanding that they check and monitor the engines performance to obtain maximum fuel savings. I will continue to carry out your instructions and to see if I can help save other crew’s lives as we have just recently experienced on X²”.
“If you do a further operation tour, come back here and I will try to look after your aircraft again for you, all the best, good flying”.
Operation Highlights
I have highlighted only a few of our more exciting operations, many of which have been written about and described by other aircrew presumably because these were the operations which for some reason caught the headlines and probably they were the crew members which survived.
It must be remembered, however, that every operation had its dangers. The fact that the aircraft flew over enemy territory was a dangerous place to be, with it being usually in darkness and with anywhere up to 600 aircraft plus on many occasions, all making for the
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same target within a time limit of between 30 to 60 minutes alone had its dangers and problems.
When I say that we had a quiet trip this usually meant that our crew had no major problems and every member carried out his duties as an individual and as a team member. This did not mean that minor problems did not occur such as the rear turret freezing up causing problems for Len (rear gunner) from severe cold and lack of visibility or wireless operator loosing [sic] contact with base or even Wally and myself with ice forming on the wing edges from travelling through cloud. On one occasion the whole crew suffering because of being caught up in a thunderstorm, the aircraft being thrown about like a toy, falling immediately to 1,000 ft and back up again, something that no one had any control over.
Cold was a further concern; the temperature could fall as low as -20 to 30oC below zero. The metal of the aircraft if you touched it with your bare hand, the skin could stick to it therefore gloves had always to be worn. There was warm air circulated throughout the aircraft this was controlled from a duct situated near to the wireless operator’s station and at times should he become very warm would turn it down.
Oxygen masks were also worn as above ten thousand feet oxygen was necessary and it was a continual task to have to remove the ice from your mask, as it built up due to the moisture created from breathing. As you can imagine the gunner being isolated from the main cabin area suffered even more.
The enemy could also cause a few problems on route. Fighters had an advantage over the heavier, slower bombers and the fact that bombers had four engines creating a fair amount of exhaust flame and light made it easy for the fighters to see us. Generally if a fighter was spotted by the gunners in time it was safest to take evasive action.
The action would come say from the rear gunner ‘fighter 3 o’clock approaching’ following ‘dive, dive to port’. The skipper would immediately throw the aircraft into a dive and do a corkscrew manoeuvre, regaining back on his normal course. This generally worked; it was the fighter which was not spotted by the lookouts which caused the problem as they would normally attack from below the rear of the aircraft strafing the fuselage with bullets.
Search lights. The normal searchlight could be a problem for aircraft at lower levels and were situated around most towns, cities and industrial sites, however, there was another much more dangerous blue searchlight, much brighter which could penetrate to much higher altitudes and operated in conjunction with anti aircraft guns. Being caught by one of these was an unfortunate experience and usually resulted in severe damage or the loss of the aircraft. We on one occasion suffered this experience, the blue light locked on to us and no matter whatever we did it was impossible, after about three minutes Wally decided to put the aircraft into a controlled dive to loose [sic] height, as we did so a Halifax aircraft which was operating at a much lower height came across our track. The anti aircraft guns operating in conjunction with the searchlight opened up and the Halifax just blew up. We had a lucky escape.
As I said some anti aircraft guns operated in conjunction with searchlights, however, the bulk of them were situated around towns and cities and created a heavy barrack in order to keep the bombers from bombing at low levels, the result could be seen and occasionally heard, and on one occasion over Amiens felt.
Returning from Modane on a bright moonlit night without warning this small unit of guns opened up and a shell exploded very close to us, fortunately not causing any injuries to the crew. Shrapnel caused damage to the fuel lines causing a leak in the pipe and holes appeared
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in the fuselage, and along the wings and side windscreen of the aircraft. We made an emergency landing at Tangmere in South England and on inspection found over 100 various size holes along the length of the fuselage and wings.
The piece of shrapnel that hit the windscreen had entered through the starboard side unbeknown to me had ripped through my flying jacket sleeve and gone out through the front window, again, lady luck was with us.
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Log Book and
Operations Record Book
(Battle Orders)
Every crew member kept a log book showing every date, time and flying details carried out.
I have copied some pages which correspond to copies of the Squadron’s battle orders, referring to operations 14, 15, 16 and 17 as detailed in my log book.
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[page from authors logbook]
[underlined] TOTAL FLYING HOURS NOVEMBER 101 SDN [/underlined]
[underlined] DAY [/underlined] 3 hrs 30 mins
[underlined] NIGHT [/underlined] 39 hrs 45 mins
[underlined] TOTAL 43 hrs 15 mins [/underlined]
DECEMBER
16 – Lanc III X2 – WO EVANS – FE – 14 OPS – [underlined] BERLIN [/underlined] QUIET TRIP – HEAVY LOSSES – FOG ON RETURN LANDED AT WICKENBY – 8 hrs 30 mins.
20 – Lanc III X2 – WO EVANS – FE– 15 OPS – [underlined] FRANKFURT [/underlined] MANY FIGHTER FLARES AROUND TARGET AREA – 5 hrs 50 mins.
24 – Lanc III X2 – WO EVANS – FE– 16 OPS – [underlined] BERLIN [/underlined] REAR TURRET U/S STRB OUTER FEATHERED – 7 hrs 10 mins.
28 – Lanc III X2 – WO EVANS – FE– 17 OPS – [underlined] BERLIN [/underlined] 6 hrs 40 mins.
[underlined] TOTAL FLYING HOURS [/underlined]
[underlined] DAY [/underlined] 0 hrs 0 mins
[underlined] NIGHT [/underlined] 28 hrs 10 mins
[underlined] TOTAL 28 hrs 10 mins [/underlined]
[underlined] DECEMBER 101 SDN [/underlined]
[signature] OC ‘C’ FLT.
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[indecipherable page]
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[indecipherable page]
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[indecipherable page]
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[indecipherable page]
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CHAPTER G
CHRISTMAS 1943
I always thought of Christmas as a time for giving and receiving, a time of joy and happiness, a time for families to come and meet and join in the happiness of the event. It was of course a time to remember, to consider ones relationship with family, friends and others and how relationships could be improved. Christmas 1943 was different; it was a time of anxiety and many other emotions, anxiety not only for the crewmembers but more so for the folks at home.
Before joining the RAF we lived in a small village where everyone knew each other. There was three of us in the forces, my older sister Jean, my brother Sandy and myself, living at home with my mother our two younger sisters Betty and Mary. So quite often my mother would be stopped in the street and asked how one of us was getting along, furthermore she had received a telegram stating that I had not returned from an operation and that further information would be forwarded when received (one must remember that at that time (1943) telephones were a luxury so the only method of communication was by the Post Office. Christmas 1943 was also the first Christmas that we had not all been at home).
The ground crews also had similar feelings when waiting for their aircraft to return from an operation and then the relief when they saw the aircraft landing and taxiing in.
There was also a period of what today would be known as pressure, then it was just part of the job although some individuals did suffer from depression and for some this ended their flying career. All crew members had to be physically and mentally fit to survive.
It was early morning on Christmas Day 1943, we as a crew had just returned from an operation, the target Berlin. After debriefing we arrived for breakfast at around 6:30 hours, the atmosphere in the dining room was best described as noisy as you would expect from 150 young men aged between 19 and 23 years old, until you really looked around and saw one, two even three empty tables then the atmosphere changed to a more sober one.
Christmas dinner was being served at 13:00 hours, this gave us time for a few hours sleep before arriving back at the mess around 12:50 hours. The meal was good and all seemed in high spirits. We finished eating and were enjoying a cigarette when the duty officer arrived, he slowly walked up to the bar and turned the Toby Jug sitting there towards the wall, this was our first indication that operations may be on, slowly the mess began to empty as the air crew members began to leave.
It was a cold but pleasant afternoon as I hurried along the perimeter road thinking of past Christmases and remembering the simple things, the pink or white sugar mice, an apple and orange possibly a few sweets, we never had many presents, hand knitted socks or gloves, then my thoughts were interrupted by seeing coming towards me a tractor pulling a bomb trolley with a mixed load of bombs on board, and further to my left I could see a fuel bowser topping up a Lancaster. Normally the aircraft were filled with 1,200 to 1,400 gallons of fuel
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sufficient for a five or six hour trip, if the trip was going to be longer then the aircraft were topped up.
On arrival at our Lancaster X² Mac, our ground engineer, was there standing in front looking at the aircraft, I said ‘”what are you doing?” Thinking he answered “isn’t she beautiful, I don’t want her to fly tonight. I am the happiest sergeant on the Squadron. Before I arrived at Ludford I had been with 101 Squadron for 18 months and during that time I had lost seven aircraft under my control. Since being here and in charge of X² and you as the flight engineer after five months I still have the same aircraft. Do you know how many operations you have flown in X²?” “No I don’t “, I replied. “Eleven and six of which was to the big city Berlin and we are still going strong.” “Let’s go and carry out ourground checks”, I said.
We had just finished when Wally our pilot arrived. “I thought I would find you here” he said. “I thought we could carry out a test flight and check out the hydraulics on the undercarriage?” “Yes I have fixed them” said Mac. “Let’s go” said Wally, “coming” I said to Mac. He hesitated then said “I haven’t got a parachute”. “Neither have we” I said.
We fired up the engines, taxied out, got the green light from control and were airborne. I then vacated my seat and let Mac have it. As I checked all the fuel and engine gauges etc we climbed to around 300 hundred feet, flew in a south west direction and as we banked to starboard there standing on the ridge was the magnificent building Lincoln Cathedral with the city spread out below it. We were privileged to see it yet also very humbled and it seemed than that what we were doing was right and that this was a ‘just war’ and had to be won. I touched Mac on the shoulder and pointed down. I’m sure he was brushing a tear away.
Ten minutes later we had landed with everything ok including the hydraulics as we closed the rear door of the Lancaster X² we hugged each other and I’m sure we all said a short prayer, at least I did.
[inserted] [Christmas dinner menu RAF Ludford Magna Sergeants Mess 1943 [/inserted]
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Briefing was scheduled for 19:00 hours. All two hundred of us where [sic] there on time and the Group Captain arrived and slipped up onto the platform, the wing commander brought us all to attention. I noticed that the curtains covering the map on the wall stayed closed “I’ll be brief” said the Group Captain, “all flying has been cancelled for tonight because of severe weather conditions over Europe. I also wish to thank you all for the maximum effort and success, which has been put in during the past five months. Good show and good flying from now on. I will let you go to continue your Christmas celebrations, have a good time, good night and god bless”. Mac got his way and X² did not fly on Christmas night.
Briefing was scheduled for 19.00 hours and as I said all flying was cancelled, this only lasted for 15 minutes, after which all the members of the 25 crews that would have flown, along with all the other necessary ground staff support teams necessary to service such an operation (all in 350‑400 young people) were now free to do as they wished, however as by now it was around 19.30 the choice was limited, retire to the mess or the local pubs.
As we the crew were now making our way back from the briefing room, Norman (our wireless operator) announced that he was visiting the pub to see if they had any beer “Are you coming?” “No” I said “I’ll make my way back to the mess”. Bill (our mid upper gunner) said “I’ll join you for a beer”.
The technical section of the squadron was situated on the south side of the main road which ran from west to east through the village from Market Rasen to Louth. The living accommodation and messes were located on the north of the road.
On reaching the main road instead of crossing and carrying on up the lane to the mess for some reason I turned right and continued along the main road, as it was extremely dark walking in the centre of the road as this was the safest place. As I continued I heard music and singing coming from the pub on the right everyone seemed to be happy and enjoying themselves, further on and on the left was the other pub ‘The Black Bull’. I could hear footsteps coming and going, but could not recognise the people, here also was the sounds of people enjoying themselves.
A little further along the road on the left stood the small church, as I approached I could hear the organ music and the congregation singing carols. I remember thinking if I was thinking of attending church I should have dressed. I was in battle dress and should be in uniform, however to return to the billet and change it would make me too late for the service.
I found myself at the church entrance I looked through the entrance hall, I could see a chink of light coming from under the heavy door. I pushed the door open and heard the creaking noise, on entering I stood for a few seconds to allow my eyes to become accustomed to the light, a few members of the congregation hearing the door turned to see who entered, as I moved across to take a place in the pews an elderly gentlemen from the other side came across squeezed me on the shoulder gave me his hymn book “we are on verse three god bless” and returned to his place. The church was fairly full mostly of elderly people man and female with a few children, all were singing and appeared to be enjoying it, the service was not a format which I knew, however I felt good to be involved and somehow very pleased to be there. All those in church appeared to believe in what they were singing and doing and further more believed that all the service people on the base were doing what was right and that they all had their full support that the war was a righteous war and a war that had to be won.
At the end of the service I quickly left the church and made my way back along the main road. I was somehow excited so much so that I remember running all the way and turning
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right until I reached the mess. There were a number of people sitting around having a drink and/or reading. A colleague was reading the picture post magazine which had an article covering 101 Squadron. When I asked him if I could have a look, he said “I’ll keep it for you”. On the centre two pages was a photo of a Lancaster with staff standing around and on the wings etc, inspecting the photo closely I noticed that it was not a 101 Squadron Lancaster as it did not show the special aerials to work ABC. (The programme had been arranged unfortunately while we (our crew) were on leave and a Lancaster from Wickenby had been used).
I checked to see if the rations had come in and found a good selection of cigarettes were available Woodbine, Captain, Players and Gold Flake and there was also some chocolate.
The dining room was closed, on a trestle table at the end was a collection of bread, cheese and butter. I took a few rounds of bread and a chunk of cheese and made my way back to the billet, on arrival I found Wally, Eric, and Jimmy were there and they had a good fire going, making the chimney almost red hot. They were sitting reading and asked “where did you get to?” “Church” I said “you should have said I would have come with you” said Eric, “I didn’t know, I brought some bread and cheese for toast if you want it”. “Thank you” said Wally “have a mug of tea, the teapot will still be hot on the stove”. “I called in at the mess they have cigarettes and chocolate in. Only a letter for Bill which I have brought back. He and Norman were going to the pub. Where is Len (our rear gunner)?” “Oh, he has gone to try to hitch a lift home to Grimsby, remember if opps are on tomorrow give him a ring to let him know so that he can return, I have his telephone number” said Wally. “Do you want something to read?” asked Eric. “No” I said, “I think I will turn in and catch up with some sleep”.
This 1943 Christmas was at least different from all previous ones and part of my life which I will never forget.
The next time we flew was on 30th December and then again the following night on 31st December both operations were to Berlin. Mac continued to service X² and over the next 3 1/2 months we completed a further 13 operations to complete our first tour.
We didn’t always bring the aircraft home in the same condition as we started, however, we always brought it back and Mac and his crew always managed to repair it and have it serviced ready for the next trip.
We completed our tour in late April 1944 and the crew were all split up and we went our separate ways all as instructors. I joined the staff at Lindholme as a flight engineer instructor. In June D‑Day arrived, we were again temporarily called up as reserved in case the invasion went wrong, fortunately all went well. I was later transferred to Bottesford then Cottesmore and ended up at North Luffenham where by now VE Day had arrived in June 1945. We were again crewed up to join the Tiger Force to operate against Japan. Luckily for us VJ Day came much sooner than expected with the use of the hydrogen bomb being used on Japan, which stopped us from being posted to the Far East.
I stayed at North Luffenham until demobbed. Lincoln Cathedral played an important role in our lives as we used to use it as a landmark when returning early in the morning from operations and provided weather conditions were good, when we saw the cathedral we knew we were safely home again. Sadly Lancaster X² only flew two more operations after we finished and was lost over Mailly le Camp, France on the 3rd/4th May 1944.
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CHAPTER H
HEAVY CONVERSION UNITS INSTRUCTOR
LINDHOLME
BOTTESFORD
COTTESMORE
NORTH LUFFENHAM
After Operations
After completing our tour of operations with 101 Squadron in April 1944 the crew went on leave for around ten days and while on leave I received information informing me to report to Lindholme on such a date.
Lindholme was 1656HCU the conversion unit, which I had reported to prior to being crewed up and joining 101 Squadron. Ludford Magna as I had said previously was an airfield specially constructed as a utility base to carry on the war against Germany. All buildings, temporary constructions accommodation nissen huts were situated in small groups situated around the unit site.
Nissen hut accommodation for up to eight persons situated in the wilds half a mile from mess, flight units ablution block 20 yards away with washing and shower facilities, no heating (as you can imagine it was very cold in winter). The accommodation had a stove in the centre of the hut with a chimney, which went up through the roof, used coal or anthracite as fuel and required lighting daily. These huts were extremely hot in summer with regular visitors such as field mice, ants and earwigs. In winter they were extremely cold and damp with condensation running down interior sides and dripping on beds etc.
Lindholme was a peacetime permanent station which had all the niceties available, good roads comfortable, centrally heated one-person accommodation with all mod cons including dining room with waitress service. This to me was the biggest difference between Ludford and Lindholme.
Lindholme then was a conversion unit where pilots and crews had completed their initial training on smaller aircraft then upgraded to the heavy, four engine bombers such as Halifax and Lancaster. Lindholme trained Lancaster crews; it was here where additional crewmembers such as gunners and flight engineers joined in.
Having completed a successful tour of operations my role now was to introduce flight engineers who had completed their year long course, at possibly Blackpool and St Annes’s as up to this time these trainees had only briefly seen the interior of a Lancaster, far less done any flying.
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Unfortunately because of the shortage of Lancaster bombers arriving to the squadron, the conversion units such as Lindholme were still using Halifaxs [sic], this did not cause too much of a problem for the other six members of the crew (except the engineers) as it was a heavy bomber and the handling regarding flying and landing was similar to the Lancaster giving the pilot the experience of flying a large, heavy plane.
The engineer’s role was the same on all heavy bombers so the experience gained was still valid and it still gave him the necessary confidence. The difference being some of the instruments and dials on the Halifax were in different positions to that of a Lancaster. The crews would have a period of familiarisation on reaching the squadron before finally carrying out operations.
Life was so much more comfortable working on a base with all mod cons as expected for the 1940s.
My role along with others was to aid the trainee engineers to familiarise themselves with the aircraft inside and out, and when flying with their new crew, introduce the engineer to his role such as to the large number of switches and dials on the main panel and also the instruments on the engineer’s panel.
One of the main tasks was how to change flying on the various fuel tanks safely, the other how to feather an engine if required without causing any problems, how they as a person fitted in with the other crew members. Therefore while the pilot was under instruction with a pilot instructor mainly on what we called circuits and bumps, which was taking off, flying around and landing again. I would also fly and show the engineer and make sure he was confident and safe in his execution of his duties.
The time varied depending on how quickly the pilot took to prove himself capable and the instructor pilot was satisfied that he could safely fly and land such a plane, this could take anything from a few hours to many hours.
I used the experience, which I had gained over the past year of flying many hours in different conditions to make sure that these young operators had a better chance of completing a successful tour than I had. I tried to emphasise on them the need to be fully committed to their job of making sure they knew their role and capable of carrying out all the safety checks which should be carried out by themselves even although someone has said that they have done so, that they used the engines efficiently and monitored the fuel available as economically as possible. I had prepared a schedule, which if used in conjunction with the gauges and filled in every fifteen minutes in flight or so gave instant information if any problem had or were occurring to the fuel position, when action could be taken.
Lindholme being a permanent station was well equipped and had space available for each crew members to have their own section huts which proved most usual [sic] and I spent a good part of my time being available to talk with these trainee engineers, discussing any problems or whatever.
In any month I spent on average around 50 hours in actual flying time either day or night flying. This was made up of flying with possibly 10 different pilots on 26 to 30 different flights. The flights were generally around the airfield at fairly low altitude, up to two hundred feet carrying out circuits and landings with pilot, instructor and conversion crews. We therefore did not carry parachutes; this also gave the trainee crews a little more confidence to think that we had confidence in them.
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In June 1944 two days after D-Day I attended an instructors course at St Albans, South Wales lasting for four weeks, which proved most instructive, enjoyable and created confidence with ample time for self expression. After that I took the opportunity to attend any other courses, which became available such as a course on jet engines – something for the future, update course on the improved Merlin engines coming into service and a short course on Stromberg carburettors. The RAF at this time was looking to the future and on the levels and quality of staff they were likely to require once the war ended, but with the peace still to be kept for years on. At present most if not all of their engineers and a station or base engineer were all from senior ground staff, so when I was asked if I would wish to embark on such a course (the course was quite complex covering all aspects of engineering ground and in flight) I said I would.
After quite a lot of time on reading (time which I had) I eventually sat the paper and was very happy with the results 89% success, this was of course only part of the paper an oral examination was also required which up until I was released from the RAF I had not taken, however, these showed on my records.
1668 Heavy Conversion Unit,
Bottesford
After leaving 101 Squadron I spent a short period at Lindholme as a Flight Engineer Instructor before moving to Bottesford. Bottesford was another war time base similar to Ludford Magna and from where Lancasters also flew, however, in early 1944 it had become surplus to requirements.
The living accommodation instead of being Nissen huts were constructed of fabricated wooden framed units. Being available it was used as a holding base for American troops waiting for D Day resulting in the accommodation being left in a dreadful state.
During August 1944 1668 Heavy Conversion Unit took the base over and myself and few others were in the advance party. On arrival we found it difficult to find accommodation suitable to live in however, after a few days of hard work managed to make progress with repairs. Among the early arrivals were two air gunners both of whom had completed their tour of operations. Jock on Wellingtons and Jack on Lancasters. The three of us became really good friends for all the time we were on the base. In fact, Jack is still a good friend, he now lives in North Cirney Nr Cirencester and we have a card from him each Christmas.
The base was situated midway between Newark and Grantham on the left, half a mile off the main A1 road, walking or cycling were the only methods of transport for getting around the base or for travelling further afield.
We had been at Bottesford for just over a week when this night the three of us decided to have a ride around, on reaching the main road instead of turning left for Long Bennington and Newark we turned right towards Grantham. After cycling along the A1 road for about three miles we came across a signpost, which read Marston and Dry Doddington so we decided to go left and see where the lane would take us. After a mile we came upon a nice looking pub on the corner of the crossroads called the Thorold Arms where we decided to call and have a beer this being Friday evening. The pub was open, furthermore this was the first time that I had entered a pub since I joined 101 Squadron, as I had promised myself that so long as I was flying on operations I would not have a drink.
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Training at Bottesford got under way relatively soon and by early September crews for conversion to Lancasters were arriving in number. The routine was very similar to that at Lindholme.
Crews arrived without any experience of the Lancaster and it was our role as instructors to train the flight engineers to a standard where he was competent and safe to act on his own, and to pass on my experience which would make him feel more confident, while other staff members were doing the same for the pilots and the other members of the crew.
Bottesford as I said previously was a base built around 1942 to a standard sufficient to allow Bomber Command to carry the war to the enemy, where heavy bombers such as the Lancaster could operate from. Carrying a bomb load to most destinations necessary and to cause severe damage to their war effort.
From the staff viewpoint it was a complete change from the comfort offered by a peacetime base with all the mod cons, even including waitress service in the dining halls.
Bottesford was however a very happy unit where, so long as the training and flying was carried out on time to a very high standard, all was well.
It was becoming clear that with D Day over with the Allied Troops now moving across Europe as expected and on course, that victory in Europe was only a matter of time with the need for heavy bomber operations becoming limited. This meant that the training for crews could be relaxed and extended, therefore to ensure the trainee flight engineers interest and enthusiasm was kept alive. Two other instructors and myself introduced a short course on engine maintenance, this course lasted three weeks, the purpose of which was to strip down an engine completely, then reassemble it so that it would fire up and run. We had available to us a Lancaster, which had recently run off the runway on landing and was declared not airworthy. The four Merlin engines were still in good condition; this meant that with four engines and four trainees working on each we could entertain sixteen students.
The course proved a great success and it was felt that all those involved had afterwards a better understanding of the engines, which could possibly save their lives in the future.
As the weeks passed three of us, Jock, Jack and myself, had more free time and when on an evening we decided to leave camp we usually ended up at the Thorold Arms. By now we knew many of the locals as well as the family and were being brought into the evening events, such as playing darts. There were a number of really good dart players and eventually we, along with Sylvia, also became an excellent partnership.
Five months on. Christmas 1944 was a completely different Christmas to that of 1943, by now Sylvia and myself were seeing quite a lot of each other and I was still on duty over Christmas, I was asked to spend Christmas day with the family, we had a lovely time. A few days later I was on leave and travelled north to spend New Year with my family in Aberdour.
Our friendship blossomed and we were spending more and more time together and with Sylvia’s family and friends. Sylvia had a brother and three sisters; Roy was the oldest followed by Eileen then Sylvia, with Gert and Brenda the two younger sisters. Roy was also in the RAF on air-sea rescue and spent most of his time overseas.
Eileen was on munitions working in Grantham; Sylvia also worked in Grantham in ladies hosiery. Gert worked in a bakery with Brenda still at school.
In the evenings when the pub was open Sylvia helped serve in the bar with her father and mother Gert usually at weekends. During early 1945 flying at the base continued smoothly
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and generally without incident. We had one scary incident during night flying practise, an enemy light bomber managed to evade the radar controls and came in along the runway following one of the Lancasters and dropped cluster bombs along the length of the runway. This did cause some excitement as these bombs could explode from the vibration of the landing aircraft. Fortunately the runway was cleared without any injuries.
The other excitement was when one of the Lancasters, which we had just received from squadron required an air test to check its airworthiness before being put to use as a training aircraft. One of the staff pilots and myself as engineer was asked to carry out the test which we did, doing all the usual flying and checking the various instruments and controls. We decided to put it in a downward power dive, at first all was fine and the controls responded perfectly then it happened the port outer propeller began speeding up. No matter what we tried it continued to increase then it disappeared, the two on the inner engines seemed all right, the propeller in the starboard reached well above the normal speed but stayed in place. We quickly reduced our speed and dive, and made a quick return to base and landed on two engines, the aircraft did not pass its airworthy test. We found out later that it was a fault with the balance plates on the, then, new four paddle bladed propellers.
I, by now, had spent eight months as an instructor resting from the pressures of flying on operations and I knew that in the near future it may be necessary to do a further thirty operations, either across Europe or possibly against Japan. A few of us were thinking along the same lines and discussing the possibilities with others of forming crews.
There were two staff pilots on the base who were seriously thinking to the future, with whom I would have been happy to fly with and to this end we took every opportunity of carrying out test flights and then engaging in some low flying, which we expected would be necessary for the future especially if the enemy were the Japanese.
I increased my link training and spent considerable amounts of time keeping fit and up-to-date on all aspects of flying which could be beneficial to our survival. There was suggestion floating around that a new Tiger Force was being formed, which was likely to operate against Japan.
The river Trent gave an excellent corridor to practise low flying as there was at that time no obstacles such as power lines, telephone lines or high buildings to restrict flying. The river banks were relatively high with a river width in excess of 130 ft where the Lancaster wingspan was 101 ft and could easily be tucked in below the level of the banks, great flying, great excitement and very satisfying.
The war in Europe was progressing well, the need for heavy bombers was becoming less and with now limited targets. In mid April a few of us were informed that it was almost 12 months since we last flew on operations and it would now be necessary to do a further tour, more information would be available shortly.
On 8th May 1945 the Prime Minister, Sir Winston Churchill, announced the termination of the war in Europe to the whole country and his speech was broadcast over the station Tannoy system at 3pm. The afternoon was then devoted to sports activities and there were parties in all messes during the evening.
I was not on base, this was the date selected on which I was to be presented with my DFM at Buckingham Palace by King George VI. My mum and Aunty Kate travelled down from Edinburgh on the overnight train in the early hours of the morning; I joined the train at Grantham. As usual it was standing room only so I met up with my mum and Aunty on the platform at Kings Cross station. If I remember correctly the investitures commenced at
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11am so we had time for breakfast then made our way to the palace. There were many RAF personnel there as well as family members to watch the ceremony and see their relatives presented with their medals. We were all greeted on arrival and then informed of the procedure.
The King seemed very thin and poorly, dressed in an Admiral’s Naval uniform. After shaking hands with him and him pinning the medal on my uniform he asked me which squadron I flew with. I told him 101 Squadron, he replied “One of the elite I believe, good flying”.
We were out of the palace by 1:30pm, by this time the news that the war in Europe was over was known and London was beginning to fill up with people. Everyone was in party mood, singing and dancing or just walking around. London had been under blackout conditions since the start of the war in September 1939. Today things were different all the dark days were over; the people of London were showing their joy. Every light possible, which could be lit, was lit and the streets looked most inviting, it was an amazing sight. My mother and Aunt Kate were booked to stay the night in London so I saw them to their hotel then I made my way back through the crowds to Kings Cross and caught the train back to Grantham. What a day to be in London, VE Day the 8th May 1945 celebrating the end of the war in Europe. There was a real sense of relief and everyone was there to have a good time and to party.
The train was again packed, mainly with service personnel making their way home on leave. I arrived at Grantham around 5pm and from the station phoned the Thorold Arms expecting to speak to Sylvia. She and Eileen had gone to the church service and not yet returned so it was Sylvia’s dad that answered, he said he would tell Sylvia on their return that I had arrived in Grantham. It was agreed that Sylvia would come and meet me cycling on one bicycle and pushing the second for me to ride back to Marston, however, on her travelling along the A1 road towards Grantham she met a person she knew cycling from Grantham. She stopped and asked him if he had seen an airman walking and he said no. Previously to this an RAF vehicle had passed Sylvia with RAF personnel on board, thinking that I had thumbed a lift and that I would be dropped off at the road end leading to Marston she decided to turn back. As I was not waiting at the road end she then thought that I must have decided to go back to Bottesford, collect my own bicycle and return to Marston later.
Sometime later Gert happened to look out of the window at the Thorold Arms and shouted to Sylvia “Jock is coming down the road”. Sylvia, thinking she was having her on didn’t believe her until she herself looked out the window. My other pals Jock and Jack had already arrived and all including the locals were having a great time. As the evening progressed and the drink continued to flow a game started where the aim was to collect as many possible pieces of other peoples [sic] ties by cutting off the ends, this was all taken in good fun until one person who had just been given a new tie for his birthday, that day, by his wife and she was not amused at seeing it being cut to pieces.
The end of the war in Europe sealed the fate of most of the war time built heavy bomber bases, they had completed their usefulness for which they were built, that in giving Bomber Command the opportunity required to take the war to the enemy, which they had accomplished very successfully.
Food on the stations was very good with a real selection most of the time. Sundays was the time when the menu suffered as most of the catering staff had time off and tea was usually laid out to help yourself, mostly cheese, bread and butter, and possibly a few cakes. This possibly was the reason why on Mondays the sweet was often bread and butter pudding, something I didn’t like then and even now when on a menu I still shy away from.
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This was the time that Petula Clarke was often on the radio, in fact every lunch time she recorded a song especially for RAF Conversion Unit 1668.
Bottesford was no exception for within six weeks the complete Conversion Unit was closed down and I, along with others, moved to new surroundings to the peacetime base of Cottesmore where all the staff enjoyed the luxuries of a permanent built unit. Working conditions within the base were very relaxed, with all enjoying a five day week when most weekends were free unless on duty. Flying hours, however, as far as I was concerned still reached between 33 to 44 hours each month.
During June onwards, now that the war was over in Europe, it was still most important that the peoples of Europe, friends as well as enemy, that Britain controlled the airspace and continued to show this by having continued aircraft flying in the skies around.
Certain trips were carried out in order to show ground staff, who had carried out such an excellent job in sometimes terrible conditions to keep the bases and aircraft serviceable along the last five years the opportunity to see for themselves what conditions across Europe looked like now. These trips were given various names: the Ruhr Express, Cooks Tour, Happy Valley Express, each lasted five to six hours flying time where up to 12 to 15 personnel were on board plus the crew of four.
I, as Flight Engineer, was on a good number of such trips. They were enjoyed by most and showed the devastation which had occurred to many of the towns and cities across Europe, in vast areas which had received attention from bombing by the RAF followed by the destruction caused by the Armies fighting their way to Berlin since D Day.
The destruction was terrible with many large areas just a pile of rubble or shells of buildings still standing. The thing which impressed me most was the number of churches and round towers such as commercial chimneys which still stood.
Such a trip would cover from a base to Ijmunden, Amsterdam, Arnhem, Nijmegen, Wesell Dortmund, Essen, Duisburg, Düsseldorf then back to base. Or base to Cologne, Bonn, Aachem Rotterdam then home.
Cottesmore
Cottesmore was situated between Grantham and Stamford, four miles west of the A1 road near the village of Ashwell and six miles north west of Oakham, so our move was only a few minutes flying time. There was much movement between stations, which gave the opportunity of visiting different locations which we heard about but not visited, such as Drem in East Lothian, Ternhill and Shawbury in Shropshire, and many others which helped to make life more enjoyable.
Being stationed close to Stamford and the main road north it wasn’t difficult to hitch a ride or at worst catch a bus or train to Grantham.
Our stay at Cottesmore was fairly short lived; we then moved on to North Luffenham another of the pre war built stations with all the usual mod cons. North Luffenham is situated south west of Stamford, one mile off the A6121 road. Before leaving Cottesmore I had confirmation that we were crewed up and to expect instructions shortly regarding a further tour of operations in the Far East but before that certain procedures would have to be carried out, such as doctors reports and certain jabs given. However, six weeks on and we were still waiting.
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The war against Japan was expected to last for some considerable time, however, the introduction of the Atom Bomb by the Americans and the use of them by the American Air Force brought the Japanese war to a very quick end. We had at the time just received our preliminary dates and instructions for flying out to the Far East. This announcement that the Japanese had surrendered cancelled this and we missed the opportunity of joining the Tiger Force. The use of the Atomic Bomb on two Japanese cities seemed, and was, a terrible thing to do and caused terrible casualties among the Japanese citizens in these two cities.
However, if it had been necessary for US troops to land and fight their way through all the various islands the casualty list was estimated that it could have been one million plus service people.
North Luffenham
The war in both Europe and Japan was over which meant that working conditions at North Luffenham changed as from now. There was less requirement for further training of Lancaster crews. There were a large number of service men and women in all three services hoping and wanting to get back to Civvie Street as soon as possible. The government also had a problem in that across the country there were not the organisations or jobs available to employ all those excess to requirements service personnel. Therefore a delaying action was in place to slow down the release. Lancasters were of course used for various operations such as dropping food supplies to the people of Belgium and Germany and for bringing home prisoners of war from Germany and elsewhere and from bringing to the UK survivors from the torture camps.
The top chiefs of all three services were of course now considering the future of the armed forces. The Air Force was no different, we had won the war but not the peace, the peace may be a lot more difficult and to that end the Air Force was trying to assess and ensure whatever happened they had sufficient of high quality personnel to carry out this purpose. Therefore as personnel were being demobbed, if they should have certain qualities they were being given the opportunity to stay on by being offered certain incentives.
While at Luffenham I took the opportunity of attending as many courses as possible, improving my knowledge and information regarding the services and of course continuing to add to my flying hours, something I enjoyed doing.
Our job on the unit was similar to any other staff member, flying still took priority, other duties such as Duty Officer and such like was also now part of our programme.
I recall an interview which I had with the Group Captain Section Leader arrived at the flight office and said “Jock, the Wing Commander wants to see you”. “What have I done?” “Nothing, it’s good news, make your way to his office for 11am.” “I’m flying at 10 o’clock”. “Ok, after that will do”. I arrived at his office next day around 9.55 am, his secretary showed me into his office. I saluted, he said “Good, come and sit down” then the interview went something like this: “I have been looking over your record and I see that you have carried out a lot of flying, almost 2000 hours. There are not many people who can live up to that, you must enjoy flying?” “Yes I do”.
“I also see that you have attained a pass, in fact an extremely high pass on the Chief Ground Engineer course, unusual for aircrew even although you are a Flight Engineer”.
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“Your flight commander also told me you were highly respected and thought of at Cottesmore because of your work with Engine Service course. You would seem to be going back to Civvie Street?” “Yes sir”. “Do you want that?” “Possibly”.
“Even with all your exceptional work the war is over so I can’t recommend you for a medal however, what I can offer you – you know that the Air Force is looking for people like yourself for its future success – therefore the offer I am prepared to put to you is stay on in the Air Force as a Chief Ground Engineer with Flying Officer on entry (permanent) with good promotional opportunities to at least Flight Lieutenant or even Squadron Leader. Think carefully about it, don’t make your mind up now, come and see me in one week’s time.”
The unit continued flying and with training. The war being over the RAF was keen to show off their aircraft such as the Spitfire and the Lancaster, which had been so brilliant during the war, to the general public so a number of open days throughout the UK were arranged whereby the public could come along and see over all these war time aircraft. These days proved very popular.
To show off the Lancaster we landed at the base involved, stayed for four to five hours opening the Lancasters up and allowing people to enter by the rear door, make their way up through the fuselage past the pilots positions and exit through the flaps in the bomb aimers compartment, at the front of the aircraft reaching the ground by ladder. Two of the open days I remember going to were Finningly [sic] and Haverford West.
During my time in the RAF I only met up with my sister Jean on one occasion and that was when I was at St Athans in South Wales, she was stationed at Bridge End and we managed to meet for an hour or two, where we met I cannot recall. My brother Sandy was stationed at Swinderby for most of his time in the RAF as a fitter servicing Lancasters, and even although we were relatively closely stationed to each other we never once met up and even when I occasionally landed at Swinderby we never managed to get together. Of course these plans were always last minute arrangements and we might only be there for an hour or so before taking off again.
After two weeks I made a further appointment to meet the Group Captain and told him that after serious consideration that I had decided to leave the RAF and return to Civvie Street. I believe that he was disappointed, he wished me success in whatever I decided to do, we shook hands and I left his office.
I was demobbed on 10th September 1946 at Uxbridge then travelled north to Stamford, Sylvia had earlier moved to Stamford to further her career as a shop buyer, by working in a much larger ladies fashion store, travelling to Stamford on a Sunday evening, returning home in the Saturday evening. This meant that we saw more of each other on my time off.
The other opportunity that was open to me on my demob, as I had over a 1000 flying hours, was to join BOAC. Unfortunately the base was Australia and the airline travelled between Australia and Ceylon. Also available because I had A‑level passes on RAF teaching courses gave me the opportunity to train as a technical course teacher.
Both of which I declined and decided to return to Civvie Street and continue in forestry, which was always my first choice and as my future notes will show.
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CHAPTER I
ADVANCES IN TECHNOLOGY
WHAT IF?
Advances in Technology
Most of the technology was designed to combat the increasingly efficient enemy night fighter’s control system, in July 1943 window was used for the first time. Window was made up of thin strips of aluminium foil (approximately 9" long) packed in bundles of approx 100. It was the bomb aimer’s responsibility to drop these down a small chute filled in the front compartment every 15 minutes along route. With all other aircraft doing the same, the concentration played havoc with the enemy’s ground and air radar sets, however, it could not deter the enemy fighter threat for a long period of time, as the Germans managed to overcome this problem.
During D-Day window was used with great success in fooling the Germans that a second landing area further east along the coast was to happen. 101 Squadron completely serviced this operation by dropping window, continually moving across the channel for 48 hours, which meant that German defence forces were stretched along the French coastline rather than being able to concentrate on the D-Day landing site. By the time they realised their mistake the landing had a strong hold.
Other new aids such as RDF (Radar Direction Finding) known as Monica was trialled by 101 Squadron, but was short lived simply because the enemy night fighter crews became efficient at tuning into the signals omitted by Monica.
In July 1943 another new system known as Ground Cigar was operating twenty-four hours a day from a site on the Suffolk coast, jamming the whole of the 38‑42 MHZ band known to be used by the German fighters.
It became obvious to the boffins that to be really efficient the system needed to be airborne, it was envisaged that a single Bomber Command squadron should be allocated the new RLM role and would operate within the main part of the bomber stream. This highly responsible task was given to 101 Squadron, the new system was known as ABC or Airborne Cigar. The ABC required an additional crewmember known as a Special Duties Operator; the area behind the main spar normally occupied by the aircraft emergency couch was converted to accommodate the new equipment. Externally, 7 ft long aerials were fitted to the aircraft, two along the spine and the third under the forward fuselage. The special duty operators were German speaking and became the eighth crewmember in 101 Squadron crews.
The role was to jam the radio transmissions made by the German night fighters ground based controllers. ABC equipment consisted of a panoramic receiver and three transmitters; the receiver could pick up all 24 different frequencies being used by the crystal controlled VHF sets. Its eight crystals each covered three wavebands used by the Germans’ night fighter
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crews to receive the necessary information about the bomber stream location. Once the operators were able to use their German language skills to find the active controller frequency he put down a key connected to one of his transmitters, which broadcast engine noise on that frequency effectively jamming it over a range of around 50 miles. He repeated the process until he had his three transmitters effectively jamming three German frequencies.
In theory, eight of the 101 Squadron Lancasters could cover all 24 frequencies in use during the night.
This equipment was quite weighty therefore so-called unnecessary equipment such as the steel plates behind the pilot’s head and the steel door behind the front compartment were removed to counter the weight increase.
ABC was very effective in jamming the German night fighter’s ability to connect quickly with the main bomber stream. The other downside was when the 101 Lancasters specials were operating their equipment these aircraft could be readily picked up by German night fighters and searchlights. With the squadron suffering much heavier losses than any other squadron in Bomber Command. There was a plaque in the middle of Ludford Magna remembering the 101 sacrifice, it read:
[border] 101 Squadron Lancasters based at Ludford Magna
from June 1943 with highly secret ABC radio and 8 man
crews flew on every major Bomber Command mission
suffering the highest losses of any squadron in World War II [/border]
Ludford Magna was also selected as one of the first airfields in the group to have FIDO fitted. FIDO (Fog Investigation and Dispersal Operation) this was justified because of 101 Squadron’s key role within Bomber Command.
The equipment consisted of two pipelines running along the edge of each side of the main runway with perforated holes in the pipes. In extremely foggy conditions when aircraft were due to land petrol was forced along the pipes which was then set alight, this helped clear the fog sufficiently to allow aircraft to land safely. One of the disadvantages being should an aircraft with fuel leaking or swerving off the runway an explosion could occur causing loss of aircraft.
This equipment came into us in January 1944. The standard rear turret fitted to the Lancaster was the Fraser Nash with four 0.303" (rifle calibre) machine guns, which were always thought to be of poor quality in terms of armament. A new turret was built by Rose Brothers of Gainsborough after much discussion with personnel from 101 Squadron. The new turret was easy to control, had more room for the gunner and better vision. Six aircraft from 101 Squadron were the first to receive the new turret. Our aircraft X² was one of the six (2 x 0.5 calibre).
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On 25th/26th February 1944 when we visited Augsburg, operation 28, Len our rear gunner was excited about the possibility of using them against a German fighter and witnessing what effect it would have.
1943‑44 was an excellent period to join 101 Squadron. The squadron had just moved to a new base at Ludford Magna near Louth, Lincolnshire and was well placed to carry the war to the enemy. A highly rated squadron within 1 group, a squadron which was given every opportunity to prove itself as one of the best and we were so lucky to be part of it.
The squadron was involved in all that was happening. New equipment was becoming on stream such as ‘Window’, ABC, upgraded Lancasters, FIDO and the introduction of the more superior rear turret. As days and weeks passed our crew was becoming the most experienced so as a crew were very much involved, we flew on the operation when Window was first used. We were also on the operation ABC was first introduced into Bomber Command and our aircraft X² was one of the six aircraft fitted with the new turrets.
These were exciting times, sometimes frightening, anxious and tiring, however, as a crew we worked as a team. We were loyal to each other, dedicated in what we were doing and hence very satisfied with the results we achieved. On completing our tour of operations we were the only crew that had completed a tour of operations since the squadron moved to Ludford Magna. Statistics showed that if Lancasters lasted more than five operations they were exceptional.
All who served in the forces have memories, some good, some not so good. My memories of being in the RAF are of being good and exciting times not to be missed.
My memories of being part of 101 Squadron are also of exciting times, with plenty of different experiences, most when flying. Some exciting, some frightening, one or two horrific, others best forgotten, however, a part of life which I am proud to have been part of and on the whole really enjoyed.
On 12th June 1944 I received confirmation that I had been awarded the DFM.
What if?
The situation seemed very strange, here was seven or eight young men from various backgrounds and from different areas of the United Kingdom, who had for the best part of a year lived and dined together. Worked as a close team under very difficult and dangerous conditions and after completing a tour of operations went on leave a few days later, moved from base on to other jobs and from then until the end of the war had no further contact with each other. In fact until recent years I still had no contact. It was 2001 when I met up with Norman our wireless operator and then years after that out special operator Ken.
What if when I joined 101 Squadron Wally Evans, our pilot, had not insisted that I was his engineer and I had joined A H Evans’ crew as their engineer? A H Evans’ crew were lost on their third operation.
What if when our Lancaster was caught by the blue searchlights over Germany, if the Halifax which drifted a few thousand feet below us into the path of the searchlight at that split second and received the full impact of the guns had not done so? We would be just another statistic.
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What if when over Amiens we received only comparatively slight damage from exploding shrapnel which passed through the window, just caught my flying jacket sleeve and then went out through the windscreen? Had I been standing three inches to the right the result could have been very different.
What if on returning to base from operations over Berlin on 16th December 1943, when caught up in thick fog and was diverted, if the beam light put up by Catfoss had not been at that precise moment when we were flying at zero feet from the ground we would have ploughed into the farm house. Another aircraft lost on operations. Or when on reaching base Wally had not accepted my advice and decided to go round again on another circuit before landing, we would have crashed due to shortage of fuel.
What if I had decided to accept my commission and stay in the RAF as a Station Engineer probably reaching rank of Squadron Leader or had joined BOAC as a flight engineer possibly based in Sidney Australia, or had taken up the opportunity to become a teacher teaching technical subjects? Life would have been so different, however, I believe I made the correct decision, in fact I know I did. This however is for another time to discuss.
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CHAPTER J
AIRCREW BOMBER COMMAND
WARTIME BOMBER SQUADRONS
BOMBING OF BERLIN
A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A SQUADRON
CLOTHING WORN ON OPERATIONS BY OUR CREW
CONTACT MADE WITH TWO CREW MEMBERS PLUS INFORMATION ON OTHERS
Aircrew Bomber Command
A typical description of a bomber crew at the time was provided by the ministry publication entitled Bomber Command. The men of Bomber Command are appointed to fulfil a special mission. Their life is not that of other men, not even those in the other branches of the service. It’s very physical conditions are different for them now; a day is much of the night, as much of the day is a time for sleep and repose. Discipline is constant yet flexible. Triumph and disaster are met with and vanquished together.
Air Marshall Arthur Harris, Air Officer Commanding in Chief Bomber Command 20th February 1992. He was known as Butch, the opinion of him varied in accordance with our losses, if they were heavy then his popularity (if that was the right word) suffered. You must remember that most aircrews never saw him when he visited Ludford, I thought he was stone faced, severe and even cynical over our effort. I disagree with those who dubbed him arrogant – he certainly was not. Nevertheless, if his crews did not see enough of him to love him they certainly appreciated what he was doing for them, he gave his command a much-needed sense of purpose. Up to the end of 1941 many people tended to regard strategic bombing as little more than a wasteful sideshow. It was Harris who proclaimed loud and long
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that Bomber Command was vital to the war effort and that his crews should be given the best of everything, because their efforts would be decisive in the final outcome.
After a successful raid the C‑in‑C would send a signal to the squadron saying good show keep it up this meant a great deal to men who knew that they stood a less than even chance of surviving a tour of operations.
Harris was also a great innovator, he called for better navigation and bombing aids, better lit flare paths and increased safety conditions on take offs and landings.
GEC was one of the aids which he had pressured for which enabled the navigator to plot his position relative to a ground station, this turned navigator from an art into a science.
Wartime Bomber Squadrons
People of the younger generation can get the impression that Bomber Command was one big, happy family. This was not so, squadrons were very much individual entities, we didn’t mix much with other squadrons and they assumed the character and charisma of the people who were on the squadron at the time.
As a result, few outsiders will ever appreciate what it was really like to serve on a bomber squadron unit. Not wishing to dwell on the dark side of squadron life I was twenty years old at the time, life was for living, we got on with the job. The higher direction of the war was for the older types – 25 years old and above. They were enjoyable days and of course we always expected to come back, suffice to say therefore that at least 277 aircraft were lost or went missing from 101 Squadron between July 1943 and 1945 and that the squadron lost 1094 crew members killed in action and 178 taken prisoner of war.
This was the highest casualty rate of any RAF squadron in World War 2.
Bombing of Berlin
It is difficult for ordinary citizens to visualise the effect of concentrated aerial bombardment.
Un Sangro front in Italy, often spoken of as the biggest land bombardment of the war, 1400 tons of shells came down in eight hours. Remember the front was many miles in length and mostly open country yet they smashed the German defence and prisoners spoke of the astounding paralysing effect of these heavy bombardments. Now compare the figures of the air assault, take as an instance only one raid in January 1944, 7300 tons of bombs went down on Berlin in 30 minutes. Remember too that the bombs fell into built up areas on a shorter front than a land attack. Remember too that tonnage for tonnage a bomb contains a much higher explosive charge than a shell. No city, no defence system could stand up to such attack for long delivered as Bomber Command was doing.
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War time Bomber Station – a normal day’s work load
The total number of personnel on the stations was around 2,500 including officers, male and
female personnel.
The station was equipped to perform as an individual unit like a small town with runways of sufficient length so that the aircraft could take off and land from where to attack the enemy.
It carried sufficient supplies of food, stocks of all the necessary maintenance supplies such as aircraft parts, tyres, turrets, engines and down to all the other small items like rivets screws everything necessary to keep the aircraft flying.
In every hour of the day people were working and with 2,500 staff on board the station could exist from the rest of the country for weeks. Time meant very little to staff and many would not know which day in the week it was or which date in the month it was. Sundays were just another working day.
The work was continuous, outside interests were possibly intentionally forgotten, all friends and family had to remain outside the airfield boundaries.
The best way of describing a normal working day is by eight am the bomb handling crews would already be hard at work sorting out the various bombs, such as the 4,000 lb (cookies) mounting them onto low engine driven trolleys, others would be packing the incendiaries into special cases, similarly all the other bombs likely to be used on operations. All these would be loaded onto special transports and dispatched around the airfield to the Lancasters which would be flying later that day if operations were on.
This operation would carry on well into the afternoon. Other staff would be doing the same with cartridges, feeding thousands of them into their ammunition belts and distributing them to the guns in the aircraft.
Other airfield staff would be filling the fuel bowsers which held 2,500 gallons of petrol and filling up the Lancaster fuel tanks which held 2,140 gallons. The fill up amount would depend on the time of the operation (Lancaster used an average of 200 gallons per hour). At the dispersal points ground crews would be carrying out their inspections on the aircraft under their control, engine fitters would be carrying checks on engine’s plugs and instruments, turrets and undercarriages and tyres, while others would be doing other pre-checks on the airframe wings, intercom and oxygen bottles etc., should any faults be found then an air test would be necessary to be carried out by the Pilot and Flight Engineer to make sure all was well. If a fault was still found and was connected with the flying ability of the aircraft further work would have to be carried out, a further air test would be required. Occasionally a complete engine may have to be replaced putting great strain on the ground crews.
While all this was happening other special staff would be working against time. The Intelligent Officer checking maps and up to date information regarding the target and route. The weather people checking the last minute weather conditions.
In messes the kitchen staff would have to prepare breakfast, lunch, tea and supper for around 200 people on top of that when operations were on a meal consisting of chips and egg had to be prepared and served approximately two hours before take-off time for the aircrews. In the locker rooms each flying crew had to have a parachute, flying helmet, safety aids, maps and money of the countries over which they would be flying, in case of being
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shot down. Sandwiches, extra rations prepared by the WAAFS and parcelled up to include chocolate, fruit, chewing gum and other items of refreshment.
The Station Officer and Flight Commander would be selecting the crew and working out the technical data for the journey.
Up until now the aircrews who may have been flying the evening before would be, during the morning, catching up on sleep (having got to bed around 4 to 5am), and in the early afternoon catching up with information etc. from their own Flight Officer or be visiting the aircraft to discuss with the ground crew, Sergeant-in-charge, any problems from the previous operation. Then probably the Pilot and Flight Engineer would have to carry out a test flight.
Once it was announced that operations were on, the aircrews had to attend briefing, have their meal then collect all necessary equipment from the locker room ready for being transported to the aircraft, to carry out the pre-flight checks ready for take-off. Only then after this could the ground crew relax, have a meal, a wash and have some time to themselves, if there was any time left, then be ready for the aircraft returning home anytime from five to eight hours later depending on the distance of the target.
Crews on return were interviewed by the Interrogation Officer, then have their meal and then to bed for hopefully a good sleep, to be ready for what were to happen the next day.
The Clothes Normally Worn on Operations by our Crew
In Bomber Command there was no laid down dress code for air crew to wear when flying on operations, every Squadron in fact every person had his own preference, all had to wear the RAF uniform, however what they wore under or over was entirely up to individuals (the RAF uniform had to be worn for safety reasons in case they landed in enemy territory, in uniform they became prisoners of war, in ‘civies’ they were most likely to be called spies and possibly shot).
Most of the operations carried out on Lancasters (in fact from all heavy bombers) were from heights of 20,000 ft or over where temperatures could drop to as low as -35 or -40oC below zero.
There was a certain amount of heating within the aircraft, this was heat which originated from the engines through ducts and entered the fuselage in the wireless operators compartment, therefore while the wireless operator and the navigator were roasting a little of the heat could be felt by the pilot and engineer, the bomb aimer who was in the front and the gunners in their turrets received no benefit, they had to source heat from other means.
As I indicated earlier it was an individual choice what clothing they wore, however I can tell you what our crew would normally wear, starting with the most comfortable.
Wireless operator: Normal RAF battle dress, heavy white jersey up to the neck, Mae West, parachute harness, flying boots and silk gloves.
Navigator: Normal RAF battle dress over silk underwear, heavy jersey, Mae West, parachute harness, flying boots, leather shoe foot with lamb’s wool tops (easily cut off), silk gloves plus leather gloves.
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Pilot and Flight engineer: There was much less heat reached the front of the aircraft therefore we wore silk underwear, long johns under RAF battle dress, heavy white woollen jersey up to neck, leather gloves over silk gloves. No Mae West, parachute harness, flying boots leather shoe base and leather flying jacket.
Bomb aimer: He usually flew in the nose of the aircraft which could be very cold, he wore silk underwear, long johns, RAF battle dress usually two heavy woollen jerseys and heavy over suit, Mae West, parachute harness, silk gloves, woollen gloves and a pair of leather gloves on top plus the normal flying boots.
The two crew members who suffered most from the cold were the gunners.
Mid upper gunner: he was still within the aircraft which gave some comfort. He wore two complete suits of silk underwear, two woollen jerseys, RAF battle dress, unheated over suit, heated over suit, Mae West, parachute harness, woollen scarf, woollen head cover under his helmet, three pairs of gloves, silk, woollen and leather, heated flying boots.
Rear gunner: This was the coldest place in the aircraft in fact he was actually outside the rear of the plane, so if it was expected that the temperatures would be around -20oC he would wear that similar to the mid upper gunner however if the temperatures were expected to drop to say -40oC he would add on extra layers of clothing and wear five pairs of gloves.
The gunners flying suits were electrically heated from a plug-in switch as were their helmet and gloves, their flying boots were also electrically heated, therefore if everything worked properly they were reasonably comfortable, this was however not always the case, a fault in the electrical system, possibly caused by enemy action, then they had problems and could receive severe frost bite, resulting in loss of fingers, toes or even more.
When the gunners were dressed up to ready to fly, it was difficult for them to walk and reach their position in the aircraft. The rear gunners especially looked like the advert for Dunlop tyres!
One of the main reasons for all crew members wearing silk gloves was if you caught the metal part of the aircraft with your bare hand it was so cold that the moisture from your skin would stick to the metal and leave you with severe injuries.
In the aircraft flying at over 10,000 ft oxygen had to be used which meant using masks attached to the helmets, which every few minutes you had to break the ice which had formed around the mask from just breathing.
The oxygen was also distributed through the aircraft from a single supply at each crew position there was a supply tap, there was also emergency bottles at each position, these would last for around 10 minutes.
We all also carried a whistle which was attached to the top left hand buttonhole of our tunic. The sound from a whistle carries much further than the human voice. It could be used to attract attention to one’s self in a dangerous situation or for making contact with others.
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Contact made with Two Crew Members after 60 Years plus information on others
Living in Scotland during the 1950’s and 60’s we had little choice of attending any of the activities which took place such as Airfield Open Days, Squadron reunions, or fly pasts, and it wasn’t until the early 1970s when we moved down to Shropshire that we began attending the occasional ‘open days’ (by this time Brian was old enough to be interested), Sylvia’s mum and sister’s home was in North Hykeham, Lincoln, only a short drive from Waddington RAF station, so this was our first visit of many which proved interesting and a good days entertainment.
We then in 1998 decided to revisit Ludford Magna (101 Squadron airfield) and the small church in the village where a Book of Remembrance was, the Book of Remembrance was of interest to me as it contained all the names of the aircrew that had been lost during the period which 101 Squadron had been there, as I said in my earlier notes that when we arrived at Ludford in July 1943 there was four crews two of which had the name of Evans, WL Evans and AH Evans, at Lindholme Heavy Conversion Unit. I was crewed up with WL Evans’ crew, and carried out my training with them, however when we arrived at Ludford somehow the paperwork was wrong and I was crewed up with AH Evans’ crew. It was suggested that as neither crews had been on operations the obvious thing was just to leave the paperwork as it was and for me to change over to the AH Evans crew, and the other Flight Engineer to take my place, Wally Evans would not agree, I was his Flight Engineer and that was how it had to be. All four crews flew on the same operations, on our first two, all returned, on our third AH Evans crew did not return, and by our fifth operation only our crew WL Evans were still operating. Checking in the Remembrance book sadly, I was able to read and realise how lucky I was that Wally had faith in me all those years ago.
While in the church we met a lady who looked after the church and was in fact decorating it with flowers, as she said this weekend coming was the 101 Squadron Association Reunion, when a service was held in the church followed by the laying of wreaths at the small memorial and afterwards the Women’s Institute laid on in the village hall tea and cakes for all, and if the weather was kind the Lancaster bomber would give a flying display.
In the year 2000 I joined the 101 Squadron Association and have attended the reunion every year since in early September, and in recent years Brian and Pauline have also joined us, joining the Association has proved very good as we have met many veterans who were flying during our time in the Squadron and other very interested people. It was through the Association Newsletter that I made contact with some of our crew members whom I had not heard from for nearly 70 years. They are Norman Ellison, our Wireless Operator and Len Brooks, our rear gunner.
In the summer of 2002 after writing a short article for the 101 Squadron Association Newsletter I was contacted by Chris, the son of our Wireless Operator (Norman Ellison) asking if I was the Donald Fraser who flew with his dad in 1943‑44 with 101 Squadron. After the telephone call Chris arranged for Sylvia and I to go to his home to meet his wife Christine and James his son, he lives in Exeter, his dad’s home was in Dawlish only a few miles apart. Chris then took us to meet his mum and dad, it was great to see him after 63 years and as such was quite emotional for both of us. It was so good to meet his wife Pauline. We stayed for around two hours before travelling on our way to Woolacombe. We met up again over the next two years, unfortunately Norman’s health deteriorated and he passed away on 13th February 2005. We attended his funeral, since then we exchange Christmas cards and the odd telephone call each year with his wife and Chris and his family.
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Norman also kept in touch with Wally Evans (our Pilot). After the war he emigrated to Australia where he lived for a number of years before returning to the UK in the mid eighties when he again contacted Norman, they then tried to contact all the other crew members, unfortunately the only member that made contact was Len Brooks, our rear gunner, Norman understood that Wally died in the late eighties.
Len Brooks, our rear gunner, we all knew that he lived in Grimsby for most of his life. During our time at Ludford whenever there was no flying on, he would take the opportunity to visit home which only took him over an hour to hitch a lift. If there was any change on flying one member of the crew would give him a telephone call and he would return to the Squadron very quickly.
During the 1980s and 90s there was a large number of books written covering the war and Bomber Command, I enjoyed reading many of them, even although as you know I did not believe all that was written, many of the books covered the time we were flying, as a result many of the operations we flew on were mentioned in them. There was a series of books written by Patrick M Otter on Bomber Command One Group, the group which 101 Squadron was in and operated throughout Lincolnshire. On reading one of Otter’s books called “Maximum Effort” I came across a picture of a number of air gunners while they were stationed at Lindholme as Instructors during their rest period. On a closer look I recognised one as Len our rear gunner. On contacting Mr Patrick Otter in 2004, he said it was 16 years since he spoke with Len at his home in Cleethorpes. However he could find no trace of him in the local telephone directories, he said he had left a message at the RAFA club in Cleethorpes to see if anyone knew what became of him, and if he had any response he would drop me a line. We thought that he had passed away around 2001‑2002.
I also made contact with Ken Lewis our Special Operator through the Newsletter, Ken also wasn’t in the best of health, however he arranged for his son in law to drive him from Reading (his home) to Lincoln. We had a great time at the Reunion lunch catching up with the past in September 2006, Ken’s profession was in Insurance which he spent all his working life in. Unfortunately he was unable to attend any more reunion meetings.
At the end of the war Norman had been in touch with Bill Blaynay, our Midupper gunner, who part way through our tour of operations after an unfortunate incident was released from flying. He told Norman that he had been reassessed and had his Sargents [sic] rank reinstated, other than that we have no other information about him.
There was still two more crew members still unaccounted for, Jimmy, our Navigator and Eric, our Bomb Aimer.
Shropshire during the war had a number of Heavy Bomber Airfields, Ternhill, Shawbury and Cosford which are still in service today. Prees, and Sleap, were both wartime bases flying Lancasters, at Prees the hangers are being used as storage units for commercial companies. Sleap is now the home of Shropshire Flying Club using part of the runway, a few buildings and the Control Tower. It is open to the public, where you watch the small aircraft flying and one can enjoy and a good cup of tea and a cake and have a good chat with people who are still interested in flying.
There is also a small Museum covering plane parts from World War II. In the last three years Sylvia, myself and friends occasionally drop in for a cup of tea, by now we know a few of the staff who are all Volunteers and very interested people.
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Jimmy Grant, Navigator
On one of our visits in 2012 I had taken with me the 1943 Christmas Dinner menu for 101 Squadron, all the crew members had signed it in the inside, most people looking at the menu thought that we had had an excellent meal considering there was a war on.
Mike Grant one of the longer serving volunteers at Sleap Museum, who aids in researching the items that are given to the Museum before they go on display to the public.
Meantime he is also tracing the history of the oil pipeline which carried the millions of gallons of oil from the ports, across the UK down to the Channel ports and on to the D Day landing sites and beyond. This will be a very interesting book to read when it is published, soon.
On seeing the menu Mike said “I know this signature, he is one of my family, see how he writes the ‘G’ and the ‘r’ in Grant, we all write our signature the same way, and we were all told off at school for not writing properly”. We worked out that Jimmy our Navigator was his uncle. After the war he said the family had gone their separate ways, as many families did, so he had no idea where Jimmy would be now – it’s a small world.
We still have no idea of what happened to Eric our Bomb aimer.
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CHAPTER K
THE LANCASTER STORY
It became clear reasonably early in the Second World War that if Britain had any chance of winning, Bomber Command had to take the war to Germany, deep into its industrial heart, which was not possible with the short range light Bombers.
It was decided by the War Council that a much larger aircraft which could travel further, with a much heavier bomb load into Germany was needed, hence the introduction of the four engined heavy bomber, the Halifax and the Lancaster.
1942 marked the turning point for Bomber Command, Marshal Travis Harris (later known as Bomber Harris) was appointed Leader of Bomber Command. He believed that Bomber Command given the necessary aircraft and equipment, could play an important role in winning the war by strategic bombing of Germany’s industrial towns and cities.
Harris ordered a 1000 aircraft raid on Cologne be carried out. Fortunately the operation was credited as a success, this persuaded the Government to allocate Bomber Command high priority for aircraft and more importantly navigation aids and radar which were vital for accurate delivery of bombs on targets.
The development of the Lancaster continued with a few prototypes being produced, the production of Lancasters increased slowly at first and gradually stepped up reaching their peak by the end of 1944.
The earlier two engine bomber had a second pilot to aid the captain with a crew number of five, however on the four engined heavies where crew members could move around the fuselage, a change was necessary. The heavies had a mid upper gun fitted requiring a mid upper gunner; because of pilot shortages owing to the increase in numbers of new squadrons coming on stream and the increased complexity of the four engine bomber, this called for a specialist engineer to replace the second pilot, so the flight engineer was created, the standard crew of the Lancaster comprised of seven specialists, Pilot, Navigator, Flight Engineer, Wireless operator, Bomb Aimer, Mid Upper Gunner and Rear Gunner. Each was an expert in his own field and each a vital cog in the overall crew, rank played no part in the airborne life of the crew.
The Lancaster was involved on most of the important operations, such as the Dambuster Raid on 16/17th May 1943, The Battle of the Ruhr, Battle of Berlin, (Overlord, the name given to the Invasion of Europe 6th May 1944) and Operation Thunder Clap, mass raids against supply and communication targets such as road and railyards continued, and against German naval shipping at Le Havre.
In late July a bombing campaign against the V-weapon sites commenced as there was fear that Germany had a new secret weapon, raids were carried out on launching and storage sites, these operations took much of Bomber Commands efforts throughout the autumn of 1944 as did the attacks against the French railway in support of Overland. In September the
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Navy believed that Tirpitz (the German Battleship) which was anchored in the Kaa Fjord in Norway was about to put to sea. Bomber Command was again given the task of destroying her. On the third attempt on 12th November 31 Lancasters attacked the Battleship. This time on arrival the weather was clear over the ship, no smokescreen obscured the target, during the attack several hits were seen by the Lancaster crews, followed by a heavy explosion, one of its magazines blew up, then the mighty Battleship rolled over and capsized.
By the end of 1944 the Allied Armies were approaching the Rhine, come the end of March 1945, they had crossed the river in strength and were advancing on Berlin.
Bomber Command’s role assisted by the United States Eighth Airforce was to support the Allies by bombing Military targets, and in supporting the Russian Army on their advance from the east on Berlin.
The last major attack of the war took place on 25th April 1945 by the bombing of the Bergholf (Hitler’s Eagles nest) and the SS barracks nearby.
The war in Europe ended on 8th May 1945 (VE Day), however just previous to that operation Manna was put into action, which was dropping vital food supplies to the starving civilian population of the Netherlands (the Germans agreed to the dropping areas) a similar operation dropped food parcels to the Dutch population. A large number of Lancasters were involved, these operations stopped on VE Day.
With the war in Europe over, plans were made for the repatriation of British and Commonwealth prisoners of war under the code name Operation Exodus, many Lancasters were converted to carry 25 passengers for this purpose. Flights continued bringing prisoners home from across France and Germany. Receiving camps were set up in the United Kingdom for the thousands of men returning home from Europe.
Although the war was over in Europe, many Lancasters were preparing for war in the Far East, known as the Tiger Force, it was agreed that 10 Squadrons of Lancasters would be used until the New Lincoln Bomber came on stream which had much longer fuel ranges. Fortunately the Japanese war ended sooner than expected (because of the use of the Atom bomb) resulting in Tiger Force not being required. Myself along with many other crew members were very relieved, because flying over Japan would have been very difficult and dangerous.
After the war the Lancaster continued flying carrying out various roles until the new aircraft came into service, of the approximately eight thousand Lancasters that were built only a few are left with only two airworthy aircraft, one in Britain and the other in Canada.
During World War II Lincolnshire was known as Lancaster County, because of the large number of squadrons scattered across the County (28 in total). Today most of the land then used is now returned to agriculture. It is still difficult to travel around without driving past the site of a famous airfield.
The airworthy Lancaster belongs to the Lincolnshire’s Lancaster Association, based at RAF Coningsby and is part of the Battle of Britain memorial Flight. Each year this flight performs at many air-displays entertaining thousands of people and serves as a living memorial to those air crew who gave their lives in the defence of their Country.
There is a second Lancaster which has its home also in Lincolnshire at East Kirby and belongs to two brothers, Fred and Harold Panton, the aircraft is maintained to a very high standard,
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where the public can have a taxi ride in the Lancaster, and enjoy the sound of the four Merlin engines.
The people of Lincolnshire were the first to know when the RAF were on operations, as with 28 squadrons based throughout the county and each squadron with at least 20 aircraft serviceable, the sound made from over 2000 Merlin engines, as they circled and climbed to reach a height of 10,000 ft before setting out across Europe was tremendous. People from the Netherlands told me (after the war) that during the war they lay in bed at night hoping to hear the special sound made by the British bombers, and as they passed over, they wished them success in their operation and prayed that the young men who flew in them returned home safely.
During operations I listened to the four Merlin engines purring away for five or six hours, the sound was magic and something I will never forget.
I am one of the thousands who have been entertained over the years by attending many of the fly pasts and open days, where the Lancaster has been carrying out the flypast, firstly to hear the sound of the Merlin engines which is music to my ears, then to see this superb aircraft flying towards you at around 200 feet nearly always brings a tear to my eyes for memories past.
Date: 30 Aug 1943
This picture was taken from the camera operated in conjunction with the opening of the bomb doors and Bomb Aimer releasing his bombs on our 2nd Operation to Munchen Gladbach. The picture plotted the bombs hitting the target.
[photograph of bombs hitting target]
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Lancaster Bomber
Specification
Length: 69ft 4ins (21.08m)
Wingspan: 102ft 6ins (31.00m)
Height: 20ft 6ins (6.23m)
Maximum Speed: 300+ mph
Range loaded: 2,600 miles app
Ceiling loaded: 24,000 ft
Internal payload: up to 7 tons
Full fuel load: 2,140 gallon
4 Merlin engines 1390 hp
(The latest Lancasters could be better in all specifications)
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[photograph of Avro Lancaster bomber]
[photograph of Avro Lancaster cockpit]
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[inserted] 16th December 1943 14th op. [deleted] Page 3 [/deleted] [/inserted]
Black Thursday
[inserted] Further notes on our 14th operation on 16th December 1943 [/inserted]
[crest]
AT A minute before midnight on the night of December 16. 1943 Lancaster LM395 emerged briefly from low cloud just north of Caistor. There was barely time for the pilot, Sgt Stan Miller of Scarborough to register what was happening before the Lancaster struck high ground near the town. When rescuers arrived they found no survivors among the crew of seven.
Crashes amongst Lancasters returning from ops or on night exercises had become an almost regular occurrence in Lincolnshire by the winter of 1943. But that night something awful was happening as the 1 Group aircraft returned from a round trip of eight hours to Berlin.
The raid that night had been specifically planned to catch the defenders fog bound on their nightfighter bases across Northern Europe. Instead, the mist came down and shrouded many of the airfields in Eastern England as the bombers were returning.
That night 483 Lancasters and 15 Mosquitos raided Berlin. Twenty-five aircraft were lost to a combination of night-fighters, flak and collisions over the German capital. At least another 29 Lancasters were lost in crashes when the bombers returned to airfields blanketed in fog.
1 Group suffered more than most with 13 aircraft being lost and 56 men killed in crashes on or around their bases. 100 Squadron was hit hardest of all, losing four aircraft, including two which collided right over the airfield at Waltham. 460 at Binbrook lost two as did 166 at Kirmington. And single aircraft were lost from 625 Squadron at Kelstern, 101 at Ludford and 12 and 626 lost a Lancaster each at Wickenby.
During briefings that afternoon, crews had been told that Bomber Command had been waiting to mount a raid on Berlin when the weather was so bad that the fighters would be grounded and they would have an easy trip. This was to be it.
The planned route was straight in and out again over Denmark. But the fighters, which were supposed to be sitting on fog-shrouded airfields across Holland, Belgium, Northern France and Germany, were airborne, and the first intercepted the stream of Lancasters over the Dutch coast and there were running battles, until the bomber stream turned for home across Denmark. Twenty one aircraft were shot down and four lost in collisions over Berlin itself.
The weather became progressively worse as the aircraft returned and by the time the 1 Group Lancasters began arriving they found the cloud base had almost reached ground level.
Crashes began to be reported from almost every airfield. Tired crews were unable to pick up the circle of lights which by then had been fitted around most of the dromes. Some came down in open fields, some, like LM395, simply flew into the Wolds. At Waltham, two Lancasters from 100 Squadron, O-Oboe and F-Freddie, collided as they circled looking for the funnel of lights that could guide them to safety.
One man who remembers that night vividly is Wing Commander Jimmy Bennett, who had arrived at Waltham three weeks earlier to form the new 550 Squadron which was due to move to North Killingholme in the new year.
Bennett. with two tours behind him already, chose to fly that with 'Bluey’ Graham and his crew.
"Our take-off was early, about 4.30 in the afternoon, and even then visibility wasn't very good and it was plain we were not going to be in for a very pleasant journey,” he said.
The bombers emerged from the cloud cover which was supposed to protect them over the North Sea. “There was no high cloud and at times we could see dozens of aircraft around us," Bennett recalled. "The clouds below cleared slightly over the city, we dropped our bombs and got away again. There was some fighter activity but we were not bothered.
"Coming back the cloud started to increase again and it was clear that by the time we reached England it would be almost right down to the deck. Bluey decided to come down through the cloud over the North Sea. In conditions like that it was always wise practice. Lincolnshire may have been fairly flat, but other places weren’t and there were always a few of what we called "stuffed clouds" around, clouds which contained something hard, like a hill.
"We dropped down into the mist but Bluey picked up the outer circle of sodium lights at Waltham, stuck his port wing on them and followed them round until he found the funnel and put her down.
“We rolled along the runway to the far hedge and we were already aware that planes were coming down all around us, landing at the first opportunity, so we decided it would be a lot safer to leave the aircraft where it was and walk the rest of the way.”
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Black Thursday
[picture of aircraft]
100 Squadron had suffered terribly that night. So had 97 Squadron at Bourn in Cambridgeshire. It lost no fewer than seven aircraft in crashes.
The 1 Group Summary, which was circulated to all squadrons at the end of December, recorded: “No opportunity for striking at our objectives must be lost. This being the case, it is obvious that, in addition to the enemy on the far side, the elements of this side still have to be mastered.
“As an illustration, after the raid on Berlin on December 16/17, a widespread and unpredicted deterioration in the weather at our home bases occurred.
"No diversion areas were available and many deplorable accidents resulted while our aircraft were endeavouring to break cloud and land."
The Summary continued: "An investigation has now been completed which shows the accidents cannot be attributed to a common factor. Some aircraft broke cloud too quickly, some broke cloud too slowly and continued to sink, whilst others ''slipped in” on a turn while endeavouring to keep the airfield lights in view."
It added: "Conditions were vile and unexpected yet 136 aircraft landed safely. We must continue to strive for better airmanship and more effective ground control.
But no number of investigations and changes to procedure could erase the memory of that wooden hut near Louth for Wing Commander Bennett.
One crew which narrowly escaped joining the casualties that night was one from 101 Squadron at Ludford. [inserted] X2 [/inserted]
Len Brooks, who was the rear gunner in a Lancaster flown by Sgt Walter Evans, remembers that they were diverted to Driffield because of the bad weather. Over East Yorkshire they were picking up RT messages from Driffield, Dishforth and Catfoss but could see no lights through the murk.
Then Catfoss offered to put a light up for them. " They realised we were very low and put the beam almost parallel to the ground right on us. I remember feeling the power go on. the nose lift and suddenly I saw under the turret chicken huts, a garden shed and finally chimney pots flashing by. That Iight had saved us.”
[inserted] This refers to the aircraft being suddenly given full power to lift itself over the farm buildings [/inserted]
Mr Brooks also remembers the first time Ludford's new FIDO fog dispersal system came into use. This consisted of a system of petrol burners the length of the runway, the theory being that the heat generated would drive the fog away. It worked, too, the only problem being that the hot air caused a great deal of turbulence over the runway.
He recalls that two aircraft ahead of them declined to land, despite the exhortations of the station commander, Group Captain Bobby Blucke. When it came to their turn they were so low on fuel they had no option and Evans virtually forced the Lancaster down onto the runway.
[inserted] [symbol] Len Brooks our Rear Gunner He was looking backwards from the aircraft therefore had a completely different view from the others of the crew [/inserted]
[photograph of the rear gunner, Len Brooks]
102. An unknown gunner standing by his turret. 12 Squadron, Wickenby, May 1944.
74
[page break]
Training the Crews
[crest]
BEFORE BOMBER Command could launch its projected expansion in late 1943 and 1944 it had to have a ready supply of crews. And that meant an increase in training establishments.
Changes in the training system meant that each Group became responsible for turning out its own heavy bomber crews. With Lindholme in South Yorkshire as the Base station, Heavy
Conversion Units were set up at Faldingworth, Blyton and Sandtoft with other training units being based at various times at Hemswell, Ingham and Sturgate.
Most of the1I Group crews were to go through these training bases and many felt that flying with operation squadrons was considerably safer than in the HCUs.
Until more Lancasters became available, their conversion to four-engined heavies was largely on Halifaxes, and in particular on the early Mark I and lls. They were underpowered aircraft which had already been discarded by operational squadrons in favour of either Lancasters or the much superior later marques of the Halifax. They also had some nasty habits, particularly when inexperienced crews tried one particular manoeuvre which effectively blocked the airflow over the tail and was responsible for the destruction of a number of these aircraft.
One ex-12 Squadron crew remember starting six cross-country exercises from Sandtoft and failing to complete one of them. There was little wonder that Sandtoft became known throughout 1 Group as Prangtoft.
Sandtoft itself was, like the other training airfields, originally intended as an operational station.
The site. which is alongside what is now the M180 between Scunthorpe and Thorne, was selected by Air Ministry surveyors in January 1942 as suitable for use by heavy aircraft and work started that October on the construction of the airfield. It was intended that it would come into use as a bomber airfield in January 1944 but in the meantime, it was decided to earmark the new station for a Heavy Conversion Unit.
It officially opened in December 1943 (although it was by no means complete, not unusual with newly-opened airfields in 1 Group at the time). The first unit to operate from there was A Flight of 1667 HCU which moved in from Faldingworth, followed by its other two flights. Later in the year a fourth Flight was formed and this became the Flying Instructors’ Flight which in turn provided the training for instructors within 11 Base which also included Lindholme and Blyton.
[photograph of gunnery instructors]
133. Gunnery instructor at Lindholme in 1944. On the extreme left is Bob Dunston, an Australian who had lost a leg while serving with the 8th Army at Tobruk and later volunteered for the RAF as an air gunner. The picture comes from Len Brooks of Cleethorpes, pictured second from the left.
[inserted] Second from left is Len Brooks our Rear Gunner [/inserted]
75
[page break]
[blank page]
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
WO Donald Keith Fraser
Donald Keith Fraser's memoir
Description
An account of the resource
Memoir describing his life and service career in the RAF. He also gives a list of 29 operations he participated in with notes on specific operations, and recounts a brief history of the Lancaster.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Donald Fraser
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
80 typewritten 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
BFraserDKFraserDKv1
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.
France
Germany
Great Britain
Poland
England--Lincolnshire
France--Modane
Germany--Augsburg
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Bochum
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Hannover
Germany--Leipzig
Germany--Leverkusen
Germany--Mannheim
Germany--Mönchengladbach
Germany--Munich
Germany--Schweinfurt
Germany--Stuttgart
Poland--Szczecin
Germany--Braunschweig
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Tricia Marshall
David Bloomfield
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1944
1 Group
101 Squadron
1667 HCU
aircrew
bomb trolley
bombing
bombing up
briefing
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
Cook’s tour
dispersal
Distinguished Flying Medal
fear
FIDO
fitter engine
flight engineer
flight mechanic
fuelling
Gee
George VI, King of Great Britain (1895-1952)
ground crew
Halifax
Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984)
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
memorial
military ethos
military living conditions
military service conditions
navigator
Nissen hut
Operational Training Unit
perception of bombing war
perimeter track
petrol bowser
radar
RAF Bottesford
RAF Catfoss
RAF Coningsby
RAF Cottesmore
RAF East Kirkby
RAF Lindholme
RAF Ludford Magna
RAF North Luffenham
RAF St Athan
RAF Waddington
RAF Wickenby
runway
searchlight
service vehicle
Tiger force
Tirpitz
tractor
training
Window
wireless operator
-
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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
Lapham, Rosemary
R Lapham
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Lapham, R
Description
An account of the resource
100 items. An oral history interview with Rosemary Lapham, the daughter of Roy Chadwick, family correspondence, congratulations on being honoured, personal documentation as well as photographs of family, acquaintances and aircraft. The collection also contains a thank you letter from Barnes Wallis to Roy Chadwick and a note from Arthur Harris to Robert Saundby about the in-feasibility of the Eder Möhne and Sorpe operation, some conceptual aircraft drawings and other mementos.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Rosemary Lapham and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-06-22
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. 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
A name given to the resource
61 Squadron
Description
An account of the resource
100 plus aircrew in five rows in front of a hangar. Titled '61 Squadron (Bomber) at RAF Station Waddington Feb 1946'.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One b/w photograph
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PLaphamR1520
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1946-02
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1946-02
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
61 Squadron
RAF Waddington
-
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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
Falgate, Donald
D Falgate
Description
An account of the resource
69 items. The collection concerns Squadron Leader Don Falgate (136896 Royal Air Force) and consists of 68 pre-war, wartime, and post-war photographs and a handwritten detailed account of his tour. Don Falgate trained in Canada and flew operations as a bomb aimer with 463 Squadron from RAF Waddington.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Paul Falgate and catalogued by Trevor Hardcastle.
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
2016-04-07
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Falgate, D
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/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Details of tour
Description
An account of the resource
A handwritten account of Don Falgate's tour between 10 September 1944 and 7 April 1945. The account includes his observations and calculations about the percentage of aircraft lost. He carried out a total of 32 day and night-time operations on following targets in France, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Norway and Poland: Le Havre, Stuttgart, Boulogne, Bremerhaven, Rheydt, Wilhelmshaven, Bremen, Flushing, Brunswick, Nuremburg, Bergen, Homberg, Dusseldorf, Dortmund Ems Canal, Weser Ems Canal, Harburg, Duren, Heilbronn, Munich, Politz, Houffalize, Siegen, Bohlen, Mitteland Canal, Dortmund, Wesel, Nordhausen and Moblis (Leipzig).
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Don Falgate
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Six photocopied sheets
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Personal research
Text. Diary
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MFalgateD136896-160407-04
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
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.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Belgium
France
Germany
Netherlands
Norway
Poland
Atlantic Ocean--English Channel
Atlantic Ocean--North Sea
Belgium--Houffalize
France--Boulogne-sur-Mer
France--Le Havre
Germany--Braunschweig
Germany--Bremen
Germany--Bremerhaven
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Dortmund-Ems Canal
Germany--Düren (Cologne)
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Heilbronn
Germany--Homberg (Kassel)
Germany--Leipzig
Germany--Mittelland Canal
Germany--Munich
Germany--Nordhausen (Thuringia)
Germany--Nuremberg
Germany--Rheydt
Germany--Siegen
Germany--Stuttgart
Germany--Wesel (North Rhine-Westphalia)
Germany--Wilhelmshaven
Netherlands--Vlissingen
Norway--Bergen
Poland--Police (Województwo Zachodniopomorskie)
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
463 Squadron
bombing
Do 217
Gibson, Guy Penrose (1918-1944)
Master Bomber
Me 109
RAF Waddington
-
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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
Falgate, Donald
D Falgate
Description
An account of the resource
69 items. The collection concerns Squadron Leader Don Falgate (136896 Royal Air Force) and consists of 68 pre-war, wartime, and post-war photographs and a handwritten detailed account of his tour. Don Falgate trained in Canada and flew operations as a bomb aimer with 463 Squadron from RAF Waddington.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Paul Falgate and catalogued by Trevor Hardcastle.
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
2016-04-07
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Falgate, D
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/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Lancaster taking off
Description
An account of the resource
Lancaster JO-P taking off. The photograph has been censored where the H2S and Monica aerials are.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PFalgateD16030111
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One b/w photograph
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
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.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
463 Squadron
H2S
Lancaster
RAF Waddington
-
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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
Falgate, Donald
D Falgate
Description
An account of the resource
69 items. The collection concerns Squadron Leader Don Falgate (136896 Royal Air Force) and consists of 68 pre-war, wartime, and post-war photographs and a handwritten detailed account of his tour. Don Falgate trained in Canada and flew operations as a bomb aimer with 463 Squadron from RAF Waddington.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Paul Falgate and catalogued by Trevor Hardcastle.
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
2016-04-07
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Falgate, D
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/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Waving aircraft off
Description
An account of the resource
Large group of personnel (one holding a dog) waving with Lancasters in the distance.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One b/w photograph
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PFalgateD16030110
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
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.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
463 Squadron
animal
ground personnel
Lancaster
RAF Waddington
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
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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
Falgate, Donald
D Falgate
Description
An account of the resource
69 items. The collection concerns Squadron Leader Don Falgate (136896 Royal Air Force) and consists of 68 pre-war, wartime, and post-war photographs and a handwritten detailed account of his tour. Don Falgate trained in Canada and flew operations as a bomb aimer with 463 Squadron from RAF Waddington.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Paul Falgate and catalogued by Trevor Hardcastle.
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
2016-04-07
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Falgate, D
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/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Lancaster, crew and bomb
Description
An account of the resource
In foreground, large bomb on its trolley, standing behind seven aircrew in flying clothing, Lancaster in background.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One b/w photograph
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PFalgateD16030104
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
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.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
463 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
bomb aimer
bomb trolley
bombing up
flight engineer
Lancaster
navigator
pilot
RAF Waddington
service vehicle
wireless operator
-
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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
Falgate, Donald
D Falgate
Description
An account of the resource
69 items. The collection concerns Squadron Leader Don Falgate (136896 Royal Air Force) and consists of 68 pre-war, wartime, and post-war photographs and a handwritten detailed account of his tour. Don Falgate trained in Canada and flew operations as a bomb aimer with 463 Squadron from RAF Waddington.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Paul Falgate and catalogued by Trevor Hardcastle.
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
2016-04-07
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Falgate, D
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/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Lancasters in the snow
Description
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Snowy landscape, snow piled up in foreground, two individuals facing away from camera, Lancasters in the background.
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One b/w photograph
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Photograph
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PFalgateD16030095
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
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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
463 Squadron
Lancaster
RAF Waddington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/622/10612/BPayneRPayneRv1.1.pdf
4be42d107ed7b8f0a042057052d00c0f
Dublin Core
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Title
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Payne, Reg
R Payne
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Payne, R
Description
An account of the resource
14 items. Two oral history interviews with Reg Payne (1923 - 2022, 1435510 Royal Air Force), his memoirs and photographs. Reg Payne completed a tour of operations as a wireless operator with 50 Squadron from RAF Skellingthorpe. His pilot on operations was Michael Beetham. <br /><br />The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Reg Payne and catalogued by Barry Hunter.<br /><br />
<p>This collection also contains items concerning Fred Ball. Additional information on Fred Ball is available via the <a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/100970/">IBCC Losses Database</a>.<a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/ball-fc/"></a></p>
Date
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2015-07-03
2017-08-25
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed document
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Transcription
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AVIATION MEMORY.
[Page break]
18
RAF BASES WHERE REG SERVED
[Underlined] 5 YRS [/underlined]
PADGATE
BLACKPOOL
YATESBURY
NORTH COATS
SOUTH KENSINGTON
MADELY
STORMY DOWN
WIGTOWN
SALTBY
COTTESMORE
MARKET HARBOROUGH
WIGSLEY
SKELLINGTHORPE
SILVERSTONE
TURWESTON
NORTH WEALD
KIRKHAM
RANGOON BURMA
[Page break]
[Underlined] Reg Payne [/underlined]
[Underlined] 1939 SEPT. WAR DECLARED [/underlined]
[Underlined] 16 YEARS OF AGE [/underlined]
Home Guard at 16 yrs (1939)
If you waited to be called up at 18yrs you could be sent to work in any of the coal mines, miles away from home
i volunteerd at 17 yrs RAF [underlined] 1940 [/underlined]
Took inteligence exams Moreton Hall Northampton then to RAF Cardington for more tests.
Training as a Wireless Operator.
My training would cost the Government twice as much as sending a pupil thro a university. Period.
2 years training before operations
[Underlined] 1 year to learn morse code 4 hrs per [/underlined] day
Only fighter pilots had long range radio speech.
Bomber pilots had only 10 miles range “Hello Darky” [Underlined] Give Details [/underlined].
[Page break]
[Underlined] JOINING THE RAF OCT 1941 [/underlined]
16 yrs old War Declared
Always keen on RAF.
Joined Home Guard (then L.D.V.) Cransley reservoir & Pytchley Bridge
At 17 yrs volunteer’d RAF
Selection testS Dover Hall Northampton
later on Cardington
Selected as Wireless OP/AG. Training with ATC. Morse code
Short hand typing exam (Cacelled) and call up papers
Advised to get very short haircut ready for RAF
Train to Padgate with Sandwich’s
Poring rain ladies umbrella
Sore eye until Derbyshire
Soaking wet at Padgate hut to hut
[Page break]
After issue of uniform next day parcel up wet cloth’s to send home to mum. Then train to Blackpool P.D.C. Personel Disp Centre
[Underlined] King St. Blackpool [/underlined]
One week only learning about
RAF regulations etc
Care of uniform
Told to get haircut and had one next day (thought I told you to get haircut
Corporal took four of us to nearby hairdressers lost most of our hair
Landlady taught us to polish boots Candle and spoon (hot)
First letter from home (over breakfast) after reading it the landlady said
[underlined] your mother still loves you [/underlined] (tears)
Then move to start our training in the tram sheds every day. Our instructors were ex naval wireless ops, 2hrs morning & 2 hrs afternoon
Morse code Morse code Morse code
[Page break]
[Underlined] OCT 1941 [/underlined]
Mrs Clegg 4 Charnley Rd Blackpool
10 RAF young lads posted there
2 in each bedroom. 2 single beds 3 beds in our bedroom
No food in bedrooms. Ron Boydon Arthur Bromich
Electric lights out in bedrooms after 7pm.
We were detailed in turn washing up. If you didn’t eat all your meals she contacted the RAF Billeting Officer and had you moved
We got over this by flushing it all down the toilet.
Gym slippers had to be worn all the time 10 pairs of gym slippers in the hall always a job to find your own
[Underlined] RAF men had to be in by 10pm. [/underlined]
Mrs Clegg locked the door promp at ten
We could not see the end of film at Christmaas Day, for a small piece of chicken and a small glass of ale
We [underlined] were charged 2 and 6 pence [/underlined]
Ron Boydon & Arthur Browich
The two boys who shared my bedroom were both killed in the war
[Page break]
All your personal clothing and items had to have your name and RAF number printed on it.
[Underlined] No bath or shower at Mrs Cleggs [/underlined]
Showers were allowed for us.
Sat mornings [underlined] Derby Baths Blackpool [/underlined]
We could swim in the baths but had no swiming trunks etc
We [underlined] could [/underlined] swim without costumes etc.
The medical plasters on our arms came off in the waters and floted on the surface on the swimming pool.
A pool atendant collected them with a shrimp net.
Female workers in a large building across the road could’nt take their eyes off us, and waved their arms to us
Morse code Morse code Morse code
[Page break]
Reg’s close RAF friend.
[Underlined] RON BOYDON [/underlined]
Junior Ket Evening Tel reporter
[Underlined] Cover’d in Corby today [/underlined]
Shared my room at Blackpool
Tall young fellow
Ron carried the white parafin lamp at front of our squad, on dark mornings when we all had to march across
Blackpool, to the tram sheds for morse practice, or Stanley Park early morning for P.T. or drill.
On dark mornings & evenings
[Page break]
Morse code speed tests were carried out in a room above Woolworths (Fridays) as your morse speed increast. We only went up to 10 words per minute
If you failed three times you would be taken off corse and be trained as Gunner (Air)
At further training at Yatesbury your morse speed reached 18 words per min
We didn’nt get our own laundry back from RAF Laundry (sizes) sent my laundry home to mum. Food also in parcel when returned Told to put food in cabinet Other boys ate it.
[Page break]
Must be in doors by 10pm.
Home from pictures food not in cabinet! Next time put food in bedroom draw wrapped in underwear.
Later food not in draw contact Mrs Clegg.
Arrive back clock striking 10 oclock just in time we say
Ron Boydon late on parade oil lantern
Trim wick
Lights go out whilst shaving. 7pm.
Turn water off on landing.
Eat up food or will inform Billeting Officer Yellow Peril & hard cheese.
Food down toilet and down back of piano
Ron’s pygamas on landing
Drill with gym shoes on Tower Ballroom also lectures Ena Bagnor organ
Derby Baths shower and swim once per week
Vaccination scabs Office girls
PTO
[Page break]
[Underlined] CHRISTMAS 1941. [/underlined]
No extra Christmas meal, we had to pay 2/6d for some chicken and Christmas Pud
Found out later my mother wrote Mrs Clegg nasty letter.
Of the three in bedroom I was the only one to survive
I recently returned to Blackpool where I visited Charnley Rd,
Our biller much enlarged (2 floors higher
Found my old room So small coul’nt believe 3 beds in a room.
Posted to Yatesbury, P.T. long distance runs over the Downs. P.T.I. ran behind the last boys Took his belt off and made the last boys run fast
Sunday bus ride to Swindon Drinking cider.
Ladies behind bar, kissing us before we got bus home
[Page break]
[Underlined] YATESBURY WILTS [/underlined]
Morse code and wireless valves
Valves}
Triodes
Tetroes
Pentrose
Diodes
Aerials & Accululators
Morse Keys
Accumulators
Stormy Down south coast.
Air Gunnery Cause
Browning machine guns
Armstrong Whitworth [underlined] Whitley’s. [/underlined]
[Underlined] NO 1 A.F.U. SCOTLAND [/underlined] Advanced Flying [underlined] Unit [/underlined]
Ansons & Botha’s
[Underlined] Night flying 34 hours [/underlined]
Pilot suspected engine trouble daylight flight. Landed over in England mid day. Nice dinner in Sgts Mess
Were told later nothing wrong with engine but all had a lovely meal
[Page break]
RADIO WORK & TRAINING
JAN 42 Yatesbury Wireless study
MAY 42 North Coates Ops Duties, Coastal, Com
OCT 42 Radio Maintenance Kensington
JAN 43 Madely Flying Proctors & Dominies
APR 43 Gunnery Course Whitley’s Stormy Down
MAY 43 AFU Wigtown Scotland Ansons Bothas
JUNE 43 14 OUT Cottesmore Saltby Market-Harb
SEP 43 H.C.U. Wigsley Halifax Lancaaster
OCT 43 Ops Skellingthorpe
Now crew of 5 at Cottesmore
Heavy Conversion Unit Wigsley
At RAF Wigsley (Notts) we collected two new crew members
1/ Jock Higgins Mid Upper Gunner
2/ Don Moore Flight Engineer
We were lucky because Don had done a lot of work as an engine fitter before joining as air crew.
[Page break]
MORSE CODE
[Table of Morse Code]
[Page break]
[Underlined] 14 OTU COTTESMORE [/underlined]
[Underlined] JUNE 1943. [/underlined]
Pilots
Navigators
Bomb Aimers
Wireless Operators
Air Gunners
All taken to an empty hangar and told to sort themselves out into [underlined] crews of five [/underlined]
Later each crew would get a Bomb Aimer and [underlined] another Gunner [/underlined]
[Underlined] OPERATIONS [/underlined]
[Underlined] Take Wakey Wakey tablets on leaving English coast for Germany [/underlined]
[Underlined
I IDENTITY
F FRIEND
OR
F FOE [/underlined]
I.F.F. transmitter sends out a signal which recognises you as an RAF aircraft
and not an enemy aircraft.
[Page break]
1 [Underlined] EVERY MORNING [/underlined] change intercom lead ACI batteries. Sign Form 700. Return used batteries to the Accumulator Section
2. [Underlined] Inspect all external aerials [/underlined] for any damage
3. During air test flight, [underlined] check all radio equip [/underlined]
4 [Underlined] Attend the WOPS briefing. D/F stations and frequencies etc. Attend the main briefing [/underlined]
5. [Underlined] Collect the colour of the, day charts, bomber codes, M/F D/F groups to use. Broadcast spare helmet W/T challenge chart [/underlined]
[Underlined] Check ground flight switch. Check voltage switch on A 1134 amplifier for inter com Check radio whilst engines are running Tidy up bundles of window on floor Oxygen mask on before take off Once air born pencil in ranges on Monica Screen IFF switched on Keep watch on Monica screen Listen for half hourly broadcast from Base Leaving the cost wind out trailing aerial
[Page break]
At RAF Wigsley our pilot was given training on 4 engines, training starting with flying Halifax bombers, then changing to Lancasters
Luckily most the wireless equipment that I had was the same that I used in Wellingtons
We did a number of flights by night
Long distance flights which always ended up dropping bombs on a distant bombing range.
At last we were posted to our bomber squadron, which was 50 Sqdn only 3 miles from Lincoln city. Skellingthorpe airfield
The first thing we had to do when arriving was to contact the orderly room and give the name and address of our next of kin.
We were then taken to our sleeping quarters a hut alongside others in a field off the main road leading to Lincoln
Toilets were provided close by, but there were no washing or shower equipment on the site, this only in the Sgts Mess, some distance away a good ten minutes walk.
Rather than take our washing towel, and shaving kit backwards and forwards each day they were hung on pegs in the Sgts Mess where we did all our ablutions. The towels had to be folded back in our haversacks each day and they were always damp.
[Page break]
It was after we had our evening meal in the Sgts Mess, and were returing to our hut, that we spoke to a group of chaps on our camp site. After telling them what a “terrible” place we had ended up in, they smiled at us and said, “terrible” it’s a lovely place, Lincoln is only 10 mins bike ride down the road, loads of pubs, and all of them have plenty of girls there that love meeting us RAF chaps, you will see when you go there.
Fred Ball our rear gunner and myself both had bikes and said we would give it a try. Biking into the centre of Lincoln we spotted a small pub called “The Unity? Finding a place for our bikes we entered the building, there was music in there and we found a table & two chairs to relax on
Sitting there enjoying a glass bitter we could’nt help notice two ATS girls also enjoying their drinks, we could’nt speak to them as they were the other side of a busy room. Before 10 oclock the two girls got up and started to walk out.
Fred said to them and where are you two off now, and they said we have to be in by 10 oclock, and our billet is near the Cathedral. Fred said do you mind if we walk with you, they said not at all.
We arrived at the large house near the Cathedral now the ATS Headquarters. We chatted for a short time and agreed to meet again the same time tomorrow. I didn’t know at that time I had just met
[Page break]
[Underlined] SQDN CALLSIGN CODES [/underlined]
50 SQDN A/C Pilgrim (B. Baker etc.
Skellingthorpe airfield C/S Black Swan
MORSE CALL SIGNS.
50 Sqdn STB
5 Group A8X
STBB V A8X Radio call from 5 Group
STBB V STB. Radio call from our Sqdn
[Underlined] V means from [/underlined]
my first wife
[Page break]
[Underlined] WAKEY WAKEY TABLETS [/underlined]
Not usually taken until getting airborn.
[Page break]
ITEMS CARRIED IN OUR POCKETS BATTLE DRESS AND BOOTS
French and Dutch money etc.
Emergency high protane food. Ovaltine tablets Water purification tablets
Knife and torch in our boots
The knife to off the tops of our boots
Map of the area (on a silk scarf) more like a large hankerchief
Dead mans rope at rear door
Amputation saw and morphia tablets in first aid cabinet
[Page break]
[Underlined] OCT 1943 [/underlined]
Posted to 50 Sqdn Skellingthorpe Lincoln
Crew not up to operation standard
More training needed
Give name of next of kin and address to the orderly room.
[Underlined] NOV 3RD [/underlined] 1943
BEETHAMS SECOND DICKY
TARGET DUSSELDORF
18 Aircraft lost (One of them my brother)
Telegram brother Arthur missing on operation
Mother asking me to come home
Making a promise to our Wing/Co to keep flying
Hoping for an easy operation for our first one
My first wife
[Page break]
1943.
OPERATIONAL FLYING
14 OTU COTTESMORE & MARKET HARBOROUGH
JUNE 1943
Crewing up in hangar Cottesmore
CREW MEMBERS
P/O BEETHAM PILOT
P/O SWINYARD NAV
SGT BARTLETT BOMB AIMER
SGT PAYNE WIRELESS OP.
SGT BALL REAR GUNNER
SGT HIGGINS MID UPPER GUNNER
SGT MOORE FLIGHT ENGINEER
WIRELESS OPS JOB
Change accumulators every morning.
Keep in contact with Base
Care of the inter/comm system.
Assist nav with bearings and fixes
Able to move about aircraft whilst in flight
Astro shots using the sextant
Check all aerials before all flights
Watching Monica screen Pilot had only [word missing] radio communication 10 miles
Jamming enemy radio messages
Demonstrate morse code.
[Page break]
1
22.1.43. LANC JA899 F/O BEETHAM
7.15 [Underlined] OPS BERLIN [/underlined]
764 Aircraft – 469 Lancs, 234 Halifax’s 50 Stirlings, 11 Mosquitoes. This was the greatest force sent to Berlin so far. But it was also the last raid in which Stirlings were sent to Germany. Bad weather again kept most of the German fighters on the ground and the bomber force was able to take a relatively “straight in” “strait out” route to the target without suffering undue losses. 11 Lancs 10 Halifaxe’s 5 Stirlings 3.4 per cent of the force. Berlin was again completely cloud covered and returning crews could only estimate that the marking and bombing were believed to be accurate, in fact this was the most effective raid on Berlin of the war. A vast area of destruction. The mainly residential areas of Tiergarten and Charlottenburg, the dry weather conditions, several “firestorm” areas were reported and a German plane next day measured the height of the smoke cloud as 6,000 metres nearly 19,00 ft.
It is impossible to give anything like the full details of the damage or to separate completely details from this raid and a smaller one on the next night at least 3,000 houses and 23 industrial premises were completely destroyd, with several thousands of other buildings damaged. It is estimated that 175,000 people were bombed out, more than 50,000 soldiers were brought in to help. From garrisons up to 100KM distance, these were equivalent to nearly three
[Page break]
Army divisions taken from their normal duties.
Interesting entries among the list of buildings destroyed or severely damaged are. The Kaiser Wilhelm Gedachtwiskirche (The Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, which is now half ruined, half restored, (a major attraction in West Berlin)
The Charlottenburg Castle, the Berlin Zoo, much of the Unter den Linden, the British, French, Italian and Japanese embassies, the Ministry of Weopons and Munitions, the Waffen S.S. Admin College the Barracks of the Imperial Guard at Spandau and, among many industrial premises, 5 factories of the Siemens Group and the Alkett tank works which had recently moved from the Ruhr. It is difficult to give exact casualty figures, an estimated 2,000 people were killed, including 500 in a large shelter in Wilmersdorf which received a direct hit, and 105 people killed in another shelter in Wilmersdorf which was next to the Neukoln gas works where there was a huge explosion.
[Page break]
23.11.43 2
17.05 LANC JA899 F/O BEETHAM
17.05
[Underlined] OPS BERLIN LANDED WITTERING FLAPS U/S. [/underlined]
383 aircraft 365 Lancs 8 Mosquitoes to continue the attack on Berlin. The bombers used the same direct route as had been employed on the previous night. The German controllers made an early identification of Berlin as the probable target. Their single engined fighters were gathered over the city by zero hour and other fighters arrived a few minutes later
Fake instructions broadcast from England caused much annoyance to the German who was giving the running commentary. The Germans started a female commentator but this was mostly counered by a female voice from England ordering the German pilots to land because of fog at their bases. Spoof fighter flares were dropped by Mosquitoes north of the bomber stream also caused some diversions of German effort. Bomber crews noticed that flak over the target was unusually restrained with the German fighters obviously being given priority [Underlined] 20 aircraft all Lancasters were lost 5.2 per cent of the bomber force [/underlined]
The target was again cloud covered and the Pathfinders carried out sky-marking, but many of the main force crews aimed their bombs thro the cloud at the glow of 11 major fires still burning from the previous night. Much further destruction was caused to Berlin but because many of the details of the 2 raids were recorded to-gether by the Germans, it is only possible to say that more than 2,000 further houses 94 wooden barrack buildings and 8 industrial premises and 1 military establishment were destroyed, with many other buildings damaged
Approx 1,400 – 1.500 people were killed on this night.
[Page break]
26.11.43 LANC JA376 F/O BEETHAM
[Underlined] OPS BERLIN DIVERTED MELBOURNE (YORKS) [/underlined]
443 Lancasters 7 Mosquitoes
The Berlin force and the Stuttgart force diversionary flew a common route over Northern France and on nearly to Frankfurt (diversionary) flew a common route over norther France and on nearly to Frankfurt before diverging
The German controllers thought that Frankfurt was the main target until a late stage and several bombers were shot down as they flew past Frankfurt. Only a few fighters appeard over Berlin where flak was the main danger. But the scattered condition of the bomber stream at Berlin meant that bombers were caught by fighters off track on the return flight and the casualties mounted [Underlined] 28 Lancasters were lost 6.2 per cent [/underlined] of the force, and 14 more Lancasters crashed in England. The weather was clear over Berlin, but after their long approach flight from the south, the Pathfinders marked an area 6-7 miles from the city centre (north west) and most aircraft bombed there. Because of Berlins size however most of the bombing fell in the centre and in the Siemen Sstadt (with many electrical factories) and Tegel districts. 38 war industry factories were destroyed, and many more damaged. The now routine destruction of housing and public buildings also took place, but not on such a great scale as on the previous raids to Berlin
The Berlin zoo was heavily bombed on this night many of the animals had been evacuated to zoo’s in other parts of Germany, but the bombing killed most of the remainder, several large and dangerous animals leopards, panthers, jaguars apes – escaped had to be hunted and shot in the streets
[Page break]
Because of the confusion caused by so many raids in a short period, it was only possible for the Germans to record an approximate number of people killed on this night, of about 700-800. The local officials however produce a report in Jan 1944 giving details of combined casualties of the three raids of 22/23 23/24 26/27 November 4,330 were killed of whome the bodies of 574 were never recovered. The districts with the most deaths were Tiergarten 793 Charlottenburg 735 and Wedding 548. The dead were foreign workers and 26 were prisoners of war.
The property damage was extensive with 8,701 dwelling buildings destroyed and several times that number damaged
417,665 lost their homes for more than a month and 36,391 for up to a month
Reaching [underlined] Melbourne [/underlined] Yorks
Still heavy fog Diverted to [underline] Pocklington [/underlined] Yorkshire
We managed to land in heavy fog still,
All aircraft had little fuel left and could not find the runway
They were told to (head your A/C out to sea and bale out
[Boxed] 1 Lancaster ran out of fuel and crashed on a farm house. Killing the farmer & wife only the Lancaster R.G. survived
[Page break]
One night we had to do a very deep dive when another Lancaster that had not seen us came across our path, Mike put our Lancaster into a steep dive to prevent us hitting each other.
After we had settled down and were flying a steady course again, we found that our inter com was not working and we could not speak to each other.
Using my torch I soon found the problem, the inter com battery was not in its place, and the inter com leads were where the battery had left. With a torch I searched along the aircraft and found the battery some distance away. I think the Navigators feet had released the clamp that held the battery in position, and the battery in the steep dive that we did ended up some distance away. Luckily I was able to replace it, and make sure it was clamped down in position.
[Underlined] OPS LEIPZIG [/underlined]
A relative successful raid on Leipzig during the war
24 Aircraft 15 Halifaxes 9 Lancasters were lost 4.6 per cent of the force
The largest building being taken over by the Junkers aircraft company the former world fair exhibition site whose spacious buildings had been converted to become war factories
[This text in the corner appears in following page text] were severely damaged One place that was hit by a exhibition site, whose spaciou [see following page]
[Page break]
[Underlined] OPS LEIPZIG [/underlined]
[Underlined] LANDED WITTERING DAMAGED BY JU88 [/underlined]
3.12.43
Our crew were told to collect a Lancaster from RAF Waddington. We must take all our flying kit along with us. After arrival at Waddington we found we had to bomb Leipzig with it first then return the Lancaster to Skellingthorpe.
We thought what a strange way to deliver a Lancaster bomber 4 miles to its new airfield
[Second part of page missing – copy shows text from page beneath transcribed below]
A German nightfighter hit us in the port wing I reported that the wing was on fire. Our FL/t Eng came and looked and said, no its just petrol escaping from the wing tanks.
All the engines were then run from that one tank to save petrol being wasted
[Page break]
[Underlined] OPS LEIPZIG [/underlined]
[Underlined] LANDED WITTERING DAMAGED BY JU88 [/underlined]
[Underlined] 3.12.43 SHORT OF FUEL. (TANKS SHOT UP) [/underlined]
527 Aircraft. 307 Lancasters 220 Halifax’s
Despite the loss of two press men on the previous night the well known American broadcaster Ed Morrow flew on the raid with 619 Sqdn Lancaster crew, he returned safely. The bomber force took another direct route towards Berlin before turning off to bomb Leipzig
German fighters were in the bomber stream and scoring successes befor the turn was made but most of them were then directed to Berlin when the Mosquito diversion opened there.
There were few fighters over Leipzig and only 3 bombers are believed to have been lost in the target area 2 of them being shot down by flak
A relative sucessful raid from the point of view of bomber casualties, was spoiled when many aircraft flew by mistake into th Frankfurt defended area on the long southern withdrawal route and more than half of the bombers shot down this night were lost 4.6 per cent of the force
The Pathfinders found and marked this distant inland target accurately and the bombing was very effective This was the most sucsessful raid on Leipzig during the war a large area of housing and many industrial premises were severely damaged One place that was hit by a large number of bombs was the former world fair exhibition site whose spacious buildings had been conserved to become war factories
[Page break]
The Wehrmacht suffered damage to 4 flak positions, a clothing store, a veterinary depot and the Army Music School. 64 people were killed and 111 were missing or still covered by wreckage. 23,000 were bombed out. A train standing six miles south of Frankfurt was hit by a 4,000lb bomb and 13 people in it were killed.
Part of the bombing some how fell on Mainz 17 miles to the west and many houses along the Rhine water front and in southern suburbs were hit. 14 people were killed
We circled arround Wittering with little or no fuel left in our tanks, the Wittering phone R/T operator repeated saying the landing lights will soon be on, we waited an waited
Eventually the landing lights did come on and we were able to land with almost empty fuel tanks.
When we entered the Wittering mess we could see what the delay had been to get the landing lights on, as no one was on duty at their watch office, they were all attending the party.
A few years ago, giving our landing date and time to a serving RAF officer, he contacted me and said there was no mention in their flying control log book of our landing that night
Myself and two other crew members stood near the open back door with parachutes on as soon as the engines cut we would jump.
[Page break]
20.12.43 LANCASTER G ED588.
[Underlined] OPERATIONS FRANKFURT [/underlined]
650 Aircraft 390 Lancasters 257 Halifax’s
14 Lancasters lost
The German control room were able to plot the bomber force as soon as it left the English coast and were able to continue plotting it all the way to Frankfurt. There were many combats on the route to the target. The Mannheim diversion did not draw fighters away from the main attack until after the raid was over. But the return flight was quieter
41 aircraft – [underlined] 27 Halifax’s 14 Lancasters lost 6.3 per cent of the force [/underlined]
The bombing of Frankfurt did no go according to plan. The Pathfinders had prepared a ground marking plan on the basis of a forcast giving clear weather but they found up to 8/10 cloud. The Germans lit decoy fires 5 miles south east of the city and also used dummy target indicators. Some of the bombing fell arround the decoy, but part of the creepback fell on Frankfurt causing more damage than bomber command realized at the time. 466 houses were completely distroyd and 1,948 seriously damaged. In Frankfurt and in the outlying townships of Sachsenhausen and Offenbach 117 bombs hit various industrial premises but no important factories are mentioned. The report stresses the large number of cultural, historical, and public buildings hit, including the cathedral, the city library, the city hospital and no fewer than 69 schools.
[Page break]
[Underlined] JU88 SHOT DOWN [/underlined]
One night I felt the aircraft start to rise as the engines were open’d up I heard Les our bomb aimer on the inter com say to our mid upper gunner (Jock Higgins) not yet Jock I’ll say when.
He then said OK Jock [underlined] NOW. [/underlined]
By that time I was standing in the astro dome and looking above and in front of our aircraft I could see a German J.U.88 night fighter, flying in front of us, and a little above us.
Our bombaimer Les Bartlett suddenly said Jock now, with that they both open’d fire on the night fighter Ju88.
I noticed that Les seem’d to be spraying the nightfighter from side to side with his twin browning machine guns, but Jock Higgins with the same two machine guns was sending a constant stream of bullets up in the area of the nightfighter where the two crew members would be seated. The German night fighter flew for some time being riddled with bullets until it turned over and started to go down
I would think that it was Sgt Higgins that killed the two German crew members and caused the J.U.88 to crash with continuous firing in the cockpit area. As Les Bartlett was an office, he received ta medal for his efforts, but I still think it was Jock Higgins that brought the aircraft down.
Jock Higgins rec’d nothing
[Page break]
29.12.43
[Underlined] 7.25 [/underlined]
1707 LM428.
[Underlined] OPS BERLIN INCENDIARY THROUGH STARBOARD OUTBOARD TANK [/underlined]
712 Aircraft, 457 Lancasters, 252 Halifaxes 3 Mosquitoes.
A long approach route from the south, passing south of the Ruhr and then within 20 miles of Leipzig. Together with Mosquito diversions at Dusseldorf, Leipzig and Magdeburg causes the German controller great difficulties and there were few fighters over Berlin. Bad weather on the outward route also kept down the number of German fighters finding the bomber stream
[Underlined] 20 Aircraft 11 Lancasters 9 Halifaxes 2.8 per cent [/underlined] of the force lost
Berlin was again cloud covered, the bomber command report claiming a concentrated attack on skymarkers is not confirmed by the local report. The heaviest bombing was in the southern and south eastern districts but many bombs also fell to the east of the city
388 houses and other mixed property were destroyed but no item of major interest is mentioned.
182 people were killed, more than 600 were injured and over 10,000 were bombed out
[Page break]
REAR DOOR OPEN
The rear end of the Lancaster near the rear gunners position is one of the coldest parts of the aircraft, but one night our rear gunner said he was freezing in his position at the rear of the aircraft.
I soon found the problem when I got to the rear of the aircraft, the main entrance door was open, and the freezing cold air was coming straight in.
With gloves on I tried to close the the door, but with a two hundred mile wind rushing thro the door way it would’nt close. The Flight Eng came down to help me, but even the two of us could not close it.
We managed to get it partly closed leaving a small gap and tying it back with the dead mans rope The dead mans rope is a long length of rope near the rear door, should one of our crew be unlucky to have one of his legs or arms chopped off the rope was to tie a torch or a lamp on him, and with a parachute on push him out of this back door and hope people will see him coming down and rush him to hospital before he dies.
With the rope we still could nt close the door properly and had to push some heavy clothing into the door cracks to keep out the biting cold wind coming in the aircraft.
Whilst doing this work at the rear of the aircraft we had porable oxygen bottles round our necks all the time, or we would have passed out threw lack of oxygen.
Gloves on hands or you would loose the skin if you touched the bare metal
[Page break]
1.1.44 OPS BERLIN
23.44
LANCASTER
M/ME 567 [Underlined] 421 LANCASTERS [/underlined] 8.15
German fighters were directed to the bomber stream at an early stage and were particularly active between 2. Route markers on the way to Berlin
The German controller was not deceived by the Mosquito feint at Hamburg. But his fighters were not effective over Berlin. Only 2 bombers being shot down by fighters there, and the local flak was probably restricted to the height at which it could fire and the guns only shot down 2 bombers over the target.
[Underlined] 28 Bombers were lost 6.7 per cent of the force. [/underlined]
The target area was covered in cloud and the accuracy of the sky marking soon deteriorated
The Berlin report says that there was scattered bombing mainly in the southern parts of the city.
A large number of bombs fell in the Grunewald, an extensive wooded area in the south west of Berlin only 21 houses and 1 industrial building were destroyed with 79 people being killed. A high explosive bomb hit a lock on an important canal and stopped shipping at that area for several days
14.1.44 LANCASTER B.LL744
[Underlined] F/O BEETHAM OPS BRUNSWICK [/underlined]
496 Lancasters and 2 Halifaxes on the first major
[Page break]
We always took of with us a thousand or 2 [underlined] thousand pound overload [/underlined]
As we left the runway the long flames from the exhausts rose over the leading edge of the wings burning the [inserted] paint [/inserted] off the wings I knew there was 2,000 gallons of high grade petrol in tanks under all those flames
[Page break]
Raid to [underlined] Brunswick [/underlined] of the war [underlined] 38 Lancasters were lost [/underlined] 7.6 per cent of the force.
The German running commentary was heard following the progress of the bomber force from a position only 40 miles from the English coast, and many German fighters entered the bomber stream soon after the German frontier was crossed near Bremen. The German fighters scored steadily until the Dutch coast was crossed on the return flight. 11 of the lost aircraft were Pathfinders. Brunswick was smaller than bomber commands usual targets and this raid was not a success. The city report describes this only as a “light raid” with bombs in the south of the city which had only 10 houses destroyed and 14 people killed. Most of the attack fell either in the countryside or in Wolfenbuttel and other small towns and villages well to the south of Brunswick.
20.1.44 LANCASTER B/LL744
F/O BEETHAM [/underlined] OPS BERLIN [/underlined]
[Underlined] 769 Aircraft. 495 Lancasters [/underlined] 264 Halifax’s [underlined] 10 Mosquito’s. [/underlined]
35 Aircraft 22 Halifax’s 13 Lancasters were lost 4.6 per cent of the force
102 Sqdn from Pocklington lost 5 of its 16 Halifaxes on this raid, 2 more crashed in England ->
[Page break]
A CLEAR NIGHT OVER BERLIN
I think my first clear night over Berlin made me realize the terrible bombing coditions that the German folk were having to face
Looking down on Berlin from 3 or 4 miles high, I could see thousands of incendiary bombs burning on the ground. The large wide roads of Berlin showed like a large map
Every few minutes a huge explosion would take place along one of the roads wiping out part of the road plan.
These large explosions were the 4,000lb blast bombs which all the Lancasters carried (known by the RAF men as cookies)
I could see a wide road thro the streets of Berlin, quite clearly with the houses on fire on both sides, then a 4,000lb cookie would drop on the road, and a dark patch would appear where it had left no buildings standing.
Red and green incendiary bombs were still raining down and the RAF Pathfinder men were telling the bomber crews which ones they were to aim at.
I could look at a long wide road thro Berlin, houses on both sides alive with incendiary bombs buring, then a 4,000pb cookie hits the area and leaves a black space.
The master bomber above is shouting out to the aircraft aim at the reds not the greens.
We were expected to sleep when we got to out huts
[Page break]
-> and the squadron would lose 4 more aircraft in the next nights raid
The bomber approach route took a wide swing to the north but once again the German controller manage to feed his fighters into the bomber stream early and the fighters scored steadily until the force was well on the way home. The diversions were not large enough to deceive the Germans
The Berlin areas was, as son often completely cloud covered and what happened to the bombing is a mystery. The Pathfinder sky marking appeared to go according to plan and the crews who were scanning the ground with their H2S sets believed that the attack fell on the eastern districts of Berlin. No major navigational problems were experienced.
No photographic reconnaissance was possible until after a further 4 raids on Berlin were carried out but the various sources from which the Berlin reports are normally drawn all show a complete blank for this night. It is not known whether this is because of some order issued by the German authorities to conceal the extent of the damage, or whether the entire raid missed Berlin
[Page break]
[Underlined] 1,000lb BOMB IN BOMB BAY [/underlined]
One early morning after we had been on an operation we taxied the Lancaster back to our usual dispersal point at Skellingthorpe
The engines were shut down and all was quiet as we started collecting our loose flying kit together.
Suddenly we heard a large thud and at first we though a van had bumped into us. Then there was the sound of something rolling along the side of the aircraft.
Our bomb aimer Les Bartlett opened his bomb bay inspection door and was shocked at what he saw.
A thousand pound bomb had fell from from its station on to the bomb bay doors and it had rolled down the sloping bomb bay and had crashed at the rear of the bomb bay.
We did’nt know if it was still live and had to warn the ground crews, unless they opened to bomb bay doors where it would fall out.
We never did know how they made it all safe.
[Page break]
[Underlined] OPS BERLIN SPOOF ATTACK [/underlined]
27.1.44
[Underlined] F/LT BEETHAM [/underlined]
[Underlined] OPS BERLIN [/underlined]
515 Lancasters and 15 Mosquitoes
The German fighters were committed to action earlier than normal, some being sent out 75 miles over the North Sea from the Dutch coast. But the elaborate feints and diversions had some effect. Half of the German fighters were lured north by the Heligoland mining diversion and action in the main bomber stream was less intense than on recent nights.
33 Lancasters lost 6.4 per cent.
The target was cloud covered again and sky marking had to be used again. Bomber command was not able to make any assessment of the raid except to state that the bombing appeared to have been spread over a wide area, although many bombs fell in the southern half of the city, less in the north but 61 small towns and villages outside the city limits were also hit. With 28 people being killed in these places. Details of houses in Berlin are not available but it is known that nearly 20,000 people were bombed out. 50 industrial premises were hit and several important war industries suffered serious damage.
567 people were killed including 132 foreign workers.
[Page break]
[Underlined] FOG OVER AIRFIELD ON RETURN [/underlined]
All with little fuel left
Most sqdns sent up 20 A/C to target
2 Sqdns on each airfield (approx.) 36 A/C Each A/C had little more than 20 mins fuel left [underlined] No 1 [/underlined] would ask permision to land.
He was told to orbit at 3,000ft and as he circled he had to shout his position on the circuit such as (railway bridge) (cross roads) (Thompson’s farm) (reservoir)
As he circled he was called to decen’d to 2,000ft but still had to shout his number and position as he circled the airfield
Finally he was called down to 1,00 F shouting his position on the circuit No 1 down wind, then No 1 funnels No 1 touching down, then No 1 clear
No 2 would follow behind shouting out their positions on the circuit. Followed by No 3 doing the same
By shouting out their number and position and height the controller called them down
All crew’s had then to go to de-briefing
[Page break]
[Underlined] INSTRUCTING W/OPS [/underlined]
[Underlined] SILVERSTONE & TURWESTON [/underlined]
JUNE 1944 TILL END OF WAR
Of the 4319 men in the A/C shot downn attacking only [underlined] 992 [/underlined] survived 22.9 per cent.
On take off with 2,000lb overload
100 miles per hour were needed for take off
A gate stopped the throttle.
If the speed was not fast enough the pilot would say to the enineer [underlined] thro the gate [/underlined] and the gate was open’d to give more power
[Page break]
[Underlined] INTERNATIONAL DISTRESS [/underlined] SIGNAL.
[Underlined] SOS [/underlined]
ˑˑˑ / --- / ˑˑˑ
You would be told to divert to another airfield if there was fog over Lincolnshire where our airfield is. And stay there with the aircraft
[Underlined] DIVERSIONS F.I.D.O [/underlined]
[Underlined] FOG INTENSIVE DISPERSAL OF [/underlined]
[Underlined] FISKERTON 49 [/underlined] SQDN.
[Underlined] ASTRO DOME (FOR NAVIGATOR [/underlined] degrees & minutes
[Underlined] USING A SEXTANT. [/underlined]
Taking astro shots of the stars.
[Underlined] Polaris Bennet Nash Dubhi [/underlined]
[Page break]
2
Switch off IFF (Identity Friend or Foe)
Continuous watch on Monica screen
Listen out on given wave band for German speech
Tune my transmitter and jamb any speech
Wind in trailing aerial when over the cost [underlined] German [/underlined]
Pass bundles of window down to Flight Engineer
Transmit height and wind speed back to base. Details from Navigator.
Keep watching Monica screen whilst listening for German speech on given wave band
Obtain bearing from given [inserted] radio [/inserted] beacon for Nav, using loop aerial
Take hot coffee to the two Gunners
On clear nights, obtain sextant shots of given stars asked for by Navigator
On run up to target get in astro dome and watch for any bombers above us
Receive messages from base. Decode them & pass to pilot
Send more winds back to base. Our Nav is a wind finder
Shout out [underlined] contact [/underlined when a blip comes on Monica screen
Keep searching for German R/T speech.
After leaving enemy coast, let out trailing aerial
Switch on IFF when near English coast
Place colours of the day cartridges in Very pistol
[Page break]
3
Wind in trailing aerial crossing the English coast
If a diversion message is received on reachin the English coast, contact the diversion airfield and obtain a [underlined] QDM [/underlined] for the Navigator.
A QDM, is a coarse to steer to take you to the airfield.
You have to stay there with the aircraft. No washing or shaving equip. money or pygamas etc. Some times for two or three days if our aircraft needs work on it to be carried out
After landing you have to attend debriefing where you are asked a lot of questions before getting any sleep.
[Underlined] WHEN LOST. DARKY WATCH [/underlined]
“Hello” Darky”
Hello Darky
[Page break]
4
[Underlined] SKELLINGTHORPE SITE [/underlined]
No washing arrangements were available on our living quarters site. Just toilet & sleeping quarters All shaving & showers etc were in the Seargeans Mess. All toilet items kept in small haversack hanging on peg’s. After a few weeks we were told to remove our toilet haversacks for one day only.
The ones still on the pegs were the property of the men missing
[Page break]
[Underlined] CANADIAN AIRMEN. [/underlined]
Three NCO members of our crew were housed in a tin hut at Skellingthorpe
We had the hut to ourselves.
Arriving back after our leave, three extra beds were in the hut occupies by three Canadians
They were very generous, and told us to help ourselves from all the boxes of food arround the hut. Tins and packages all arround us.
The S.W.O. Station Warrant Officer came in and looking at it all said, I will be in this hut ever night at 7 oclock and if it is [inserted] not [/inserted] clean and tidy you wont be allowed out until it is. We had to wait for his insection every evening before we could visit Ena and Joan in Lincoln
A short time after the Canadians were shot down over Germany, all their contents were taken away and the hut was tidy again
The S.W.O. then said we could go out in our own time he would not visit us again. It probably took the death of three nice Canadians to allow Fred and myself to take Ena & Joan for an early meal.
And they were taken away
[Page break]
Whilst flying over Germany I would search a wave band on my radio.
I would listen for German speech sounding like giving orders to people.
I would tune my transmitter to that frequency and prese my morse key.
This would transmit the noise of one of our aircraft engines on that frequency as there was a microphone in that engine
On one long German operation, bad weather was forecast for our return over Lincoln and we were told to land St. Eval, Cornwall Some hours later I received another message which said cancel the previous message return to base.
Our Wing Commanders wireless operator did’nt get this message and he landed in Cornwall. On his return to Skellingthorpe, crowds of aircrew members line’d the runway to cheer him in.
At our next briefing, the Wing Co. said Wireless Operators make sure you get all the messages from Group, not like some clot that dos’nt get them. Jagger his Wireless Op got up and said, if that’s what you think of me you can get someone else to fly with you[inserted] tonight sir [/inserted] and with that he then left the room to go,
[Page break]
28.1.44
LANCASTER B/LL744 [Underlined] OPS BERLIN [/underlined]
677 Aircraft [Underlined] 432 Lancasters 241 Halifaxes 4 Mosquito’s [/underlined]
Part of the German fighter force was drawn up by the early diversions and the bomber approach route over northern Denmark proved too distant for some of the other German fighters. The German controller was however able to concentrate his fighters over the target and many aircraft were shot down there [underlined] 46 aircraft 26 Halifax’s 20 Lancasters [/underlined] lost 6.8 per cent of the force
The cloud over Berlin was broken and some ground marking was possible, but the bomber command claim that this was the most concentrated attack of this period is not quite fully confirmed by German records.
The western and southern districts were hit but so too were 77 places out side the city. The Berlin recording system was now showing an increasing deterioration no overall figure for property damage was recorded Approximately 180,000 people were bombed out on this night. Although many industrial firms were again hit the feature of the night is the unusually high proportion of administrative and public buildings appearing in the list of buildings hit. The new Chancellery, 4 theatres, the French Cathedral, 6 hospitals, 5 embassies, the state patent office etc, the report concludes with the entry the casualties are still not known
RAF Police came forward to stop him and the Wing Co. said let him go.
[Page break]
28.1.44
LANCASTER B/LL744 [Underlined] OPS BERLIN [/underlined]
677 Aircraft [Underlined] 432 Lancasters 241 Halifaxes 4 Mosqioto’s [/underlined]
Part of the German fighter force was drawn up by the early diversions and the bomber approach route over northern Denmark proved too distant for some of the other German fighters. The German controller was however able to concentrate his fighters over the target and many aircraft were shot down there [underlined] 46 aircraft 26 Halifax’s 20 Lancasters [/underlined] lost 6.8 per cent of the force
The cloud over Berlin was broken and some ground marking was possible, but the bomber command claim that this was the most concentrated attack of this period is not quite fully confirmed by German records.
The western and southern districts were hit but so too were 77 places outside the city. The Berlin recording system was now showing an increasing deterioration no overall figure for property damage was recorded Approximately 180,000 people were bombed out on this night. Although many industrial firms were again hit the feature of the night is the unusually high proportion of administrative and public buildings appearing in the list of buildings hit. The new Chancellery, 4 theatres, the French Cathedral, 6 hospitals, 5 embassies, the state patent office etc, the report concludes with the entry the casualties are still not known but they are bound to be considerable. It is reported that a vast amount of wreckage must still be clearid. Rescue workers are among the mountains of it. *Report os Technischen Nothilfe Gau 111-Berlin Berlin and Brandenburg. In Berlin City Archives
[Page break]
Reg Payne flew with 91 different pilots during his service in the RAF
Flew with Sir Michael Beetham as pilot 108 times
362 official flights were made during his RAF service, plus a lot of unofficial flights not recorded in his log book
After one operation after returning to our dispersal, and switching everything off a 1,000lb bomb came detatched from its moring in the bomb bay, luckily the bomb bay doors were closed. It rolled down the bomb bay and made a clonk as it reached the bottom. We don’t know how the ground crew delt with it.
During one operation the gunners complained how cold it was, I was asked to look into this. Going to the rear of the A/C I saw that the rear door was open. It could not be closed agains the slip stream but we tied it up as close as we could, and then pushed spare heavy flying clothing in the small gaps.
[Page break]
[Underlined] KENSINGTON ALBERT HALL [/underlined]
Wireless instruction in Science Museum.
Meals in Victoria & Albert Museum
Bedrooms in Albert Court next to Hall
“P.T.” in Albert Hall (boxing) etc.
Football in Kensington Gardens
[Underlined] BOXING ALBERT HALL [/underlined]
P.T. instructor sort us out in pairs boxing gloves on.
Instructor shouts Get stuck into each other or I’ll get stuck in to the pair of you
[Page break]
[Underlined] FIRST OPERATION BERLIN [/underlined]
[Underlined] 16.45 hrs [/underlined]
2,000lb overload Beetham spared this
NOV 22ND 764 A/C 7HRS 15MINS
26 A/C Lost 169 killed
Dispersal 1 hour before take off
Check all aerials/W/T./Monica./SBA/IFF/Trailing/Gee/Loop
[Underlined] Gunners getting ready [/underlined]
[Underlined] 17.05hrs BERLIN AGAIN [/underlined] Trailing aerial out [underlined] over the [/underlined] sea
NOV 23rd. [Underlined] IFF switched on [/underlined]
383 A/C 7hrs 45 mins
Navigator reading airspeeds at take off flames from exhausts 20 A/C lost [underlined] while taking off [/underlined]
130 killed
[Underlined] ON LANDING [/underlined]
Flaps frozen up, [Underlined] Refused landing [/underlined] Diverted to RAF Wittering
Bath ready in the morning
[Page break]
[Underlined] 3RD OPERATION [/underlined]
NOV 26TH [Underlined] BERLIN [/underlined]
17.20HRS
443 A/C 8HRS 5MINS
28 A/C lost 202 killed
[Underlined] Fog over Lincoln [/underlined] 14 damaged beyond repair
Diverted to Melbourne (Yorks)
[Underlined] Fog also over Melbourne [/underlined]
5 A/C crashed landing
Head your A/C out to sea and B.O.
Back to Skellingthorpe 2 days later
K King hit farm house. Farmer and wife killed
Only rear gunner survived
No cash or shaving kit on operation toothe brush etc.
[Page break]
3 times to Berlin in 5 nights
Cold bed at nights thinking about it.
EXTRACT FROM OFFICIAL GERMAN RECORDS ABOUT BERLIN RAID NOV 22ND
The most effective raid of the war on Berlin 3,000 houses and 23 industrial premises were completely destroyed with several thousands of other buildings damaged
175,000 people were bombed out
More than 50,000 soldiers were brought in to help from garrisons up to 100KM distance. Equivalent to three army divisions taken from their normal duties
Buildings destroyed or severely damaged are the Kaiser Wilhelm, Memorial Church (now a memorial) the Charlottenburg Castle, the Berlin Zoo, much of the Unter den Linden, the British, French, Italian, and Japanese embassies. The Ministry of Weapons and Munitions, the Waffen SS. admin college. The barracks of the Imperial Guard at Spandau, and many industrial premises inc. 5 factories of the Siemens Group, and the Alkett tank works, recently removed from the Ruhr. 2,000 people killed inc 500 in a large shelter which received a direct hit, and 105 people in another shelter near the gas works, where there was a huge explosion.
[Page break]
[Underlined] DEC 3rd [/underlined] 0023 HRS 527 A/C
[Underlined] LEIPZIG [/underlined 7HRS 50MINS
24 A/C lost 120 killed
Damaged by JU88 Fuel tanks ruptured short of fuel
Landed at Wittering
Officers Mess party no landing lights
Bath in the morning (much better conditions than at Skellingthorpe)
DEC 20TH 17.26 HRS 41 A/C Lost 193 killed
[Underlined] FRANKFURT [/underlined] 5HRS 40MINS
A/C G ED588 Did over 100 operations
DEC 29TH 17.07 HRS
[Underlined] BERLIN [/underlined] 20 A/C lost 79 killed
30lb phosphorous incendiary thro stbrd outer fuel tank.
We didn’t know about it.
Wing/Co took Beetham out to A/C after breakfast to show him hole in wing
[Page break]
[Underlined] JAN 1ST 1944 [/underlined] 23.44HRS NEW YEARS DAY 421 A/C.
BERLIN 8HRS 15MINS
28 A/C lost
Had to take the mid upper an axe spare mid upper smashes Perspex of turret Turret perspex frozen over
JAN 5TH 0005HRS STETTIN (TOUCHING SWEDEN)
358 A/C 8HRS 40MINS 16 A/C lost
Lancaster was fired on from another Lancaster
JAN 14TH 17.15HRS BRUNSWICK
498 A/C 5HRS 10MIN 38 A/C lost
Freda and Joans Lincoln Imps
Fred R/G forgot Lincoln Imp whilst on peri track.
Van driver collected it before take off
[Page break]
JAN 20TH [Underlined] BERLIN [/underlined]
16.35HRS
769 A/C 7HRS 35 A/C lost
Coned by searchlights Inter.comm battery became loose
No sound on inter com
2,400 tons of bombs dropped
Collected the HT battery from rear of A/C and re connected it
JAN 21st 19.51 HRS
22 A/C [Underlined] berlin [/underlined] spoof attack → 1 A/C lost
Main operation Magdeburg → 66 A/C lo
7 HRS 25MINS
Back door open. [Underlined] Tie up with rope Would not close. Slipstream [/underlined]
Dead mans rope at the rear door
Torch and knife in boots
[Page break]
FEB 25TH 18.35 HRS
[Underlined] AUGSBURG [/underlined]
594 A/C 8HRS 21 A/C lost.
Oil temperature much too high on one engine
Returned on 3 engines
Oil temp guage U/S
Nothing wrong with engine
Mike Beetham flying Lancasters promoted to Flight [inserted] LTD [/inserted] Commander
Could not drive car
Help from WAAFs.
1ST MARCH 23.19 HRS
[Underlined] STUTTGART [/underlined]
594 A/C 8HRS 10MINS 4 A/C lost
Thick cloud on route and over target
Night fighters unable to locate bomber stream
Much damage to Stuttgart
[Underlined] On the bomb run left left etc. [/underlined]
[Underlined] Bomb doors open Very cold draught when open. [/underlined]
[Page break]
JAN 27TH 17.17 HRS
[Underlined] BERLIN [/underlined
530 A/C 8.55 MINS 33 A/C lost
Off inter comm. High engine rev’s
Les and Jock attack Ju88
Of Les gets DFM, Jock goth nothing
JAN 28TH 0021 HRS
[Underlined] BERLIN [/underlined
677 A/C 7HRS 55MINS 46 A/C lost
Washing & shaving items
Haversacks collected from Sgts mess from airmen missing
19TH FEB 23.55 HRS
[Underlined] LEIPZIG [/underlined
823 A/C 7HRS 78 A/C lost
Returning home over North Sea (dawn reduce hight to stay in the dark
[Page break]
12.2.44
[Underlined] FIGHTER AFFILIATION [/underlined]
12.2.44 We were detailed to fly a short distance up into Yorkshire and to meet up with a Spitfire, who would contact us and when ready would continue to dive on us and give us advice on our defensive moves. In our Lancaster we had our full crew of seven personel, plus another pilot and his two gunners.
Our pilot Sir Michael Beetham decided that he and our two gunners would do the exercise first. With our two gunners in the turrets and Michael in the pilots seat, the attacks began all of them ending in the Lancaster doing cork screws to prevent the Spitfire from shooting him down. After 10 or 15 mins, the other pilot took over from Michael, and his gunners made for the turrets.
When all was ready the Spitfire came in for it first attack, the Lancaster went into a steep dive. I don’t think I have ever dived so steep before in a Lancaster, and so fast. On pulling out of the dive I noticed smoke round the port outer engine, and then there were flames.
Michael shouted a warning on the inter com and to our flight eng to use the fire extinwishes
[Page break]
With the extinuish’s working the flames vanished, with just smoke and steam, however once the extinguisher was empty the flames came back again, and seemed to be spreading down the wing. From the port outer engine the wing was on fire, and as the fire extinguisher was now finished and the fire spreading down the wing Michael gave the order to abandon the aircraft.
With ten crew members on board there was a move to the two exits, my pilot and navigator baled out at the nose exit, followed by the other pilot.
The rear door was open and Jock Higgins our M.U.G. baled out there, Les Bartlett our B.A. also left from there, when I arrived at the rear door they made way for me to go next. I had just left looking at the large fire in the port wing and I knew it was about to break off. I baled out.
Looking down I could only see 10 tenth cloud 3,000ft below me and I did’nt know if we were still over the Humber Estury
As I was falling to earth I found I was pulling one of the canvas handles and not the metal release handle. With the correct handle my chute opened, and looking up I saw part of the port wing following me down Also I could see the coast and I was drifting towards it. At the same time I heard the crash as the Lancaster crashed a few miles in land. I was drifting towards the Lincoln
[Page break]
shore, and I could see all the smoke drifting up in the sky from where it crashed
I made a soft landing in a field quite near East Kirkby airfield, quite close to where the Lancaster crashed. I was told that four of the crew were still in the aircraft when it went down. And I was asked if I would help them decide which body was who. As they were so badly crushed I did’nt want to go near them
[Underlined] REG [/underlined]
The four airmen killed were the other pilots 2 gunners.
Also our rear gunner Fred Ball our flight eng Don Moore
Fred Ball and Joan
Reg and Ena
The two ATS girls
Fred Ball was due to take Joan home to his house in [missing word] on their next leave together. But that was no longer possible
But Reg & Ena found it drew them closer together
[Underlined] Reg was made a member of the Caterpillar Club. [/underlined] Irving parachute.
[Pgae break]
19.2.44
[Underlined] OPERATIONS LEIPZIG [/underlined]
19.2.44 823 Aircraft 561 Lancaster 255 Halifax’s 7 Mosquitoes,
44 Lancasters and 34 Halifax’s lost 9.5 per cent of the force. The Halifax loss rate was 13.3 per cent of those dispatched and 14.9 per cent of those Halifaxes which reached the enemy coast after early returns had turned back. The Halifax 2’sand 5’s were permanently withdrawn from operations to Germany after this raid.
This was an unhappy raid for bomber command.
The German controllers only sent part of their force of fighters to te Kiel minelaying diversion. When the main bomber force crossed the Dutch coast they were met by a further part of the German fighter force and those German fighters which had been sent north to Kiel hurriedly returned. The bomber stream was this under attack all the way to the target. There were further difficulties at the target because winds were not as forcast and many aircraft reached the Leipzig area too early and had to orbit and await the Pathfinders. 4 aircraft were lost by collision and approximately 20 were shot down by flak.
Leipzig was cloud covered and the Pathfinders had to use sky marking. The raid appeared to be concentrated in its early stages but scattered later. There are few details of the effects of the bombing. No report is available from Germany and there was no immediate post raid reconnaissance flight. When photographs were eventually taken they included the results of an American raid which took place on the following day.
[Page break]
Reg Payne flew with 91 different pilots during his RAF service
Flew with Sir Michael Beetham his pilot 108 times
362 official flights made during his RAF service. Plus a large no of unofficial flights not recorded in his log book
After my operational flying at Skellingthorpe as a rest period I was sent to RAF Silverstone No 14 OTU, an Operational Training Unit
This made it rather difficult for me to see my ATS sweetheart in Lincoln.
I always visited her on my days off in Lincoln. Arriving back in the train one evening, I left the railway station at Brackley quite close to my airfield at Turweston. My bike was left chained to the station railings ready for me to ride back to Turweston a short distance away. A WAAF was in the same rail coach as me, she also was based with me, and worked in our Sgts mess. I asked her how she was getting to our airfield a couple of miles away. She said walk I suppose. I had my bike with me & she was please when I offered her a ride on my cross bar. All went well until near the airfield down a dark unlit lane, the pedals of my bike dug into the grass and we both ended up in the ditch. Luckily we were both not hurt, but decided we would walk the rest of the way, and I left her at the gates of the WAAFs site
[Page break]
Having all my meals in the Sgts mess, I thought I would see her again, and finally I asked one of the WAAFs if she was working there still. She smiled at me and said not any more, I then said why not, she then shook me and said, she’s had a dishonourable discharge, I asked what ever for, and she replied, she has had a mis-carriage and is in hospital. I could only think our bike accident was the cause of it. I never met her again.
[Page break]
[Underlined] OPS. AUGSBURG. RETURNED ON 3 ENGINES [/underlined]
25.2.44 23.55 Lancaster B LL744
F/Lt Beetham W.OP.
[Underlined] OPS LEIPZIG [/underlined 7.0PM
823 Aircraft – 561 Lancasters 255 Halifax’s 7 Mosquito’s 44 Lancaster and 34 Halifaxes lost 9.5 per cent of the force The Halifax loss rate was 13.3 per cent of those dispatched and 14.9 per cent of those Halifaxes which reached the enemy coast after early returns had turned back. The Halifax IIs and Vs were permanently withdrawn from operations to Germany after this raid
This was an unhappy raid for bomber command, the German controllers only sent part of their force of fighters to the Kiel minelaying diversion. When the main bomber force crossed the Dutch coast they were met by a further part of the German fighter force and those German fighter which had been sent north to Kiel hurriedly returned.
The bomber stream was thus under attack all the way to the target. There were further difficulties at the target because winds were not as forecast and many aircraft reached the Leipzig area too early and had to orbit and await the Pathfinders. 4 aircraft were lost by collision and approximately 20 were shot down by flak
Leipzig was cloud covered and the Pathfinders had to use sky marking. The raid appeared to be concentrated in its early stages but scattered later. There are few details of the effects of the bombing. No report is available from Germany and there was no immediate post raid reconnaissance flight, when photographs were eventually taken they included the results
[Page break]
BALING OUT OF THE LANCASTER
In a short time the whole port wing had flames along it, and Michael Beetham gave the order for us to bale out
With ten members of the crew in the aircraft we all had to move swiftly
Les Bartlett our bomb aimer left the astro dome where he had been filming the spitfire and baled out of the rear door followed by Jock Higgins. My pilot and navigator baled out of the front escape hatch
I made my way to the rear exit and baled out, below me all I could see was cloud, we were at 6,000ft, I did’nt know if we were over the Humber Estury or over land. We did not have Mae Wests on
As I was floating down on my chute, part of the port wing was above, luckily it passed by me.
Unfortunately the Australians two gunners didn’t bale out and were both killed
Worst of all our flight eng did not bring his chute because he told it was only a local flight
I think our rear gunner waited to late to jump.
Don our flight eng didn’t stand a chance He said he had not taken his parachute because it was only a training flight
Some time later after I had left the RAF, a friend of mine from East Kirkby took me to the crash side. We dug up a human pelvis and lots of metal that I had melted down and made into small Lancasters
[Page break]
9TH MARCH 20.42 HRS
[Underlined] MARSEILLES FRANCE [/underlined]
No A/C lost.
44 A/C of 5. Group. 8hrs 55mins
AIRCRAFT FACTORY BOMBED 10,000FT.
Practice flight before op with Air/Comm Hesketh Flew over target to get French workers clear before bombing
24TH MAR. [Underlined] BERLIN [/underlined]
811 a/c 7hrs 20mins 72 A/C lost
FOG OVER LINCOLNSHIRE LANDED FOULSHAM (NORFOLK
Tea with rum Massive searchlight & birds 2.30am.
[Underlined] EXPLAIN DARKY PROCEDURE [/underlined]
26TH MARCH 44 19.50HRS
[Underlined] ESSEN [/underlined]
705 A/C 5hrs 5mins 9 A/C lost
Jock pinching coal from compound
Bombs make a metalic jolt as each one leaves
[Page break]
30TH MARCH 19.50HRS
[Underlined] NUREMBURG [/underlined]
[Underlined] BELGUIM [/underlined]
795 A/C 7hrs 45mins 95 A/C lost
5 Northants airmen killed on this op.
Kettering man Arthur Johnson killed with all his crew
4 of our Sqdn were missing
Trevor Roper Gibsons R/G on the dams raid was killed
60 miles of burning A/C across Belgium
Aircraft flying in bright moonlight
200 mile strait leg to north of the target leaving large contrails behind
60 A/C lost
5TH APRILX 20.31 [underlined] TOULOUSE [/underlined] 6HRS 55 MINS
144 A/C of 5 Group [underlined] AIRCRAFT FACTORY [/underlined]
One aircraft exploded over the target.
The factory was severely damaged but 22 people killed in houses near by
[Page break]
[Underlined] HUMBER ESTUARY [/underlined]
12TH FEB [underlined] FIGHTER AFFILIATION [/underlined]
Baled out at 6,00ft
Pilot P.O. Jennings RAAF & two gunners
Les and his camera
Don [inserted] Moore [/inserted] No parachute
Jock on the tail
Me pulling wrong handle
Over the sea or over the land Baling out watching Don Moore (no parachute)
Large reservoir
P/O Jennings in the trees
Tablets from M.O.
Ena ringing Sgts mess
Looking over at Freds bed that night
Freds Lincoln Imp on tunic (not wearing it.
[Underlined] 1979 VISIT CRASH SITE PELVIS FOUND [/underlined]
Explain landing procedure at airfield after [underlined] returning to base Black Swan from Pilgrim B. Baker [/underlined] etc
[Page break]
2252HRS
28TH APRIL [underlined] ST MEDARD BORDEAUX [/underlined]
88 A/C 8HRS No A/C lost
Explosive factory
Markers set woods on fire
Unable to see target
Bombs returned to base
22.35HRS
29TH APRIL [underlined] ST MEDARD BORDEAUX [/underlined]
68 A/C 7HRS 20MINS No A/C lost
Explosive factory destroyed
Message (master bomber) do not bomb below “4,000FT
Blast lifted up our A/C
21.35HRS
1ST MAY 44 [underlined] TOULOUSE [/underlined]
131 A/C 5HRS 35MINS No A/C lost
Aircraft factory & Explosives factory
Both targets hit.
[Page break]
23.21HRS
[Underlined] 22ND APRIL BRUNSWICH [/underlined]
238 A/C 6HRS 4 A/C lost
617 Sqdn Mosquito’s marked target
Thin could over target hampered the bombing
[Underlined] 1,000lb bomb still in bomb bay after [/underlined] landing
Rolled down bomb bay after landing
[Underlined] 21.35 HRS SCHWEINFURT [/underlined
[Underlined] 26TH April [/underlined]
206 A/C 8HRS 50 MINS 21 A/C lost
Unexpected strong winds
Raid not a success
F/St Jackson Flt/Eng Awarded V.C. for climbing out on wing of A/C to put out fire in engine
FW 190 below Lanc. But didn’t fire at it.
[Page break]
11 TH APRIL 20.30
[Underlined] AACHEN [/underlined] 4 HRS
341 A/C 9 A/C lost
Always wanted to bomb Aachen
They gave us so much AA when it was used as a turning point
German civilian population all prepared for RAF raids. All their cellars were joined together with tunnels
The roof attic timbers coated with lime
18TH APRIL 44 [underlined] JUVISEY PARIS [/underlined] 4.25HRS
202 A/C RAILWAY TERMINAL 1 A/C lost
5 Group effort with master bomber Red spot marking
20TH APRIL 44 [underlined LA CHAPELLE [/underlined] (PARIS) 4HRS 30MINS
270 A/C 6 A/C lost
[Underlined] Rail target north of Paris [/underlined]
[Underlined] Washing & shaving equipment [/underlined]
[Underlined] Haversacks in Sgts mess. [/underlined]
Collected from hooks after approx. 6 weeks
[Page break]
Although operations were detailed one night our crew were not detailed.
I needed a few items for myself from the shops in Lincoln and went there on my own to purchase them.
Lincoln city was very quiet. Not an aircraft in the sky and you could hear all the traffic noises.
Suddenly the crackling noise of a heavily laden Lancaster bomber climbed over the roof tops from one airfield, then followed by another from another airfield. This was followed by dozens of Lancasters circling round the city, heavily laden with tons of bombs. The people of Lincoln were used to this, as they knew that once on their way to Germany it would be quiet until they returned some hours later
[Page break]
[Underlined] WE HAD TO BURY REAR GUNNER AT BIRMING [/underlined]
End of tour operations.
Returning after 7 days leave
5 – 50 Sqdn crews missing from raids whilst away
4 on Mailly le Camp.
15 Lancs flown whilst with 50 Sqdn 14 lost soon after.
[Underlined] No interest in football what so ever [/underlined]
[Underlined] DURING MY 30 OPERATIONS [/underlined]
691 aircraft lost
3967 aircrew killed
1111 P.O.W.’s
209 hrs over Germany (all at night) over 8 days.
Of the 4319 men in the A/C attacking Berlin who were shot down in the 18 raids only 992 survived 22.9 per cent.
[Page break]
Fred and Reg Ena Goodrich and Joan Brighty
[Underlined] THE LINCOLN IMP [/underlined]
Ena & Joan our two ATS girl friends gave us both a little Lincoln Imp badge to wear on our clothing when flying. They were known as very lucky items. Fred liked to pin his to his blazor when he went out in the evening, and pin it to his flying jacket when flying.
One evening when we were on operations being taken to our aircraft, Fred said to the driver of our transport, I have’nt got my Lincoln Imp (I never fly without it) Fred told him our hut number, 1st bed on left, Lincoln Imp on blazor hanging above bed.
The driver after dropping us at our A/C sped off to our hut, in ten minutes he was back with Freds Lincoln Imp. We all felt much better.
It was some time after, during a local parachute jumping afternoon, we had ten men in the Lancaster and only six of us managed to bale out before the Lancaster crashed. The other four men were killed Fred our rear gunner was one of them.
As I lay’d in my bed the next morning with Fred’s bed next to mine, his uniform jacket hung in the sun light: something on the pocket lapel caught the sunlight. It was Freds Lincoln Imp
[Page break]
AIRCRAFT & AIRCREW LOSSES DURING REG’S 30 OPERATIONS
[Table of aircraft with losses and details of crews]
Total number of A/C lost on these operations [underlined] 562. [/underlined]
Total number of aircrew killed [underlined] 4,300. 1206 POW’s
Average number of A/C on each operation 425.
Of the 4319 men in the A/C shot down attacking Berlin only 992 survived 22.9 per cent
[Page break]
BOMBER COMMAND LOSSES 8,325 AIRCRAFT.
1 in every 7 aircrew were killed in training
[Underlined] 1942 [/underlined] Only 3 in every 10 crews would finish a tour
3 groups od U.S. P40’s had sweepd German airfields in the afternoon prior to Nuremburg
Many say after pilots releasing their brakes and getting close to 105mph. was the moment of greatest fear. Sitting between 12 tons of petrol and explosives
6 nights before the Nuremburg raid 72 bombers were lost over Berlin
[Page break]
Killed on the Nuremburg raid
545 RAF crew
129 German civilian and military inc 11 Luftwaffe
[Underlined] 5 airmen from Northants killed [/underlined]
F/Sgt T J Hirst Weedon
F/O H C Frost Northampton
Sgt A J Johnson Kettering
Sgt J.P G Binder Moulton
Sgt G.W. Walker Geddington
In all during WWII 14,000 tons of bombs were dropped on Nuremburg. 6,369 Germans killed
A crew member had 1 in 4 chance when shot down
In the 5 month period known as the Battle of Berlin, it cost bomber command 1,123 A/C missing over enemy territory and crashes in England More than the entire strength of bomber command
Cyril Barton was the only Halifax pilot to gain V.C.
After Nuremburg, Mosquitoes went out with the bombers using the latest Mark X radar. Before this it was never allowed over enemy territory
[Page break]
[Underlined] NUREMBURG [/underlined]
41 Second Dicky’s took part in raid 9 killed 2 POW’s
9 Flight Commanders lost all killed
Half missing crews had done less than 10 ops.
30 missing had done less than 5 ops.
9 crews missing on their first op.
Out of 64 Lancs shot down only 4 rear gunners survived
101 Sqdn lost 7 A/C
51 Sqdn lost 6
Sgt Brinkhurst was the only crew member to get back to England after being shot down by a Halifax mid/upper gunner
Most men after being shot down in Germany, after taking off their parachutes, felt a sense of relief and were glad to be alive
No Mosquito carrying Oboe was ever shot down
[Page break]
Finally the moon set 1.48am, 3 hrs flight home against head winds
Martin Becker had shot down 6 bombers, he landed and re fuelled then shot down another Halifax. The rear gunner never saw him
50 men in Beckers 7 A/C 34 died
Major Heinz Wolfgang Schnaufer had shot down 121 bombers
The spread of bombers was 160 miles wide when crossing the coast home at 4am.
F/Lt Snell PFF pilot over Nuremburg 0107, landed base Downham Market 0410by direct route home 25 mins before the next A/C landed
Some crews 100 miles off track
Our crew crossed coast at Calais instead of 80 miles further south
P/O Barton crossed Durham coast 200 miles off track and crash landed. 3 crew survived.
Cyril Barton died – VC.
14 A/C crashed in this country.
[Underlined] East Kirkby [/underlined] 5 crews had there leave stopped to go on this operation 2 aborted 2 shot down.
[Page break]
NUREMBERG
Sgt Handley 50 Sqdn crashed RAF Winth [missing rest of word] All crew okay.
But all crew killed 5 weeks later Mailey le Camp.
When we were interrogated we were asked, How many did you think we have lost. Our M/U said about 100 and they said “Come off it Sgt. ” and poo pooed it.
Bennett was angry when he heard of the losses
One third of bombers shot down by 8 pilots
Nav F L Chipperfield 619 Sqdn Coningsby composed the Warsaw Concerto was on this raid
Our crew were No 1 airborne at Skellingthorpe at 2200 later Flt.Sgt Bucknall burst a tyre on take off and came off the runway “Wing & engine ripped out”
52 A/C Boomerang’d
4.7% Lancs
14.2 Halifaxs.
1.8 PFF.
2,600 tons of bombs carried all together
[Page break]
NUREMBURG
The forecast winds the bombers were using were not accurate & blew crews to the north
German night fighters still had navigation lights on when they first saw the bombers
The SN-2 improved radar could locate bomber even if they were using window.
Walter Heidenreich switched on radar and saw unusual blip. It was two Lancs flying together for company (it was so bright) He shot them both down with (slanting music)
Helmut Schuite shot down 4 A/C with 56 cannon shells
P/O Cyril Barton’s A/C on fire.
Nav, W/OP & B/A bale out
After fires are put out he still carried on with 3 engines loosing 400 gals fuel
Aircraft burning on ground lit up the sky
Our nav told crew not to report any more A/C being shot down
[Page break]
NUREMBURG
9 out of 10 pilots would always corkscrew port. The German pilots would allow for this
50 Mosquito night/fighters were in bomber stream, their radar could not pick up the signals from the German night fighters
The RAF radio station at Kingsdown could hear the claims of bombers being shot down and knew bomber command was in trouble
The long leg 200 miles 1 hr flying. 60 aircraft shot down one every 3 1/2 miles one per minute
In only 1 A/C did the whole crew survive
One crew in three were all killed
After the long leg bombers turned south for Nuremburg. Owing to strong wind, lots were too far [missing word] and east. 75 miles 20 mins flying.
PFF found that Nuremburg was covered by dense cloud 2 miles deep. Had to use sky markers
[Page break]
German single engine fighters all sent north to Berlin.
The bombers turn to the south wasn’t predicted
Chris Panton, brother of Panton Bros East Kirkby was shot down and killed on southern leg
PFF target indicators were widely scattered
Within 7 mins of bombers turning south, all German night fighters were told of new course
18 more bombers were lost on short south leg
In one Lanc Trevor Roper was killed Gibsons R/G
After target marking A/C should be bombing 47 A/C per min. or 160 tons per min
But they were late being too far north at turning point.
2 groups of markers could be seen several miles apart
Backers up dropped their sky markers near Lauf too far east. There was no master bomber to tell main force
[Page break]
NUREMBURG
It was usual practice for some PFF crews to scatter bombs over target area to keep the defences under cover whilst the aiming point was located and marked accurately.
Sky markers dropped over Lauf drew most of the bombing
One Path finder had a clear view of industrial town. Thought it must be Nuremburg and dropped large green TI on it
The town was Schweinfurt.
All the ball bearing factories were hit with incendiaries but no HE bombs.
Of all the A/C shot down on the outward flight only one full crew survived
German fire fighters working in -15 degrees- ce [missing end of word]
Village of Schonberg was destroyed by incendiaries 11 miles from aiming point
After leaving Nuremburg Some pilots flew into cloud after losing height still being blown north
[Page break]
[Underlined] 30TH MARCH 1944 [/underlined]
[Underlined] OPS NUREMBERG SAME SIZE AS BRISTOL [/underlined]
Harris
Severe icing in northern Europe, raid had to be more south
Harris chose Nuremburg.
Beginning of moon period
Early forecast cloud cover on way to target but clear over target
Straight leg 200 miles over Germany
Bennett PFF was against this
Halifax groups were in favour save fuel
Bombers in 5 waves 17 mins over target.
795 aircraft 572 Lancs 214 Halifax’s 9 Mosquito
In 7 months up to this date bomber command had lost 1047 A/C
6 days before 73/AC lost on Berlin
Halifax’s would carry only incendiaries one third of Lancasters weight.
162 aircraft involved in diversion raids (Baltic)
[Page break]
[Underlined] NUREMBERG [/underlined]
Some U.S. Mustangs and Lightnings were flying as night fighters RAF crews not told
20 Stirlings
10 Albemarles
8 Wellingtons
6 Fortress’s
110 Mosquitoes
I all 6,493 airmen over Germany that night.
In 103 Sqdn no one had completed a tour for 7 months
Photo rec’I’ aircraft flew over area in late afternoon and reported clear skys and no cloud cover.
But Harris did not cancel the raid
The German controllers ignored the mining diversion towards Baltic
German radar picked up signals from our H2S headsets soon after leaving our bases
By midnight, 200 German night fighters were making their way to orbit beacons “Ida” and “Otto” In the path of the bombers
Bombers were leaving contrails in bright moon
[Page break]
Because of the failure to find and mark Nuremberg Harris gave Cochrane (5 Group) the all clear to mark targets from low level. Using 617 Sqdn and Mosquitoes W/Co Cheshire obtained his V.C. for all his low level marking
Cheshire marked an A/C factory from 1,000ft over Toulouse and 5 Group destroyed it.
This was the last time the bombers all went in one stream to a single target.
[Page break]
[Underlined] REG’S TOTAL RAF TRAINING [/underlined]
Oct/41 Blackpool Basic RAF training Morse Code etc
Jan/42 Yatesbury. Wireless study. Morse procedure
May/42 “North Coates”. Wireless ops duties costal command
Oct/42 Radio Maintenance “South Kensington” London
Jan/43 Radio training “Madely” Proctors & Dominies
Apr/43 Air gunners course Stormy Down Whitleys
May 43 “AFU” Wigtown Scotland Ansons & Bothas
June 43 14 OTU Cottesmore Saltby & Market Harborough
Sept 43 H.C.U. Wigsley Halifax & Lancaster
Oct 43 50 Sqdn Lancasters 10 Berlin ops and Nuremburg Pilot Sir Michael Beetham
May 44 RAF Silverston 14 OTU.
June 44 RAF Turweston 14 OTU
June 45 Voluntarily taken off flying duties
July 45 Trained as receipts & issues stores officer at RAF Kirkham
Dec 45 Flown to Rangoon 56 FRU Forward Repair Unit 39 Flying hours reclaiming RAF equipment
July 46 Return home by boat. Demob RAF Kirkham 30 days not leaving the boat
In Burma. Reclaiming RAF equipment left arround after the Japanese were defeated
Based in Rangoon
Bringing it on charge or turning it to scrap
[Page break]
[Symbol] Lost on ops whilst F/O Beetham was at 50 Sqdn.
[Symbol] Missing POW’s.
[Underlined] No.50 Squadron Battle Order – 22nd November, 1943 [/underlined] BERLIN
[Underlined] A/C Pilot F/Eng. Nav. A/B. WO/AG. MU/G.
“A” P/O Toovey Sgt. Smith F/O. Pagett Sgt. Bedingham Sgt. Olsson Sgt. Kelbrick
“B” F/Lt. Bolton Sgt. Brown P/O. Watson F/Sgt. Forrester Sgt. McCall Sgt. Moody
“C” P/O. Heckendorf Sgt. Henderson P/O. Dale Sgt. Kewlay Sgt. Hope Sgt. Hall
“D” F/O. Beetham Sgt. Moore P/O. Swinyard Sgt. Bartlett Sgt. Payne Sgt. Higgins
“E” F/Sgt. Leader Sgt. Rosenburg F/O Candy P/O. Stevens F/Sgt. Lewis Sgt. Tupman
“F” P/O. Litherland Sgt. Green F/O. Chilcott Sgt. Hartley Sgt. Harris F/O Crawford
“G” F/O. Wilson Sgt. Felton P/O. Billam F/O. Newman Sgt. Gunn F/Sgt Harring
“H” Sgt. Lloyd Sgt. Avenell Sgt. Richardson SGt. Dewhirst F/Sgt. Hewson Sgt. McCarthy
“J” F/Sgt Erritt Sgt. Jones F/Sgt. Delaynn Sgt. Gleeson F/Sgt. Taylor F/Sgt. William
“K” F/Sgt. Thompson Sgt. Laws F/Sgt. Chapman Sgt. Conlon Sgt. Corbett Sgt. Spiers
Front Gunner – F/Sgt. Bolton
“L” F/Lt. Burtt Sgt. Taylor F/o. Presland F/O. Daynes F/O. Betty Sgt. Parkman
“M” F/O. Keith Sgt. Mitchell F/O. Guthrie Sgt. Bendix Sgt. Morrey Sgt. Brown
“N” F/Sgt Cole Sgt. Cammish F/Sgt. Burton Sgt. Wasterman F/Sgt. Stanwix Sgt. Sockett
“O” P/O Dobbyn Sgt. Cave F/Sgt. Palmer Sgt. Jackson Sgt. Ridyard Sgt. Duncom
“P” P/O. Lundy Sgt. Stevens F/Sgt. Jordan P/O Bignell Sgt. Green Sgt. Rundle
“R” W/O. Saxton Sgt. Fryer F/Sgt. Jowett F/Sgt Rees Sgt. Watson F/Sgt. Zunti
2nd Navigator F/Sgt Crerar
“S” P/O. Adams Sgt. Midgeley Sgt. Rawcliffe Sgt. Ward F/Sgt. Crawford Sgt. Hastie
“T” F/O Herbert Sgt. Russell Sgt. Rae F/O. Bacon Sgt. Poole P/O. Hughes
“X” P/O. Weatherstone Sgt. Gregory F/Sgt. Thompson Sgt. Lane Sgt. Spruce Sgt. Linehan
O.C. Night Flying S/Ldr. W.F. Parks, DFC.
Duty Engineer Sgt. Brown
R.McFarlane
Wing Commander, Commanding,
[Underlined] 50 Squadron, Skellingthorpe [/underlined]
[Page break]
[Photograph]
[Page break]
[RAF Challenge Chart]
[Page break]
Early DI’s change LT. accumulators Sign Form 700
Airtest check equip whilst flying
Attend W/Ops briefing D/F stations & freq’s etc. codes
Attend main briefing.
Collect. Colour of day charts
Main bomber codes
Beacon freq’s
M/F D/F groups to use
Broadcast times
Spare helmet
W/T challenge chart
Most of these are on rice paper and can be eaten before landing
Operate ground flight switch check voltage main acc’s
Switch on A1134? Amplifier for inter com.
Check radio whilst engines being run up.
Tidy up bundles of window on floor
Oxygen mask on before take off
Once airborne pencil in ranges on vis Monica screen
IFF switched on
Listen out for half hourly broadcast from base
Leaving coast wind out trailing aerial
Switch off IFF.
Keep continuous watch on Monica screen
Listen out on given wave band for German speech and tune transmitter to jamb the speech
Wind in trailing aerial when crossing enemy coast
Pass bundles of window down to F/Lt engineer
Transmit wind speed and height back to base. Details from nav
Keeping watch on Monica screen whilst listening for German speech on given wave length
Obtain bearing from beacon for nav. using loop aerial
On clear sky nights, obtain shots of given stars as asked for by navigator
On run up to target get in astro dome and look for A/C above you on bombing run
Receive any messages from base, decode them and pass to Pilot or nav
Send more winds back to base
Shout “contact” each time a blip comes on Monica screen
Keep searching for German R/T speech
Let trailing aerial out after leaving enemy coast.
Switch on IFF when near English coast
Place colours of day cartridges in very pistol
Wind in trailing aerial (crossing English coast)
If diversion message is rec’d before reaching English coast. Contact the diversion airfield and obtain QDM. Coarse to steer to get you to the airfield
[Page break]
[Photograph]
[Page break]
Alfred East Gallery Aircraft Paintings.
Grafton Underwood Oil Painting . Raffle for funds re Americans returning
Later Exhib Grafton Village Hall
Village scenes & aircraft.
Lady bought two church paintings
Vicars wife spitfire painting
Forest Green village bridge painting
Thank you letter.
Comission Lysander dessert painting
Kept. It.
Aircraft Paintings for guest speakers Air Gunners Ass
Chairman got praise
Lancaster Sqdn painting Lincoln £1,600 Memorial
Comission B24 Liberator painting Harrington Memorial unveiling
[Missing word] B17 over Grafton Underwood Dr Wildgoose
[Missing word] of friends deceased wife
Rothwell family mother father & wife all deceased
[Missing word] Ship painting for Malta.
[Page break]
Exhibiting Paintings in Rothwell Antique Shop.
2 Exhibitions in Rothwell library
Lancaster painting bought by friend donated to Bishop Stopford School.
Trevor Hopkins and talk to children
Photograph’s taken of paintings & made into cards
Started painting local scenes in water colours to produce greetings cards
Now visit all villages in this area taking photographs to use in producing more cards.
County library services use my Manor House painting to produce 4,000 cards.
Still have to go back to Lanc painting in oils
In 1999 exhibited 16 paintings All sold
[Page break]
[Underlined] PAINTING [/underlined]
Started 1970
Picture framing out of hand
Framing for art exhibitions & weddings
Nude lady painting in shed
Some of them not worth framing.
To Doctor [inserted] Walker [/inserted] with chest pains, pack up framing first do some for us
Calendars from drug firms.
Clear up back log framing
Try painting for change
Started copying calendars – water colours sold first one to neighbour
College told me change to oils
Did my first aircraft painting sketching model oils
Later photos of models at required angles
Started taking photo’s of local scenes to copy
Exhibited in Kettering P.O & Lloyds Bank
Commissioned paint bank for manager
Changed it to holiday painting
[Page break]
[Underlined] BROUGHTON ART EXHIBITION JUNE 2000 [/underlined]
Paintings hung 3 sold
1 painting took 2nd place in favourite painting vote.
Oct and November Exhibitions in-:
Alfred East Gallery Kettering
Kettering Library
Rothwell Holy Trinity
31 paintings sold during year 2000
Jan 2001, completed painting of Rothwell Church school building for use on letter heading note paper
Selection of greeting’s cards including A/C cards
Total over 100
Donate paintings-: Westside Community Group
Rowell Fair Soc
Rothwell Church
Painting of Rothwell Sunday School Bdls’
Broughton Flower Festival Poster
[Page break]
Intelligence Exams. Dover Hall? Northampton. RAF Cardington over night.
Fitness Exams [Underlined] DETAILS OF W/OP TRAINING [/underlined]
MAY
25.5.41 RAF Reserve
OCT
9-10-41 8 Recruit Centre Padgate.
OCT
16.10.41 10 Signals School [underlined] Blackpool [/underlined]
FEB
5.2.42 2 Signals School [underlined] Yatesbury [/underlined]
MAY
7.5.42 W/OP [underlined] North Coates [/underlined] Coastal Comm
SEP
16.9.42 7 Signals School [underlined] South Kensington [/underlined]
JAN
6.1.43 4 Signals School [underlined] Madeley [/underlined]
APR
6.4.43 7 A.G.S. Stormy Down
APR
27.4.43 1 A.F.U. Wigtown
JUNE
1.6.43 14 OTU Cottesmore, Saltby Market Harborough
SEPT
8.9.43 1654 Conversion Unit Wigsley. NOTS
OCT
22.10.43 50 Sqdn Skellingthorpe Lincs.
10.6.44 14 OTU Silverstone
1.8.44? 14 O.T.U. Turweston
[Page break]
RAF SERVICE OVERSEAS 1945/46.
[Underlined] OCT 1943 [/underlined]
Met my future 1st wife whilst serving in RAF Lincoln
She was an ATS girl also based in Lincoln
[Missing word] [Underlined] 1944 [/underlined]
After completing my operational flying 50 Sqdn Skellingthorpe posted to 17 OTU Silverstone as an instructor where I stayed until VE. Day May 1945.
By that time I was engaged to my ATS girlfriend but agreed not to get married whilst still flying
Large surplus of aircrew after VE Day.
Given choice to give up flying and take ground job.
After training were promised posting near home
1st 2nd and 3rd choice Desborough Market Harbor’o Silverstone
After courting 2 years decided to get married
Posted to RAF Kirkham 8 week course Receipts & Issues Officer
Fixed date of wedding 5th Oct 45
After finish of course posted to Blackpool P.D.C.
Then to North Pier to be told of our postings
My posting 56 FRU S.E.A.C.
Told to go to Karachi to find where 56 FRU was.
Home on leave for wedding & back to Blackpool
Trainload of us to Northweald Essex to fly over seas
[Page break]
NORTHWEALD LATE OCT. 1945
Parade 8am each morning hundreds on parade
Call for 50 personel 2 Liberators departing
Kept hanging back wifes parents living nearby.
5 weeks later not many of us left, all transported to [underlined] RAF Tempsford [/underlined] spy’s airfield [underlined] Bedfordshire [/underlined]
Now very cold snow on ground [underlined] no heating. [/underlined]
[Underlined] 11TH DEC [/underlined] 26 off us taken with kit, to waiting Lib
Given ‘K’ rations [underlined] no drinks no seats [/underlined]
1300 hrs took off for North Africa
Landed North Africa [underlined] Castel Benito Tripoli [/underlined] Mussolini’s airfield 7hrs 5mins
Canteen for cup tea Barrel of oranges
Slept in tent [underlined] cold [/underlined] Out door wash etc
Servicemen going home have preferance of A/C
Dock & harbour Tripoli full of sunken ships
Airfield littered with Axis A/C
[Page break]
[Underlined] 13TH DEC [/underlined] 4pm took off for [underlined] Cairo [/underlined] Landed [underlined] Almaza 6hrs 40mins [/underlined]
Taken to Helioplis Palace Hotel
Civil aviation hotel Very posh.
Cool bath in morning (Lady cleaner)
Trip to Pyramids in afternoon
Collect Roman coin [underlined] Diaclesus 300BC [/underlined]
Trouble with young Egyptian shoe shines
[Underlined] 15TH DEC 0630hrs [/underlined] Took off [underlined] Persia, [/underlined] Landed [underlined] Shaibah 5hrs [/underlined]
Very hot sunstroke centre near A/C
[Underlined] 15TH DEC 1500hrs [/underlined] Took off for India landed at [underlined] Mauripur Karachi 7hrs 20mins [/underlined] 10.20pm.
Given bunk beds in large hangar 3 high.
Spent 13 days at Mauripur including Christmas
Changed into Khaki clothing
Plenty of fruit and bananas and drink
Christmas day in shorts & hat only
Swimming in Arabian Gulf with dolphins
Hot sands Camel rides messy smells
[Page break]
[Underlined] 28 DEC 45 6 AM [/underlined]
Boarded Dakota to [underlined] Palam Delhi 4hrs 40mins [/underlined]
[Underlined] View of Everest during flight [/underlined]
28th DEC [underlined] 12.35PM Palam to Chakula 4hrs 15mins [/underlined]
[Underlined] 100 miles? From Calcutta [/underlined]
At Chakula for 2 or three days
Stayed on camp site all the time
Lived in bamboo huts on stilts [underlined] 4ft [/underlined]
Wild country all arround, jackals howling at nights
Primitive toilets on raised stairways
All personel were armed mostly Sten guns
All had firing practice on firing range
1ST JAN 46
We all boarded Indian train, no window panes no corridors
As Warrant Officer was I/C the train
Airmen firing from train at wildlife during journey
[Page break]
Thought I was in for rocket when we pulled into Calcutta station
Spent next few days in transit camp near Calcutta
Not allowed to leave camp over local Indians pushing for their independance
Whilst there played football against African black, they wiled the floor with us, playing with bare feet
Ice cream under shade of tree monkey’s dropping
Eating ice cream
5TH JAN 46.
[Underlined] TRANSPORTED TO DUM DUM AIRPORT CALCUTTA [/underlined]
12.30pm Boarded Dakota to Mingladon Airfield near Rangoon 4.30hrs
Total flying hours Tempsford England to [underlined] Mingladon Rangoon 39hrs 30mins [/underlined]
We were all taken by lorry transport (now 12 off us)
To Rangoon where we found 56 F.R.U.
F.R.U. = Forward Repair Unit.
[Page break]
We were taken to our separate mess’s
After a meal in the Sgts mess we were taken to a neaby bombed building nearby
Given timber & tools to make beds
Mosquito nets
[Underlined] No windows electrics water [/underlined]
After breakfast taken to 56 FRU stores
[Underlined] 56 FORWARD REPAIR UNIT. [/underlined]
Capable of repairing anything used in R.A.F.
Aircraft Vehicles Radio’s Parachutes etc
Stores in large [inserted] ex [/inserted] printing works
[Underlined] Job Detail As a W/O I was given the jobs [/underlined]
As, I/C our Sgts billet
Anti malaria officer
Fire officer
Petrol receipts & issues officer
As well as working in stores & Orderly Officer
[Page break]
[Underlined] Japanese POW’s working for us. Petrol drums [/underlined]
[Underlined] Very hot & sticky [/underlined] Atmosphere 110°
Green mould on shoes
[Underlined] Khaki shorts [/underlined] changed 3 times a day.
[Underlined] Dark [/underlined] soon after 5pm, thousands large bats
[Underlined] Fire fly’s [/underlined] lighting up tress
[Underlined] Canoe building [/underlined]
[Underlined] Victoria Lakes Sunday’s Me organising [/underlined]
[Underlined] Transport Food Bookings Snakes [/underlined] in lake
[Underlined] Hot sands [/underlined]
[Underlined] Petrol for Unit dance [/underlined]
[Underlined] Drains and sewers in Rangoon [/underlined] flooding in monsoon
Units closing down disposing of their equipment.
[Underlined] Orderly Officer Parachutes and Army Depot fire [/underlined]
[Underlined] Duty Free labels [/underlined] F/Lt. Adjutant
[Underlined] Rangoon toilets [/underlined] Squash dog on road
Water Festival
[Page break]
[Underlined] Monsoon rain [/underlined] Deluge on flat roof
Open sewers full
W/shops flooded testing canoes
We each bought a black steel trunk to store all our presents in to take home called a [underlined] deep sea trunk [/underlined]
[Underlined] One thing remains in my memory [/underlined]
Anglo Burmese ladies in office
11am Thursday’s shooting Jap war criminals
Listening to rifle shots ladies smiling.
[Underlined] EARLY JUNE 1946 [/underlined]
My demob group No 42 has come up
Transferred to a disposal centre on the outskirts of Rangoon
Sleeping 2 persons small tent
Were instructed to keep our arms in our beds, [underlined] “Dakoits” [/underlined] Burmese bandits from surrounding countryside
After a few days we were taken out by boat where our ship to take us home was moored [Underlined] The “Orduna” [/underlined]
[Page break]
REG PAYNE
WIRELESS OPERATOR
SGT RON BOYDON W/OP 207 SQDN
21/22 JAN 1944 OPS MAGDEBURG
ALL CREW BURIED IN BERLIN
1939-45 CEMETARY
“Bomber Harris and the Strategic Bombing Offensive 1939-1945
By the time war in Europe had ended more than 8,000 bombers had been lost during operational sorties, and by night alone nearly 14,000 were damaged, of which some 1,200 were totally wrecked. In terms of human casualties no fewer than 46,268 had lost their lives during or as a result of operations, and a further 4,200 had been wounded. In addition on non-operational flights 8,090 had been killed or wounded. Put another way, out of every 100 aircrew who joined an Operational Training Unit, on average 51 would be killed on operations, 9 would be killed flying in England, 3 would be seriously injured in crashes, 12 would become POW’s of whom some would be injured, 1 would be shot down but evade capture, and 24 would survive unharmed. No other branch of the fighting services faced quite these awesome odds.
[Page break]
1943/44
REG PAYNE
1435510 WIRELESS OPERATOR
50 SQUADRON
SKELLINGTHORPE
LINCOLN
PILOT SIR MICHAEL BEETHAM
NAV FRANK SWINYARD
BOMB AIMER LES BARTLETT
WIRELESS OPERATOR REG PAYNE
FLIGHT ENG. DON MOORE
MID UPPER GUNNER JOCK HIGGINS
REAR GUNNER FRED BALL
[Page break]
[Table of Aircraft & Aircrew Losses During Reg’s 30 Operations]
Total number of A/C lost on these operations 562.
Total number of aircrew killed 4,300. 1206 POW’s
Average number of A/C on each operation 425.
Of the 4319 men in the A/C shot down attacking Berlin only 992 survived 22.9 per cent.
[Page break]
[Underlined] BOAT TRIP HOME FROM BURMA RANGOON [/underlined]
As a W/O was given a berth in centre of ship
The ship terribly overcrowded
The only drinks water and tea
No canteen or such No books or library
30 day journey
Tried sleeping below deck first night
Slept on deck (crowded) after that
Quizz on how many miles the ship did each day
Went thro monsoon period
Attacked by swarm of locus
Hung dirty washing out of port hole
Noticed Army personel had ringworms
Nothing to do all day
Biggest event watching one chap having his boils squeezed each morning.
Called in at Ceylon, Alexandra Suez Gibralta
No one allowed off ship.
Went below to sleep just before we reached England
Docked in Liverpool mid July.
[Page break]
[Underlined] DEMOBBED AT RAF KIRKHAM 17TH JULY 1946 [/underlined]
W/O’s were told to leave their kit bags on deck and they will be taken to demob centre
All khaki clothing burned on parade ground
Our deep sea trunks were brought to us.
My kit bag had not turned up.
Had to pay 19/6d for missing overcoat (in kit bag)
Revolver & 40 rounds also in kitbag.
Told some of you W/O’s would loose your bloody head if it was’nt fixed on.
That’s all that was said
With that trundled my deep sea trunk to the railway station and home
[Page break]
[Underlined] SGT RON BOYDON [/underlined]
WIRELESS OPERATOR /AIR GUNNER 207 SQDN
LOST WITH ALL HIS CREW
WHILST BOMBING MAGDEBURG
21/22ND JAN 1944
YOU ARE NOT FORGOTTEN RON
REG PAYNE AND TUBBY MELHUISH
YOUR TWO EX RAF CHUMS.
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
Aviation Memory
Description
An account of the resource
A detailed account of Reg Payne's service in the RAF. He starts with a list of 18 RAF bases where he served in his 5 years of service. He was 16 when war was declared but volunteered for the RAF at 17. After tests he was selected for training as a wireless operator ending up at Blackpool. Morse had to be 10 words a minute or retraining as a gunner. Moved to RAF Yatesbury and speed increased to 18 words per minutes. Then RAF Stormy Down for air gunnery followed by #1 AFU Wigtown for training in flight.
By June 1943 Reg is at RAF Cottesmore, 14 Operational Training Unit.
He details his daily tasks before operations.
Next he is moved to RAF Wigsley Heavy Conversion Unit for conversion to Halifaxes then Lancasters then ended up at RAF Skellingthorpe.
The social life at Skellingthorpe is popular and he met his first wife.
November 1943 his brother is missing over Dusseldorf.
Each operation he was involved in is described in detail.
Later in his memoir he details where and when he trained.
There is a list of prisoners of war from his squadron and a colour photograph of Reg and two colleagues at the tail of Lancaster 'Just Jane'.
There is a list of Reg's paintings.
He details his post war service via Libya, Cairo, Iran, India and Karachi, ending up at 56 Forward Repair Unit in Rangoon.
In June 1946 he returned to the UK by ship.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Reg Payne
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
120 handwritten sheets
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Memoir
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
BPayneRPayneRv1
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
British Army
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.
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Belgium
Burma
France
Germany
Great Britain
Burma--Rangoon
England--Lancashire
England--Lincolnshire
England--London
France--Paris
France--Toulouse
Germany--Aachen
Germany--Augsburg
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Essen
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Leipzig
Germany--Magdeburg
Germany--Nuremberg
Germany--Schweinfurt
Germany--Stuttgart
Germany--Braunschweig
France--Marseille
Poland--Szczecin
France--Bordeaux (Nouvelle-Aquitaine)
Germany--Wolfenbüttel
Poland
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
1942
1943
1944
1944-03-30
1944-03-31
1944-04-05
1944-04-06
1944-04-18
1944-04-19
1945
1946
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Anne-Marie Watson
102 Squadron
14 OTU
17 OTU
49 Squadron
5 Group
50 Squadron
619 Squadron
Advanced Flying Unit
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
Albemarle
Anson
arts and crafts
bale out
Bennett, Donald Clifford Tyndall (1910-1986)
bomb aimer
bomb struck
bombing
bombing of Nuremberg (30 / 31 March 1944)
bombing of the Juvisy, Noisy-le-Sec and Le Bourget railways (18/19 April 1944)
bombing of Toulouse (5/6 April 1944)
Botha
Caterpillar Club
crewing up
Dominie
FIDO
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
Home Guard
incendiary device
Ju 88
Lancaster
Master Bomber
military living conditions
military service conditions
Morse-keyed wireless telegraphy
Mosquito
navigator
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operational Training Unit
Pathfinders
prisoner of war
Proctor
RAF Cottesmore
RAF East Kirkby
RAF Fiskerton
RAF Kirkham
RAF Madley
RAF Market Harborough
RAF Melbourne
RAF North Coates
RAF North Weald
RAF Padgate
RAF Pocklington
RAF Saltby
RAF Silverstone
RAF Skellingthorpe
RAF St Eval
RAF Stormy Down
RAF Tempsford
RAF Turweston
RAF Waddington
RAF Wigsley
RAF Wigtown
RAF Wittering
RAF Yatesbury
Stirling
superstition
training
Wellington
Whitley
Window
wireless operator
wireless operator / air gunner
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/622/10635/BPayneRPayneRv2.1.pdf
a90530e769feeb87faa075c28bdb865c
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
Payne, Reg
R Payne
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Payne, R
Description
An account of the resource
14 items. Two oral history interviews with Reg Payne (1923 - 2022, 1435510 Royal Air Force), his memoirs and photographs. Reg Payne completed a tour of operations as a wireless operator with 50 Squadron from RAF Skellingthorpe. His pilot on operations was Michael Beetham. <br /><br />The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Reg Payne and catalogued by Barry Hunter.<br /><br />
<p>This collection also contains items concerning Fred Ball. Additional information on Fred Ball is available via the <a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/100970/">IBCC Losses Database</a>.<a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/ball-fc/"></a></p>
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-07-03
2017-08-25
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
BEFORE I WAS IN THE RAF
[underlined] Wartime Memories [/underlined]. Reg Payne
[deleted] 2 [/deleted] 2
I didn’t think of being killed whilst flying until I visited one or two crash sites in the Kettering area, some of them were German aircraft and I knew members of the crew had been killed when the A/C crashed.
I visited the crash site of a Blenheim Bomber which crashed in some sand pits, I rescued parts of flying clothing in the hedge row, and found there were still parts of human flesh mixed with the lambs wool.
Another aircraft crashed near a pond and the crew were all killed, bits of the Blenheim Bomber were still on the ground. A bunch of boys with caterpilts [sic] were shooting at something floating in the pond. As it came nearer to me I saw that it was, a human eye ball.
All this didn’t stop me from Joining the RAF to fly when I reached the age of eighteen yrs.
After two yrs of training as a W/OP Airgunner for two yrs I finally arrived at RAF Skellingthorpe 50 Sqdn on the outskirts of Lincoln. My brother two yrs older was also flying in the RAF, near by at RAF Fiskerton, also a W/OP, he had already flown a number of operations.
I was already a member of a Lancaster crew, and my pilot had to fly on an operation with another, before he could take his own crew on his own. After the operation was over we were glad that he had returned OK, and said that he didnt [sic] think the operation was as bad as he expected.
The next day I had a phone call from my mother to say that my brother was missing from the same operation that my pilot was taken on. She asked me if I could come home.
I visited our Squadron C.O. and asked if I could visit my mother, he refused to let me go saying that my parents would perswade [sic] me to stop flying if I did. I told him that I promised him that
[page break]
[deleted] 2 [/deleted] 3
I would come back and continue flying. My Mother and Father both told me to be very careful when I was flying so the C.O. had nothing else to say to me. Luckily later we found that the Lancaster that my brother was in exploded whilst flying and two of the crew, by brother one of them, were blown thro [sic] the perspex roof, although in a German hospital they were not killed.
After a few weeks my mother told me that Ron Boydon the fellow that I had done all my training with was reported missing from operations, followed by Arthur Johnson who I trained with. She told me that Mrs Boydon has been seen looking in peoples gate ways at night looking for her son Ron.
We didnt [sic] think much of our hut at Skellingthorpe with no washing arrangements, to do this we had to walk to the Sgts Mess some distance away.
On our first evening there Fred our Rear Gunner and myself cycled to Lincoln as we were told it was only a short bike ride.
We found a small pub called the “UNITY”,? it was quiet inside not many people in the room that we were in, just tow ATS Girls sipping their two drinks together across the other side of the room.
It was not until they got up to go that we spoke to them, they had to be in their quarters by ten o’clock, in a large house near the cathedral. We were ready to go ourselves and asked if we could walk back with them. They seemed a couple of nice girls and we arranged to meet them at an earlyer [sic] time the next night
Luckily we were not wanted for any evening duties and we were able to get away early and spend time with the two ATS girls until it was time for them to be in their billets by ten oclock [sic]
We spent time with the two ATS girls for a few weeks and both Fred and I found a close relationship with them, Fred along with Joan & myself with Ena, we all became very friendly, and met each other as early and many times as we could get away.
Returning to the large room of ours in our hut, we were
[page break]
4
surprised one evening when entering our large room that there was three extra beds in there, with lots of kit bags and luggage scattered about the room. We had three Canadian aircrew members added to our room who had just joined our 50 Sqdn.
They seemed to get lots of parcels from Canada, and told us we could help ourselves to any chocolates or fruit that we could see in the room they could not cope with it all.
However the Station Warrent [sic] Officer came in one early evening and looked around the room. He said the place looked like a rubbish tip and he would come to look at it each evening and we were not to go out until he looked to see how tidy the room was. At times he was late comming [sic] so it became late each evening for Fred and I to meet Joan & Ena, especially as they had to be back in their billets prompt at 10 Pm.
However one evening the Lancaster that the three Canadians were flying in failed to return and all their clothing and goods were taken out of the room, leaving our room neat and tidy again as it was before the Canadians moved in.
Now that our room was now so clean and tidy, the Station Warrent [sic] Officer said that he would no longer come to visit us each evening as he could see that the room would no longer be full of food parcels etc.
I never did know if the three Canadians lost their lives, but if they did all I could think was that it cost the lives of three men to allow Fred and I to go out early evening to meet our girl friends when we were not flying early evening ourselves.
Having the three Canadians possibly killed made it possible for Fred and myself to go out early and meet our ATS girl friends when we were not on duty ourselves.
Many of [deleted] Fred [/deleted] Ena’s ATS friends had lost their air crew boy friends, and never knew if he had lost his life or not
[page break]
5
Ena’s ATS friend Joan spent all her spare time with Fred Ball our Rear Gunner. Fred was killed when our aircraft was in flames and he didnt [sic] Bale Out.
Lots of Ena’s ATS friends had lost RAF Boy friends flying on operations and tried not to get attatched [sic] to them anymore.
Ena’s Mother came to Lincoln and work in the NAAFI as she was called up to do war work. She chose Lincoln to be near to her daughter Ena.
She had lodgings with a nice lady Mrs Fatchet in Winn St Lincoln. Next door to her was a young lady, that had a small baby, she had it in her arms as we watched the Lancasters flying off on another operation.
She told me that the babies [sic] father was an aircrew member that had been missing from operations for some time, and no one had had any news of him. I always felt very sorry for her as she watched the Lancasters taking off from the Lincolnshire Airfields.
When I knew we were on operations that night I would ring Ena around lunch time, and say to her, I wont [sic] be able to meet you tonight, but all being well will see you tomorrow.
She knew that we were on operations that night.
With my brother Art now a POW in Germany, only two of his crew surviving, my mother was worried what would happen to me. She already knew that our Lancaster was on fire over the Humber Estory [sic]and four members of the crew didnt [sic] have time to bale out and were killed. I went thro [sic] the clouds pulling one of the carrying handles and not the parachute release handle, luckily I pulled the correct one and my parachute opened and I made a safe landing.
We were asked to identify the four bodies in the crashed aircraft
[page break]
6
by one of the senior RAF officers, but not one of us wanted to identify the crushed up bodies in the burned Lancaster. We did’nt [sic] want to go near the aircraft.
On one of our ten operations to Berlin, a German night fighter attacked us and his bullets made a large hole in our Port wing. I thought it was smoke coming out of the large hole in the wing, but our flight Eng. said it was petrol coming from one of the large tanks in the wings.
Arriving back as far as Northamptonshire we were nearly out of Petrol and our Pilot decided to make a landing on the emergency airfield at RAF Wittering to save the extra miles to Lincoln. We circled the airfield, and were waiting for the runway landing lights to come on, expecting any time for the engines to shut down as the petrol had all been used. At last the landing lights came on and we were able to land with all the petrol now used up.
As we entered the Wittering office buildings, we heard the dance band close down and found that no one had been on duty, to turn on the Aircraft landing lights when Aircraft were in trouble and needed to land.
Returning from another of our operations to Berlin we were told to land at RAF Pocklington in Yorkshire, as there was a dense fog in the Lincoln area. We tried a few times to find the runway at Pocklington, but then were told to proceed to RAF Melborne which we found was also foggy.
After flying quite low for some time Michael found it in the fog and managed to land safely.
A large van driven by a WAAF picked us safely up and drove us to their crew rooms. In the fan she had a radio that could hear all of our aircraft calling and saying that they must land as they had little or no fuel left.
[page break]
7
One of our squadron aircraft ran out of fuel and crashed into a nearby farm house, the farmer and his wife were both killed, and only the rear gunner in the Lancaster survived. From then on all the Lancasters on the circuit trying to land were told to Head their aircraft out to sea and Bale Out, which they had to do.
The fog stayed with us for three days up in yorkshire [sic], and we could’nt [sic] return back to Lincoln. We had no washing or shaving items for three days or money to buy anything with, not even our toothe [sic] brush’s [sic] or razors to shave with, we had to stay with our lancasters until the weather improved and we could fly them back to Skellingthorpe.
We had a scare one morning, we had just landed after completing another of our operations, and taxied the Lancaster back to our usual dispersal. Michael Beetham then said to us all, OK everybody “All Switch’s [sic] off.” Before I could check all my radio and inter Comm switch’s [sic], there was a loud scraping noise like a van dragging along the side of the aircraft, followed by a heavy thud.
We all scrambled out of the aircraft and expected to see a small lorry or van firmly stuck to the side of the aircraft, but there was nothing any where near us. The Bomb Aimer went back to the Aircraft and opened the little inspection door panel that allowed him to look down into the Lancasters Bomb bay. He was shocked at what he saw.
A thousand pound bomb had been still in the bomb bay, it had not dropped with the others over the target. Its [sic] a good thing that it didnt [sic] hit its nose cap on the way down the bomb bay or we would all have been blown to pieces.
I’ve often wonderd [sic] how the bomb disposal crews got to remove the bomb without it blowing up the Lancaster.
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We landed early morning after a long trip to Berlin again and our ground crew asked how the aircraft had flown, we all said there were no problems with the aircraft and we all left in a hurry to get back to the Sgts Mess and get our breakfast before getting into bed and have our sleep.
After we were all awake again around tea time we were told that they wanted to show us something about our aircraft. Arriving at the dispersal point of our aircraft “B” baker” the ground crews pointed to a large hole in the port wing where a large bomb had gone thro [sic] and left a large hole you could look thro. [sic] Not only did it go thro [sic] the wing it also went thro [sic] a large petrol tank
Luckily the petrol tank was empty by the time we got to the target. There were three tanks in each wing and this tank was empty when the bomb went thro [sic] it. Had it been thro [sic] the one next to it which was full of petrol we would never have got home and finished as POW’s etc.
On one Berlin Operation as we were getting close to Berlin, I heard the engines on the Lancaster open up and felt the aircraft starting to climb. Our Bomb Aimer Les Bartlett shouted to Jock Higgins our Mid Upper Gunner and said, “Not yet Jock, wait until I say now.” I moved over to our Astro-Dome near my compartment and looked above and in front of us, and I saw straight away a German JU88 Night Fighter which had not seen us.
We flew closely underneath it and Les shouted “OK Jock NOW” They both opened up together and I could see the red hot bullets crashing into the German Heinkel Night fighters. Our Bomb Aimer bullets were being sprayed along its wing area, but I noticed that Jock’s the Mid Upper Gunner, his red hot shower of bullets were going into the cabin area where all the crew members were close together. The JU88 continued to fly steadyly [sic] on for some time whilst the bullets continued to enter the cabin area where the crew were based. After a short time after
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the German night fighter tipped over on its side, with smoke now coming from its engines and cabin area, as it fell lower and lower it was lost from my view.
The forward members of our crew said, that smoke and fire came from it as it plunged down to the burning city below it, and was certainly shot down.
What upset me though, that our bomb Aimer was an officer, and he received a medal for his shooting, but Jock who was only a Sgt received not even a mention.
[underlined] Frank Swinyard Navigator. [/underlined]
Frank Swinyard was a Flying Officer, we sat very close together, and we go on together very well. Frank was our Navigator. Frank and I worked together. He would ask me what stars I could see from the ASTRODOME close by me, when I told him the ones in view, I would take his sextant and read out the degrees & minutes for him to use on his Astro Graph. Also I obtained quite a number of radio bearings for him from distant Radio stations, this helped him to plot his position.
When we were diverted to another Air Base on the way home he would not worry about getting the Lancaster there, he could ask me to get him a QDM to the base, [underlined] QDM COURSE TO STEAR [/underlined] after another on or two, I could take him there.
My worst flying experience was not a bombing operation, but an Air Gunners training flight which we had over the Humber Estory [sic] part of the North Sea of course
We had our own crew of seven, plus another pilot and his two gunners, making ten men altogether.
From Lincoln we had to fly over the Humber Estory [sic] where a spitfire would join us, and in radio contact would continue to attack us whilst our two gunners would train their guns on it as it dived on them. We would then call the Spitfire Pilot & tell him that the other pilot and his two gunners were changing over and we would call him to begin attacking us.
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Cameras were fitted to the guns so the film could be shown after the exercise to see if the Airgunner was using the correct deflection in the attacks etc.
We had our full crew of seven on board the aircraft, along with the other pilot and his two gunners.
On boarding the Lancaster I noticed our Flight Engineer was’nt [sic] taking his parachute with him, I remember saying to him, wheres [sic] your parachute Don, and he said, it’s only a training flight Im [sic] not bothered about that.
The time of the year was January but it was a sunny day although the sea looked very cold should we ever have to land up in it one day, and I wondered, should I be wearing my Mae West. Looking down from the aircraft all I could see now was cloud, so I didnt [sic] know how far away the coast was should you have to use your parachute etc.
The other pilot and his two gunners were moving into their positions in the aircraft, and I noticed that our two gunners had now joined us at the rear of the Lancaster where we could see the other Australian pilot and his two gunners do their part of the exercise.
At the word GO. the Lancaster was taken in a very steep dive, Ive [sic] never seen one dive so steeply, but as it pulled out of its steep dive one of it’s engines burst into flames.
The pilot operated his extinguisher for the engine and for a little time we thought all was well, but after the extinguisher had finished its work, the whole wing seemed to be on fire, and Michael gave the order for all of us to abandon the aircraft. There were only two escape doors in the Lancaster, and ten men who needed to use them.
The Australian Pilot & his two gunners in the front of the aircraft started to bale out of the nose escape exit, as our Mid upper gunner Jock Higgins baled out of the rear exit, but damaged his ribs as he hit the tail plane. I tried to leave by the back exit, but the
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gust of wind blew me back again. I think I was given a push with someones [sic] foot that got me out of the aircraft.
As I fell thro [sic] the air there was nothing but cloud below me, and I didnt [sic] know if I was over the sea or the land.
I did a silly thing I was tugging away at the carrying handle of the parachute pack and not the release metal handle so by the time I had pulled the correct parachute release handle I had already gone thro [sic] the cloud.
A large part of the wing had broken off and was coming down behind me, I’m glad that it drifted away from me and didnt [sic] cut thro [sic] my parachute.
As I got nearer the ground I could see the coast a short distance from me, and I was drifting towards it, then there was a large crashing noise, and smoke and flame as the Lancaster crashed a few miles in land near East Kirkby Airfield and I was still drifting that way myself.
I finally landed in a large field and before I could get in a standing position I saw an RAF van coming towards me with two airmen in it. At the same time some one on a parachute coming down a short distance away landed in a dense spinney, I could hear the branches on the trees breaking as he fell thro [sic] them, I found out later it was the other Australian Pilot.
Our Lancaster had crashed close to East Kirkby Airfield, where I was taken to, there were four men in the aircraft when it crashed and I was asked if I could identify the bodies. I was told they were all crushed, and I just didnt [sic] want to look at them
Fred Ball our Rear Gunner would no longer come with me when I would visit Ena in Lincoln he had every chance to bale out the aircraft early but he didnt [sic] have the pluck to do this Jock Higgins hurt his ribs as he baled out and hit the tail plane, he spent a short time in the base hospital and made a good recovery.
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Following this air crash I would go into Lincoln to see Ena on my own.
Also I was introduced to Ena’s mother who was in lodgings with Mrs Fatchet in Lincoln, whilst working in one of the large NAAFI forces canteens in Lincoln.
Luckily I had plenty of time off when not flying, and during the cold winter day’s [sic] I could ride on my bike and visit Mrs Fatchet at her home in Winn St.
She always made me welcome and found me something to eat, she had a fish & chip shop next door to her so I could always pop in there during the day.
Before going on an operation taking six or eight hours flying time, after no sleep during the day, we were given Wakey Wakey tablets which we only swallowed just before we were airborne, there was no chance of a sleep during the day before going on operations, you didnt [sic] even know where the target was until the main briefing just you were airborn. [sic]
I was the wireless Operator in the crew of Lancaster LL744 VNB 50 SQDN. each morning after breakfast, if I had not been flying the night before, after breakfast I had to visit the Accumulator Store and collect two small but heavy accumulators, on my bike I would ride to our Lancaster, and replace them with the two in the aircraft. I then had to [inserted] VISIT [/inserted] the flight office and collect the form 700 and say the batteries had been changed Sign my name etc. and return the two batteries that I had replaced to the accumulator store. This had to be done by me every day unless I had been on operations the night before.
The batteries had to be changed each day, even if the aircraft had not been flown.
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During one operation the two gunners said how cold they were, especially the Rear Gunner.
Michael Beetham air pilot told me to see what the problem was, I had to put a portable oxygen [inserted] BOT. [/inserted] round my neck before I went down, you wouldn’t last long without one.
I could see straight away what the trouble was, the back door was open & a strong freezing cold wind was coming in.
The flight Engineer came down to help me, but together we could not close the door. There must of [sic] been a wind of over one hundred miles per hour coming thro [sic] the open door and the temp would be around minus thirty degrees.
With the help of I think the Navigator we managed to tie the door up but not fully closed, and leave a sharp knife there to cut the rope should we need to bale out.
One other night the mid upper gunner said his turret had frost all over it and he could’nt [sic] see a thing, he asked me to bring him an axe, I gave him one and he smashed the perspex from the front of his turret so he could see, luckily he had electrical clothing on and could only have the turret facing backwards.
We have a long length of rope close to the back door in the Lancaster, should a crew member loose [sic] an arm or a leg and we are three or four hours from reaching home, we could tie a torch on the wounded crew member, tie a length of rope to his parachute release handle and when passing a large German town or city push the wounded airman out the back door. His parachute would open and he would be seen with the torch and parachute. Hoping he would be rushed to a German hospital to have his life saved.
We called it The dead mans rope.
As a Wireless Operator whilst I was flying on operations I was given a frequency band on my radio to search, and if I picked up a German mans [sic] voice giving out instructions
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I would tune my transmitter to this frequency, and press down my morse code key, this would transmit the sound of one of our Lancaster engines on that frequency and blot him out. A Microphone was placed against one of the engines for that reason.
To prevent to [sic] many aircraft over the target at the same time and hitting each other, we were divided into two or three waves, First, Second, or third wave, we had our own height to bomb the target and the time over the target, but after a long flight to get there we rarely arrived at our time over target, it was not unusually [sic] for an aircraft to get an incendiary bomb thro [sic] its wing whilst over the target, from an aircraft above.
Whilst over the target area a senior RAF officer would be circling the city area, he was the “Master Bomber” he would be shouting out details of which colour’d [sic] flare’s [sic] to aim at, reds or greens etc. His language at times didnt [sic] meet up to an RAF Officer.
On one operation we were told to land at St Eval Cornwall on our way home, but during our flight I received a message, which said cancel Landing instructions “Return to Base” Unfortuneately [sic] the Wing Commanders Wireless Operator failed to get this message and they landed at St Eval. The only crew to land there.
All the Sqdn Aircrew were at the airfield when the Wing Comm landed back at Skellingthorpe to Cheer him home.
At our next briefing for an operation the Wing Commander said, Wireless Operators, make sure you get all the messages broad casts not like some clot I could name that misses them. His wireless operator stood up and said. If thats [sic] what you think of me sir, you
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can get some other Wireless Operator to fly with you tonight, and then started walking towards the door. RAF police at the door moved to stop him leaving, but the Wing Commander said let him go.
I’m glad I was’nt [sic] the Wing Comm Wireless Operator.
The Wireless Operator had an unusual name which you could remember and looking at a long list of aircrew who lost their lives on fifty Sqdn I saw his name on the list.
After breakfast if I found I was in operations that night, I knew that our Sgts Mess Phone was disconnected and to Tell Ena that I would not be able meet her tonight I used to cycle to a nearby village and us the public Phone Box (she always knew the reason why.
On one day when operations were detailed, I found our crew were not on the list of crews taking part.
I needed a few items such as soap & toothepaste [sic] etc and cycled into Lincoln to purchase them.
I found Lincoln rather quiet whilst in the shopping area with no local aircraft flying at the time.
As it became dusk winter time, all the local airfields were preparing for aircraft take off,
Suddenly I heard a heavy Lancaster taking of [sic] from Waddington, taking off with an overload, then another one from our Skellingthorpe, also from Fiskerton & Bardney, all these Lancasters were flying with an overload of bombs and needed all the power their engines had to get them airborn. [sic]
This was the first time I had been in Lincoln City to hear all the aircraft circling round Lincoln with a heavy overload of bombs, they needed all the power their engines had, to get them airborne. The people of Lincoln didnt [sic] seem to take notice of it I suppose they were quite used to it.
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Ena & Joan had given Fred our Rear Gunner & I a brass Lincoln Imp which they said would bring us luck, and told us not to fly without them.
I kept mine on my flying jacket so I always had it with me when I flew. Fred often removed his from his flying jacket and wore it on his tunic when he went out at Evenings.
One evening we had attended briefing for an operation, and were on our way to our aircraft when Fred told us he didnt [sic] have his Lincoln Imp with him, On arriving at our aircraft we told a ground staff member and he said he would collect it from our billet, after we gave him the hut number, and the position of Freds [sic] bed etc. Freds [sic] Lincoln Imp was on his tunic hanging up over his bed. First bed on the left as you go in the main door.
Off went the man in his van and he returned later with Freds [sic] Lincoln Imp which he had removed from Freds [sic] tunic
We all felt better after this, and we hoped it would make Fred more careful to make sure he always wore his Lincoln Imp.
It was a month or two after this that we had to do an airgunnery exercise with some extra members of the crew, during the exercise the pilot put the Lancaster in a very steep dive, which caused one of the engines and the wing to burst into flames. The Lancaster was overloaded with ten crew members taking part. Four crew members were killed when the Lancaster crashed and sadly Fred was one of them.
My bed was next to Fred’s and I didnt [sic] have a very good nights sleep, I lay awake for some time, looking up at Freds [sic] tunic which hung close to my bed the early sun light shone over Freds [sic] bed area, his tunic was hanging up above it, and the sun was shining on a small brass item on the lapel. I could’nt [sic] believe it, it was his Lincoln Imp and he was’nt [sic] wearing it again.
[inserted] PS I still wear my Lincoln Imp. [/inserted]
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I think my first fear of our operational flying was the Lancaster taking off and getting airborne.
At the briefing for the operation we were usually told we would all be flying with a thousand pound overload.
With a normal all up weight of bombs in the Lancaster it took a long run along the runway before the aircraft became airborn, [sic] but when they had added another thousand pounds of bombs on the aircraft it became that bit more stressful.
As the Lancaster began its way along the runway, the Navigator would read the speed it was travelling at, it needed one hundred miles per hour before it could take off.
Some times when the pilot could see that the aircraft was not going to reach that speed at a certain position along the runway, and the gate was getting closer on the throttle control, he would say to the flight engineer, “THRO THE GATE”, and the throttles were pushed that little bit more before the aircraft started leaving the ground.
[underlined] The gate had to be moved to get [/underlined] the take off speed up to 100 miles per hour.
We had an ELSAN toilet at the rear of the aircraft, but it was not used very much when we were flying. We all had our own metal cans close by us that we could use and they were emptied into the Elsan Toilet as we left the aircraft. The Elsan toilet was at the rear of the aircraft, and to get there in flight you needed a portable oxygen bottle to breath for the journey, and for all your layers of heavy clothing, and the temperature around minus thirty degrees you could’nt [sic] take your gloves off and touch anything.
Most of our flying time over Germany was around six to eight hours. Berlin was around eight hours which our crew flew ten times. We went there three times in five days. (Nights)
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In our pockets we had a bag of sweets, and a selection of money according to which country we were flying over. Also we had a map of the area that we could use should we have to bale out and find our way to safety.
If we had flying boots with high leather padding half way up to the knee, a knife would be in one of the boots so the tops could be cut off should you be shot down in Germany, or any enemy country, to make them look just like a pair of shoes, and not flying boots.
We also had water tablets in our pockets to use when selecting water from small streams, or brooks.
As the Wireless Operator I had to know the position of some of the stars, the Navigator would ask me which ones were plainly in view. I then had to use the Sextant and take a shot of the star asked for. This was taken in Degrees & Minutes and the correct time. From this the Navigator had equipment where he could plot his position
3.12.43 around lunch time Michael Beetham was instructed to take his crew to RAF Waddington to collect a Lancaster.
When we got there the Lancaster DV376 was already loaded with bombs and before we took it to our airfield, we had to go off and bomb Leipzig first, then take it to Skellingthorpe
During the operation we were attacked and damaged by a JU88, we were very short of fuel and managed to land at Wittering.
Another Lancaster from Skellingthorpe had to collect us the next day and take us back to our base Skellingthorpe whilst the Lancaster DV376 went thro [sic] repairs.
On the 29.12.43 we had to Bomb Berlin, and had a [sic] Incendiary Bomb through our Starboard Outboard Petrol tank and were lucky to get back home again.
We flew on operations to Berlin ten times, and in doing so, we lost 383 aircraft
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Our first three operations were to Berlin [underlined] 22.11.43 23.11.43 26.11.43 55 MISSING. [/underlined]
114 aircraft missing in our first three operations.
The inter comm system was powered by two smallish Lead Acid Batteries. Every morning, it didnt [sic] matter if the aircraft had flown or not these Lead Acid Batteries had to be replaced.
Each morning after breakfast, I as the Wireless operator, I had to visit on my bike the Battery Store. I had to collect the two batteries on my bike and cycle across the airfield where the Lancaster was parked. I had to change the batteries in the Lancaster. I then had to visit the flight offices and ask for the form 700 for our Lancaster.
I then had to sign it to say the batteries had been changed, then on my bike again I would return the two batteries that I had removed from the Lancaster to the battery store where they would be put on charge again.
This I had to do as the Wireless Operator every day, regardless of the day of the week or the weather. Even if the Lancaster had not left its parking site. The hardest job was finding the form 700.
If we were on our way back after an operation over Germany, and the weather was bad over lincoln [sic],”usually fog”. we would be diverted to another airfield which could be as much as sixty miles away from Lincoln.
To help our navigator, I would contact the airfield and ask for a QDM, a course to steer to reach them. By pressing down my morse key, the receiving station could give me a course to fly to reach their airfield, which I would then pass on to our navigator & the pilot.
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My Navigator was a wind finder, this because he was an experiest [sic] Navigator of around thirty years or more of age.
The winds that he found I would pass them on to 5 group, and these would be passed on to all 5 group aircraft in their half hourly broadcasts.
One evening I spent some time passing wind details to the 5 group radio people not knowing if the receiver was a man or a WAAF female.
In morse code I asked if the receiver was a male or a WAAF. I got a very short but strong answer,
In morse code I got, ([symbols]) which was a [underlined] G [/underlined] and an [underlined] S [/underlined]
The G & the S. was a short way to tell me to [underlined] get Stuffed. [/underlined]
When I attended de briefing after the operation, I asked if the 5 group radio operators tonight were male or female, and I was told they are all WAAF female operators.
All this gave us a lighter side of the serious thing we were doing in bombing cities in Germany ETC.
During our training days at RAF Cottesmore, we would be riding our bikes back to Cottesmore after an evening out at Stamford. Frank Swinyard our Navigator would ask me to point out certain stars in the sky, as he always asked me to do his astro shots for him with the sextant.
He had to make sure that I knew the star that he wanted Both he and our pilot (now Sir Michael Beetham) received the DFC. after war, but for us Sgts, there was nothing.
We always relied on my radio bearings when in trouble to get us home safely.
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When flying over the sea, I was taught to let my trailing aerial out, this hung down from the aircraft and [deleted] locked [/deleted] [inserted] touch’d [sic] [/inserted] the sea when the aircraft was flying at sixty feet.
If the pilot was flying over the sea and in the dark he could not see the water if he was going to ditch.
With my radio on, I would loose [sic] my signal as soon as the aerial touched the sea, and I would tell the pilot we are at 60 ft, and he would land the aircraft in the sea. We would call this ditching, “having to ditch”
When we were doing our training, flying as a crew on 14 operational unit at Cottesmore, I would tune my radio into one of the regular BBC programmes and we would all listen to some nice music, I would turn it down should our pilot want to give us instructions. Our cross country flights sometimes lasted two or three hours.
It became general practice for bomber crews to wear a white silk scarf when flying on operations, printed in black ink on the scarves [deleted] wh [/deleted] were the names of the German cities that the wearer had bombed. This went on for a short time until we heard that airmen shot down over Germany wearing one of these scarves, had one wound round their necks and hung on a lampost [sic] etc. This soon stopped us wearing them anymore.
By this time Ena my ATS girl friend and I had become very close to each other, she knew I was on operations, as I had contacted her & told her I would not be seeing her this evening.
However in the morning on the BBC news they would mention the RAF Bombing raid, then finish by saying sixty five of our bombers failed to return, and she could’nt [sic] believe it when I rang her the next day and said I will meet you again tonight.
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On a bombing raid to a large German city, the RAF Pathfinder Force would have arrived there and dropped marker flares for us to aim at, Greens & Reds.
Along with them would be the master Bomber, he would be in charge of the operation.
Green & Red marker flares were dropped all around the city and his voice could be heard telling us not to aim at the Reds, but hit the greens. I think what surprised me most was his bad language and his swearing.
I spoke to Michael Beetham and asked who was that man using that language over the target and he would say it was Wing Commander So & So.
I never thought that an officer such as Wing Co. would use language like that, I only heard it from Erks as we queued for our lunch.
The RAF bombers arrived over their targets in two or three different waves, each wave flew at a different height, should you be late getting over Berlin, you could have two hundred bombers dropping bombs from above. Our navigator F/O Frank Swinyard always urged Michael Beetham to get to the target on time.
There could be 500 ft between the height of each wave. One night we had a bomb dropped on us from above, it punched a large hole in one of our petrol tanks, passing thro [sic] the wing. We were lucky that the tank was empty, the petrol being used to get us to the target, should it have been the one next to it which was full, we would never have got back to Lincoln.
The wireless operator controlled the heat entering the Lancaster, you could never please all the crew. It entered the aircraft from the Engine Exhaust by the side of the Navigator, If I turned it up to please the pilot & Flight Engineer, the navigator would tap my knee and get me to turn it down a bit.
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[underlined] LANDING INSTRUCTIONS [/underlined]
When there was [underlined] two Squadrons [/underlined] based at the same airfield
This could involve over thirty aircraft wanting to land at their airfield, and most of them had only twenty minutes fuel left in their tanks.
[underlined] NUMBER [/underlined] 1 The first aircraft to arrive had to orbit at three thousand feet, and as he circled the airfield he would call out his position on the circuit such as “CROSS ROADS,” OR “BAKERS FARM,” “RAILWAY STATION”, then NUMBER 2 would arrive and call up and he would follow No 1 on the circuit shouting out NO 2 BAKERS FARM ETC,
After around four of five aircraft were circling at three thousand feet, number one would be told to circle at two thousand feet, but still shout his number and position on the circuit, until he was called down to one thousand feet, where he would call out, No 1 down wind, then he would call out No 1 Funnels, then No 1 “touching” “down” then No 1 clear as he left the runway
Our flying control would give the calling aircraft their number and instruct them when they could reduce their height as long as they all called there positions out whilst flying round the circuit
This would possibly go on for fourty [sic] aircraft to land. Our crews were trained to do this on night training exercises, to prevent aircraft running out of fuel whilst circling the airfield many times waiting to land.
My pilot, Michael Beetham (now Sir Michael Beetham) was told by one of the WAAF M.T. drivers that he could use one of the Commer vans on the airfield to check on the servicability [sic] of the aircraft. He asked me if I could drive a car, and on telling him NO. He then said, I have never driven a car.
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This came about because the Wing Comm. Spoke to Michael Beetham and said, now you have been promoted to a Flt Lt you will have the responsibility of checking the servicability [sic] of the Lancasters in “B Flight, but you can use one of the comer vans to get round the airfield. He didnt [sic] like to tell the Wing Commander that he had never driven a car before.
As the Wireless Operator I had the major hot air supply control close to my seating. Also it was close to where the Navigator spread his maps and charts to keep us on course.
The actual heat came from the flames of the port inner “Roles [sic] Royce” Merlin Engine, and were quite hot at times.
The navigator often got quite hot during checking his Course and direction, and signalled me to turn it down a bit, but after ten minutes or so the crew at the front of the aircraft complained at feeling the cold.
I could never please all of them.
Frank Swinyard FLT.LT. was our navigator, also he was a wind finder, from time to time he would find a wind & I would transmit it to our five group base
We must have had around ten aerials on the Lancaster, most of them small whip radar aerials, these had to be looked at before each flight to check that they had not been damaged by the ground crews
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During the bombing operations that we did to Berlin, I would look out of the astro dome and see areas of Berlin covered in the small incendiary bombs, the wide roads were plain to see running thro [sic] the city with all the buildings on fire each side of the roads.
At regular intervals the four thousand pound cookies would explode in the roads and that part of the wide road could not be seen any more, the whole area was covered in large cicular [sic] explosion areas, and the wide roads that were clear to see at the beginning of the raid, were not there anymore, just one large area of fire.
As we had no washing facilities on the site where we slept, we had to walk some distance to the Sgts mess, there we had washing and shower facilities. After we had been in the showers and dried ourselves we had to fold up our towels and put them back in our canvas hold alls, they never got dry, and were always damp when we used them.
Our canvas hold alls were hung on a long row of coat hooks in the shower room of the Sgts Mess.
After a number of weeks we were told to remove our canvas hold alls from the Sgts Shower rooms for a single day. During this time all the canvas holdalls were removed on a trolley that were [underlined] still [/underlined] hanging on the coat hooks, these hold alls were the property of the Sgts who were missing from operations.
When our Lancaster was taking off with an overload of bombs, I would see the flames comming [sic] from the port inner engine, and spreading over the leading edge of the wing.
It was only a few hours before that I had seen the petrol Bowser pumping petrol into the wings in the same area. And petrol running down the wings.
I felt easier after ten minutes of flight, only a small flame leaving the exhaust.
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During my time with 50 Sqdn at RAF SKELLINGTHORPE aircrew started wearing long silk scarf’s [sic] (pure white) on the scarf’s [sic] were printed in black marking ink the names of the German cities that they had bombed.
We were all proud of our scarves mine had the name of Berlin on it ten times.
This all came to an end when it was found out that aircrew who were shot down and were wearing one of these scarfs angered the german public, that the scarf was hung round the airmans neck and he was hanged from the nearest lamp post or tree.
I dont [sic] think I saw anyone wearing his any longer.
I still have mine in my wardrobe.
The pilot of the Lancaster sat in the front of the Lancaster on the Port (Left) side, behind him sitting at a large table was the Navigator, he needed a large table to spread his maps open so he could read his maps.
Also on the left hand side of the aircraft, behind the Navigator was the Wireless Operator, who had his large Marconi transmitter and receiver in a smaller table, along with his morse key for him to transmit his messages etc.
Also by the side of the Wireless operator was the Monica (aircraft Warning) Receiver which he had to keep his eyes on thro [sic] out the flight.
Down along the Starboard side of the aircraft were a number of box’s [sic] of “Window”. Window was small lengths of stiff paper, with a stiff metal like coating on the paper strips. The Bomb aimer in the nose of the aircraft would thro [sic] out a bundle every five or six mins or so, and each time he would call out Window.
A large blip would show on my Monica screen as it passed us by, and I had no need to shout a warning.
When I saw a blip on the monica screen & the
[page break]
27.
bomb aimer had said nothing, I would shout a warning, shouting “CONTACT” “STARBOARD QUARTER UP” our Lancaster would dive in a different direction and for the next few minutes everyone would search the sky until we were sure we were on our own again,.
The paper bundles of window strips were along the bomb bay floor in a row along the starboard side,
As our flight continued I would keep passing these bundles down to the bomb aimer in the nose of the aircraft, and as he said “WINDOW” I would see the blip apear [sic] on my Monica screen.
Its when I saw a blip apear [sic] on my screen and the bomb [inserted] aimer [/inserted] had not spoken that I shouted contact Port, should it be that, or Starboard if it was on our starboard side.
As a Wireless operator I had to tune my receiver to our five Group radio broadcast every half hour to see if they had any messages for us.
One part of my operational flying that I never felt easy with, was when we became airborne on an operation.
The Lancaster always had a one thousand pound over load and the engines needed every bit of power to get us airborn. [sic]
I would look out of my small side window and see the flames leaving the port engine exhaust, the flames were so long they even left large scorch marks on the wings, each side of the engine.
I knew that in those wings were over two thousand gallons of high octain [sic] petrol, the flames would burn the paint off the wings, each side of the engine. This continued until we reached the height we were detailed to fly at over Germany.
[page break]
28.
In our flying clothing pockets we had a fare [sic] ammount [sic] of French or Dutch money which we could use if we had to bale out of the aircraft over such as Holland or France. We also had a supply of water purification tablets to make sure we had drinking water. This all had to be handed back in to the Squadron after landing, which we were always glad to.
A little farther down the aircraft where the Navigator sat, and the Wireless operator, was the rest bed, quite a large bed where a crew member could be placed if he had been wounded.
It was also handy for placing spare heavy flying clothing, especially if I myself had to move into one of the turrets to take the place of a gunner if he had been wounded. I would need to wear some heavy warm clothing.
All our Wireless operators had completed an Airgunners course during his training and could man one of the turrets if need be.
During our crew training period at 14 OTU Cottesmore and Market Harborough we were detailed to do long cross country flights taking two or three hours.
I made this period a little more enjoyable by selecting some nice music on the radio and feeding it on to our “inter comm” circuit in the Wellington,.
Our crew always looked forward to this.
But when flying on our operations over Germany we needed every bit of information on the inter comm spoken, and action had to take place immediately
29.
Our Pilot Michael Beetham was concerned that we were always in bed at nights at a reasonable time.
He had nothing to fear for Fred our rear gunner and myself, as our two ATS girl friends had to be in their quarters before ten oclock [sic] at nights failing this they were not allowed out at nights for some time.
We only had a fifteen minutes bike ride back to our hut at Skellingthorpe, and were soon in bed.
Our ATS girls often gave us a sandwich or a slice of cake to eat on our way back to Skellingthorpe so we didnt [sic] go back feeling hungry.
During our operations and the long journey, our reward came when our Bomb Aimer decided which bunch of PFF marker flares he was going to aim att. [sic]
He would then say “Bomb Doors Open”, and a cold draft would fill the aircraft, then he said “Steady” Steady – “Steady”, and then “Bombs Gone”. You could hear and feel the “clonk”, “clonk”, as the bombs left their positions hanging in the bomb bay. The cold air left you as he said Bomb Doors closed.
We all felt better now we had no bombs on board, and the aircraft felt much lighter now all we had was the long journey home, hoping that there would be no fog over our airfield and we could have a nice long sleep.
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Title
A name given to the resource
Before I was in the RAF by Reg Payne
Wartime Memories
Description
An account of the resource
An account by Reg Payne of his wartime experiences. Too young to sign up at the start of the war he spent two years in the Home Guard. Training started at age 18 and lasted for two years. He served at RAF Skellingthorpe and his brother served at RAF Fiskerton. His brother was shot down and taken prisoner but Reg was not allowed to go home to comfort his mother.
He met his future wife in the Unity bar in Lincoln.
Reg survived a crash on a fighter training session when four of his aircrew died.
He also survived ten operations to Berlin. On one operation they were shot up and lost a lot of fuel and had to make an emergency landing at RAF Wittering where no one could be found because they were at a party, on base.
Arriving back on another operation they found everywhere fogged in but landed at RAF Melbourne where they had to stay for a few days until the fog cleared. They had no clothes to change into, no money and no toothbrushes.
After one operation they landed safely and on powering down the aircraft a bomb, which should have been dropped over Germany, came free and rattled down the bomb bay without exploding.
Once they came back with a large hole in the wing, made by a bomb.
On another op they shot down a JU-88 night fighter.
Bombing operations were directed by a Master Bomber who set flares.
Reg and Fred were given Lincoln Imps as mascots but the night Fred died he had left his mascot on another tunic.
He describes the landing procedures when 40 Lancasters arrive back at the same time, most low on fuel.
His navigator, Fl Lt Frank Swingerd calculated winds aloft and Reg transmitted these to 5 Group aircraft.
He describes the various operating areas of the crew on board the Lancaster.
Creator
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Reg Payne
Format
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28 handwritten pages
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Text. Memoir
Identifier
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BPayneRPayneRv2
Coverage
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Civilian
Royal Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Leicestershire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Rutland
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Leipzig
England--Cornwall (County)
Germany
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.
Contributor
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Tricia Marshall
David Bloomfield
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
14 OTU
5 Group
50 Squadron
aircrew
Blenheim
bomb struck
bombing
civil defence
crash
Distinguished Flying Cross
flight engineer
ground personnel
heirloom
Home Guard
Ju 88
Lancaster
Lincoln
love and romance
lynching
Master Bomber
military living conditions
military service conditions
navigator
Operational Training Unit
Pathfinders
pilot
prisoner of war
radar
RAF Bardney
RAF Cottesmore
RAF East Kirkby
RAF Fiskerton
RAF Market Harborough
RAF Melbourne
RAF Pocklington
RAF Skellingthorpe
RAF St Eval
RAF Waddington
RAF Wittering
sanitation
superstition
training
Window
wireless operator
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/790/10771/PDaviesHM1701.2.jpg
e6daf8f8f03865493b5a9708da17e4ce
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/790/10771/ADaviesHM171009.1.mp3
86742009fa3786e958f911e74bcb67bc
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
Davies, Howell
Howell M Davies
H M Davies
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Squadron Leader Howell Davies (b. 1939, 2617909 Royal Air Force). He served in the RAF 1963 - 1994.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-10-09
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
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Davies, HM
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 Howell Davies
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Nigel Moore
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-10-09
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
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Sound
Identifier
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ADaviesHM171009
PDaviesHM1701
Conforms To
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Pending OH transcription
Format
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00:56:44 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Howell grew up on the Glamorgan coast. After the university air squadron, he joined the RAF in April 1962, training on Provosts at RAF South Cerney. He then went to RAF Swinderby and flew the Vampire T11. He subsequently trained on Vulcans at 230 Operational Conversion Unit at RAF Finningley and the Bomber Command Development unit. He joined 50 Squadron at RAF Waddington. Howard flew Chipmunks at Central Flying School and worked as an instructor in several locations. After a refresher course, he returned to fly on Vulcans at RAF Scampton 35 Squadron as pilot leader and pilot instructor, training crews on terrain-following radar.
Howell discusses the change from Bomber Command to Strike Command, and feelings around the RAF giving up its nuclear strike capability to the navy. He examines the role of captaincy and piloting. Howell outlines how crews came together and describes target study. He also relates his experience of Quick Reaction Alert. Howell describes low level flying in North America and the United States and flying to Libya, Cyprus and Malta. He was trained to do air-to-air refuelling.
Howell enjoyed teaching people to fly and trained the first women at RAF Swinderby. He delineates the training he co-ordinated at RAF Bawtry and the RAF Staff College, Bracknell. His final posting was to RAF Support Command at Brampton. He was also involved in Royal Navy elementary flying training at RAF Topcliffe.
In retirement, Howell spent 20 years restoring a Hawker Demon.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
United States
Libya
Cyprus
Malta
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sally Coulter
35 Squadron
50 Squadron
aircrew
pilot
RAF Bawtry
RAF Brampton
RAF Finningley
RAF Scampton
RAF South Cerney
RAF Swinderby
RAF Waddington
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/800/10781/ADellowJA170617.2.mp3
643b36b0ab4c85a5824d3d83a5adba37
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
Dellow, James Albert
Dellow, Jim Albert
J A Dellow
Description
An account of the resource
Six items. An oral history interview with Flight Lieutenant James Albert Dellow (1921, 13918226, 171266 Royal Air Force) his log books and note books. He flew operations as a bomb aimer with 44 Squadron.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by James Dellow and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-06-17
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Dellow, JA
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DB: This is Denise Boneham and today I am talking to James Albert Dellow in his home at Icklingham in Suffolk. Today’s date is the 17th of the 6th 2017 and it is currently 11.10 hours.
JD: When war was declared in September 1939, I’d reached the age of eighteen years and we had to report to a government office where my name was recorded. Here we were asked to tell which branch of the armed forces we hoped to join. We were told that it didn’t mean we would definitely get our choice, but it would depend upon the requirements of the country. They would do their best to grant our request. I had opted to join the RAF for pilot training. After this we were told that when we were wanted the authorities would send us a letter. I resumed my employment which at that time was in an office in Kent. In 1941 I had to attend an RAF Medical Centre in London in June of that year. I passed A1 fit for flying and after this I was told to go back to my office job and await a call up letter which could be as long as six weeks. Eventually a call up letter came telling me that I had to report to Lord’s Cricket Ground in London which was being used as a Centre to receive recruits. It had been requisitioned by the Royal Air Force. Eventually [pause] I’ve read that, I was given my service number, uniform and other clothing. My accommodation was in a small hotel requisitioned by the RAF, and this was situated opposite the London Zoo where we had our meals prepared by RAF cooks. But we didn’t eat with the animals. About twenty other lads about my age were at the hotel. We were supervised by an RAF corporal and during our short stay in London which was two weeks we were taught to march in the quiet road where the hotel was located. We attended lectures in the hotel. We took turns in preparing equipment in case our hotel was bombed as it was still early in the war and London was still experiencing bombing raids. However, it was only a stay of two weeks in London when we were moved to other parts of the country. This move was the first stage of our training and we arrived at Scarborough, the seaside place in Yorkshire. Number 10 Initial Training Wing. And we stayed in the Crown Hotel located on rising ground facing east and enabling us to see the sea. It was a very bracing place to be. Here we attended lectures, doing a cross country run every day in all weathers. We had to learn, practice Morse. Sending and receiving messages by lamp and then by buzzer. We studied RAF law, gunnery, learning to recognise different aeroplanes using models. Enemy planes and RAF ones. That came under the aircraft recognition. I was sent to a grading course at Brough situated right next to the River Humber near Hull and I was there for about a month as a pupil pilot. This was just to see what, if we were competent in holding the joystick and being up in the air. I was supervised by a qualified pilot sitting behind me in this Tiger Moth. We had equipment, joystick, rudders and steering wheels, speaking to me through a speaking tube. I passed the course. Returned to Scarborough. However, my return there was only for a very short time. Those of us who’d passed the grading course were told we were going to continue our training overseas. Until we were on the ship we did not know where we were going until we were well on our way across the Atlantic Ocean in February of that year. Early February. Because the Atlantic was infested by many German U-boats we were on our own. Just the one ship. Not in convoy. We were escorted from Gourock in Scotland by two Royal Navy destroyers. One was each side of us listening out with their sonar for U-boats under the water. We ran in to very rough weather and many of the lads including myself experienced sea sickness which caused us to stop eating for about three days. But mine was really brought on by something which I had got from the, the kitchen where we had to get our food. It so happened that I, memory, that I’d been appointed as the runner for my people on our mess table to get the meal. And I had two billy cans, one in each hand and I had to walk the full length of the ship to the galley where the cooks were providing the food. I could smell the, [pause] smell the food. The smell of food came along the walk that I was using to get to where the cooks were, and when I got there we had in one billy can I had a big amount of stew which was put in. It looked rather oily and had about two or three peas floating on the top. And then on the, on the counter there was some lovely baked, newly baked bread loaves which had been baked that morning, and they were the main things that interested me because I was loving, wanting to eat some bread and put some, we didn’t have butter we had margarine. Now, until we were on the ship we didn’t know where we were going which I’ve already said. I’m sorry about that. I trained in a, in a Tiger Moth [pause] Something’s gone wrong. Pages turning] Here we are. The time of the year was January, late January 1942. After five days at sea we were nearing Halifax, Nova Scotia. By the time we left the ship we were put in the care of English RAF sergeant and we were put on a railway train to take us a thousand miles to Toronto in Canada. Being in wintertime darkness was upon us. However, unlike Britain at this time there was no blackout in Canada and traffic right near the port were moving along the roads with their headlights and all the lights of the streets were on. We travelled the thousand miles and we left the train and we were taken to the National Exhibition building in Toronto. This would be a similar building like the Olympia in London. This place was used as a Recruiting Centre for the Canadian recruits. And we were here for six weeks waiting to be sent to an aerodrome. The huge building could accommodate several thousand people, and I had to move later on. For pilot training I was sent to a small aerodrome situated on the shore of one of the great lakes. Lake Huron. This is an Indian name because they were the original inhabitants of Canada. I trained in a Tiger Moth training plane, and to qualify as a pilot in the war each pupil pilot had to show that he could be trusted to handle the plane on his own within ten hours of training. Once he’d done that he was expected to go up on his own. Unfortunately, I failed to do this in the, in that time and I was taken off the pilot course because they were desperate to get fully trained pilots back in Britain. I had to report to our commanding officer at this Canadian flying school. He happened to be a British squadron leader who had fought in the First World War. He could see I was upset at being taken off the pilot training course and he said to me, ‘If you want to carry on flying why don’t you become a member of the bomber.’ This I thought of and agreed and thanked him for my advice. On my return I was given two weeks leave and told to report to a Canadian aerodrome where recruits would train to be members of a bomber crew. So the two weeks leave meant that I was able to choose where I would spend it, and I decided I would try and visit my sister Eileen in America. Where she had just arrived in 1937 as a newly married lady with her husband Jim, or James and he too was working in opening a factory in America. They were living with their two little children in Pennsylvania. Altoona. At the end of my leave I returned to Canada from America and reported to Trenton, Ontario where bomber crews started their training. I became a trainee bomb aimer flying in a plane, able to carry out the duties required. In Canada I used practice bombs day and night on ground targets. I had to do aerial gunnery and at one time I flew in a Battle. An old aeroplane they called the Battle. In an open cockpit and I had to do gunnery firing at a drogue pulled by an aeroplane alongside. Our bullets were coloured so that they knew when they took the thing down that where the green bullets had landed that meant they would be mine and the other people had different colours. I qualified in all departments and it was in late November while at Moncton, New Brunswick in Canada we had to move out ready to leave Canada and travel by train all the way down in to the States. Passing down the east coast of America through the New England States, such as Boston, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. New York Harbour we arrived at, and we had to go on board the brand new ship which had only recently been launched named Queen Elizabeth. She was eighty five thousand tons in weight and we didn’t need any escorts to guard us as we crossed the sea to come back to Britain because she was so fast. She was able to zigzag through the ocean and we reached Scotland five, five days afterwards. But because the ship was so huge she couldn’t come close to shore. She had to lay in deep water while we got off the ship. We had to go down ladders at the side of the Queen Elizabeth and go on small, small ships that came up to us and here they were jumping, bumping up and down with the rough sea. In Scotland, sorry [pause] in Scotland a bomber crew was formed by us trainees. We’d been trained in Scotland. We’d been using a Whitley bomber in Scotland. But when the new plane came out called the Lancaster built to bear much heavier loads we were sent to a Conversion Unit near Lincoln city where our pilot had to learn to fly this very big four engine plane. This he did successfully after which we were put in to Number 44 Rhodesian Squadron which was using Waddington as our base where we had our own plane to bomb Germany. Before the whole crew started bombing operations three of us out of the crew namely pilot, navigator and myself, we didn’t fly with the, our own crew at all. We weren’t expected to do any work because we were observing what it was like to be over enemy territory. To see what gunfire was like, ack ack from the ground, enemy fighters, searchlights. We attended the briefing of this trip with another crew. This was Hitler’s birthday, the 20th of April and so we all reckoned it surely must be Berlin, the target. Because one never knew the target until you entered the briefing room which had to be locked and kept secret to the very last minute and you would know where you were going by the big red ribbon that started from your base and ended at the target. And this time when we looked we found that our destination on this occasion was not Berlin, but it was a sea port in the Baltic Sea Called Stettin. I flew in a Lancaster from Number 106 Squadron and while we were flying we, we flew all the way to Denmark on, over the North Sea with our propellers just churning almost the waves to keep low so that Germany couldn’t catch us on their radar which stretched all along the wall that Hitler had built. As we approached Stettin a Lancaster flying on our left side was hit by flak, that’s enemy fire, because the sea there had many flak ships which Hitler had in the sea where they were all heavily armed with guns which could reach planes and this poor chap had caught it. In no time at all a burst of flame came out from the side of the Lancaster and a huge ball of fire came out in such a short time giving no time at all for the crew to leave and so seven men perished in a split second. They were immediately cremated alive. On arrival at Stettin we saw it was already on fire and many searchlights were on the move probing the sky to locate any of our planes. Fortunately we weren’t caught by searchlights but hit, nor hit by shells from planes or ground or searchlights. We didn’t linger over the target. Once we’d dropped our bombs we changed course as our next location was our base near Nottingham with this other crew that I flew with. Again we approached Denmark and soon left this behind. Descended, flying over the sea, very low down and not to be on the German radar. On landing at our base after the trip we had to report to the intelligence officers to give them information concerning the state of the target and any other news of interest. This trip took eight hours. The target we went to as a full crew and now we had our own crew was in the Ruhr in Germany. A very dangerous part to go because it was where the bombs were made and the big firm Krupps made the armour and big guns, and it was heavily guarded. And it was on a coal field which made it easy for the factories to get their boilers heated to run the engines of their factories. It had extra searchlights and anti-aircraft guns. Here for a while we were picked out and got caught in the searchlight. I remember looking down the beam of the searchlight which wasn’t a very sensible thing to do but in our plane it was light as day, and thankfully our pilot managed to wriggle out of the other searchlights that were trying to come on to the one that was already there. Fortunately we managed to drop our bombs without incident after that and made our way back to Britain. We were getting short of petrol as the fuel gauges indicated but with luck and good navigation we looked for the red light flashing the Morse Code letters that told us the location of our base. Our base was at Dunholme Lodge because we’d had to move from, from Waddington earlier on in our tour because originally we started using, landing on grass and the heavy Lancasters eventually began to sink into them in wet weather. And so Waddington was closed for six weeks while the people that built the new runways would come in and lay down concrete. And so we were sent to a new aerodrome. A wartime one this time because Waddington had been there since 1917. It was a peacetime base but Dunholme Lodge on the other side of Lincoln city was on farmland and was a real wartime aerodrome. Everything was just metal and we, we knew that eventually it would be returned as farmland. Before land [pause] before landing our pilot told us to leave our places because this time having been hit by flak we were told to take up crash position. This meant we lay on our backs in the plane with our knees bent ready for any eventuality. As we’d been reported missing and late returning from the air we could see the ambulance and the group captain’s car by the runway. Landing on one wheel because the other one had been damaged on our trip to Peenemunde it touched the ground, we spun around. Eventually stopped still. Not anyone in the crew needed medical attention luckily, and we were all taken to the aircrew building for debriefing telling the intelligence officer all about our trip. Of all the trips we’d made, most in Germany other targets in Italy and Czechoslovakia it was on our visit to Peenemunde rocket base that we were attacked by enemy fighters who fired shells through our fuselage making holes on both sides. One engine was destroyed. A shell, a hole went through the flaps of the wings and one, fortunately we got rid of all our bombs before this happened otherwise I wouldn’t have been here now. We’d have been blown up with it. We were especially grateful to our pilot’s skill in escaping from those night fighters and our navigator Desmond for navigating us home to our base at Dunholme Lodge, which is about five miles north east of Lincoln city. It has now gone back to become a farm. My pilot and navigator each received, or were awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. Other targets we visited in my tour were Dortmund, Duisburg, Pilsen in Czechoslovakia, Dusseldorf, Wuppertal, Krefeld, Mülheim, Cologne, Gelsenkirchen. We went four times to Hamburg. Then we went three times to Mannheim and then Nuremberg and eventually Berlin which was heavily defended. After our trip on bombing we were moved to become instructors but we all parted, each of us never, not knowing where our friends were going to. And so once this happened I never saw my pilot again until I saw him at a reunion which I went to at Waddington. It was only many years after the war that some of my crew met again. We were all grateful at leaving the Air Force uninjured. After a tour not one of us ever received even a scratch. And then when we were still in the Air Force I hadn’t finished yet because the war with Japan was still going on and the idea was that they would send Lancasters to India and we would continue bombing from India to Japan and, or we might do desk jobs to free long serving personnel who could come back to Britain. But when the Americans used their atom bomb and the Japanese surrendered it meant that Japan surrendered and we were saved from going any more over any country doing this job which we believed helped to preserve our country. And so I was in the Air Force for six years and the war enabled me to move around Britain. I went to Canada, the United States and India. So I found all the places interesting and we were given great hospitality everywhere we went. And although we were in Canada first of all as trainees they treated us like heroes even before we’d seen an aeroplane [pause] Now, after leaving the RAF I had to go to my civilian home. My father at this time who’d been living in a tied house in London looking after a school. My mother had been killed in the Blitz or died in the Blitz, so he was on his own and he had to move to a new house out of London which he did and informed me and I had to make my way to the new location. It was in Surrey. Near Croydon Airport. A place called Carshalton. And we soon got used to living there and of course at this time I had to get a job to earn some money and I found I’d already been promised to be taken on a teacher’s training course, and so I knew I had a job eventually. But in the meantime I was given a part time job in a office in London which I had to travel too. That didn’t last long and eventually I was on the teacher training course which was at a very nice situation in the lovely town. A seaside place called Eastbourne. This building was very comfortable in which to live. It had been a private prep school before we used it as a teacher training college. Training college was very interesting and of course we had lots of lectures. We had to do teacher training in, going out in actual schools and the first school I went to was in Eastbourne itself which had the name I cannot remember at this time. But there was primary school children, and my class that I was going to happened to be mostly Barnardo children. Barnardo boys who were orphans and they were a reasonably nice lot. But of course as a student you have to learn to make sure that you had order in the class and gradually, and as long as they knew the type of things that you wanted such as stopping, stopping talking when teacher spoke. We wanted absolute silence so everyone could listen to the teacher. And of course it meant preparing things every night. Models of things and maps to show the children and of course while you were training at the school and teaching at the school just roughly for three weeks a lecturer would come, an inspector would come in and sit at the back of the class watching you doing your job. Seeing if you could make any headway in the new job that you’d chosen to go in to. And I managed to get through this successfully. And that was the first teacher training school that I went to. And the teacher of the class of course started to be with me to begin with, but after a while he or she would go and leave me entirely on my own. The next school I had to go to was the, some distance from Eastbourne. It was near Hastings called St Leonards. And this was a very, very good church school because it was situated alongside the church itself and assemblies were actually held in the church and so the behaviour was very good because teachers accompanied the children into the church. And occasionally we would be taken in as a class to see a Communion service and attend, and the priest would kneel near us and explain everything that was going on at the altar in the church. And I enjoyed being at that particular church at St Leonard’s on Sea because it was quite a train journey as the train hugged the south coast of England going through Pevensey and Romney Marsh and then eventually St Leonards, and next door was Hastings itself. And so I got through the training course there, and again inspectors came in and summed me up and made notes about my method and how I was teaching. And then I left to return to the college. But everything wasn’t all work because after work many times I would go back into the town. This lovely seaside town. Go up to Beachy Head which can be very dangerous if you go too near the edge because being chalk it could crumble and there was about a six hundred feet drop down to the beach and there were many cases of people who had gone over accidentally. And even poor little dogs who’d been running after a ball where their master or mistress had foolishly thrown a ball towards the edge of the cliff. The poor little dog had gone running after the ball and not realising that the end of the edge of the cliff he went over and was killed. Anyway, I won’t dwell on that too much but I have had a very interesting life and met many good people and managed to keep going and keeping cheerful because that’s the main thing. You have to grit your teeth like in the war when we all gritted our teeth and tried to be cheerful. Used to sing plenty of songs, but occasionally we would go and have a nice drink in a hostelry somewhere which increased in volume especially when we were on the squadron [laughs] Anyway, here I am at ninety five years old and I don’t feel any age much except that I’m conscious of that fact that I’m so frustrated that I can’t do the things I used to and I do ache in joints and places like that. But again I emphasise I’m so happy to be free from pain like some poor people, and I could have been killed on my first trip. I could have been killed in our training because we lost many men in the crew who had been, while they were training they failed perhaps to take a turn on the petrol of their aircraft and the amount already there was just enough to get them up in the air and by not turning on the petrol of course the whole plane would fall to earth. Other people made the foolish mistake of being up above masses of cloud. They felt they were lost a bit and they thought they would go down under the cloud to see where they were not realising especially in Wales and Scotland that mountains exist and again they would meet their end while they were training. And that was what happened to so many. And again I don’t want to end on a sad note but I was very proud of fighting for my country and I felt that we mustn’t let the devil Hitler come in this place. Otherwise, we would not be here now. And the same feeling was, was felt in the, all the Services. And here I end and I wish you all well. Thank you.
[recording paused]
I failed to mention, and I have been more or less ordered [laughs] to give this information which I didn’t really want to do but I did actually get my [pause] You see my pilot Des and, Derek was the pilot, Desmond was my navigator, and I am James or Jim. And it was on the raid to the Peenemunde rocket base that we were really the only time we felt we could never get back to England because we were attacked while we had luckily had finished our bombing. The bombing had stopped because we’d dropped all our bombs. If that hadn’t happened and what I’m going to tell you did happen at that time it would have set the whole plane on fire and we would have blown up like that poor chap on the way to Stettin. But I’m in the front as a bomb aimer, lying full length on the floor looking through this Perspex with plenty of vision to allow me to look either side of the plane and down. And while I was there I must remember, remind you or tell you that because we weren’t in the first wave the first people to get to that target it already was on fire and it was like a hornet’s nest that had been stirred up because it was, we were flying at low level. Six thousand feet and the full moon, and the air was full of German night fighters and they, I’m lying full length looking through my bomb sight and other parts and I could see a stream of incendiary shells coming from underneath the plane, just below our plane and they were whizzing in front of me. And they were all coloured and lit up and they were a tremendous speed they go through. And then in the plane each crew member could talk to anyone else in the plane by our special communication that we had underneath our goggles, underneath our mouthpiece and they severed, these shells coming through our plane severed the cable that enabled us all to speak to each other and immediately we were completely separate in talk amongst everybody. So nobody could talk to a fellow member of the crew like you would do and so I literally got up from the floor, Derek my pilot was throwing the plane all over the place to escape these night fighters and searchlights, and I managed to get upstairs to the navigator who was in his little office with the light to show him how to make his courses on the maps. He had to have a light and he was shielded from letting the light out by a cover which you had to pull apart. I couldn’t speak to him through my mouthpiece so I had to lift up his earpiece and take my own thing off in front of my mouth and shout to try and beat the noise of the engine to ask him what would be the next best thing to do. How to work out how to get back to England. And anyway, this happened and I returned to my place in the front and I certainly didn’t know I’d been awarded a mention in despatches because I don’t see why I should have had one quite honestly. But I think, I was never told why I’d got it but I think it was because I managed to remain calm and didn’t fluster, and I actually made an effort to continue how to do things which I really couldn’t really do. So, anyway, by the grace of God it was Derek, my navigator and the pilot who managed to go almost on the deck, or on the ground in flying to escape the fighters and we flew away from Peenemunde flying over a Luftwaffe aerodrome which had all lit up. Quickly as we could and as best we could, we saw a lovely mass of cloud not too high above us which stretched some distance and my pilot felt that if we could just climb up to that cloud, disappear in the cloud for some time it would be a hiding place and enable us to get across part of the North Sea and get back to England. And that’s what happened. We flew in to this cloud for some time and then it didn’t last long because Derek lifted the plane slightly above the cloud and we continued flying back to England. And the navigator, the bomb aimer, the flight engineer I should have said he was the one that told my pilot that we were short of petrol and we hoped we’d make it enough petrol to get back to our base. By the grace of God that did happen. We managed to reach England and it was here that we had to decide where our base was. And in the war every aerodrome had a big mechanism of lights. All in red. And each of them was flashing letters of the hour which was changed to not let the enemy get to know which was which. We knew which our letters were for that period and we saw it, aimed for it and we were given priority to land. And as we came lower and lower we could see the group captain’s car by the runway. We saw the ambulance waiting because we’d been reported missing presumed crashed or something like that. And so we had to take up crash positions so that we wouldn’t hurt ourselves if we could help. We had to lie on our backs in the middle of the aeroplane with our legs bent to push against the metal bar there so that it would help to stop us being thrown around inside at the sudden stop. But don’t forget we were landing on one wheel. The other one was completely useless. It had been punctured in the air by shells and so we landed on this one wheel and landed at the side of the concrete runway on the grass and it spun round on the one wheel and as luck would have it not one of us was hurt. And then we came out and debriefed and gave all the information to the intelligence officer. And it was, it was later on our aircraft was photographed and I have the photographs of the damaged aeroplane in my logbook at this moment. And they’re over there actually. So that’s, that is the news. Our worst raid was over Peenemunde and I still don’t know why I on my own got a mention in despatches but I suppose it must have been given by my pilot or someone in the crew. And that’s my story. Alright.
[recording paused]
He must have been in his very early thirties and it was because his wife was so upset at him flying in dangerous jobs that it affected him and he went along to ask for, to be taken off operations. And as you know in the war they were very tough on people that left. Don’t forget all our flying was voluntary, and they took this other awful decision that anyone who came off the crew through, they would call it cowardice you would be stripped of your rank. You would be, it didn’t matter who you were, officer or anything you became an AC2 and your only job would be to clean the toilets. The lowest of the low. And this has been remarked on many times because as you know now the medical people have studied more and realise it isn’t just cowardice. It’s something that happens and anyone can get into this position. So you can’t judge people if they are in this state. You see, that poor man. Every time he saw his wife she was in a dither. That affected him didn’t it? You see. But they don’t take that in to consideration and of course we never, we never knew what happened to the poor chap. And then we had the other mid-upper gunners but eventually we got one that lasted a long time and apart from that but of course I could have said all this on my machine about who was who because our rear gunner was a young man. Sam. He was about nineteen when he joined us and he was a coal, he’d been in a coal mine. And then there was, the only officer we had in the crew was Desmond Heslop and he, the rest of us to begin with were flight sergeants. Derek, my pilot got his commission while he was still a bomber pilot. He was married and he came from Norfolk and he got his DFC as I’ve told you. Now, I did go to Bury St Edmunds Library. This was some time ago. To the Reference Library because I wanted to see what the citation was about awarding, you know. You know the citation don’t you? Why they got this award. And I wrote them in my diary as a matter of fact which is over there. I might try and locate. So Derek got his citation and Desmond, the pilot, the flying officer and Desmond the navigator unlike us, because I went on to become an instructor, ending up at RAF Silverstone which is now the racing track. That was, that was an OTU. An Operational Training Unit. And in the meantime, I found this out later, Des the navigator did not want to leave the bombing side of it. He wanted to remain damaging Germany you see. So he didn’t become an instructor as he could have done because in his, in his citation they remark on his expert navigation. So he would have been a good instructor. But unfortunately I think he went on in a Mosquito. Two engine. So in other words pilot and navigator. And he flew. I’ve got it in my [pause] I’ll get that down because he [pause]
[recording paused]
Definitely. She had a stroke through it. Through, where we were living in London was a place called Wandsworth. You may have heard about Wandsworth about two miles from the River Thames. And I can remember on the day a big fleet of German bombers, daylight flew over our house and they flew towards the Thames which was a couple of minutes, well, in flying two minutes to get there. Less than that. And then they followed the Thames all the way around to the docks. This was the beginning of the Blitz and they dropped bombs on the oil, the tanks in the docks and other things. Anything that would light and keep burning. So because they did that in daylight that fire was still raging in the evening and so at that very evening he sent bombers over the docks and they dropped stuff using the docks. They didn’t need to navigate. They could see it from miles away, you see. So, that was the beginning of the Blitz. And then gradually the bombing spread and where I lived was not far away. Quite near was a Common. You know a lovely place where you could play on grass and so on. And also not far up the road was a little, it wasn’t a big one it was a public library where I as a boy used to go there and belong to it. Get books out and help to do, to get knowledge and that kind of thing. And in April ’41 there was a very heavy bombing raid and that affected our area and they destroyed completely that little library and also houses in the street very near and in one of these houses lived a family that we knew very well. And Mr [Bazant] and his wife, his eldest daughter were killed their house destroyed and the only one that got through it in that family was the youngest daughter. So, that was the kind of thing that went on. And also the Germans that night dropped what they called parachute bombs and they were mines dangling on parachutes. Once they dropped these things they were, they didn’t fall straight to earth. They were slowed down by like baby parachutes and these floated in the air and they went where the wind took them. And as they were swaying they’d only got to touch a house and they’d go pssst, you see. That’s another thing they did. And I think it was the day after because I at that time had to evacuate to Kent because the firm I was working for temporarily before I, before I went into teaching was an insurance company that felt that they would be bombed the first day of the war. And I had, I worked a little while in London at the offices but a note came around saying the whole firm except for a skeleton staff would, they would stay in London. Very few. But the bulk of the firm which was a big one would be sent in to Kent where they’d leased a lovely big house in its own grounds. Big enough to accommodate the office and all its equipment and the rooms were turned into the offices. So, we, we were working in bedrooms with the typists and so on. The claims department was in a bedroom. All the filing was in a corridor. You know. And I was very happy down there near Tonbridge. If you know Tonbridge. And I used to travel up on the Green Line Bus every weekend when we, we either worked Saturday one week but the next week we finished on the Friday. Alternate you see. But whenever we finished I always got, at the end of this big house there was the London Road and the bus stop for the Green, what used to be called the Green Line Service. Like a country bus service. And that was a single decker which would take you from, all the way to London. To the coach station at Victoria and then I’d get a train up to where we lived and walk to my where I lived and see if my family were still alive. That was the kind of life I was living you know at the time. And then I returned to work on the Monday because I used to stay. If it was say if I finished on Friday at the office I’d arrive Friday night at home in London. Stay Friday night at home in London. Saturday in London. Even Sunday in London. But I had to get up very early in the morning to go back to Victoria to catch a train. No. Waterloo. I beg your pardon. Waterloo. To get a train to Sevenoaks and the firm down in Kent used to run a coach service from Sevenoaks which is before you get to Tonbridge. And that was the kind of life I was living you see. But when I got back on that Monday I didn’t hear anything from the family. There was only one telephone in this big house by the way. Under the stairs. But then a call came through. I’m in the claims office. Working in the claims office and the door opened and a person came through and said, ‘Can Mr Dellow please come to the phone.’ And this was very unusual. So I, my boss who was a very decent bloke he said, ‘You can go,’ he said. Off I went to the phone under the stairs and it was my father speaking to me saying, ‘I’ve got some bad news,’ he said, ‘Mum. Your mum’s very ill. Become very ill.’ And then he said, ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ He said, ‘I can’t keep it from you,’ he said. ‘She’s died.’ And I was nineteen at the time and I must confess that I actually cried in the office. My boss was a very decent bloke and said, ‘You can’t stay like that,’ he said, ‘You go straight home now.’ And it was the most awful journey home and I met members of our friends who were going to the house where mum had died. She was still in the house and they were crying. It was an awful time. This was 1941. And my father told us what had happened. He said that although I’d seen her at the weekend and she seemed to be alright she went out shopping on the Tuesday I think it was. It may have been the Monday. She went to Clapham Junction where there was a big shopping centre. Not like they are now but I mean there were lots of shops where, it was a place she like going. It needed a bus. A little bus service. Not far. About a mile. While she was out apparently this is what, what my mother told my father when she had to go back home there and then. She couldn’t carry on shopping. So she got back. She staggered back somehow with this terrible headache she’d got. She got home and got worse in pain. Luckily, this was before the NHS of course we had our doctor, luckily enough that used to come to us when we needed him was not far away across the road where we lived. So he went across, told the doctor that my mother was very ill indoors and he came over pretty well straightaway and apparently he realised that my mother had had a stroke and that it’s what they called to do with the brain. You know the brain bursts or something or other and he said that, ‘If she lives she’d be just like a vegetable, you know. You know, you’ve got to remember that it’s better, the fact that she died.’ It sounds awful but that’s the case he said. And so that period of my life was very sad, and like you do you have to grin, well you don’t exactly grin. That’s the particular way. But I mean you’ve got to go on. You know, you’re still here aren’t you? That’s the attitude. That was the attitude of the war. Grin and bear it. Keep cheerful. Keep singing. Have singsongs and if you really must go to the pub and get sloshed [laughs]
DB: Which you did [laughs]
JD: We had a good old session up in London. This was after the war. But some I think your father was in the, no I don’t know whether he’d gone back in the Air Force or what. Anyway, now we used to get the last if you were up in London you see the last train from Victoria Station to our station near where we lived in Surrey which was Carshalton Beeches it was 11.38. Just gone half past eleven at night and luckily we caught the 11.38. And it was quite not about half hour journey in time you know normally. But having had plenty to drink and the movement of the train we both fell asleep. And when, the next thing was the door opened. The train was sealed and it was at a station you see. But it wasn’t Carshalton Beeches. It had gone on to the end of the line which was at Epsom. You know, Epsom. The races. And we had a long, long, in the black out. This was blackout there were no lights and we had to walk and got back indoors I think the Wallington clock was chiming three. It was 3 o’clock in the morning. So that kind of thing you know, you could get caught like that going to sleep on the train. So these things happened, didn’t they?
[recording paused]
It was on, on the training but they found that they found that the Manchester wasn’t at all reliable. The engines weren’t powerful enough and if, it only had two engines and if one failed you were more or less fall to earth whereas with the Lancaster you used to do training over the North Sea every morning before going to Germany. Test all the equipment. And Derek my pilot used to switch first of all one engine off. That meant we were flying on three. He’d knock another engine off. We were flying on two. He’d knock another engine off. We’d be flying on one. But if you flew on one you would gradually sink, because the one engine wasn’t quite powerful enough to keep you up at height. But most of our bombing was about twenty thousand feet and we didn’t have proper heating and we only got heat in the jacket you wore up here. Your legs would get frozen stiff. And we used to get little cartons of orange juice to take with us, and that used to get frozen solid so we couldn’t drink that. And we always took a pigeon with us in case we were crashed in, in the North Sea and we would tie a message to that pigeon’s leg you know and he’d fly back to your home base and they’d see that you were in the North Sea, and send a plane out to see if they could see you. In fact, when I was at Waddington which I think I’ve told you had to close down because of the, putting the concrete runway we were in bed in the morning, about three in the morning banging on the door. Woke up. ‘Hurry up. Go down to the crew room,’ which we did. ‘We hear a plane has landed or fallen in the North Sea you are now going on a square search,’ you know. And this was in the middle of summer and luckily although the sun was very powerful it made a mirage on the sea. If you’re up high and you’re looking at the sea for somebody, you get this shiny background of water glinting in the sun. And that very often puts you off seeing the chaps in the, in the dinghy you see. So, it wasn’t all. We never did find whoever had crashed. Which was must have been an awful experience. And if you were seen of course you would have been notified. They would send a message back to base and then they’d send people out to rescue you. But that was the only one we ever had to do. Searching for somebody in the sea.
[recording paused]
In Lincolnshire, and they’d blindfold us and go all round the roads in Lincolnshire and then you’d stop the thing somewhere miles from camp and they dropped you out and you were supposed to make your way back to base on your own. You know. That’s in case we landed, we had to land in Germany or France. Anywhere. To make us learn how to try and get back to base. We had compasses. Little compasses in our shoes and I think it was in the heel of your shoe I think it was. Yeah. All these little things. And I think I did get back to base anyway. Oh yeah. Lovely times. I enjoyed my life in the Air Force and in a way I wouldn’t have minded staying in. But there was a, I think the fact the country had spent so much money on the war. Fifteen million. We were told at that the time that the country was paying about fifteen million pounds a day to keep the war going which doesn’t sound so much these days but in those days that was a big, and then of course we borrowed money from America didn’t we? National debt which we’re paying now. I don’t know. That was, and America too I think is in debt, you know. I don’t know how these countries manage, do you? It baffles me. Money. Economics and how we keep going you know. We keep talking about an individual. lf you go over your own in the bank they pounce on you like you’re a criminal don’t they? You know. I’m limited to three hundred pounds if I go over my bank statement. Which isn’t much these days. And ever since I joined because when you become an officer all your money is paid into a bank. It’s with everyone now, isn’t it? But in those days if you weren’t commissioned you had to pay. You had pay out, go to a pay parade and stand in front of the officer who was doling out the money and when your name was called you went in front of the them at the table and saluted and he said, ‘Dellow, 1391826,’ you see. To make sure that you were the same person, and he’d give you the money which was half a crown a day to begin with. Once you went flying you got three half crowns a day which was seven and six. Still under a pound. The pound in those days you could buy so much with it. You know. Well, you had two hundred and forty pennies to the pound. It used to cost one penny on the bus to go from East Hill where I lived to Clapham Junction which was a mile. So that’s a penny a mile. That’s for the national newspaper one penny. Now what is it? Sixty pence a day, isn’t it?
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with James Albert Dellow
Creator
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Denise Boneham
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
2017-06-17
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ADellowJA170617
Conforms To
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Pending review
Format
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01:05:16 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
James ‘Jim’ Albert Dellow had to register the start of the war he as he was 18 years old. On being asked which service he would prefer, he opted for the Royal Air Force as a pilot. Whilst waiting for his call up, he worked in an insurance office in London, which was evacuated to Kent. Once called up in June 1941, he was sent to Scarborough for basic flying training in a Tiger Moth. In February 1942 he was sent to Canada for further training as a pilot, but he did not qualify and opted to become bomb aimer. He qualified in November 1942 at Trenton, Ontario. On arrival back in Great Britain, he trained on the Whitley before transferring to a heavy conversion unit based at RAF Waddington to fly Lancasters.
Posted to 44 Squadron his first flight was a Second Dicky flight with another crew to Stettin in April 1943. Though their aircraft was not hit, one flying alongside was and caught fire - there were no survivors. The worst operation that Jim recounts is one to Peenemünde. After dropping their bombs, they were attacked and damaged by a night fighter. Their pilot managed to get them back on three engines. As they landed at RAF Dunholme Lodge, only one wheel was working, and they spun off the runway crashing with no casualties. The pilot and navigator were awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and Jim was mentioned in dispatches. After 30 operations Jim became an instructor based at RAF Silverstone. After the war he worked as a teacher.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Yorkshire
England--Northamptonshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Kent
England--Scarborough
England--London
Canada
Ontario--Trenton
Poland
Poland--Szczecin
Germany
Germany--Peenemünde
England--Buckinghamshire
Ontario
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941-06
1942-02
1942-11
1943-04
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Nick Cornwell-Smith
Julie Williams
106 Squadron
44 Squadron
aircrew
bomb aimer
bombing
Bombing of Peenemünde (17/18 August 1943)
Distinguished Flying Cross
forced landing
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
RAF Dunholme Lodge
RAF Silverstone
RAF Waddington
recruitment
searchlight
shot down
Tiger Moth
training
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/815/10796/AFairweatherF170130.1.mp3
33bb72f1f6e536e97fe00f823c32010a
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
Fairweather, Freda
F Fairweather
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Freda Fairweather (b. 1923). She was employed by Avro.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-01-30
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Fairweather, F
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HD: This is Helen Durham interviewing Mrs Freda Fairweather on Monday the 30th January, 2017. [Beep]. Freda, thank you ever so much for giving us an interview, thank you.
FF: Yeah, that’s it, yes.
HD: Could you tell me a little bit about yourself before the war? Did you come from a big family?
FF: No, I worked at some iron works, [unclear] iron works, it’s closed now, I used to do a lot of [unclear] there, I was a bit younger then.
HD: Yes, how old were you then?
FF: I should think about twenty-four.
HD: Twenty-four, and how old were you when the war broke out? How old were you?
FF: Oh, I can’t remember duck.
HD: Yeah?
FF: No, I can’t remember.
HD: Ok, so where were you living?
FF: I lived in a village called Bassingham, near Newark.
HD: And you went to work for where?
FF: I went to work in a bakery. A bakery there making the cakes and the bread, but I was a lot younger then.
HD: Yeah, and can you tell me about when you got involved with bomber command?
FF: In what?
HD: When did you get involved with bomber command?
FF: When you was- If you was young and not [unclear] you got called up to do some war work and they sent me to Avro's, which I enjoyed.
HD: Yeah. What did you do?
FF: Used a hammer and chisel and the nuts and bolts, and we used to clean the perspex in the, in the- Where the pilots used to look out, they would clean all the perspex.
HD: So did you go into the planes?
FF: Pardon?
HD: You went actually into the plane?
FF: Went up in the Lancaster.
HD: Did you?
FF: I had chance to go, ‘cause I'd been there a good long while and they let me have a- I went up a bit, I can’t say I liked it though.
HD: Why didn’t you like it?
FF: Well, it’s a bit- You got to be feeling fit and well I also suffer with bad- Had bad head at the time.
HD: Yeah. So, what was your job when you went to the Lancasters?
FF: Doing- Taking all the wings off, taking the nuts and bolts and that along the wings and they were all round and when you got all that done you could lift the top off and the-
HD: And how many hours a week did you work?
FF: Oh I can’t remember duck, ‘bout twenty-four hours, more.
HD: Yeah, and were there any specific times that anything happened, any special times, or something that you remember, that was different?
FF: We used to get a lot of, what you call ‘em, shooting in the air with special ep[?] guns-
HD: Right, yeah.
FF: Yes, it’s a long while ago though. I did me share.
HD: And how long did you do this for?
FF: Pardon?
HD: How many years did you do this for?
FF: About four-and-a-half, then I got married then.
HD: Right, yeah, and did you meet any of the pilots or the crew?
FF: Yes, we used to talk to them, they used to tell ‘em where what's, when they went over Germany to do the bombing, their special planes, special bombers, when they used to bomb a certain part in the war over Germany ‘cause it was Germany was the trouble.
HD: It was a very dangerous job?
FF: It was for the pilots. But we had to work because I wasn’t married then and you had to work then.
HD: So did you clean the inside of the Lancasters?
FF: Yeah, yeah. Used to do nuts and- Used to have special box spanners ‘cause I was used to that being [?] and having two brothers, box spanners twist the- turn and loosen the screws and let the tin come up?
HD: And why did they take the wings off?
FF: ‘Cause they wanted new ones putting on and they were getting old.
HD: And did you find anything unusual?
FF: Well once found an end of a thumb that had got cut off by like that, I always remember that. Used to see where the, the blood had [unclear] upon the, what they called, top of the- Inside the airplanes, you used to get a lot of blood and things. It’s such a long while ago I can’t remember a lot.
HD: Did you find it upsetting?
FF: No, I didn’t. I’d had a hard life myself, I'd worked on the land and in the factories, I used to make- Do all sorts of things. It’s a long while ago I can’t remember a lot, but I used to use box spanners and- I had my own toolbox, with my name on it, with my spanners and screwdrivers and things, I left it there though when I left, I left it there.
HD: And was it always ladies that you worked with?
FF: No there was men and young lads. There’s two very clever, clever lads that worked there. They’re very, very clever. ‘Course it was different in them times want it, yeah. If I hadn’t of been married- When they got- I was just about to get married.
HD: So you had to leave?
FF: Yeah.
HD: Because you were getting married?
FF: Yes. It was a long while ago, you can’t remember can ya?
HD: So what time in the morning did you start?
FF: Half-past-seven. We used to go on shifts, that was half-past seven till half-past two and then the next shift come on, half-past two till half-past nine at night. They were long hours.
HD: And was there a night shift?
FF: Pardon?
HD: Was there a night shift?
FF: Yes, night and the day shift. I worked most nights there.
HD: Did you find you were busier at night?
FF: Not really, no. [unclear] more the beginning and end, and they didn’t need to materialise[?].
HD: So which year was it that you were very busy?
FF: About 1944 ‘cause the war started at 19- What year did the war start?
HD: ‘39
FF: Oh ‘39, yeah. I’ve been there a long while love, but I worked a bit beforehand. You can’t help growing old that’s the trouble 'int it.
HD: And did you still live in Bassingham at this time?
FF: You what?
HD: Did you still live in Bassingham?
FF: No I lived at North Hykeham. My mother had a small holding there, and she used to rear chickens and things like that, it was quite nice, it was big old farm house, but it’s going back a long while like, I can’t remember.
HD: Did you ever, when you went to work, ever feel frightened that something might go wrong or there might be an accident?
FF: You didn’t- Too young to bother or to understand or, youse too young to bother. I used to get a lift to work in a- On one of those, what do you call them? I can’t remember, I’m a little- Tram car things? I used to get a lift to work on that. It’s a long while ago though duck, you just can’t remember can ya. I did my bit and I'm satisfied now, I just wish I was a bit younger.
HD: Yes, and how many were in your crew? In your team?
FF: Used to be the pilot and the co-pilot and two air gunners and a rear gunner at the back, so he could- At the back he could see the airplanes and then he could shoot at them then. There’s wonderful plane them Lancasters, I know they all said it, without them they would never of won the war. They were so agile and that, easy get up and down. It’s a long while ago though, you can’t remember can ya?
HD: And, when you went to work and you went to the Lancasters, did you go on your own or were you in a team of people?
FF: No, I went on the bus, couldn’t of gone by car in them days, had to go on the bus, but I had a bicycle and on afternoons I used to go on my bike, we used to make afternoon shifts. I used to go on my bike there.
HD: And you had a team with you, did you when you were at the Lancaster? Was there a team of you, was it just you on your own? Working?
FF: Yes, yes. It’s a long while ago duck, all I know it was the Lancasters that won the war. They were so well made and active and easy to get up and down off the floor.
HD: So you saw them taking off and landing?
FF: Yes. I once went up with an old Manchester airplane. The old aeroplane called the Manchester, it was a two-engine, one each side, it was a very old plane. Me and another girl we had chance to get up and chance to get up, she was only young then and didn’t see no danger.
HD: Did you enjoy it?
FF: Yes, I’ve had a good life, had a good husband, I've got two good daughters, I've no sisters left living now, no sisters left living.
HD: And did you have a lot of friends who worked with you at Avro's?
FF: Yes, oh we used to get- Make our own amusements, I used to play the accordion and then one young man used to play- He was very good on the mouth organ, you used to get these mouth organs where you can press in and out on each side, get different tune. I was brought up in a musical family. I just wish I was a bit younger to do it again.
HD: So was your husband in the RAF, or had a connection with bomber command?
FF: He was in the army, he got called up, he was in the royal army service corps, he was driving jeeps, them jeeps about up at- Where, I can’t think, Northumberland, yes. It’s a long while ago I can’t remember a lot more.
HD: That’s fine.
FF: But if you were single, you had to go to work. I enjoyed it though, before that I worked at Boots, the chemist, on the chemist counter, at there but then that was called not a special job, you had to do something more, bit better, bit more war worthy.
HD: And did you get a lot of training?
FF: Yeah, up and down the plane, on the wings and once sat on the wings and the airplane started to take off.
HD: And you were on the wing?
FF: Yes, but they soon found out and they stopped the plane. See I was so agile then, I was young and fit. I could jump off the plane, off the wings and-
HD: That was a near escape, wasn’t it?
FF: It was yes. If you were single you had to work, and I was single then you see.
HD: Is there any special memory you have of working at Avro?
FF: Well, we saw one crash, it was a four-engine bomber, a Lancaster and he crashed when it come to the ground cause his engine failed, and it couldn’t get stopped it just crashed to the ground. But the pilot and the co-pilot they had an, what you call ‘em? what you call ‘em? A parachute and they got out before it crashed. I always remember that cause I wasn’t very old then
HD: No, whereabouts did it crash?
FF: At Waddington, just outside, just outside the aerodrome. It nearly got home before it crashed, I always remember that.
HD: That must’ve been quite frightening to see that?
FF: Yes. It’s going back a bit though ‘int it?
HD: It is, yeah, and did all the crew survive?
FF: Pardon?
HD: Did all the crew survive?
FF: Yes, they did in that one but I saw a lot didn’t survive, we saw a lot come to the ground that didn’t survive.
HD: So, you saw quite a few Lancasters crash then?
FF: Yeah, they had Lancasters some there near Swinderby near Newark, some of the Lancasters there, we used to go there on the army bus to get there. I’ve seen them with the life, but I all say it was the best made plane, they were strong and they were light. They did a good job. A lot didn’t come back, that’s the trouble, a lot of the soldiers didn’t come back. Two of the soldiers which my husband worked with that, where was it? near London, they never came back, they turned funny in the airplane, turned, had dizzy and that and they never survived. But I've done my share, worked on the Lancasters and that and done my share, cleaning the mirrors so the pilot could see and that.
HD: So did you clean the inside and the outside?
FF: Yes, well right in the front where the pilots looked out ‘cause there were two pilots you see, there was co- What you call a co-pilot in case one just felt queer, didn’t- The other one took over. I - They were wonderful aeroplanes and I’m always proud that I worked on the. But you can’t turn the clock back can ya duck, you’ve got to carry on haven’t ya?
HD: So you- When did you finish working for Avro?
FF: Well, I worked at Boots for a long while, then they found out I was young enough to, young enough to go on aerodrome, you see, they got younger people, in the shops, I worked at Boots about two year and I got sent because I was a bit older, I got sent on the Lancasters, but I enjoyed it though, and they all say it was the Lancaster that won the war and the Spitfires.
HD: How long did you work on the Lancasters?
FF: ‘Bout two year. I had a bit of a rash came on me though, on me arm, on me legs so I had to stop off. I didn’t stop off work but I didn’t fly, I went to work on the bottom on the, what they call, air ground, on the ground.
HD: Why did you get a rash? Was it something from the plane?
FF: It was something in the materials you used to clean and use, it was a special sort of stuff but I, it, it all went though ‘cause again this is special stuff ‘cause I was so young then I didn’t know what was happening to me.
HD: And so you worked at Waddington, which other-
FF: Yes, and we went down to Swinderby a bit. Swinderby was a bit open air, very open air, open spaces, it was a lovely aerodrome though, clever pilots that used them planes, I shall always remember long I live them pilots, they were brave ‘cause they knew that one of them went up there they might not come back. But we did all we could to help them and save them.
HD: I should think you were a great support?
FF: Pardon?
HD: You would be a great support for them?
FF: Yes, yes, well I was pretty strong then, I was- ‘Cause we were working down the land I got muscles, good and strong then. But you can’t, you can’t keep young forever can ya, no.
HD: So did you live at home in Bracebridge- In North Hykeham?
FF: Yeah I lived at home, yes ‘cause mother had a big farm house there, there was five bedrooms.
HD: You never lived on the stations then?
FF: We did from- We did some weeks, we did, when there was a lates, we used to be able to stop on there at night and it was- We had like a little long bed with just top [unclear].
HD: Were you in dormitory's?
FF: You what?
HD: Were you in a dormitory, sleeping with others?
FF: No we were on the aerodrome itself on in- Because the aeroplane, the hangar was built- Big hangars and there was room for aeroplanes in there.
HD: And you slept in the hangars?
FF: Yes. I saw, I’ve done my bit in the war. I’m glad, I'm glad we won the war, it took a long time though. Took troops from other countries to help us. I want very old then I were only about seventeen, but I was fit and I could use hammer and chisel, nuts and bolts.
HD: You were tough?
FF: Yes. It’s going back a long while duck, it makes you feel sad when you think about it. We had- I made good friends with the girls, good lasses, they were clever as well, they were tough, they could handle spanners and things like that and the box spanners.
HD: So what did you do for social times? To go out socially?
FF: There used to be a pub across the road called the John Bull, it was a big pub it had a big room, extra room like and we used to go across there and have a glass of shandy and sit down have a bit, and a sandwich.
HD: You had quite a crowd of friends then?
FF: Yes, we all stuck together. I lost touch with a lot of them though when I come-
HD: You used to play the piano, did you?
FF: Yes I played by ear, I used to play in the school in the morning, what you call it? In the morning when you first start.
HD: The assembly?
FF: Yes, I used to play the piano for the hymns, ‘There is a Green Hill Far Away,’ and all them they were quite easy, I was born to be musical, I played the mouth organ as well.
HD: So when you worked for Avro, did you ever have a chance to play the piano with your friends and-?
FF: I didn’t after I left ‘cause we had a very old piano in the old farm house, and when nobody wanted it so mother got somebody to move it to my house, that was at North Hykeham, near the [unclear] iron works, yes. Happy days but the, without the- The Lancasters were the one plane that were used most in the war ‘cause they were so agile, they took off the ground ever so easy
HD: They made a lot of noise?
FF: They did when they got up in the air, when the revved up they made a big noise.
HD: Yeah, and you used to watch them going off?
FF: Yes, and sometimes never saw them come back. But there were so many of them you see, young fellas that was called up. You can’t help growing old like, can you, that’s the trouble can ya? No.
HD: Is there anything else you want to tell me about your work on the Lancasters?
FF: Once we were working on the aerodrome, we was outside cleaning the perspex and putting new screws in the perspex that had come loose, and an aeroplane crashed so we ran, it was an old-fashioned Manchester plane, called Manchester, big heavy plane.
HD: Were you nearby?
FF: They took them off the- Out the air ‘cause they were so heavy they couldn’t keep up.
HD: Were you nearby, were you?
FF: You what?
HD: Were you nearby the crash?
FF: No- We had an aeroplane crashed on our little farm, where me mother lived, come down in the field, near the pond, just near the pond.
HD: And that was a British plane?
FF: Yeah, it was happy days though, there weren’t nothing to fright- We lived in the country but they was nothing to frighten you much, you just went out with your dog and that, and nobody would hurt ya.
HD: So you never felt frightened?
FF: No, I always felt happy when I got my dog with me, called him Ranger, he was a Red Setter, they’re gun dogs they are, they- If a plane crashed they- The first [unclear] on the plane, to the plane to pick anything out, what they call them? I can’t think what they call them, the- The aeroplane things, I can’t think what they call them, the Manchester's- There was Manchester's and the Lancasters, but the Manchester it got grounded ‘cause it was found out it couldn’t- It was too heavy to fly. It couldn’t get off the ground, it did go out for quite a lot of times but then it crashed. They were happy days though in them days, and you didn’t fall out like you do today, no. You can’t turn the clock back can ya duck?
HD: You can’t.
FF: And that’s me oldest daughter, you’re not doing bad are ya?
Other: Not too bad [laughs], keep trying.
HD: So when you finished at Avro, you got married-
FF: Not straight away. I went to work on a poultry farm at our village, it was a very well to do poultry farm, they were very well to do and their special chickens and things like that, they were very wealthy people and they had a lovely home and big dining room, used to allow me and me sister to go in the dining room and have a bit of dinner they did.
HD: So what was it like being a civilian in the war?
FF: Well you felt more better ‘cause I had a good home and a good husband.
HD: And were you rationed with food?
FF: Yeah we still rationed yes, but we were lucky we had our own chickens and our own pig you see. We had two pigs and chickens, and a goat. The goat used to eat all the- It would keep the edges and that down, edges round about. It’s such a long while ago duck I can’t- I mean to talk about.
HD: How do you feel about it all now?
FF: Pardon?
HD: How do you feel about it now? Does it make you quite sad?
FF: I forgot all about it duck ‘cause me life's changed, changed altogether. See I’m in this home and I can’t do a lot, I'm quite happy here though, I’ve got a good bed. You can’t be at home forever can ya?
HD: Yeah, well it’s really interesting what you’ve told us, thank you very much.
FF: Pardon?
HD: Very interesting what you’ve told us, thank you.
FF: Oh yes it was duck, course they were right from the start, it was the Lancaster bombers that won the war, they were specially made and they were very strong planes and there’s- they had special guns where they could shoot down on the ground with the guns, I went in on one. I wouldn’t like to do it again though.
HD: No, what was it like when you went into the plane, when it had got back?
FF: Well, it felt a bit strange, awful smell of petrol that you got, no windows you see for the smell to go out. But there was a wonderful, wonderful plane, I'm always glad I worked on them. I just wish I was a bit younger duck. I’m ninety-four, I think.
HD: You’re doing very well.
FF: Yeah, I'm not bad, am I?
HD: So, was there a favourite moment in your job whilst you were working with Avro, what was your favourite part of the job?
FF: I think when we had a break in the middle of the night, when I was on nights, I always had an hours break and we used to be able to wonder round and see what, different things. It’s such a long while ago duck, I can’t remember such a lot about it.
HD: What did you see, can you remember?
FF: Pardon?
HD: What did you see when you had your hours break?
FF: I think we used to go on the airfield, walk on the airfield when there’s no aeroplanes there, we used to walk on the aeroplanes, round the ground at Waddington, yeah, Waddington was one of the biggest camps.
HD: Yes, well thank you ever so much for giving us this interview, thank you, it’s been very kind of you.
FF: Yes, it’s been a pleasure. I still have happy memories of- Had a good marriage.
HD: Ok.
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 Freda Fairweather
Creator
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Helen Durham
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
2017-01-30
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AFairweatherF170130
Conforms To
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Pending review
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Format
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00:31:35 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Civilian
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Description
An account of the resource
During the war, Freda Fairweather was called up to work for Avro’s and worked on Lancasters at RAF Waddington and RAF Swinderby. She describes cleaning the perspex windows and using her own box spanners to remove aircraft wings. She recollects flying on a Manchester and Lancaster, witnessing multiple crashes and an aircraft nearly taking off with her on the wing. She also recalls socialising with her friends and reflects on her war work with much pride.
Contributor
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Tilly Foster
Temporal Coverage
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1944
crash
ground personnel
hangar
home front
Lancaster
Manchester
RAF Swinderby
RAF Waddington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/854/10859/AHandleyE-BushD171012.2.mp3
b71ce9edeabc2babe3b741dbd3632cf7
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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Handley, Ivor
Ivor T Handley
I T Handley
Tommy Handley
Description
An account of the resource
Four items. An oral history interview with Eileen Handley and her twin brother Dennis Bush about Ivor 'Tommy' Handley (2205484 Royal Air Force), and a photograph and documents. Ivor Handley served on 626 Squadron at RAF Wickenby. His crew were lost on a post war operation to return troops from Italy. <br /><br /><span>Additional information about his crew is available via the </span><a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/103959/" title="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/madgett-hr/ ">IBCC Losses Database</a><span>.</span><br /><br />The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Eileen Handley and Denis Bush and catalogued by Nigel Huckins
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-09-24
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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Handley, IT
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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CH: This interview is being recorded for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Cathie Hewitt and the interviewees are Eileen Handley and Dennis Bush. Twin brother and sister. The interview is taking place at Eileen Handley’s home [buzz] Waddington on the 12th of October 2017. Also present are Elaine Brackenbury and Denise [Lorrey] Thank you very much Eileen and Dennis for agreeing to be interviewed. Perhaps you could, one of you could start off and give a little information of your background.
EH: Am I being interviewed?
CH: You are.
EH: Well, we were born in Waddington. We were born at Quakers Chapel which is in the centre of the village and then we moved down. I do believe the cottage wasn’t big enough because we were twins so mum and dad were given a council house and we moved down and lived down Mere Road in the council houses and had a very happy childhood. And we both grew up with no problems really I don’t think. And then we both left home didn’t we love when we were in our teens. Den went and did his National Service and I went and did my nurse training in Lancashire but we’ve always kept in touch with Waddington through our lives. And then after ten years of marriage from my own personal point of view I always wanted to come back to Lincolnshire and Waddo and we managed to come back when we’d been married just ten years. So we moved back on our tenth anniversary and we’ve been happy ever since.
CH: Can I just go back a little bit to when you were both children?
EH: Yeah.
CH: Tell me a little about your parents. What they did and growing up in the village.
EH: Yeah. My mum was a housewife wasn’t she, Den?
DB: Housewife. Yeah.
EH: A housewife and a good cook and a good mum and wife and everything as they were in them days and still are.
Other: Didn’t your dad work in the fields?
EH: Yeah. Dad —
DB: Dad was a farmworker.
EH: Farmworker.
Other: And then your dad passed away didn’t he in 1939.
DB: He passed away when we were nine year old.
Other: And your mum got remarried.
EH: Yeah.
Other: And it goes from there really doesn’t it?
EH: Yeah. Came down Mere Road.
Other: The war broke out then, didn’t it?
EH: Yeah.
CH: Where were you when war broke out?
EH: We lived down Mere Road. Number 9. We were still at school weren’t we and we had a quite —
DH: Yeah.
EH: A quiet upbringing but lots and lots of local friends.
CH: How about you Dennis?
DB: Yeah. Quite an eventful childhood really.
CH: Yeah.
DB: There was quite a lot of kiddies in the, in the row of council houses. And we kept ourselves really separate from —
EH: And we played down there didn’t we altogether. Good friendship.
DB: I’m sorry. I can’t hear you.
Other: She said all those children, you all played together.
EH: Yeah.
Other: With the children out of the road.
DB: Yes.
EH: We were all good friends.
DB: Yeah. Life changed when war was declared. I can remember standing outside the house one, and I think it was mother shouted out the window, ‘They’ve declared war.’
EH: Yeah.
DB: But life changed then. People started moving into the married quarters. There was only one row of married quarters I think in those days and builders and different personnel moving on to the camp. I can remember the Irish navies starting to build the runways and they used to attract us kids at night time because they used to stand in big groups playing pitch and toss.
EH: Yeah.
DB: And later on the Leicestershire Regiment, they moved into the married quarters that were there and they used to get a gang of us boys and they used to train us in military training. Rifle drill. Homemade rifles with bits of wood and yeah we had a good life really.
EH: Yeah.
DB: Yes. Things developed later. We had paper rounds. I used to take papers especially on a Sunday morning on to the camp. There was gun emplacements. I used to go there and the soldiers manning the guns used to give us slab cakes and say, ‘Take them home to your mother.’
EH: You were lucky.
DB: Yeah.
EH: I used to go down the Station Road delivering papers and walk back up the hill.
DB: Yeah.
EH: Pushing me bike.
Other: You were lucky you had a bike.
EH: Yeah.
Other: When did the evacuees come to live with you?
EH: Den maybe remember more than me.
DB: Oh, I can’t remember. 1941. I can’t remember. About 1942 I would think. I can’t remember. You see we were only what? Eleven and twelve year old at that time. Didn’t take much notice of dates.
Other: No. But you remember what they were called didn’t you?
DB: Oh yeah. We, we had evacuees from Leeds.
EH: Leeds. Yeah.
DB: And they came and tried to take over the school [laughs] Used to try and make us play rugby which didn’t go down very well.
EH: Was there a lot of evacuees, Den?
DB: Yes. All over the village.
EH: Yeah. I can’t remember that. I know my mum had three or four.
DB: Three or four. The Millers. They came from Primrose Hill School in Leeds. And the eldest one was Eric Miller I think his name was. I can’t remember the girl’s name.
EH: No. I can’t.
DB: But it was a problem for mother because they were [pause] not wishing to decry them but they were from a slum area I think in Leeds.
EH: Yeah. They weren’t [pause] they were —
DB: They were unclean.
EH: They were unclean in comparison to what we were used to.
Other: They had nits.
EH: Nits in their hair. And they had beautiful long ringlets the two girls. I can’t remember their names and my mum cut them all short and I can see her now in the kitchen with a saucer of paraffin and perfume. Rubbing it in their hair to get rid of these nits.
DB: Yeah.
EH: Can you?
DB: Yeah.
EH: Yeah.
DB: Spent hours just with a nit comb.
EH: Yeah.
DB: Combing their hair. Yeah.
Other: Did they actually live with you?
DB: Yeah.
EH: And I was petrified that I’d get these nits.
Other: An extra four people in the house then.
EH: Yeah. I don’t know where they all slept.
DB: For some reason they didn’t stay long. I don’t know why.
EH: I don’t know why they didn’t stay long.
DB: I think their parents must have come.
EH: I can vaguely remember the parents arriving.
DB: Can you?
EH: Yeah. So maybe it was an amicable agreement that they wanted them home. I’m not sure but—
Other: I think a lot of evacuees went home fairly soon.
EH: Yeah.
Other: Because they couldn’t.
EH: Yeah.
Other: Live without them.
EH: Yeah.
DB: Yes. I had a paper round and used to go on to the camp laden with Sunday papers. Big. Heavy as I could carry.
EH: I had a paper round as well love, didn’t I?
DB: Yeah. I worked for Mr Saxby in those days.
EH: No. I didn’t work for her.
DB: And the highlight of the Sunday morning then was to set up stall in the officer’s mess kitchen and then have a nice breakfast.
EH: Yeah. I bet it was.
DB: Yeah. Aye.
CH: What do you remember about the goings on RAF Waddington when you were that age?
EH: Not a lot.
DB: Well, as a group of kids we used to assemble at the bottom of Mere Road.
EH: Yeah.
DB: And look over the, well there was no hedge. You could walk on to the airfield if you wanted to.
EH: Boys and girls we all played together. And there was a, they were building the new gymnasium, weren’t they? Was it a gymnasium. And they had the seesaw.
DB: And they built the gym where, where the new houses are now.
EH: Yeah. And we used to go down and play on the seesaw, you know.
DB: I can’t remember that.
EH: All the RAF people accommodated us.
DB: We used to go to the bottom of Mere Road looking over the airfield.
EH: Yes.
DB: And count the planes taking off on bombing raids.
EH: And wave to them.
DB: And then the next morning when they were all coming in we could hear them coming in. We’d dash down there and see who was coming in and who was missing.
EH: Yeah.
DB: Yeah.
EH: Spent hours down there waving them off.
DB: Yeah.
EH: Early evenings before bedtime.
DB: Yeah.
EH: That doesn’t seem long ago Den, does it?
DB: No. It only seems like yesterday really.
EH: Yeah.
DB: When you look back.
CH: Do you remember what type of aircraft they were?
DB: Yeah. They were Lancasters.
EH: Yeah.
DB: I can remember the old Hampdens when the war first started and they used to take off over the back of mum’s house.
EH: Yeah.
DB: That’s before the runways were built. Hampdens. Yeah. The disturbing feature about it was when planes crashed close by with [pause], there was one in particular at the corner of the Grantham, Mere Road.
EH: Yeah, there was —
DB: Grantham Road Mere Road Junction. Next to the radio shop. And that was —
EH: Where the doctor’s surgery is now.
DB: Yes. That was a bad crash.
EH: But we were all such good pals together, weren’t we?
DB: Yeah.
Other: Can you remember what it was like the day after the church had been bombed in the village?
DB: Yeah.
EH: Very sad.
DB: Yeah. We were taken.
EH: Very sombre. Very.
CH: What do you remember about that episode? About the church being bombed. Can you tell me the sequence of that?
DB: I can remember walking out to the roadway in the morning and —
EH: Seeing the —
DB: The first thing that took your sight as you looked towards the village was the church tower and it was gone.
EH: And the bell stood right on top of all the rubble. The church bell.
DB: Yeah. Later on we went down to the village to see what the effect was and there was rubbish all over the streets and buildings. Old cottages demolished and —
EH: And all, you know a lot of the neighbouring country lanes, village lanes with all the thatched roofed cottages were no longer there were they?
DB: Yeah.
EH: The rooves and that. And everybody helped one another.
CH: So when the bombing happened were you in a shelter?
DB: No. We were in bed.
EH: We were under the table. Well, we —
DB: Well, we were under, under the table. We didn’t go to the shelter.
EH: Yeah. We had a big dining table under the window and if the sirens went we got under the table and stayed there until the all clear.
DB: Yeah.
CH: So you heard the explosions did you?
DB: Well, I can’t –
EH: I can’t remember.
DB: I can’t remember the explosion.
EH: No.
DB: But we must have done.
EH: Yeah. We must have done. Must have been dozing under the table.
DB: Yeah.
EH: And there was one lady. One twenty one year old. My mum’s —
DB: Next door neighbour’s daughter.
EH: Next door neighbour’s daughter was killed.
DB: She was killed. She was sleeping at her grandmother’s house.
EH: With her grandma.
DB: In the village.
EH: She went to sleep with her grandma because grandma was poorly and she, and her grandma stayed downstairs because she was poorly and Eva went upstairs and she was the one that was killed. The only one.
DB: And that was a stone off the church.
EH: Yeah.
DB: Flew over and dropped through the roof of this cottage.
EH: Yeah. And she was the maid of the Reverend.
DB: Yeah.
EH: And lived in the Rectory and this particular evening she didn’t sleep at the Rectory. She went to her grandma’s. It’s just —
Other: One of those things.
EH: Yeah. And her parents lived next door to our mum and —
Other: It destroyed your school as well, didn’t it?
DB: Yes.
EH: Yeah.
DB: Well, it destroyed the school. We had to move to Bracebridge Heath.
EH: Yeah.
DB: Unfortunately. I never liked school. There was no score.
EH: Yeah.
Other: That’s where I get it from.
EH: I weren’t that brilliant.
CH: It was quite a journey you had to make then.
EH: To Bracebridge Heath.
DB: Yes. Yes.
EH: There was a school bus.
CH: Oh.
DB: We had. Yes. They had a school bus.
EH: And our headmaster was Mr Critchley was it?
DB: In the village.
EH: Yeah.
DB: Yes.
CH: What else can you remember from the war time living in the village?
EH: Living in the village? As I say we were all good friends together and we had an old Village Hall on the hilltop. There’s two cottages there now. If you go down Tinkers Lane on to the hilltop on the right hand side there’s two nice stone cottages. That used to be the old Village Hall and we had lovely concert parties through the war.
DB: Yeah.
EH: And singalongs.
DB: War Weapons Week.
EH: Yeah. And lots and lots of, we used to go to Chapel and go to the village shop to spend our Saturday penny. If we, if we were lucky it was a sixpence. Can you remember Den?
DB: Yeah.
Other: What did you buy?
EH: Sweeties.
DB: Yes. We had black —
EH: Sweeties. And it was called Mrs Black’s Shop.
DB: Yes.
EH: And it’s called now Black’s Close because they built a lot of houses on the farmland. They were farmers and she had the shop. The sweetie shop. It was lovely.
DB: I can’t really think of much more.
EH: It was just camaraderie but as, as there was twenty odd houses down Mere Road, council houses and they all had children didn’t they Den?
DB: Yeah.
EH: There weren’t many that didn’t have. We all went to the same school and we all played together. There wasn’t the amount of traffic so you were quite safe to play in the road. Whip and top, and marbles and football and skipping. All the old fashioned —
DB: I can remember the VE Night. Victory. We had a bonfire at the, in the field where previously that aircraft had crashed.
EH: Yeah.
DB: Had a village bonfire.
EH: Yeah.
DB: And later that night. I think it was later that same evening or was it the evening after? I’m not quite sure but they had a Victory Dance in one of the hangars on the camp and we went down there.
EH: Oh, I can’t remember that. I might have been —
DB: Yeah. And as far as I can remember the hangars were all draped with flags. Air Force flags. You know the —
EH: Different squadrons.
DB: Yes.
Other: Was it for the whole village?
EH: Yeah.
DB: Yeah. Yeah. Yes, there were a lot of village folk invited to it. Yes.
EH: It was a nice —
DB: It was a nice celebration.
EH: A nice community life. It was lovely. I can never ever remember not having lots of friends you know. Not, some of them weren’t close friends but you always got on together. It was lovely. It was a lovely community spirit.
CH: Dennis, can I ask you how old were you when the war ended?
EH: World war ended —
DB: Nineteen forty —
EH: Seven? Six?
DB: Seven. I left school —
EH: Yeah.
DB: At fourteen. Fourteen or fifteen. Fourteen, I think.
EH: Well, I met Tommy in nineteen forty —
CH: Let’s ask Dennis, what did you, were you working then? When you left school, Dennis.
DB: When I left school at fourteen I went to work at Lincoln Co-op. Errand boy at first and then shop assistant.
CH: And where was that?
DB: High Street in Lincoln.
CH: How long did you stay there for?
DB: Til I was eighteen and I joined the Air Force as National Serviceman.
CH: When you came back from your National Service what did you do then?
DB: I joined the Railway Company at Lincoln Station. Became a signalman and stayed there forty, well stayed on the railway in Nottingham and various, Derby and places. Forty odd years. Forty five years I think.
CH: Yeah.
DB: Yeah.
EH: And he went just like that.
DB: Yeah.
CH: And what about you, Eileen?
EH: I didn’t.
CH: When the war ended you were fourteen.
EH: Yeah. We, I left school on the Friday as we all did and I started work on the Monday at British Home Stores for a short space of time and then I found a better job at Marks and Spencer’s and I stayed there and left there to go and do my nurse training.
Other: You worked at St John’s.
EH: Yeah. Yeah. I left there and went to work at St John’s to begin with. And then I met my husband and he’d got a home station. He was in Bomber Command at Waddington.
CH: How did you meet him?
EH: Well, he flew from Wickenby and then he came to Waddington after the war. Well, he flew from Wickenby and lost his crew just after the war on the 7th of August as war finished on the 5th didn’t it? They went to bring some prisoners of war home from Italy. The crew. And Tommy being a rear gunner and the mid-upper gunner didn’t go with them and they flew in to the Pyrenees on the way there thankfully and they were all killed. So they’d no prisoners. And then Tommy got moved from Wickenby. That was in the August and he came to Waddington in the February and I met him at the village dance on Valentine’s Day 1946 or seven, I can’t remember. I was, and we, and we never never parted. We stayed together from there.
CH: How old were you?
EH: I told him I was seventeen and I weren’t quite sixteen. So I had to be honest after a while when it got a bit more serious. He forgive me [laughs]
CH: So was he then based at Waddington?
EH: He was, he was only at Waddington for a short space of time and then he decided he didn’t want to fly any more with a new skipper because he’d flown all through the war with the same crew. And he got the opportunity and he volunteered to go down to London to the Science Museum on gunnery display work and he stayed there a year. It was a year’s contract and he used to come back to Waddington every two, second weekend and stay with my mum and dad and then go back to London you know after the weekend. And then he got a home station after that to RAF Padgate and did drill instructing. And I wasn’t very happy doing my Psychiatric nursing although I did my first year and he said, ‘Come to Bolton and we can be near together.’ So I went. I met a lady, a good friend at Bracebridge Heath called Edith and she came to Lancashire with me because we were both in the same frame of mind and we stayed friends all our lives. And she died four years ago. Lived at Spilsby. Had three boys.
Other: When you moved to Lancashire you went to do your Psychiatric training there didn’t you?
EH: No. No.
Other: And they put you on General instead.
EH: Yeah. Well, we thought we’d applied for Psychiatric but it was General so we stayed there and we were so happy. And all my nursing career has been happy.
CH: How old were you when you got married?
EH: Twenty two. Nearly twenty three. 1951.
CH: Where were you living at the time?
EH: In the nurses home at Bolton. You weren’t allowed to live out. Did you know this? You weren’t allowed to live out as a student nurse in my day. It was only after you qualified that you could live at home or get a flat. And we, we qualified. Did our finals in the October of 1951 and we arranged our wedding day for the 3rd of November 1951. I always promised my mum I’d sit my finals but I didn’t say I’d wait for the results [laughs] So we got married while we were waiting for the results and thankfully I was successful. And we lived in Lancashire as I say for ten years and then moved back to Waddo. Here. Nineteen fifty —
Other: 1960.
EH: ’61.
Other: ’61.
EH: The 3rd of November. You were five.
Other: Not quite.
EH: Not quite. And Ian was nine.
DB: A lot of water gone under the bridge, hasn’t it?
EH: Yeah. I tell you why the final reason we came to Lincolnshire. Tommy had come out of the Forces and he was working in an insurance business. And in nineteen the late ‘40s the cotton mills, the coal mines they were all coming out on short time and he came home one night and he said, ‘It’s now or never sweetheart.’ ‘What do you mean?’ he said, ‘I know you’ve always, would have liked to have gone back to Lincoln’. I did. After Elaine was born I wanted to be back here. Funny isn’t it? And he said, ‘It’s now or never. We’ll go and move. We’ll put the house on the market and we’ll move because there will be no job for me in insurance if there’s no work for people. They’ll not pay their insurance.’ And we never regretted it.
CH: What job did he do?
EH: What? What here?
CH: Once you moved back here.
EH: Oh, he just went down the camp and got a job on the electrical department on the runways and he stayed there until he retired. And we were never more contented. And you worked at British Rail a long time and Tommy worked for the Department of Environment.
DB: Yeah. I went —
EH: Eh?
DB: I went from porter at Lincoln Central.
EH: Yeah.
DB: I wasn’t there a few weeks when I applied for a signalman’s post. I came to Waddington.
EH: Yeah. I can remember you being at Harmston.
DB: Aye. Then I went to Harmston. Bracebridge. Then I moved. Met my wife, moved to Nottingham and did all sorts on signalman. Was made redundant there. Went in the marshalling yard.
EH: Did you?
DB: Yeah. And then I eventually went back to a signal box and then got promotion to supervising station manager.
CH: Where did you meet your wife, Dennis?
EH: Skeg.
DB: Skegness.
EH: Skegness.
DB: After we came out —
EH: At the Ship Hotel.
DB: Pardon?
EH: Was it at the Ship Hotel?
DB: No. No. No. It was the posh car.
EH: Eh?
DB: My friend who lived in the village and I bought old cars. I had an old Austin 7. This was after I got demobbed. He bought an old Austin 7 and we used to, on a Sunday evening we used to go over to Skegness.
EH: I can remember.
DB: Well, a Sunday afternoon and stayed for the evening. And walking across the car park one evening I saw my wife and her friend with her brother and his brother’s wife, her brother’s wife and had a little bit of chit chat and met them later on in the evening and that was it.
EH: Yeah.
DB: I came home that night. She was on holiday. I plucked up courage and wrote to her and asked her if I could go over to Nottingham to meet her and that’s —
EH: Plucked up courage [laughs]
DB: How things developed.
EH: And you had a good life together love.
DB: Yeah. Yeah.
CH: How old were you when you got married?
DB: Twenty two I think.
EH: You were married the year after me and Tommy.
DB: Yeah. A few months after you and Tommy.
EH: Yeah. I was early pregnant.
DB: I met her. I met her in Nottingham in November and we were married the next March.
EH: Yeah.
Other: Really?
DB: I met her just before your wedding.
EH: We got, we got married in November love and you got married in the Easter.
DB: March.
EH: In the March.
DB: Yeah.
EH: Yeah. And we came home from Lancashire for your wedding and I just, just early pregnant.
CH: Yeah.
DB: Yes.
CH: It seems like both of you have been drawn back to Waddington all the time.
DB: It’s funny.
EH: It’s been a nice village.
DB: I think mum lived here all the time so —
EH: What love?
DB: Even though I lived in Nottingham from ’53 I think it was when I moved to Nottingham and we still came home as regular as we could. Yeah.
EH: Yeah. We’ve always come home.
DB: Yeah.
EH: Always used to spend a fortnight in the summer. September we always came home when we were married. And George, our step dad he used to come and meet me off the bus and helped me to carry the children down. Yeah. Good old days.
DB: Yeah.
CH: Eileen, what do you remember about Tommy’s service in the war?
EH: Service in the war? Well, I didn’t really know him, love. I didn’t meet him while he was still flying at Wickenby. I met him when he came to Waddington and he’d just lost the crew and he was a very very traumatised young twenty eight year old. Very very sad.
CH: Did you say he was a bomb aimer?
EH: No. He was a rear gunner.
CH: A rear gunner. Did he talk much about the war?
EH: He did to my son, our son. Yeah. No, he didn’t used to talk a lot about the war. He never forgot the crew. They were a family. The crew’s photograph is on the wall over the sideboard. Never took it down. And we still keep in touch with the, there was only one of the crew married and they had only been married a very short few months when her husband was killed. And we got in touch with her in later years and we still keep in touch, Cath and I don’t we?
Other: Yeah. You do.
CH: So he’d flown with the same crew then all through the war.
EH: All through the war and he never settled when he came to Waddington. That’s why he went to, to do gunnery display work. He enjoyed it in London. He said it was a fantastic career.
Other: When he was at the Science Museum.
EH: Yeah.
Other: He had to go into a locked room didn’t he?
EH: Yeah.
Other: And somebody came to see it. He had to open the door for them.
EH: Yeah.
Other: Who was it?
EH: Was it Anthony Eden? Eh?
Other: Yeah.
EH: Yeah.
Other: And I don’t know what was in this room. It was some German equipment that had been captured.
EH: And Anthony Eden said to him, ‘How did we win the war?’ He said, ‘Because their gunnery is far superior to what we’ve ever had.’ He reminisced occasionally but —
Other: He didn’t tell very much.
EH: Eh?
Other: He didn’t tell you very much.
EH: No. He didn’t.
Other: But I do remember that.
EH: I think he did to Ian occasionally. Ian will come out with snippets every so often. ‘My dad told me this.’ To be quite honest ducky, I’ll be honest with you now we were always busy at work, you know. We didn’t, we worked forty eight hour week didn’t we Den?
DB: Yeah.
EH: With overtime. I mean our hourly weekly work was forty eight hours. And then we’d work overtime to earn a bit extra. Especially Tommy and the men. So you didn’t have time for a lot of reminiscing.
DB: Yeah.
EH: Did you?
DB: No. It’s strange. There was a lot happened that you just can’t remember.
EH: Yeah.
DB: Yeah.
Other: Your auntie and uncle lived in one of the cottages.
EH: Yeah.
Other: Down Church Lane, didn’t they?
EH: Yeah.
Other: That was bombed.
EH: Yeah. She went, they went to, they came to live with mum and dad actually for a short space of time after they were bombed out. And then they got a council house at Washingborough, didn’t they?
DB: No. They went in a cottage at Washingborough.
EH: You what, love?
DB: They went in a little cottage in Washingborough.
EH: Yeah. And then they got [pause] yeah they did. They’ve been passed away a long time haven’t they?
DB: Yes.
EH: Yeah.
Other: And you used to play with their boys didn’t you?
EH: Yeah. Harry and John. They’re all dead now. Makes us feel very fortunate, Den.
DB: Yeah.
EH: Eh?
DB: Yeah. Yeah. I told Denise I’m not getting old.
EH: Eh?
DB: I told Denise I’m not getting old.
EH: I know. You try not to. Have we been of any help?
CH: Very much. Could I just take you back again to the wartime and any other recollections you have of what happened on the station at Waddington?
DB: Well, often there was air raids and you knew things were happening on the camp but you never got —
EH: It was —
DB: Immediate information that there were occasions when there were WAAFs and airmen killed in an air raid shelter but we never got information about that sort of thing.
EH: No. It was very very quiet. It was very very what’s the word I’m after?
DB: Although we lived in in the boundaries of the camp.
EH: We didn’t know what was —
DB: The council houses were in the boundaries. We had to go through a guarded barrier to get home in the evening and that sort of thing.
EH: We weren’t allowed on ad lib, you know.
DB: So —
EH: Like two communities really, weren’t it?
DB: Yeah. News from, bearing in mind we were only kids, teenagers we didn’t get a lot of news off the camp. The only things I remember was when I was on my paper round and and when the early in the war when the Royal Engineers or Leicestershire Regiment I think it was used to drill us with their home made guns. So first hand information of what was happening in the war and that we didn’t really get to know that at all.
CH: It must have been very noisy.
DB: Yeah. Yeah. Made a lot of noise but —
EH: It was part of —
DB: You lived with it. It was like part of living —
EH: It was part of daily living. We didn’t notice it.
DB: Yeah. You lived with it.
Other: A bit like now.
EH: Eh?
Other: A bit like now.
EH: Yeah.
DB: Yeah. You’re so close to it you don’t take notice of it do you?
[recording paused]
CH: Ok.
DB: Yeah. There was one occasion and for some reason or other I think it was a Saturday morning because we weren’t at school and there was a low flying German plane flew over by George’s Café firing its guns. Now, who it was firing at I’ve no idea but that was a scary moment. I mean as far as I can remember I was in mother’s garden and George’s Café was what —?
EH: George’s Café.
DB: Five minutes’ walk down the road, wasn’t it?
EH: Yeah, it’s just on the right hand side down Mere Road before you get to the barrier where you have to —
Other: Go through on to camp.
EH: Go through on to camp. Used to be George’s Café.
DB: I can also remember a Wellington bomber crashing on the sewerage farm on the High Dyke. Can you remember that?
EH: I can. Vaguely.
DB: Yeah. But like I was saying before we got no information of that sort of thing. Nothing appeared in the newspapers or anything like that about crashes. You just took notice of them at the time and as as kids after the crashes were cleared up we used to go and search for pieces of the glass. What did they call the glass?
Other: Perspex.
DB: Perspex.
EH: Yeah.
DB: And make rings out of them. Yeah.
CH: When the planes crashed did the people from the station come quite quickly to clear away?
EH: I can’t remember.
DB: I can’t remember. When the crash was tucked away it was quite horrendous. Machine gun bullets going off and all sorts in the fire. Yeah. And strange as it may seem the one that crashed near the Wheatsheaf at Waddington that was the site where they had the Victory Bonfire. Yeah.
EH: Yeah. It’s a long time ago love.
DB: Yeah, it is. You see. We didn’t take a lot of notice as teenagers. We were searching for —
EH: You were searching for love life and good fun. We did have a good teenage life though.
DB: And we spent a lot of time in the village after the Blitz. After the bomb. And it was a landmine that dropped on the church actually.
EH: Yeah.
DB: One on the church. One in the vicarage grounds.
EH: Yeah.
DB: You spend a lot of time in the bombed cottages and that as kids would you know.
EH: Yeah.
DB: Yeah.
EH: We used to, well simple pleasures of life your life in them days you know. We’d go tad poling in the village pond. Can you remember? [laughs] And things like that you know. Innocent. Just innocent camaraderie with your mates. Somebody would go to Black’s shop and buy some goodies and hopefully you’d get one when they come back. Yeah.
Other: Did you have pigs down the garden during the war as well?
EH: You what love?
Other: Did you have your pigs down in the garden?
DB: No.
Other: During the war.
EH: Yeah.
DB: Chickens.
EH: Chickens.
DB: We didn’t have pigs until I came out the Air Force.
EH: Yeah.
DB: Nineteen forty —
EH: We always had chickens, didn’t we?
DB: 1949.
EH: Yeah. I hope we’ve been of some use.
CH: You were talking about chickens. Do you remember the sort of food that you were eating?
EH: Yeah.
DB: Yeah. We never really went short of a lot of food.
EH: Potato peeling.
DB: Mum was always.
Other: That was the chickens.
EH: Yeah.
DB: We had a big garden. She always had plenty of chickens up the garden and you know if we had no Sunday dinner she’d send dad up the garden to kill a chicken and that sort of thing.
Other: You always used to tell me that you ate quite well because you were living in a village. In a rural area with plenty.
EH: We never went hungry.
DB: No. We never went hungry. Like I say when I delivered papers —
EH: I was just going to say that too.
DB: To the gun emplacement on the camp that the soldiers used to provide me with slabs of cake. ‘Take those home to your mother.’ You know. And they’d last us a week or more.
EH: And we used to deliver papers. I often think about this. In the early morning my mother always had a lovely breakfast ready for us before we went to school. And it must have cost her more money to cook that breakfast than what we got for delivering papers.
DB: Yeah. I can’t remember much about that.
EH: Yeah.
DB: But —
CH: What did she cook you?
EH: All kinds of things. A fried breakfast. A bit of sausage. A bit of bacon buttie, you know. A boiled egg, scrambled eggs. You see we always had our chickens so we had —
DB: Yeah.
EH: Our own eggs.
DB: We were brought up on eggs I think.
EH: Yeah. You know.
DB: None. Now none of my kids eat them.
EH: Do they not?
DB: No. No.
EH: I need some eggs before you go away.
Other: Go on holiday. Right.
CH: So you said your father died when you were nine.
DB: Yeah.
CH: And so how long was your mother on her own for?
EH: Only a year.
DB: A year. She —
Other: Needs must.
DB: She married the lodger.
EH: My dad was, my stepdad was a lodger. He was a Newcastle gentleman.
DB: Yeah. He worked on the camp.
EH: He worked —
DB: Building the hangars and then he joined the, he was a warden on the camp. I don’t know what the organisation was called. He was at the wireless station up beyond the camp on Waddington Heath.
EH: Yeah.
DB: Wasn’t he?
EH: Yeah. We have a stepbrother. He lives in Doncaster. We’re very close. We’ve never had any —
DB: No.
EH: Any family hiccups. Stepbrothers, or twin brothers they were both as adorable, you know. No differences in opinions of any of them.
Other: You had to get by didn’t you because there was no money in the house.
DB: No.
Other: Was there mum?
EH: No.
DB: I can’t think of anything else really.
EH: I can remember once going to Mrs Black’s shop with a sixpence on a Saturday and I lost it in the snow and I can never remember finding that tanner and I didn’t get any sweeties. My dad hadn’t got any more pennies. Yes. Things like that you know that you think oh you’d give them another tanner today [laughs] It wouldn’t be a tanner would it? [laughs]
Other: No.
EH: Is that a mark on the carpet?
Other: No. No. It’s not.
[recording paused]
EH: Can you —
CH: Ok.
Other: I can remember because —
EH: Yeah.
Other: When we came back off holiday we bought dad a video of the Eagle’s Nest.
EH: Yeah.
Other: Because we’d been up.
EH: Yeah.
Other: And he told me that he’d been over there.
EH: Yeah.
Other: On a bombing raid to bomb it but unfortunately it was too cloudy.
EH: Yeah. I can remember that.
Other: So he had to, well he was going to bomb Eagle’s Nest.
EH: Yeah.
Other: Which was Hitler’s secret.
EH: Yeah. Yeah. I can remember that.
Other: Yeah.
EH: Yeah. I can remember now you’ve talked —
Other: So, it didn’t get bombed. Not that night anyway.
EH: Yeah.
Other: Yeah. But that’s the only thing he ever really did tell me.
EH: A lot of them didn’t talk about it did they?
DB: No.
DB: That’s I would say. We didn’t really get a lot of news from the camp.
EH: No.
DB: What was going off in the war. You, you’d just listen to the radio and think well that —
EH: Yeah.
DB: That’s where they were going last night when they took off.
EH: Yeah.
DB: And that sort of thing.
EH: It was top secret really.
DB: But —
EH: Can I not get anyone a drink?
DB: No. I’m alright duck, thanks.
CH: Ok. What we’ll do is we’ll end the interview there, Eileen.
EH: Yeah.
CH: And Dennis. Thank you so much for talking. It’s been fascinating listening to your stories and thank you very much.
EH: 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
A name given to the resource
Interview with Eileen Handley and Dennis Bush
Creator
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Cathie Hewitt
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-10-12
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AHandleyE-BushD171012
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Civilian
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Format
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00:49:30 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Twins, Eileen and Dennis, were born in Waddington in 1929. They give a detailed account of their experiences living adjacent to RAF Waddington throughout the Second World War. Summer evenings were spent waving to aircraft departing on operations, then going back in the morning to count how many had returned. Evacuees arrived from Leeds and three were billeted with Eileen and Dennis, but it wasn’t long before their parents came to take them home. Dennis delivered newspapers to the camp and would be rewarded by cakes which he was told to take home to his mother. Several aircraft crashes were witnessed. The sombre mood of the village is described after the church was bombed, which resulted in the death of a twenty-one-year-old resident. Their school was also destroyed, resulting in transporting each day to nearby villages. VE night was celebrated with a bonfire on the site of one of the aircraft crashes, which was followed by a dance in one of the aircraft hangars. Dennis joined the RAF in 1947 for his National Service, and upon discharge, became a signalman. Eileen initially worked as a shop assistant before undertaking a career in nursing. She met and married an ex-Lancaster rear gunner, who was posted to RAF Waddington after the war.
Contributor
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Ian Whapplington
Julie Williams
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941-05-09
bombing
crash
evacuation
home front
RAF Waddington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/777/11005/PFalgateD1610.1.jpg
35c185ef471807940d23c594b90c3567
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/777/11005/PFalgateD1611.1.jpg
0abb0e169450ca8f385acb1c5c210a61
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
Falgate, Donald
D Falgate
Description
An account of the resource
69 items. The collection concerns Squadron Leader Don Falgate (136896 Royal Air Force) and consists of 68 pre-war, wartime, and post-war photographs and a handwritten detailed account of his tour. Don Falgate trained in Canada and flew operations as a bomb aimer with 463 Squadron from RAF Waddington.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Paul Falgate and catalogued by Trevor Hardcastle.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-04-07
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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Falgate, D
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
Don Falgate's crew and aircraft
Description
An account of the resource
Lancaster in background, seven aircrew in flying clothing standing behind a large bomb on a trolley. On the reverse 'Crew of Lancaster P (Peter) DV229 463 Squadron RAAF Waddington Lincs 1943. Lancaster P (Peter) DV229 lost over Orleans night 10th June 1944. Last flown in 26-4-44 on a raid to Schweinfurt. Crew left to right Don Falgate (Bomb Aimer) Pat Kirkpatrick (Rear Gunner) Tony Burton (Navigator) Joe Foster (Australian) Pilot Ron Houghton (Flight Engineer) Taffy Williams (Wireless Operator) Alf Wing (Canadian) Mid Upper Gunner'.
Date
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1943
Format
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One b/w photograph
Language
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eng
Type
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Photograph
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PFalgateD1610, PFalgateD1611
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Canadian Air Force
Royal Australian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
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.
463 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
bomb aimer
bomb trolley
flight engineer
Lancaster
navigator
pilot
RAF Waddington
service vehicle
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/860/11102/AHarrisNG160128.2.mp3
617dde8eedd97b1d29cf4bc164b586a4
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Harris, Neil
Neil Gibson Harris
N G Harris
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Flight Lieutenant Neil Harris (b. 1920, 56027 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a navigator with 578 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-01-28
Rights
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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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Harris, NG
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
BW: Alright. This is Brian Wright, I am interviewing Flight Lieutenant Brian Wright DFC of Bomber Command on Thursday, the 28th of January 2016 at his home in Lidham and the time is twenty past three in the afternoon. Just to start us with a formal question, if you wouldn’t mind so, could you just confirm your full name, rank on leaving and your service number please?
NH: Neil Gibson Harris, 56027, Flight Lieutenant.
BW: Ok. And I believe you are born in November 1920 in Bournemouth.
NH: 27/11/1920, yes.
BW: What was your family like, you lived with your parents, of course, did you have any brothers or sisters?
NH: Yes, I had two brothers and one sister we, fairly wide range, my eldest brother was nine years older than me and my sister was six years younger than me. So, was a spread of fifteen years between us, we are a working-class family, thank you, but very close.
BW: And what was the area like where you were growing up, was it [unclear]?
NH: Very pleasant indeed, oh, suburban, but very pleasant. Although basically a lower middle-class type area.
BW: And you were at school in Bournemouth during that time?
NH: Yes.
BW: I understand that you left school at fourteen.
NH: Fourteen, school called East Howe.
BW: East Howe.
NH: Yes.
BW: And did you have any qualifications?
NH: No, there weren’t, there were no qualifications available in those days. Not at fourteen, no, just, you just left school at fourteen and started working. And I went to work in the East Dorset brickworks as an office boy but by the end of nine months, I was rang into [unclear] office and my salary went, my wages went from seven and six to fifteen schillings, the works manager didn’t, gave me all his work to do [laughs]
BW: Just [unclear] you with it.
NH: So, I went from there to Bowmakers, which is a banking facilities company in Bournemouth, where I upgraded my position quite a bit, I was a proper clerk, a junior clerk.
BW: And from there I understand you went into the civil service.
NH: No, not the civil service, no, I went straight into the Air Force from there.
BW: Oh, I see, so you were [unclear]
NH: As an apprentice, as an apprentice. No, I’ve never been in the civil service, No, I went, that was, I was fifteen when I went to Bowmakers and I was nearly seventeen when I joined the RAF as an apprentice at Halton.
BW: Ok, and this would be 1937, so that would be
NH: That would be 1930, no, earlier, yes, ’37, that’s right, yes, ’37, September ’37.
BW: And what attracted you to join the RAF, what was your interest in that?
NH: Well, there were half a dozen or so, junior clerks, they all had had benefit of grammar school type of education, which is different to the one that I had and I, three or four of them were interested in the RAF, two of them, like myself, became apprentices, and one of them became an acting private officer
BW: I see.
NH: And a man named Haynes, he was a Battle of Britain pilot eventually, he was killed eventually too, got a DFC, shot down five, after that I don’t know anything about him but he didn’t survive the war, that’s all I know.
BW: A shame. And so, what prompted you to join the RAF, did you sense that the war was coming or did you [unclear]?
NH: Well, I think It’s the effect of three or four of us talking about the RAF and doing quite a nice job, had a pleasant working situation at Bowmakers but we wanted more excitement, I think. And of course I wanted more education, I, leaving school at fourteen I still felt I’d liked to have gone to a public school, there’s no chance of me doing that but RAF Halton provided a fairly good substitute, we had school and workshops and plenty of sport, which is what I wanted.
BW: And was there a good social life as well?
NH: Oh, no, social life, no, you weren’t allowed out [laughs], no, there’s three years hard regime but you had plenty of sports, but never saw a girl [laughs], no, we were all frustrated [unclear] [laughs]
BW: And so you
NH: It was a good training, excellent, marvellous training of course.
BW: And so, your trade in the engineering branch was what?
NH: I was a fitter 2A, a fitter to airframe.
BW: Ok.
NH: I managed to get in because the expansion scheme had started and the entries became much larger so I [unclear] an examination of three set papers, quite large, got a couple of them here somewhere, and I’m quite impressed by the standards that they required. So I did a lot of private study, my second brother was a very clever man, young man, he helped me a lot, he was an, he was a really highly, he became a highly qualified engineer and he helped me a lot, I managed to scrape in and but by that time, entries were getting to something like nine hundred or a thousand, so two entries a year, and of course the expansion scheme has started because of the threat of Hitler and there were, so, we were, before that time it was, you were called fitter twos and you did both engines and airframes, they split us up, the aircrafts were becoming more complicated and so you either became airframe, a fitter airframe or a fitter engine and then you did your three year, it’s a three year training, you did your three year training either as a fitter to airframe or a fitter to engine, and then the scheme was that after you’d been out on a normal squadron, and had practical experienced, you went back and did another year and that would be a conversion, if you did airframes before then you did a year on engines or vice versa so then you became a fitter one, so that’s basically how the training worked.
BW: And so, you get a good grounding not just in the structure of the aircraft but also the powerplants as well.
NH: You would, by that time but of course the war intervened from my entry and we stayed as fitter 2A’s of course but I got off and I took the easier route and managed to get onto aircrew. And but they wouldn’t let me, as soon as I finished my training, I volunteered for aircrew, but they wouldn’t release me until enough people, the war started by then but they wouldn’t release me to go onto aircrew duties until they had enough people in from, to be converted to trades, you know, as engineering trades and I could leave, so it took me nearly eighteen months from the time of being selected to being called up.
BW: So they needed enough people to be in the pool to replace you
NH: That’s right, that’s
BW: Because they could allow the engineers to move on.
NH: Yes
BW: [unclear]
NH: That’s right, yes.
BW: And what attracted you think to aircrew, was is, there simply more money, cause there was flying pay [unclear] or was it [unclear]?
NH: I wanted the glamour.
BW: Alright.
NH: A little bit it was there but I [laughs], I wanted to be a fighter pilot.
BW: I see.
NH: Yeah.
BW: And did that involve more tests and [unclear]?
NH: Not until you got onto, when I was eventually called up of course then by that time of course there the whole process was so huge that there are bottlenecks and so every stage it took time because you had to wait until you could move on to the next stage, the, either, whether held up training or something of that sort so, we start off at the ITW, which in my case was, well, first of all it started off in London, at the air crew receiving centre and we were all there, we live, we ate at the zoo, I remember,
BW: At London Zoo.
NH: At London Zoo, and lived in flats, in luxury flats in North West London and marched to the zoo for our meals.
BW: Right.
NH: But that, again, took a long time before we moved on and the next stage was to go on to the Initial Training Wing, where you did an eight week course and learned navigation and various other skills but there was a bottleneck there, I remember I went down to Brighton for a, just to occupy time, and eventually, although I’d been called up in November, November ’41, that’s right, and I was at Wick at the time when, as a fitter, on the, we were protecting the convoys coming into Liverpool but we’d been stationed at Stornoway on the Outer Hebrides,
BW: That’s where Wick is, is that right?
NH: Pardon?
BW: That’s where Wick is.
NH: No, Wick, no, Wick is on the north east coast.
BW: Ok.
NH: And now we moved over there with Hudsons, we had started with Ansons and changed over to Hudsons, when we moved up to Stornoway and then from Stornoway, we moved over to Wick. But whilst we were at Wick, I was called up for aircrew duties and that was in November ’41, I happened to be on leave at the time in Bournemouth so I got recalled from Bournemouth to Wick, which was to go back to London [laughs] to start my aircrew duties and as I say, then, we had, we hung around in Regent’s Park waiting for the next stage, well the first stage of training and that didn’t happen, this was in November ’41 and we didn’t get to Stratford until about the end of January, February ’42 and then we had this eight week course at Stratford learning navigation, doing drill, all RT and all the rest of it.
BW: So you travelled in a very short time to the length and breadth of the country cause you’ve gone from a short period of time in Brighton right up to the north of Scotland to work on aircraft protecting the convoys and then, across the other side of Scotland, then back down again, and called for [unclear] training
NH: Well, just go back a little bit, when I left, when I graduated from Halton, well, I graduated as a, what’s the right word, as an aircraftsman first class, normally I’d have an entry at, say, of a hundred, well take a hundred, apprentices leaving but ten would pass out as leading aircraftsmen, ten or fifteen would pass out as leading aircraftsmen, aircraftsmen first class, about sixty or so would pass out as aircraftsmen first class and the remainder would pass out as AC2 but the rate of pay was quite significant, a leading aircraftsman would get forty two schillings a week, which was a big rise from five and six pence,
BW: Yeah, absolutely.
NH: Yeah. So, I passed out an AC1 which is 31, 31 of 31 and six pence a week, which is quite good, I, [laughs].
BW: And was that more than you were earning in the bank previously?
NH: Oh, yes, oh yes, in the bank I was getting seventeen and six, I think it was, might have gonna up, to nearly a pound, but no, seventeen to six a week, yes,
BW: So you almost doubled
NH: No, I, and of course, as an apprentice, I’m only getting three schillings a week, for the first two weeks and then five and six pence for the last week, that’s the third week. And then when I passed out as an AC1, I would have jumped up to thirty-one and six pence a week, which is magnificent,
BW: I believe at some point during your early training, you caught pneumonia and had to be sort of
NH: Oh that was before, that was at the end of my training,
BW: Oh, I see.
NH: Yes, this was, the war had started October, November, I caught pneumonia almost [unclear] they had to, they called my mother to come up because they thought I wouldn’t live but M & B was the new drug which they’d produced and that saved my life I think because but always touch and go anyway, when I recovered and I came out, my entry had, the whole thing was telescoped, you see, did a three year course, when the war started, all sports afternoons were stopped, we worked longer hours, and the whole thing was telescoped from the three years to a much shorter one but so we were on that at the time that I went into hospital with pneumonia and when I came out, my entry had finished and they’d gone, so I was left on my own, they gave me some Christmas leave and when I came back, I just studied on my own for a few weeks and passed out on my own as an AC1. I probably had passed out as an AC2 [laughs]. So, I’ve been lucky that way.
BW: So, there was no parade for you then, unfortunately, they just allowed you
NH: No, I just, no.
BW: So you graduated [unclear]
NH: I went down to Thorney Island under 48 Squadron, which is at Coastal Command, we had Ansons then, as I said, and then we, as an AC1. Is it all getting a bit garbled for you?
BW: No, no, that’s perfectly fine. So, during your time at Thorney Island then, which is near Chichester,
NH: Yeah.
BW: You were still as a tradesman, you were an aircraftman
NH: That’s right
BW: First class
NH: Yeah.
BW: What was it like there, what sort of air, you said Ansons then, have other aircraft there too? [unclear] and Blenheims, would you work on them at all or?
NH: No, only Ansons.
BW: Ah, ok.
NH: Yeah. And of course we were there to protect the shipping coming up to Southampton and to the docks along the south coast but then, when the invasion of the low countries came, it was too dangerous and the shipping was moved up to Liverpool, Liverpool and Glasgow and so we followed the shipping up to Liverpool and we were stationed at Hooton Park.
BW: I see. So around the time of the Battle of Britain and when the invasion was looking imminent during the summer of 1940,
NH: Yeah.
BW: You and your squadron, 48 Squadron, actually moved up to Liverpool.
NH: To Liverpool and we were there for about a year I think before we moved up to, because then there were all bombed badly and the submarine menace became bigger and we moved, and so the shipping was moved further up into Glasgow and so we moved up to Stornoway,
BW: I see.
NH: And then to Wick. Don’t quite know why we did that, we were on Hudsons by that time.
BW: How did you find them to work on?
NH: Well of course [unclear] much, they’d hydraulics of course which you know, on the Anson it was a wind up undercarriage, took a hundred and twenty turns to get the wheels up, well of course there was much more hydraulics on the Hudsons, very modern by comparison with the Anson.
BW: And so, you mentioned earlier about having completed your trade training, you were called up for aircrew which is in November ‘41 thereabouts, did you apply to be a pilot or did you?
NH: Yes, I wanted to be a pilot, yeah, I wanted to be a glamourous pilot and go out with girls [laughs]
BW: [laughs] And what happened to enable the change [unclear]?
NH: Well you see that, everything, as I said, was taking so long with bottlenecks everywhere, they decided to change from being a two pilot crew to one pilot and introduced bomb aimers and bomb aimers very often failed pilots, [unclear] capable of getting an aircraft back perhaps in an emergency as the pilot was no longer capable, that was the, so, the some man crew then became a pilot, navigator, bomb aimer, wireless operator, engineer and two gunners, that’s a Halifax or Lancaster.
BW: Ok.
NH: And so then of course they had a business of what they called grading and so all of us who wanted to be pilots, we had to go to a grading school and fly Tiger Moths and be graded and although we went solo, I did a very poor final test so they graded me down, I’m afraid I messed it up, I made a mess of the spin, that sort of thing but so that was very disappointing but so they transferred me to being a navigator.
BW: I see.
NH: And others who were the same, were either navigators or bomb aimers did navigator or bomb aimer training.
BW: Ok. And so, until this stage you’ve been training on Tiger Moths
NH: Tiger Moths
BW: As a pilot
NH: Yeah
BW: But I believe you were sent abroad to Canada so you
NH: Well then, then of course I went to, yes, that’s right, I went to Rivers, near Winnipeg, went over on the Queen Elisabeth, just newly constructed, that was in, that was in September ’42, yes, September ’42, oh, because of the bottleneck we gone down to Eastbourne for further navigation, for navigation training, so we did a further navigation course down there, that was after we’d failed, we failed to become pilots and went down and became navigators, this is the start of our navigation course at Eastbourne, so did a few weeks there and then we moved across, up to, somewhere near Manchester, where we stayed there before we were shipped up to Glasgow to get onto the Queen Elisabeth.
BW: And what was it like going across to Canada?
NH: Oh, quite good, I mean, we were only a few thousand aircrew going across to, a mixture of pilots and navigators, most of the pilots went down south to Texas or somewhere like that and we went to a place called Mana, called Rivers in Manitoba, in the middle of Canada, about a hundred and twenty miles from Winnipeg and so we were only going out, we were only about two or three thousand I think aircrew under training or going for training. Coming back, I, and I came back on the same boat, we landed in New York, then went to up to Moncton in Canada on the East Coast and then across to, had two or three weeks there, it’s all bottlenecks all the time before we were posted to Rivers at Manitoba, that took a three day rail journey from
BW: Wow.
NH: And we got there about the middle of September.
BW: So just in time before the winter set in.
NH: Just setting in, yes, a week or two later they froze, they sprayed a compound of water and that was the ice rink for the rest of the winter, yeah.
BW: So, did you get much flying in during that time?
NH: Oh yes, yes, yes, in Ansons again, bitterly cold because we had to do astro training was the big feature and we had to open the hatch and these pilots of course shuddered at the cold air coming in but we had to take our, take these, you know, all these [unclear] and stuff, fortunately in Canada, you know, you get these wonderful clear nights, and the stars and everything so visible, it was a, for doing astro navigation, it was ideal.
BW: So you had to
NH: But it was still to bloody cold.
BW: So you actually had to open the hatch mid flying in order to take reading the stars.
NH: Yeah, and take the reading, well, the stars you wanted, yeah. But navigation was simple in Canada because the nights were clear and the days were, cold and brisk, you know, you could see for miles, you could, you get airborne at Rivers, hundred and twenty miles from Winnipeg, and of course you could see Winnipeg because it is, all the lights were still on in Canada
BW: No blackout.
NH: No. And there’s only a few towns there anyway and you knew exactly which town, by the size, so navigation was simple.
BW: What was life like there in general, did you manage to travel out or did you meet any Canadians, at least some aircrew were stationed off base or b&bs and things but presumably you [unclear]
NH: Oh no, we lived, oh no, we were right in the prairies, we just the camp,
BW: So just yourselves and
NH: Place called Brandon, was about twenty five miles away, [unclear] I never went there, once or twice, we did get down to Londa, to Minneapolis [unclear] at Christmas there over the Christmas period but we managed to work our way down there for a, for the Christmas break
BW: And did you stay
NH: Rather special
BW: And did you stay over in hotels and things and [unclear]
NH: No, we stayed with, while went to the US the United States organisation, you know, like the Red cross naffy or whatever but being American at that time was very well appointed, we had written to them before saying we are coming, and they phoned us out, we stayed with a professor, while he was away, on national service, he was a Lieutenant colonel American Air Force but he was a professor at Minneapolis University and we stayed with him, with his wife, five of us.
BW: And was that your crew that you went with then?
NH: No, not, we weren’t crewed up then, we were just five navigators under training.
BW: Ok. And from there you, I believe, you passed out as sergeant observer navigator
NH: Sergeant observer navigator, yes,
BW: You graduated while you were in Canada.
NH: That’s right, yes, came back to Moncton to wait for our journey home, which again was on the Queen Elisabeth from New York. And then back in Glasgow, by avoiding the U-boats, but because we were so fast, they couldn’t, they couldn’t get any nearer but both the Queen Mary and the Queen Elisabeth both scootered across the Atlantic, coming back it was very different than coming out, we brought all the American troops, about fifteen thousand American troops on board.
BW: So this is pretty much at the height of the Atlantic war, then, isn’t it? When the [unclear]
NH: Yes, this is, this would be March ’43 now and we are just beginning to get over the U-boat, we are just beginning to get control of the U-boat menace, it was in ’42 the U-boat menace was at its highest, and it was a serious problem, well still was but we, yeah, we are getting on top of it by the time I came back in ’43.
BW: And so from there you went to
NH: We went to Harrogate, we were all, Harrogate was the assembly point and we were all assembled, officers went into the Majestic and sergeants went into the Grand Hotel in Harrogate, do you know them?
BW: Yes, I’ve been
NH: And the Majestic
BW: I’ve been to one, yes.
NH: Yeah. So
BW: Very nice [unclear] hotels
NH: We didn’t mind that at all, this was March, we had a couple of weeks leave in Bournemouth and back and then we were kept hanging around again, waiting to go on to our onto the OTU, which is the next step in our training, operational training unit, and that took some time, I remember, in order to occupy us they sent us up to Perth, to a flying training school that flew Tiger Moths around the, the name of the river near Perth, do you know it? Tay, is it, Tay?
BW: Tay.
NH: Lovely, anyway, lovely week, I think it was only a week or ten days, just a way of keeping us amused, before we, eventually we did get to the operational training which was at Kinloss, in northern Scotland.
BW: And was that number 19 OTU, [unclear]
NH: I don’t remember the number, [unclear] on my log book. But it’s, yes, operational at Kinloss and we were on Whitleys, so we are on a different aeroplane now. And this will be, by the time we did that, it’s August, August ’43, so it’s already taken me from November ’41 and now we are in, at August ’43,I got my navigator’s brevy but I still haven’t got, I’m still not operationally trained, that we did on a Whitley.
BW: Right. So it’s taken you, as you say, approximately two years, they needed two years
NH: yeah.
BW: To get to that operational training unit.
NH: Yeah. That’s right, yeah. And that finished for about the end of October, beginning of November ’43,
BW: Ok.
NH: So I think it be the end of October, we were posted, we were crewed up there, that was the big feature and I, you all join up together, you look around and you see who you’d like to fly with. I joined up with a chap named, sergeant, he was a sergeant, Sergeant Wilkinson, we liked the look of one another I suppose, so he and I joined and that was the usual pattern, you and the pilot joined up and you skited around and gathered in the rest of the crew which at this stage we would be five, wireless operator, gunner and a gunner.
BW: And this I believe commonly took place in just a big hangar, they amalgamated all together
NH: No, that’s right, yes
BW: And they just left them
NH: Left us to sort ourselves out, yes, a funny system.
BW: And so, you crew up with Sergeant Wilkinson,
NH: Sergeant Wilkinson, yeah.
BW: And do you recall the names of the other crew members?
NH: No, I can’t. No, I’m afraid I can’t. Oh, George Dugray, yeah, a French Canadian, oh, that was later, no, he’s the bomb aimer, oh yes, he was there too. Did George Dugray? Anyway, he joined us on the next one, the heavy conversion unit, when we got on to the Halifaxes.
BW: So
NH: He was a French-Canadian bomb aimer
BW: So if you were five crewmen initially, what were going to be flying at that point when you initially met Wilkinson and Dugray?
NH: Well, we only knew that we would probably Halifaxes or Lancasters were most likely.
BW: I see.
NH: Well the possibility of a Mosquitoes if we were lucky.
BW: So, where were you when you were looking for your crew and when you were getting yourselves together, was this at Burne or was this elsewhere?
NH: Oh no, this was at the operational training unit at Kinloss
BW: Kinloss.
NH: At Kinloss,
BW: I see.
NH: Yes, that’s when you came together
BW: I see.
NH: And up to that time we’d all been navigators but as you know you are split up and you find your crew, so with them we flew as a crew then, pilot, navigator, did we have a bomb aimer? I suppose we did have Dugray as bomb aimer, wireless operator, not an engineer, gunner. That’s right, yes, that’ll be it. That’s the five, isn’t it? One gunner, engineer, no, one gunner, bomb aimer, navigator, pilot. And wireless operator. So then, then you had to do, you went through the whole, all the daylight flying, night flying and of course very different flying conditions in Kinloss in Scotland, the blackout and very few aids and it was a very difficult and hazardous training period and a lot collided into the mountains through inexperience cause that’s what we were, totally inexperienced and there was a lot of fatalities there. So, it wasn’t an easy time.
BW: What sort of aids were you working with as a navigator then at this point?
NH: I’d be twenty-one, twenty one.
BW: What sort of navigational aids or equipment were you using at this time?
NH: Oh, hardly any
BW: So was
NH: Radio, we could get the old radio bearing, navigation and that’s it
BW: Was it all dead reckoning
NH: Otherwise dead reckoning, yeah, and that was one of the troubles as where people, they got lost and they sended through cloud and hit the high ground.
BW: And roughly how long were you on the OTU?
NH: That’s about six to eight weeks, we went the end of August, it’ll be eight weeks and we finished round about the end of October, beginning of November.
BW: So, this is October, November ’43.
NH: That’s right, yeah, yeah. And then of course we still hadn’t finished, then we got to go to the heavy conversion unit, flying the sort of aeroplanes we were going to fly on operations, which in our case was the Halifax and that was when we were posted to Rufforth to a heavy conversion unit at Rufforth which is about four miles out of York.
BW: And you were onto Halifaxes at that point.
NH: Yeah.
BW: Did you acquire any more crew members at all [unclear]?
NH: Oh yes, that’s where the engineer came, and the second gunner, that’s it. Yes, that’s right, Dugray, he did join us up at [unclear] and so were five when we went down to Rufforth and then we were joined by the other, by the mid upper gunner and by the flight engineer.
BW: Do you happen to recall their names at all or?
NH: No. I can’t.
BW: That’s alright.
NH: I can’t. Hardly anyone finished, I was the only one that finished the op, a full round of ops, they all disappeared one way or another. Well, you see, Wilkinson who I became, who became a good friend, splendid, a good looking chap too, and he became, he was going to go to university, he, when we finished our training at Rufforth, preparing to go to a squadron, we had finally finished our training and now we are fully qualified but it was quite usual for pilots to go on an experience exercise and he was sent on to do a run on on an operation on Berlin and that was the end of him and so we didn’t have a pilot and that kept us waiting again.
BW: And do you recall who eventually came
NH: Yes, I’ve got his name, what’s his name? Oh Gosh, my memory’s gone, I’m afraid,
BW: That’s alright.
NH: It’s in the logbook, he was a flying officer, so now as a sergeant I was being teamed up with a flying officer, who’d been posted from Hemswell. Well, Hemswell was a station, was a Bomber Command station in 4 Group and it achieved a terrible reputation for not pressing on to the target and Harris, the Bomber Command chief came up, called them all sorts of names, and closed the station down, Hemswell, everybody was posted, and I got one of those.
BW: I see.
NH: And so we did our, we did [unclear] game, so we had to train together again on the Halifax from Rufforth and that took us until well after Christmas, during which time I met my wife, who, the girl that became my wife.
BW: And how did you meet her?
NH: Oh, I met her at a dance, and she’d gone with, oh, she had arranged to meet a girlfriend at the Grey Rooms in York, I don’t know if you know it.
BW: No, I don’t.
NH: Oh, it was a lovely place, oh, we all got there, all the, York was full of aircrew, Australians, New Zealanders, Canadians particularly and Brits and a few Americans and of course there wasn’t much in York then, everything was closed down but there was a lovely dance place, the Dugrey Rooms, and that’s where we all went, to meet girls and that’s where I met my wife.
US: Sorry, after Williams your pilot, you then had Houston.
NH: Williams, Williams, that’s right. Flying officer Williams, he was the one who was, came to Rufforth from Hemswell we, I having lost Wilkinson and what you say the name was?
US: Williams.
NH: Williams. Oh, he had, I eventually found out he was called Turnback Williams, we are not going to the target? I’ll on that, busy
BW: Part of the reason Harris talk to these guys.
NH: Yeah. Yeah, that’s right so I did all my, I completed all my training with, as a, with him, with Williams, and from there at the end from February 44, now is it? End of 44, yes, Paul Williams of course, when he was sent out on his second Dickey for experience, that was at the height of the Berlin raids, and the losses were huge, we’d been, we’d been on those of course, if he’d come back from his, from his trip of experience
BW: Second Dickey means like a second pilot
NH: Second pilot experience, yes, yeah, so he didn’t come back and I wrote to his father and I got a nice, I might have it somewhere a nice letter from his father who is a stockbroker in London and anyway so I saw that with Williams then we completed another bit of training before we went off to the squadron which I say was about the end of February ’44.
BW: And this was the newly formed 578 Squadron.
NH: And that was the newly formed, yes, they were only formed about three months before
BW: And they were specifically
NH: From Snaith.
BW: And they were specifically flying Halifaxes Mark III as they were one of the first
NH: I was jolly lucky to get on one of those cause it was just as good as the Lancaster, radial engines Bristol and they could get up to the required height and carry a similar amount of bombs, splendid.
BW: So, your first sortie with 578 would be in February as you say,
NH: In March
BW: In March
NH: Then in February, then again the training was so much, I mean they wouldn’t escort, again got ourselves familiarised with the Mark Iii and done a couple of training runs before we were then considered to be operational and that took place in March and it was during that time the Nuremberg raid and of the pilots at Burton on the squadron, he got a posthumous VC.
BW: Did you know him?
NH: No, I didn’t know him, no, no, I’d only been on the squadron a week or so but I didn’t know him, I know, no, I didn’t know him, I didn’t really know him, I didn’t know anybody really, we kept to ourselves a
BW: You tend to associate with your crew if anything
NH: Just with the crew, didn’t mix much with anybody else, you stuck pretty close into the crew and as I had a girlfriend now in York I scuttled off there [laughs].
BW: So, it was looking pretty serious with your girlfriend
NH: Already started to look serious, yes, yeah, we got engaged in April, after I’d done about five operations. I took her down to Bournemouth to meet my family.
BW: Right. And so, what were the accommodation facilities like at Burne, this is where your 578 Squadron
NH: They weren’t bad, it was a brand-new place, you know, all Hudson.
BW: Were you billeted with the crew?
NH: Oh yes, yes, I, we were in huts of course but as sergeants we had little privileges, the sergeant’s mess and that sort of thing, reasonably comfortable of course, we were well-fed as aircrew, the local people, we always had eggs before we went and that sort of thing, things which people couldn’t get on the ration we had plenty of, plenty of chips too cause at the age of twenty one, twenty two I [unclear] of chips [laughs]
BW: [unclear]
NH: [unclear]
BW: And were you the only crew in the billet sometimes or there were two crews in there or?
NH: I think we were the only one, as far as I can remember we were the only one.
BW: And at this time there was a CO in charge
NH: Yes.
BW: Wing Commander Wilkey Wilkinson, do you recall him?
NH: Oh, I do very well, yes, he’s one chap I do remember, and I’ve never been a hero worshiper but I would think I would put him into that category. Marvellous chap, good looking, tall, great sense of humour, great, young, handsome, had every quality, but you knew that if Wilkinson was flying it was gonna be a bad one, he’d only, he wouldn’t take the easy ones, he’d always took the bad ones, great leader, he was on his second tour, too, very nice chap too because then of course I, to going on a bit further, I was with Williams, I did two operations with Williams, I didn’t remember what it was I didn’t like but I didn’t like it, I went to see Williams in great trepidation but I didn’t know what Williams I never spoke to Wing Commanders, they were far too elevated, but I went to see him and so I did my night flying with Williams so I said, we must have talked a bit, I can’t remember, so he said right leave with me, I’ll fix you up with somebody else and I went then to, I was teamed up then with Houston, Jock Houston, and we stayed together all the time, finished together, got commissioned together, got a DFC together.
BW: And so, you when you went from your crew flying with Williams at this point
NH: Yes
BH: To make the change to another crew
NH: Yes, the others all, I [unclear], yes, yeah.
BW: [unclear]
NH: [unclear]
BW: [unclear]
NH: Well, Williams did finish his tour, yes, but I don’t know who he flew, he finished the tour.
BW: The other members of your crew didn’t pick up your sense of
NH: No,
BW: [unclear]
NH: Not as far as I know. No, no.
BW: And you mentioned about Wilkinson, there’s a description here which seems to chime with what you commented about it and it’s only a short description if I can read it to you, it says, he was described by those who knew him as a tall, loose end fellow, the first impression that a stranger might have of him was that he was rather irresponsible, care-free, vague individual, but on closer acquaintance he would seem that he had one of the kindest, gentlest and most sympathetic
NH: Oh, I think that was pretty accurate
BW: Could possess
NH: Yes
BW: He had the knack of inspiring confidence in his crew, when flying I can’t remember anything disturbing him, he was huge with his men
NH: No, no. There’s my little story in that book he’s flying a strange aircraft, an unusual aircraft and he’s got an army man, and army major alongside him but oh, they couldn’t get the flaps down and the army major says to Wilkinson, can you fly this without flaps? He said, well, you are just about to find out [laughs].
BW: And it says of him because he was awarded a DSO he said, he inspired powers of leadership, great skill and determination, qualities which have earned him much success, his devoted squadron commander, his great drive and tactical abilities used in large measure to the high standard of operation to assume the squadron
NH: Yeah, he did, yeah, briefing were always made a pleasure by him being here, he made them quite different, we quite looked forward to his briefing
BW: And when you, you mentioned about him when he going out on a bad raid, were you aware that if he briefed it, it was gonna be a bad one or was it the case [unclear] the raids?
NH: No, not particularly, no, but you knew that if he was on it, it wouldn’t be an easy one.
BW: But he, he always gave the briefing whatever the raid was.
NH: Oh yes, oh yes.
BW: There was only a few at the time
NH: That’s right, yeah, yeah. Yes, I remember his briefing, that is one thing I do remember quite well. Always something to look forward to. I remember a young WAAF officer looking at him I think, Gosh, I’d like a young woman to look at me like that [laughs].
BW: So, by now you are on the early part of your tour and initially it looks like you got operations mainly over Germany, are there any other particular raids through March that you recall?
NH: No, they were all a great big jumble mainly, I, oh, there is one when we lost a lot of aeroplanes.
BW: That night be Nuremberg presumably.
NH: No, not Nuremberg, I didn’t do Nuremberg, there is some, somewhere like, oh, retro memory for names, the size of the Ruhr, a fairly long trip and I remember coming out, they’d briefed us to come down from the target area right down to five thousand feet, it seemed odd tactic, I remember going up with another navigator to Nuremberg, I don’t like this and he said, I wish we weren’t doing this one and he didn’t come back. We lost six that night. So, I don’t know what that tactic was all about.
BW: So, at this time, when you
NH: Oh, I’m trying to remember the name, that, Karlsruhe,
BW: Karlsruhe. And so at this when you were doing operations, you’ve gone from the billet to the ops room to be briefed, you’ve had your briefing, just talk me through then what you would do from there in terms of boarding the aircraft, the checks you would do, what sort of things would be going on then.
NH: Well, we had our own, quite a lot of instruments, we had Gee for example, the bomb aimer would have his stuff but I would have all my charts, gee charts, ordinary plotting charts, what were they called? [unclear] and then the Gee charts, all rather luminous, astro navigation, [unclear] anyway, waste of time most of the time but always had to do it, sextant, all the stuff had to be checked and so, you know, that took up quite a long time, you did that some with the pilot, checking the routes and marking off certain points on it.
BW: And H2S was coming in at this time.
NH: Oh, we didn’t have H2S.
BW: That wasn’t on your aircraft.
NH: We didn’t have it, no,
BW: And was the Gee equipment located right where you position were?
NH: Right in front like that
BW: Ok.
NH: Had a table, table, yeah.
BW: In some aircraft [unclear] different.
NH: And that, that was an incredibly, wonderful instrument I had, of course the Germans were jamming it as much as they could and you’d lose it, you’d, what it did help you to do was to get an accurate wind, cause that’s so incredibly important, if you got an accurate wind then doing jet reconning isn’t going to be too bad and you could get Gee fixes right up to inside the Dutch coast so it gave you a whole string of fixes and a whole comprehension of the wind you know was established by the time you got there. And then, the same thing coming back, you, I’d have, I’d be searching madly to get the signals eventually appearing and it’s marvellous when the, when they just started to appear on your radar screen, and you’d, and you’d get a proper fix, because when you tried astro navigation or even wireless, there were so many errors involved.
BW: Was your pilot good in terms of sticking to the course? Was he [unclear] following your instructions?
NH: Oh yes, of course, oh yes, oh yes, very good, you know, if I take an astro shot, they had to keep very steady because you have a steady platform to get, I don’t know if you know about sextant?
BW: Yes.
NH: You know, yes, getting the star dive into the bubble and holding it there, if the plane lurches up you’ve lost the, it, you’ve gotta get it back again,
BW: And so, you found that you worked quite well presumably [unclear]
NH: Oh, very well, with Houston, terrible memory for names, I even forget my own sometimes
BW: What was it like actually in the environment of a Halifax then, was it pretty roomy, has a reputation of being a fairly roomy aircraft.
NH: Not bad, not bad really
BW: [unclear]
NH: No, no, not when you compare it [unclear] like the Whitley
BW: And I believe the heating, say for example in a Lancaster kept the wireless operator and the navigator pretty warm
NH: yes
BW: Is it similar in a Halifax or not?
NH: Ah, yeah, pretty I was never cold, I never remember being cold,
BW: How did it feel in your flying kit? Was it [unclear]
NH: I didn’t wear much, had a Mae West on, and a parachute harness of course and that was, oh, and an aircrew sweater, and that was about it, don’t [unclear], I think flying boots, yes, yeah, flying boots, cause you could if you were, if you bailed out and you landed, you could cut the top off and they looked like ordinary shoes, ordinary boots
BW: And so you were pretty comfortable in the interior of the Halifax.
NH: Oh, pretty, reasonably comfortable.
BW:
NH: Yes, yes, I had a good desk and all the instruments that I needed. Wind thing, what you call, wind setting, forgot what they called, wind, don’t they use that much, you had to be [unclear] sort of view the sea at eighteen thousand feet, you can’t do that
BW: Did you find that you had to use oxygen much if you were above [unclear] feet or?
NH: Oh yes, about ten thousand feet, most certainly.
BW: Were most of your ops above that [unclear]?
NH: Oh yes, as soon as you get to, well pretty well from five thousand feet or even before, I can’t remember exactly but you certainly wouldn’t want to be [unclear] oxygen above ten thousand feet
BW: You noted as well one particular date you were in the air on the night of D-Day.
NH: Yes, yes.
BW: Do you recall the briefing for D-Day primarily?
NH: No
BW: Were you aware that is was gonna be the start of the invasion?
NH: Well, we were all suspicious but nobody knew anything definite but of course so much everybody knew that D-Day was gonna come soon but that anything definite not until we, well, we were, the target was an easy one on the Northern Coast of France, just inside, gun batteries of some sort, and we bombed that but as we are coming back, and as we are coming back near [unclear], both the gunners shouted out, all the shipping that they could see and so all this shipping was just on the invasion, that was June the 6th.
BW: What sort of time would that be, was it early morning?
NH: About three or four o’clock in the morning. It be in the logbook there. Be about that time.
BW: The gun battery that you mentioned, was it Mont Fleury,
NH: Right.
BW: And that was covering Gold Beach, which was one of the British invasion beaches.
NH: Yeah, yeah. Cause we did two or three, Montgomery, that was later on, after the armies had got established but got held up by the Germans and Montgomery requested Bomber Command to drop their bombs on the German, where the Germans were and we did that, we got a letter of thanks from him because that’s form where the armies could move on.
BW: Were you made aware of the results of the bombing on that particular D-Day mission?
NH: Not really, no, not until we got this letter from Montgomery thanking us for, yeah, I can’t think that we got any particular, no. Of course, we were taking photographs all the time, and we were given some sort of marking for the accuracy and the standard and that was posted up on the boards.
BW: Did it feel like a competition, where you
NH: A little bit like that, oh yes, a little bit like that. Bomb aimers, you know, we, in that book [unclear] claims that we were used for these targets because we had a bomb aiming accuracy record.
BW: Quite [unclear]
NH: No, but, I think that, what is, my God, the insignia of the squadron has got
US: An arrow
NH: A arrow, isn’t it? A bomb aiming accuracy or something is called.
US: Just called accuracy.
NH: Accuracy, yes, yes. So we had this supposedly reputation. I don’t know [laughs].
BW: Well, the gun position that was there at Gold Beach was actually a target given to the Green Howards, the army regiment that was to assault that.
NH: Oh, was that? Oh, was it?
BW: And that particular action was where sergeant major Stanley Hollis got the VC, [unclear] boxes near that battery. So coincidentally the raid that you were on happened to be the target which sergeant major Hollis was the only VC on D-Day.
NH: That’s interesting too. Yeah, yeah.
BW: There was only one [unclear] I can see on that raid and that was a Halifax flown by squadron leader Watson
NH: OH yes.
BW: Who was shot down
NH: yes.
BW: [unclear]
NH: I think I’ve seen the name but I don’t know him. No, no.
BW: So, at this time during April, May, June, most of your targets are in France
NH: Yes
BW: With the idea of supporting D-Day [unclear]
NH: Yeah, D-Day the invasion, yes, yes,
BW: And that continues
NH: [unclear] targets of course, by comparison with the Ruhr and Berlin
BW: And by easy that I assume that they were lighter, more lightly defended, is that right?
NH: Not so much that they’re but quicklier have a long, the big thing somewhere like Nuremberg or Berlin, even if you got to, you had a long trail back to UK and the German fighters knew that and would wait for the trail of bombers coming out of the target and shooting them out then but so and they had a long time to do it whereas going to somewhere Paris or somewhere like that, they didn’t have that length of time to do it.
BW: did you encounter many fighters that you [unclear]?
NH: No, I can’t remember, well, I think the most famous of course was the concentration, I did a daylight on the Ruhr in September and then you saw the concentration, what a concentration of bombers looked like cause we flew at night and we didn’t see how it really looked. But on this occasion we flew daylight to the Ruhr in September and I flew with a strange crew, which is slightly unsettling, their navigator had gone sick or something, and but then you saw aircraft colliding and of course you saw all the bombs dropping from other aircraft dropping so, you know, getting so close to releasing their bombs on you and the gunners would be shouting out, you know, he’s right over, he’s right over us now, and quite often it did happen that bombs from one aircraft hit another one, underneath.
BW: Did it happen on that occasion when you were?
NH: No, no, I never saw it actually happen,
BW: Just [unclear].
NH: No, I did, I did see aircraft, the other thing was collisions, when you got several hundred aircraft, well, at nighttime you don’t know what has happened, whether there’s a collision or whether they’re being shot by ack-ack, but at daylight you could see and I did see a collision, two aircraft hitting one another,
BW: And what, how could you describe what [unclear]?
NH: No, I can’t, we turned away and it was gone but didn’t see anybody come out.
BW: And so during [unclear]
NH: No explosion, that’s all.
BW: And so, during the raid on Stuttgart, during the daylight, could you see, did you get a chance to see clearly the formation? The bomber formation?
NH: Oh, not really, no, you know, of course you know that they are at night because you get into their slipstream, so you know and that’s what you want, of course you want to be close, you don’t want to be isolated that’s when they can pick you off, the whole object of flying in a gaggle or stream was to protect one another with your, what’s the stuff? Window and, you know, confuse the enemy defenses radar so you were conscious at nighttime, but you didn’t see the full horror of it.
BW: And what was your impression during the daylight raid?
NH: Well, I thought, how the hell can you get through that lot? Approaching the Ruhr, this is a lovely September afternoon and you could see the smoke hovering over the Ruhr from such a long way away, I got a feeling we could see it almost from the Dutch coast, and then you think, then of course within the smoke, which is just the puffs of smoke from the ack-ack, you could see the brusts of the showers, well, there’s no penetration, you cannot penetrate that lost, but looks, it probably looks worst than it really is.
BW: In each case your pilot kept on, there was no consideration of turning back [unclear] target?
NH: Oh no, no, but no, no, we were, I think we were pretty that way, we did what we had to do, and although it is nerve-racking when the bomb aimer is insistent on, you know, my God, why doesn’t he press the bloody button? It was he said, bomb’s gone, yeah, that we could turn away.
BW: Were there any occasions where you had to make a second run over the target or not?
NH: Not exactly the, I ‘m not quite sure but I do know that we’ve been approaching the target and we’ve been told to hold off, the Pathfinder, the master bomber is directing us from underneath, usually in something like a Mosquito and he is calling us by our codename whatever, main force, main force, whatever the code, and he said and he’d be telling us, the bomb, overshoot the red TI’s or bomb the green markers or in one case he couldn’t tell because of the smoke and he couldn’t get accurate and he told the whole force to orbit, that was a nasty experience too,
BW: And the whole force at this stage [unclear]
NH: Would have to turn and wait and come in again until he could give the instructions on which markers to attack, they were of course people like, who has got the VC?
BW: Cheshire?
NH: Cheshire, yeah. Incredible people they were. They would stay, I mean, they would stay on the target for the whole time, going round and round, giving the directions to the main force, and asking for new TI’s or something like that if he wanted it.
BW: So, moving on from the D-Day operations, the squadron was then tasked with hitting the V-Weapon sites
NH: Yes, we, those were fairly easy targets, just inside the Dutch and French coast, yeah. We [unclear] several of those, three or four of those.
BW: Do you recall much about what was explained to you about the targets, we know now that they were being [unclear], did you know that?
NH: I don’t think so, I can’t remember, no, I just know that they were, well eventually of course when the flying bombs came up cause they came up, they came off fairly earlier, in was about August wasn’t it? July, August? Well, after, well then we knew them, that sort, they were that sort of targets, not until they, they’d actually arrived.
BW: So, from there through July and August, I think in total you flew thirty-nine operations, right?
NH: Thirty-nine altogether, yes. And of course the normal operation, prior to that., had ben thirty but because we were getting these easy French targets, they made us do thirty nine. And I, when they did say you’re finished, I was quite surprised, I’d thought they’d keep me I wasn’t all that bothered, I was getting used to it and it think sorry there won’t be an end you just carry on to the end and I accepted that I think.
BW: So you would have gone on for the duration of the war.
NH: Yes, I was slightly surprised when they said, you can stop and get.
BW: And what happened at that point, how was it explained to you your tour would end? What happened [unclear]?
NH: No explanation, I was just told that I would be posted on a certain day to in this case to Marston Moor as an instructor. But of course before that I’d been commissioned, Jock Houston and myself both got commissioned and we both got and then shortly after that we both got DFCs. Oh, we got that after I left the squadron, we got them afterwards, we were commissioned before we left the squadron, about a month or so before and then we got the DFC about a month or so after we left the squadron.
BW: And did you go to the palace to receive the DCF [unclear]?
NH: No, it came in the post, it came in the post with a letter from King George, signed by King George and that was stolen, we had a burglary and some bastard stole it, including the letter which was in some respect more important than the DFC. I got the DFC changed
BW: And that was soon after, that was soon after you’d been awarded it, it happened or was it
NH: No, no, it happened, oh, about twenty years ago.
BW: So still, right, still, as recently as that.
NH: Yeah, but we were in Muscat in Oman and this burglary happened whilst we were away.
BW: But you managed to get a replacement for
NH: I got a replacement, yes, they charged me a hundred pounds for it but it’s not quite the same cause I haven’t got the letter from King George.
BW: A shame. And so how was your relationship at this point with your girlfriend, cause you’ve been on pos, a pretty intense period through [unclear].
NH: Oh, well, every, you see, I suppose, in some respects I missed out a bit, I was very friendly with Jock but the other I, I went and had a beer occasionally with them but I was so eager, I was so wrapped up with Dorothy that every opportunity, I just speared off into York and I didn’t spend much time on the squadron but I, I used to take my inflight rations, because we got chocolate and chewing gum and other things and I couldn’t eat them, I was too frightened to eat them, and so I’d take them into York ands give them to her, I ran up to her office, which is on the fourth story of the LNER headquarters building in York and bang on her door and give her my inflight rations, sweets and chocolate mostly cause these things were rationed at that time.
BW: And that must have made your visits special for her.
NH: Yeah [laughs].
BW: [unclear]
NH: Yeah. Well if I wasn’t flying that night, I’d rush into York and rush up and tell her I’d be there and wait for, meet her after she left work.
BW: At what stage during the day would you find out whether or not you were on ops or not?
NH: Well, usually in the morning, you round about, just round about midday as I remember you’d know whether you’d go and operate that night or not. I do remember one occasion when we, we thought we were going to operate and that was when the flight engineer we’d, it was in June cause its, the nights were brighter, I think we were due for a take-off about ten o’clock and it was getting dusk and as usual everything goes very quiet, you wait for the start-up pistol and all engines would then start revving up, start the engines up and revving up, make a crescendo of noise of course when you’ve got sixteen or eighteen four-engines, all going and on this occasion there is always a little pause, you see you check your aircraft, you check everything and then you sort of hang around for a few minutes, I was there waiting for the [unclear] pistol, signal to get in and start up and on this occasion the flight engineer, we’d done about fourteen trips, he said, I’m not going tonight, and he wouldn’t, he said he wasn’t going, so of course the tower had to be informed that we weren’t, we had a crew deficiency and everybody came out then, the CO and the flight engineer leader and the medical officer and they took him to the rear engine to talk to him and took him off and we thought, well, by this time all the other aircraft had started up and are travelling round the peri-track looking at us curiously wondering what, why we hadn’t started up and we are waving them to say, well, clear off, we’re not going but then the engineer nearly came rushing out saying I’m [unclear] [laughs] so we had a start-up and all we did like that.
BW: So you then got, were you having to get back in the aircraft at this point?
NH: Oh, of course, yes. And off we had to go but then we were Tail End Charlies and that’s another thing you don’t like you don’t wanna be amongst the gaggle.
BW: And so you, how did you feel being at the back of the bomber stream then?
NH: Well, I suppose we must have made it up, you know, put a bit [laughs] more throttle on and we, I think we reached them in the end because what you do, you assemble at same point or something like that, that’s the usual thing, the squadrons all take off from the various aerodromes, say in Yorkshire and Spurn Point was a favorite assembly point and you’d set off from there, which there is no formation, you just keep in the stream, and so of course by the time the assembly had taken place and they had set off, we were catching up.
BW: How did you feel during the flight having had [unclear]?
NH: I didn’t like it, I didn’t like it [laughs] I [unclear] much more nervous, well, I’ve always felt nervous but felt a lot more nervous that night and that’s a clear memory of one flight I do have, yeah.
BW: You mention that just feeling nervous and feeling that you could have your inflight rations when you were airborne, you managed to overcome that, did you [unclear].
NH: [unclear] do it, no, chewing gum, I had the chewing gum but didn’t need anything else, coffee, I’d have, I’d drink the coffee and eat and the chewing gum but I was too frightened to eat anything else [laughs]. I waited for my eggs and bacon, egg and chips like got back.
BW: Did you recall the rest of the crew felt in a similar way?
NH: I think they felt similar, fairly similar, yeah, I think so, I think we all felt pretty much the same.
BW: Did you ever talk about it?
NH: No, no, that’s a strange thing, it’s only in the last few years that I’ve ever talked about it, Dorothy never wanted me to hear me talk about it and I never did, I never thought about it and it’s only sort of more or less than she died that I’ve given it any thought.
BW: And at the time did you talk to your crew mates or did they tell you how it felt on the operations night?
NH: No, never talked about it, never, never, no, it’s a, I look back a lot of it and I think, this is a bit strange really cause I think about it a lot now and talk about it quite a bit but for thirty or forty years never thought about it, hardly, hardly, [unclear].
BW: And how does it feel now, reflecting back on that time?
NH: Well, it’s a different time, you know, it’s something which I didn’t, something which is very different to anything, but you know it’s an experience which you’d never imagined that you’d go through really.
BW: And you mentioned now at this stage of your career that you’d come off operations, you were then posted to Marston Moor as instructor.
NH: That’s right, yes, for six months, six months tour and then we got married in June and when I came back from my honeymoon, I was told I was posted back onto operations to go with Tiger Force against Japan.
BW: And is this June ’45?
NH: This is June ’45, the war, the European war had ended and that ended in May, was it May? Yeah, is it.
BW: That’s right.
NH: Yeah and I’ve finished my six months rest and so I was posted back onto a second tour which happened to be with, what I called the force?
BW: Tiger Force.
NH: Sorry?
US: Tiger.
NH: Tiger Force, with Tiger Force. Yes, [unclear] to, and we were going to do something similar to what we did against Germany. That was, but that was on Lincolns, was it Lancasters or Lincolns? Wasn’t Halifaxes? Either Lancasters or Lincolns, I got the feeling it was Lincolns. Cause then after the war I flew in, I was on 50 Squadron which was at Waddington.
BW: At Waddington.
NH: Yeah, that was after the war, that was in 1950, talking about 1947, ’48, no, ’48.
BW: So you were earmarked to go with Tiger Force out to the Far East
NH: Yeah. We did
BW: Did that happen?
NH: yeah. No, no, we did our training and we didn’t have to do much, it was, you know, becoming acquainted, with a slightly new aircraft and we were all experienced people, all done our tour of ops, all being instructors so we are a very experienced crew we did, we just did a little bit of familiarization and we are ready to go and then they dropped the atom bomb so we didn’t go and we all got split up then.
BW: So you were all prepared to go and then you continued your post first to a training as a crew
NH: Yes
BW: Together and I guess you were all I guess earmarked at the same to go to the Far East but
NH: Yeah
BW: But you said it didn’t happen
NH: No, and we would have gone of course if they hadn’t dropped the atom bombs.
BW: And so, just talk us through your subsequent career which I believe involved transport command, fighter command
NH: Well of course [unclear] lot of funny little jobs like on a recruiting center and I was eventually had a sort of a career posting as an instructor at the RAF [unclear] at Cosford which was, if I’d played my cards right, would have done me some good, but I didn’t, I volunteered for flying, I have tried to go back on flying and they posted me back on transport command, but then Dorothy was expecting her babies and after a while I asked much to their irritation I think and it never did me any good, they posted me back to Bomber Command.
BW: And where did you get posted to?
NH: To, well, first of all I did a conversion, I became a navigator, bomb aimer, I did a bomb aiming course at Lindholme, near Doncaster and then from there I was posted to 50 Squadron at Waddington and that was when Dorothy had her babies, twins, and we all moved into quarters at Waddington and I became adjutant to 50 Squadron and my Co’s a man named Peach and that was a most enjoyable experience, I really enjoyed that time, we flew Lincolns.
BW: I was going to ask actually because at this time Jet aircraft are becoming more widely [unclear].
NH: [unclear] was just coming into service, yes, in Bomber Command.
BW: Did you get a chance to fly in it?
NH: No, I didn’t. No, no.
BW: And so what happened after that, were you involved at all in the Berlin airlift for example or not?
NH: No, because, as I say, I would have been if I stayed on transport command, that’s where I didn’t do myself any good by asking for this, but I didn’t know that Berlin airlift, I would have I wish I could have done that now but I got this request answered and was posted to 50 to Bomber Command but I made a mistake though.
BW: And at what stage did you become flight controller?
NH: Well, this is a, from Waddington I was posted to Scampton as an instructor, again I wish I’d protested and I and stayed on longer but I, we were posted to Scampton, as an instructor and then I hadn’t been offered a permanent commission but they did offer me a restricted permanent commission but it had to be either in the air traffic control branch or the fighter control branch, so I chose the fighter control branch, I wish I, somehow I wish I could afford that more and stay, and let me stay on aircrew and I think I’d have prospered more so then I, I did the course on fighter control and yeah that’s and from there I was posted to Patrington, how do we call those units? Fighter control unit.
BW: And this was at Patrington?
NH: Patrington, yeah.
BW: Patrington.
NH: In East Yorkshire.
BW: Ok.
NH: And then I went from, from there I became training officer and that was a nice post I became training officer to the Hull fighter control unit, [unclear] unit, based at Sutton, that was most enjoyable.
BW: What did you like about it?
NH: Well, I was my own boss, I was both adjutant for a long while, was adjutant and training officer, I had the use of the staff car, say I was my own boss, we had a nice house in Withernsea, no, not in Withernsea, in
US: Wasn’t Cottingham?
NH: Cottingham. In Cottingham, yeah. Nice house in Cottingham, we had some pleasant friends in the village and that was a most enjoyable time, I was very, I became very popular with the people, with the auxiliary people who were of course all civilians but I enjoyed their company I got on well with them so that was quite a nice [unclear], from there so I did a full tour there and then we were posted to Germany doing, well doing an operational job, you know, fighter control unit first of all at [unclear] and then at [unclear].
BW: And that I suppose saw you through to, through the Sixties and
NH: Yeah, and right up until
BW: The Seventies
NH: Yes, I did a year in Borneo on my own and joined the confrontation, nobody knows about that, do they? When we fought the Indonesians I’d, of course that was a year what they called an unaccompanied tour, we were based on a little island called Labuan on the north coast of Borneo, which is enjoyable up to a point but I didn’t like being separated all that time from the family.
BW: What sort of things were you doing out there?
NH: Oh well, the Indonesians were trying to control the whole of Borneo and they were claiming it but we said no, the northern part, including, what’s the oil rich place? Begins with a b. Brunei. Kuching and, that’s Kalimantan and then, we said, no, that all belongs to Malaysia, Malaysian federation which at that time includes Singapore but the Indonesians wanted the whole of Borneo as part of the Indonesia so we said, no, you can’t have it, this is all, so we had a four year war, we didn’t call it a war, we called it a confrontation.
BW: Is this the Malaysian insurgency?
NH: Yeah. Yeah, well, it is an insurgency, but of course Singapore was part of it and Malaysia so we eventually Indonesia gave up and accepted the status quo as we said it should be and we had Javelins at that time so we were controlling Javelins along the border, which was way undefined, you couldn’t and of course we had Gurkas out there and Indonesians were scared stiff of them and it was good jungle warfare, very good for anybody who wanted an army career it was ideal training, not too many casualties, a couple of hundred or so were killed, but we had, but we have radar jamming, Lincolns, not Lincolns, Hastings, we had Hastings out there doing our radar jamming and we controlled the Javelins, we had our Javelins which would come onto the island and jet airborne wherever we saw anything that might be a useful target. So I commanded that little unit, I had about sixty or seventy men and all radar equipment, that sort of little encampment of my own, was quite nice and six officers, and seventy men and we had a marvelous time, laughed like anything, all the time, oh yeah, drank a lot, we drank the hell of a lot. Dorothy never stopped saying how shocked she was [laughs] [unclear].
BW: And so after late Fifties through the Sixties
NH: Yes, that’s the Mid Sixties, the confrontation finished in ’66, well, that’s when I came back, I came back in June ’66, and the confrontation stopped just after that and then I came back to, oh, Scotland again, to, up to Buchan, is it Buchan?
US: Peterhead, yeah.
NH: Peterhead, yeah. Peter, yeah, Peterhead, Buchan. Onto a, well, there we are looking at, we are looking after, looking at Russian aircraft, that was the interesting part there was watching for the Bisons and what not coming out of the Russian bases up at, you know, beyond.
BW: Beyond Murmansk and.
NH: Beyond Murmansk, yeah. They’d come out into the Atlantic, they’d be picked up by the Norwegian radar and we would [unclear] them then to come down between the Iceland gap and the
BW: Faroe islands.
NH: Faroe islands, Shetlands, my memory is terrible, anyway we were waiting for them to come through, past the Iceland gap and they’d go out into the Atlantic while we had a flight of, what were they in those days, not the Javelins, what was after the Javelins? Hunters, Hunters? What were the ones before the Lightning? No, it was the Lightnings, the Lightnings, of course it was. Yeah, the Lightnings, we had Lightnings up at Kinloss, or Lossiemouth? Lossiemouth, they were up there on the and the Americans had Phantoms in Iceland so we would scramble when we, as soon as we saw these coming, being handed over, they were handed over to us by the Norwegians, we probably couldn’t see them then but then when we knew they were there and eventually they would appear on our radar and certain time after that we would scramble the fighters from Lossiemouth and the Phantoms from Reykjavik and at first the Lightnings didn’t have the range to get to them and very frustratingly they would turn back because of lack of fuel, the Phantoms would come on and make the interception and then come onto Scotland and land, but then when the Lightning Mark VI came in, we could make the interception properly and return. But that was quite interesting for a while because we also had radar up on top of the Faroes, right on top, no, not the Faroes, the Shetlands, right up on the top island, Saxa Vord, that’s, there’s a radar station up there, so there, that was a bit of an interest and then I was finally posted back to Germany and that, did my final tour in Germany on a NATO, on a NATO post. We had a German commandant then, Brigadier, German, he was, by that time the Germans had bene reconstituted but we had control of the fighter element, the Germans weren’t allowed to control, we were [unclear] of course for, to intercept the Russians in case there was any sort of attack but we had, but they had to have RAF controllers out there, the Germans, under all their constitutional rules weren’t allowed to do this so although they provided all the manning for it, we did the actual operating of the stand-by fighters, what did we have then? Lightnings, did we? Lightnings, yes, Lightnings, and they were at places like Laarbruch, Bruggen and somewhere else, there were three, Gutersloh, yes, we had the triangle of those three and then of course Monchengladbach.
BW: And so
NH: So I finished my tour there and made a lot of good friends, [unclear] we were Germans, Dutch, British and that very pleasant finished my career really, made some good friends who stayed friends right up till now, those who survived, even the Germans, the German commandant of the German regiment, he became, I still talk to him every week on the telephone [laughs]
BW: And so
NH: Oberst Wolfgang Ostermar
BW: Wolfgang Ostermar
NH: Wolfgang, yeah, we went on holidays together, became very close, you know.
BW: And is he a similar age to you?
NH: A year younger.
BW: So he’d been around the year, presumably in opposing forces when you [unclear]
NH: He was, he was, and he was taken prisoner by the Americans.
BW: Really? Did
NH: But he’s an Anglophile, speaks excellent English, same as his wife does. Did his training, of course he became a fighter controller but trained by us in Britain.
BW: Do you recall briefly what his wartime service was? Was he a pilot or a gunner or [unclear]?
NH: No, he was ground staff.
BW: Right. So there was no chance of him being
NH: When we’d been on holiday together, people made romantic conclusions, you know, a German and a British exile, sorry, good friends,
BW: But it wasn’t
NH: Not like that, no.
BW: And so you left the RAF and NATO
NH: Yeah.
BW: What was your civilian career, what did you, did you [unclear]?
NH: I enjoyed the last couple of years, I did a correspondence course which is organized by the service, my [unclear], what did I do?
US: Agency and business studies.
NH: Agency and business studies, that’s right, yes, and it was such an easy posting in Germany I was able to do this with a lot of enjoyment and I thought, well, I can go in human relations or something like that, I’m made for that and it meant a two week course in a [unclear] to start with, then about eighteen months correspondence, finishing up the six weeks again at Chelsea and we happened to be in the Chelsea barracks near the Chelsea officer’s mess but we were told, the Chelsea officer’s, the guards officers not the, not any ordinary mess it’s the guards officer’s mess and we were told very strictly we were not, we may be officers but we were not entitled to go into the guards officer’s mess [laughs].
BW: You mentioned before we started the interview you were security on the ton air project
NH: Well I, having got the H&C, I wrote lots and lots of letters people offering my services and I got reasonable replies from quite a number and I was offered several jobs, I eventually left the air force in November 1970 and I came up here, [unclear] they seemed puzzled as I, I wanted to come up here, why do you want to come up here then? [laughs] because I suppose hopefully you are going to offer me a job. So, they did in fact, I became assistant to the chief designer, they offered me two jobs actually, they offered me a job on Tornado cockpit which was still on the drawing board, I could have either be that job or be assistant to the chief designer, so I said, I’m not qualified to cock pit design work, so I think I better take the other one so I did that, which was quite a nice job, I learned a tremendous amount cause I worked in the main drawing office with him and got to know all the chaps and what they were doing and of course I say the Tornado was still on the drawing board it goes now in production but that was still very much a live product. And so I got to learn in eighteen months so I did that [unclear], I learned a lot and then the chap who is the chief security officer was an ex wing commander and I had, and he still, I want, I want to retire very soon, do you want to take my job over? So, that’s promotion anyway, so I did, I took, George Kennedy, wing commander George, he’d been an ex apprentice like me, but much earlier, and when he, well, I went and joined him as his assistant, first of all about eighteen months, two years, and then took over completely when he retired and that really was a splendid job because the Tornado was still not flying but it was full of classified information and working with the Germans and the Italians, our own Ministry of Defenses and who of course were very hard on us if we gave any information away it was all very and of course the Cold War was on, you know, and Munich we had plenty of Cold War suspects and [unclear] around Munich, eager to get hold of the information about the Tornado.
BW: And so, you were very limited about what you could and couldn’t say at the time.
NH: Oh yes, very much, yes, but it’s very, eventually I did get hold of because these technical people and engineers [unclear], the last thing they wanted to know was about is security, they want to show off their knowledge and they want to write papers and get their names noticed and things like that their ego, you know publicity, whereas we of course, the security side, wanted to restrict it, well, not because we ourselves wanted it, the Ministry of Defense, they provided the contracts and if we broke the rules, they would start threatening that there would be a loss of contract work. So that’s I, I managed to, because I had experience in aircraft all, you know, I think I was able to work all the people like flight test engineers, the flight crews, the [unclear] like Paul Millet, who is the chief test pilot at the time but he took over from, oh, famous wartime pilot, forgot the, I’ll get it in a minute, anyway I had a good time because I got on well with these people.
BW: And so, looking back at your career and the association you have with Bomber Command, how does it feel now looking back?
NH: Well, occupies my thoughts continuously cause I’m on my own now, I’ve been on my own for nearly elven years, it occupies a tremendous amount of time, I can’t read but I do have listening books which I enjoy and music but otherwise I, I have to use my own thoughts to pass the time and I do it a lot.
BW: And have you been able to keep in touch with progress in terms of the memorials to Bomber Command, how do you feel about the tributes and memorials that have been paid these days?
NH: Well, I love it and Dorothy and I went once to St Paul’s, that would be about, oh, about the year 2000, and I can’t even remember what it was for, is for, I know the chap who was the, oh gracious me, trying to remember, he was head of the air force, and he was also president of Bomber Command.
BW: The name that speaks to my mind are Paul Enteder.
NH: No, long after him, no, long after them.
BW: I see.
NH: He’s about my age.
BW: I see.
NH: Oh Gosh, anyway, we did go to this ceremony at St Paul’s cathedral, it be about three or four years before she died so, be about 2000 or something like that, we had a Lancaster flying over York, we all came out of the service and assembled on the steps, but what was the question?
BW: Have you been to Hyde Park memorial [unclear]?
NH: No, I’d like to, near the Green Park one, you mean?
BW:
NH: No, I haven’t, but I know of it and I and Tony Iveson , who was, this is how I did have a connection with, because he was in 4 Group the time as I was, and he led all the staff to make the memorial, he was on, I heard him on Desert island Discs, he’s dead now, but I couldn’t see it if I went I couldn’t see it.
BW: yeah.
NH: I used to, well, I am a member of the IMF club still but I haven’t’ ben there for three or four years.
BW: How do you, what are your thoughts about the memorial center that’s been set up in Lincoln, the International Bomber Command Center?
NH: I don’t know anything about it.
BW: They have now unveiled the memorial spire and the walls which have the names of all the fifty five thousand and something aircrew who were lost during the war and they are now building, or going to start building the Chadwick Center which will house documents, artifacts, there will be audio recordings as well such as this one, the digital
NH:
BW: That will be in the memorial center in Lincoln
NH: Is that a new purpose build
BW: It’s just outside, it’s on one of the hills outside of Lincoln.
NH: Oh! When is it going to be opened?
BW: The center should be opened later this year
NH: There will be a lot of publicity attached to that one. Pretty sure I can’t see much.
BW: I just wondered whether you’d be informed of it and today
NH: I haven’t been informed of it, I’d like to know about it but I can’t do, I can’t see it, so , you know, provided, I hope I shall hear about it.
BW: Well, I can post the details out to you and the information
NH: Right, yes,
BW: You know
NH: I’d like that. Because if I can’t read, Anthony can read it out to me.
BW: Yeah. So
NH: But I’m restricted in movement and everything else now, I don’t really want to go anywhere.
BW: I see. The, there aren’t any other questions that I have for you, are there any other particular recollections that may have come to mind you wish to talk about or else, anything else I may have missed?
NH: I’m sure there will be when you’re gone [laughs], I can’t, I think, oh, I’ve surprised myself [unclear]
BW: Well, it’s been very interesting to talk to you, you’ve given an awful lot of information
NH: Is it?
BW: [unclear] very happy with that.
NH: [unclear], I seen, I’m very happy with that. That’ll give me a better pleasure anyway.
BW: Thank you very much for your time.
NH: Ok.
BW: [unclear] Thank you.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Neil Harris
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Brian Wright
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-01-28
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AHarrisNG160128
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Pending review
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01:53:47 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Air Force. Transport Command
Description
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Neil Harris wanted to join the RAF because he was looking for an exciting life experience and an opportunity for further education. He started as a flight mechanic before training as a pilot. Remembers being trained in different locations across the country, from Brighton to Kinloss, in Scotland. Mentions a particular night, when they took off late and had to catch up with the bomber stream. Flew with 48 and 578 Squadron. Shares his memories of D-Day, when he was targeting a gun battery in Northern France. Remembers his life after the war, when he was sent to Indonesia in the 60s during the Borneo confrontation.
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Peter Schulze
Spatial Coverage
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Canada
Germany
Great Britain
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Nuremberg
Scotland--Wick
France
France--Ver-Sur-Mer
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
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1944-06-05
1944-06-06
50 Squadron
578 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
bombing
bombing of the Normandy coastal batteries (5/6 June 1944)
crewing up
Distinguished Flying Cross
fitter airframe
Gee
ground crew
ground personnel
Halifax
Halifax Mk 3
Hudson
Lincoln
love and romance
Master Bomber
navigator
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operational Training Unit
pilot
promotion
RAF Burn
RAF Halton
RAF Kinloss
RAF Marston Moor
RAF Rufforth
RAF Waddington
Tiger force
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/864/11106/PHaytonK1701.1.jpg
ef6b69d8536b3e5ebdb6b4231318428f
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/864/11106/AHaytonK171004.2.mp3
2342cec6176bee1aa281e272dd002da5
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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Hayton, Ken
K Hayton
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Ken Hayton about his father George Stanley 'Stan' Hayton (1912 - 1971). He served as a fitter at RAF Woodhall Spa and RAF Riccall.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-10-17
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Hayton, K
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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JS: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Joyce Sharland. The interviewee is Ken Hayton. The interview is taking place at Mr Hayton’s home in Andover on the 17th of October 2017.
KH: Yes.
JS: Right. So, Mr Hayton, can you tell me about your father?
KH: My father was George Stanley Hayton. Always known as Stan. And before the war he was employed by Lloyds Bank. He was born in Durham City in two thousand and err now then let me get this right [pause] in 1912, and lived in the city all his life until his death in 1971. In, around about the early time, early days of 1940 he was given permission by the bank to join the Royal Air Force as a volunteer. Which he did. And I know that he did join as a volunteer because initially his uniform had the letters VR under the albatross on his shoulder flashes. It would be 1940 that he joined up because I have recollections as a small boy of going to Durham Station to see him off. I believe his initial training took place at RAF Padgate. And then after that was completed he went on to his trade training as a fitter armourer which I think took place at Lytham St Anne’s. I’m not sure about that but I think that’s where he went. Once that was completed he was posted to Bomber Command into 97 Squadron which was based at RAF Woodhall Spa in Lincolnshire. A satellite unit to RAF Coningsby. And he remained there right throughout the war or almost to the end of the war. And towards the end of the war he was posted to RAF Riccall in Yorkshire where he was involved in preparing all the redundant 303 Browning aircraft guns for storage in case they were ever needed to be called back into service. He was demobbed from RAF Waddington in around about the latter part of 1945. I do believe that he was offered a commission if he was prepared to stay in the Royal Air Force but his duty he felt was to the bank who had released him early. So he then was demobbed and joined Lloyds bank where he remained employed until he retired after having served forty years. During his service at Woodhall Spa he was involved in bombing up Lancasters for raids over the occupied territories and when 617 Squadron was due to take, take-off for the Dams raid 97 Squadron was moved back to the parent unit at Coningsby and 617 Squadron came in to Woodhall Spa. I can only think that that was done from a security point of view because it would be much easier to maintain security on a single Squadron station like Woodhall, rather than on the main base of 617 Squadron which was of course RAF Scampton. My father was involved in the bombing up of 617 Squadron for the Dams raid. And I only learned about this when after the war and the production of the film, “The Dambusters,” my father and I went to see it at the cinema in Durham. And on the way home we were discussing various things in the film and it came out that my dad had been involved with 617 Squadron. And when I asked him about the parts of the film which showed the aftermath of the raid on the countryside I said I wondered if that was anything like what had actually had happened and whether the filmers had got it anything accurate. And he said, ‘Yes. It was just like that.’ And immediately after that he said, ‘But don’t tell your mother I said that.’ I can only think that that comment was made because he had been taken over the Dams in one of the Mosquito reconnaissance aircraft which did the photo reconnaissance after the Dams raid. I’ve no proof of that but I can’t see any other reason for the comment which he made except that he was there. He had been very much involved in the bombing up of the aircraft and this I think was why he wanted to go and see the film because neither he nor I were great film goers. When he was at Woodhall there was an incident at a bomb dump near Snaith which is not too far away from Coningsby and Woodhall when a Lancaster came down on the edge of the bomb dump and my dad was involved in the clearing up operations. And I think that had an effect on him because we never ever had chops as a meat meal and he could never stand the smell of lamb being cooked. No other reason that I can think of for that reaction other than the involvement that he’d had in clearing up what obviously must have been carnage with the Lancaster coming down on the, on the edge of the bomb dump. At one time during the war my mother and my sister and myself went down to Woodhall Spa because my dad couldn’t get any leave. It was during a high pressure time I think of bombing raids and he wanted a pushbike. And being the elder of the two children I was given the responsibility of looking after the bike. I can remember feeling quite proud that I’d been given the responsibility of taking care of this bike all the way down from Durham to Woodhall Spa. During that journey we passed through York Station not long after it had been blitzed by the Luftwaffe and it really was in a very bad state on one side of the station. Of course the Luftwaffe went for York because it was a main railway junction during the war and if they could have disrupted the railways it would have had a marked effect on our war effort. The other effect I think that I learned about with on the family was when my father came home on the odd occasion that he could get home on leave he always changed out of uniform into civvies before he saw my sister because my sister was younger than I was and she thought that the RAF was a sort of box that my father was locked up in and the uniform always brought that home to her. But we can only think that that was one of the reasons that dad always got changed as soon as he came home. There was not a lot of other effect on us as a family except that once my father had joined up we moved out of the council house and went to live with my maternal grandparents in the city which overlooked the river and the Cathedral. And just thinking about that period in the early days of the war Durham City is what might be regarded at the centre of a hub of a wheel with the perimeter being on the three main rivers. The Tyne, the Wear and the Tees with the shipyards in Newcastle, Sunderland and Middlesbrough. And at the beginning of the war we used to get all the air raid warnings if enemy aircraft were coming in for any of those three places. But we never had anything over the city. And eventually we stopped getting air raid warnings unless the aircraft were heading inland. So we were very, very fortunate. Not so my wife who was a Sunderland girl and she lived through the various Blitzes in Sunderland and it had obviously an effect on her as a young girl. Much more so. And I didn’t realise until after we were married and we were talking about things that had happened during the war how fortunate we had been as a family because my maternal grandfather was a great gardener and had allotments which provided vegetables. And we also had an orchard at the back of the, at the back of the house so that we always had fruit. And he kept chickens in the orchard so we always had meat. And it made me realise, talking to my wife just how lucky we had been having all those facilities when I heard of the sort of things that she had had to put up with in Sunderland. So, you know there were many things that happened during the war which folks don’t realise. I mean that was only a distance of twelve miles between Durham City and Sunderland and yet such a difference in the effect on families that lived in, in those two places. My maternal grandfather had been a forge smith in Yorkshire and at the beginning of the First World War he was sent up to Durham to work in the forge there. And they sent him away from Yorkshire because the recruiting officers were fed up with him trying to join the forces and told him he was much more valuable making the armaments for the forces rather than him going out into Europe. So that was how the family from Yorkshire came to be based in Durham city and how my parents met. Because my paternal grandfather was trained as a pharmaceutical chemist and during the First World War he was stationed in Mesopotamia. I think as part of the Northumberland Fusiliers. But I’m not certain about that. He eventually moved into the motor trade and that was how I knew him all my life. The effect, I think on my mother wasn’t anything that I ever knew about or thought about. She had started training as a teacher before the war and of course like all women had to do something and once my sister got to school age she went back to teaching. So as a family we were still a fairly compact unit. Whilst we were living with my grandparents as I say we were in a house that overlooked the river and the Cathedral. And there has been for many many years the knowledge that if ever the Durham Cathedral were to come under attack for any reason whatsoever St Cuthbert who the Cathedral is dedicated to and who is buried in the Cathedral would save it. And of course Von Ribbentrop was determined to obliterate all the main Cathedrals in the United Kingdom if he could. And shortly after the raid which destroyed Coventry Cathedral we had an air raid warning in Durham and that was as I say by this time quite unusual. So we were due to go down into the cellar of the house which was our air raid shelter but looking out of the window there was the mist rising off the river. And of course the river is an ox bow around the central peninsula of the city on which stands the Cathedral and the castle. So this mist rose off the river and it’s always been said that that was St Cuthbert’s way of protecting the Cathedral. And certainly that mist blanketed the whole of the city and we could hear the German aircraft over the top of the city. It was definitely German aircraft because their engines weren’t synchronised like the English or British aircraft engines were. And they were over the, overhead going around and around. Nothing happened and eventually they flew off. The all clear went. And as the all clear went the mist descended back to the river. And I can vouch for that because as a youngster I saw it out of the windows of our house. My grandparent’s house. And it’s made a lasting impression as you can probably gather. I really don’t know that there’s much else that I can say apart from the fact that my own Royal Air Force service which was three years as a regular and two and a half years on the reserve and during that time the one thing that I was very proud to wear was my father’s cap badge. Sadly, I no longer have that. I have my own cap badge but I think my father’s cap badge must have gone back with my uniform when I had to return it to RAF Fenton which was my call up base when my two and a half years reserve service was ended. The only other thing of my father’s which I have apart from his ‘39 ‘45 Star and Defence Medal is a piece of metalwork which I know was part of one of his trade tests in which I think was part of the bomb release mechanism for a Lancaster. I can’t be sure about that but the trade test would be taken after he’d started working on Lancasters so I think it’s a fair assumption that that’s probably what it is. I don’t know that there’s much else that I can say.
JS: You said you recall going to the station to see your father off.
KH: Yeah.
JS: How old were you then?
KH: I’d be about seven.
JS: About seven. And you went with your mother and your sister?
KH: I don’t think my sister went. My sister would only be about three. Three and a half and so I don’t think she went. She would probably stay with my grandparents. But I, I can certainly recall going to the, going to the station in Durham and seeing, seeing dad off on the train. Little bits of things like that they do stick in your memory and you know it’s a bit like the [pause] the memories of the 9 o’clock news during the war. Alright, as a youngster you don’t appreciate everything that is being said but the things that stick in my mind are Big Ben, and my grandparents sitting in the lounge and everybody being quiet and listening to the news. It was a nightly ritual and you know its little things like that which, you know I think need to be kept in mind. And I think future generations need to know how important it was to us at home to know what was going on. And the only way we could get recent, decent reliable news was the BBC. And you know it was important to everyone I think and I’m quite certain that my family weren’t any different from countless other families throughout the country. At 9 o’clock every night the wireless was turned on and we had the news. There wasn’t all the current news from the battlefield and all the rest of it and I think it’s perhaps just as well. I think we get too much of this instantaneous news now and it doesn’t give people time to digest really what’s happening. Yeah. Instant gratification in a different form. Perhaps I’m being old fashioned.
JS: Did, as far as you’re aware did your mother ever receive letters from your father. Was he able? Could he write letters? Could he communicate? Make phone calls perhaps. Do you ever recall him making contact when he was away?
KH: I don’t recall any phone calls. I don’t think, in fact I don’t think we had a phone in the house so that wouldn’t have been possible. Letters I think possibly he did get able, he was able to send. I mean as he was based in this country I don’t think there was any problem in that respect. But it didn’t sort of register on me as a, as a youngster. I mean that’s not something that I would have been aware of I don’t think. The only things that I was aware of were, you know the pleasure of having him come home on leave on the occasions when he could get home. And as I say the occasion when we went down to Woodhall Spa and it would be during my school summer holidays. And the one, the one thing apart from the pushbike being my responsibility the one thing that I can remember of that little holiday from our point of view was seeing a Lancaster loop the loop. Which was totally out of order. And I believe talking to my father afterwards that that particular exercise had such a damaging affect on the airframe of the aircraft that it was written off and I believe the pilot was severely disciplined because obviously you don’t write off expensive aircraft. But it shouldn’t, it shouldn’t have happened but I can remember seeing it and was quite surprised. It was just one of those little things that come back to mind as you, as you think about what, what happened. And another thing that has just come back to my mind thinking about that was at the beginning of the war just after my father had joined up and before we moved in with my grandparents I can remember being taken into the shelter in the garden when there was an air raid warning and looking up into the night sky and seeing searchlights over towards Sunderland and seeing what was obviously an aerial dogfight because you could even at a distance of twelve miles you could see the tracer. And that, that’s something which has just come back to me since talking about seeing the Lancaster. We shouldn’t have been out of the shelter but, you know youngsters do things that they shouldn’t do even, even in wartime. Yeah.
JS: So, did life for you as a young lad, did it more or less go on as normal? You were going to school. You were helping around the house presumably, were you? Were any of your friends lives touched in a bad way by the war? Did any of them lose close relatives.
KH: No. Not that I can say. I mean, as youngsters we didn’t sort of discuss the, we didn’t discuss the war. It was something that was going on and we had the black out and there was no possibility of after school work or sports clubs or anything like that. They were all off limits. When school was over you went. You went home and you stayed at home. You couldn’t go and play out. Which we could once the war was over. But we didn’t [pause] I can’t recall sort of discussing or talking about the war as a youngster at school. Not even when I got to Grammar School just towards the end of the war. The only thing that was noticeable when I got to Grammar School was the fact that there were quite a number of older teachers there who had obviously stayed on beyond retirement because the young teachers had gone into the forces. And I was made well aware of that because both my, my uncle and my father had gone to the same Grammar School and some of the teachers that taught them taught me. Which was sometimes a little embarrassing because on occasions, I can remember one particular occasion in the physics laboratory when I’d been assisting in dealing with some electrical experiment which had a series of plug keys connecting wires up and one thing and another. And that master was one of the masters who had taught my father. And in operating one of these plug keys I’d managed to disconnect some of the, some of the wires. And the master just looked at me and just sort of tut tutted and said, ‘Your father would never have done that.’ Which you know, it was a little embarrassing at the time but you get on with it. But it was only things like that I think which made you realise that the war had had an effect. Then of course towards the end of my Grammar School career a number of the teachers who had been away on war service were coming back and the older ones took well-earned retirement. Not something which you would tend to think about until later on when you look back and you think, oh I wonder why that happened? And then as you get older yourself you realise why these things happened. It’s not, not something that you think about a lot but when you do think about it, it all comes back. Yeah.
JS: Do you have any recollection of the atmosphere on the day the war ended and the immediate aftermath of the war ending? Can you remember, were there were celebrations in your street? Can you remember your family saying anything or general air at school of relief?
KH: Not really. Again, it was something that yes there were celebrations in the city quite clearly. But as a youngster, bearing in mind what, I’d be only ten or eleven when the war ended. It wasn’t the sort of thing that you got involved in very much. It was, you weren’t old enough in those days. A ten year old or an eleven year old was still regarded as a child. Unlike nowadays where they tend to be treated as semi-adults. But so, yes there were celebrations and yes a sense of great relief and the hopes that everybody would come home safe. Which, you know was important but not something which as a youngster really impacted on you. I think obviously it would impact on my mother and my grandparents on both sides because not only was my father in, in the Royal Air Force but one of his younger, his youngest sister was also in in the WAAF. So that you know the family I think were a case of well, great relief when they both came home safe and sound. So yes there was a sense of relief and, but as a youngster it perhaps doesn’t penetrate the consciousness in quite the same way as it does as you’re older. But as a family my, we had sort of my paternal grandfather as I say was in Mesopotamia in the First World War. My uncle, my mother’s older brother had been in the Durham Light Infantry between the wars and strangely enough very much like his father he couldn’t go back in to the Army at the beginning of the Second World War because he’d become an employee of the Ministry of Agriculture which was a Reserved Occupation and although the Durham Light Infantry wanted him back he couldn’t go back. So he took it on himself to get involved with the Army Cadet Corps and he ran the Army Cadet Corps in the city for a number of years. Even after the war. Until I think he got to an age where he was voluntarily retired. But it was something which again we, we just took on board. It was part of parcel of, of what we were doing. In much the same way as my grandfather because he had allotments and whatnot could supply friends and family with, with fresh, fresh veg and so on. And also, I think, I know we used to sell apples from the door and presumably what was raised from those went to, went to charities or went to support the, probably went to support the Army Cadet Force I would think because my uncle was so involved in it. These are odd little things which you think about if, you know if you sit down and put your thinking cap on.
JS: And you said after your father was demobbed he came home in his demob suit.
KH: Oh. Yes. Of course all Service personnel got a demob suit. And the one thing that I do remember was that it was a brown suit which was most odd because going back into the bank I don’t think he would wear a brown suit in the bank. Not in those days. Banking was very much more formal than it is now. In fact, I think if my father was still alive and was still involved in banking he’d be horrified at some of the things that happen. One of those things. But yeah. The, the demob set up is a little bit different then I think from when I came out. I mean I had to sign the Official Secrets Act of course when I, when I signed on, and again I had to sign it again at the time I was demobbed. But I spent my three years at RAF Innsworth as part of the Record Office where I was working in the Stats Section until I was seconded to the Home Command Coronation Unit which in fact happened to be based at Innsworth. And we did all our training on one of the local airfields which I believe is now a civil airfield which was RAF Staverton at that time. And we eventually, having completed our training ended up in Kensington Gardens under canvas for the actual Coronation. And of course Coronation Day was a dreadful day weather wise but we were fortunate. Our section of the route lining force were in the Haymarket. And the Haymarket in London in those days was two way traffic and it had islands down the centre. And I was on the edge of the road in the middle of one of these islands and the royal coach came past my side of the island and the outriders that are normally alongside the coach during the procession because of the narrowness of the road had to go in front and behind. And as the coach passed me Phillip must have said something to Her Majesty and she turned to speak to him and I have a photographic memory of seeing her turn towards Phillip. So I had a full face view of the Queen on the day of her Coronation. Granted, around the barrel of a 303 but still something that one never forgets. And that, that night or that afternoon after we’d got back to Kensington Gardens I think it must be the only time that the Royal Air Force had issued the men with a rum ration. It had been such a dreadful day that we were all taken to the mess tent and dished out with a tot of rum. And that evening three of us went off into, into London because up ‘til that point we hadn’t been allowed out of Kensington gardens. But we went to look at the fireworks and we went down to Buckingham palace to see the royal family and their guests going off to the ball at Hampton court. And because we’d been trained in crowd control as part of our Coronation training we were able to link up with the police to control the crowds outside Buckingham Palace that night. And again something which I didn’t discover until I was married and talking to my wife about the Coronation in London and had discovered that she had been in London with her uncle and aunt and they had been at Buckingham palace on that night. Although obviously neither of us knew the other but we were both there at the same time. Strange coincidence. But we, after we’d seen some of the fireworks on the Embankment we were looking for a drink and all the pubs of course were packed out to the doors as you could imagine. And eventually we looked through the doors of one pub and somebody seeing three RAF uniforms it was like a tidal wave. The crowd opened up to the bar and we were given straight access to the bar and I don’t think we bought a drink for ourselves the rest of that night. One of those things where you know men in uniform in those days were regarded with consideration and there wasn’t any of the problems that sadly we have now where men are told not to wear uniform when they go into towns and so on. Which is, I think very, very sad because the armed forces now and then do a remarkable job in protecting what we have in a democratic country. And it’s sad that men in uniform have got to be told to, not to go in to towns in their, in their uniforms. Although I’ve got to see we do see some uniforms in Andover which we still, it’s not the garrison town that it once was but there are still quite a lot of Service personnel around and we do see some of them in town and nobody ever I’ve never come across anybody making any adverse comment on what I’ve seen in Andover. But I know it does happen in some places. Sad. Very sad.
JS: I expect your parents were hugely proud of you serving in the RAF. Did you ever speak to your father about your time there?
KH: Not, not specifically because the only thing was talking about the Coronation obviously because that was, that was something which you know happens once in a generation. But most of, most of the work that I was doing wasn’t something that you would, you would talk about. Alright you know I mentioned the Official Secrets Act and I was based in a section which dealt with personnel for all the RAF stations throughout the world by command. So you just didn’t talk about it because, well in those days there were so many different commands and obviously a lot more RAF bases throughout the world than there are now that it would have been impossible anyway to keep in mind what happened in any particular RAF camp in the Middle East, or the Far East or in Europe or wherever. But it, it would never have occurred to me to have discussed anything to do with that. It was something which wasn’t to be discussed even, even with my father. Yes. We’d talk about inconsequential things like guard duty and having, you know things like hearing the experiments with the after burners for jet engines which took place at a company called Rotol which was just up the road from RAF Innsworth. And also seeing some of the test flights of the, the RAF Javelin. The Gloster Javelin which was in its test flights was always supported by a Meteor. And seeing those two aircraft together made you realise how big the Javelin was. Because of course it was being built at Gloucester, in the factory on the outskirts of Gloucester which was not far from where the Record Office Unit was. So things like that. Yes. You could remember and you would talk about it. I would talk about with my father, you know because he’d obviously been involved with Lancasters and Manchesters, and I think it gave him a taste for flying because when he came out of the Royal Air Force he joined the Newcastle Aero Club and got his private pilot’s licence which, so that he flew Tiger Moths and Austers. And both my wife and I flew with him in the Tiger Moth. I can remember going to the Aero Club on one of their at home days when there had been all sorts of demonstrations and one thing and another and my dad had said to my wife, ‘Come on. I’ll take you up.’ And they went. They went up and flew out over, over the border country. Over North Northumberland and so on and it was, it was a very nice night.
SH: Very cold.
KH: And it was, yes. As my wife just said, very cold. And it must have been quite light up there but it was getting quite dark on the ground and I can remember the flight engineer who was a very, very good pilot himself standing on the grass outside, outside the hangars striking matches as my dad came down. That was, that was quite amusing. Yeah. So we maintained a contact with flying although I never had the opportunity or the time to get a pilot’s licence myself. But I do remember flying with my dad on several occasions when I was at home from university. Yeah. Yeah. Strange. Strange how things have a knock on effect because although my father’s uncle was one of the early members of the Newcastle Aero Club I don’t think there had been any thought of my dad getting involved until he came out of the Royal Air Force. One of those things. But yeah.
JS: You say you kept up that connection with flying. Did he keep up any connections in terms of any Associations? Did he meet up with people he’d served with? They were quite a fluid bunch as I imagine in various parts of the country.
KH: You see, I think there was only one person that he ever sort of had contact with after he came out of the forces. See the Royal Air Force is rather different from the Army, for example where in the Army you move as a regiment or as a section of a regiment. So that you have that connection with a bunch of chaps or girls who are together as a unit. In the Royal Air Force there’s a subtle difference between the aircrew and the ground crew. The aircrew will move with the Squadron. The ground crew tend to move as individuals between units because they, they are posted. And I know this from my RAF experience myself in the Record Office. They are posted as individuals to, to a unit. To an RAF station. They’re not posted to a Squadron like they were during the war. But even during the war as exemplified by the fact that although my dad was posted to 97 Squadron and was based at Woodhall Spa when 97 Squadron moved out it was only the 97 Squadron aircraft and aircrew that moved out. The ground crew remained there. And that’s how my father came to serve with 617. Because 617s ground crew would remain at Scampton. That’s the difference. So that you don’t have that sort of ongoing connection except as aircrew. I mean, you talk, if you talked to people who have been aircrew and we’ve got a near neighbour who was in the Royal Air Force and he still goes. He was a, he flew helicopters and various things. And he still has Squadron reunions. But I think that’s the difference. Understandable when you know how the, you know sort of how the system works. I don’t know about the Navy although my niece has just retired as a naval officer. I don’t know. They, they are sort of posted to ships more or less. So I think the navy and the Royal Air Force have a similar —
JS: System.
KH: A similar sort of system. Unlike, unlike the Army and probably the Royal Marines.
JS: And he didn’t discuss the war much?
KH: No.
JS: In the years that followed it. He went back to working at the bank as you said.
KH: Yes.
JS: Because he felt he owed them that because they had released him to go.
KH: Yes.
JS: And he stayed working in Durham.
KH: He stayed in Durham. He, he for a short while he was moved to Bishop Auckland which is about twelve, twelve or fifteen miles outside the city. He moved to Lloyds Bank there for a short while but didn’t move out of the city because it was within easy travelling distance. So, yes he remained at Lloyds Bank in Durham until he, until he retired. Yes. He became a sub manager at one of the sub branches of the city but it was a sub-branch in one of the mining villages. So it was not a case of having to move. So we, as a family we remained in the city and I only left the city when I joined the Royal Air Force myself and then when I went to university and then, you know that sort of broke the, broke the connection although after, after we were married because my wife and I were married in the city in our parish church and after having lived in the East Midlands we moved back to the North East but not to the city because I was then working in Newcastle. So it was only my parents who remained in in the city and they both remained there until they died.
JS: And you lost your father at quite a young age, didn’t you?
KH: My father. Yes. He died very very suddenly when he was only fifty nine. Which was a great shock. Particularly as, or within, within the previous fortnight he’d had a full flying medical and passed. Passed his full flying medical and then had a massive heart attack within a fortnight. So it was, that was quite a, quite a shock for all of us.
JS: For all of you. Yeah.
KH: And at that time my sister was in, was living in Australia because her husband was a civil engineer and he was working out there and so, she wasn’t here when he died.
JS: And your sister’s name you told me was Ann.
KH: My sister was Ann.
JS: Ann. Yeah. And your mother’s name for the record.
KH: My mother’s name was Hilda.
JS: Hilda. That’s right.
KH: Her maiden name was Lambeth. L A M B E T H. And that is my middle name.
JS: Ok. And she stayed in the city, did she?
KH: She stayed in the city. She remained in the family home that was bought. That they bought after the war when my father was demobbed and until she eventually went into Sherman House Hospital which was a Church of England Old People’s Home which was where she died after having, having had a series of strokes unfortunately.
JS: And you did give me the address of the family home at the time.
KH: The family home that was bought after the war was 24 Church Street Head. Church Street having been split into two sections, Church Street proper which ended where, just above St Oswald’s Church which was our parish church and the parish church. The infant school which was attached to the parish church that was sort of the dividing line. Up to that point it was Church Street and from there up to the crossroads at the top it was Church Street Head. One of those peculiar things that you get in cities where one street has two sections.
JS: Yeah.
KH: Yeah. It was, in those days it was basically on the outskirts of the city and just beyond the road that ran across at the crossroads there was the university. One of the university science colleges there. But beyond, but that was quite small. And beyond that were woods that, the woods which surround the city and a lot of that land was owned by the university because the majority of the land around Durham City was owned either by the university or the Cathedral, and all that land now is occupied by new colleges. There are one, two, three, four. At least four colleges now on the south side of the city. No five. Because there was a female college opened. That was the first one to be opened just after the war and it was opened by the Queen when she was Princess Elizabeth. So there are all those colleges now are built on what were woods and fields. It’s quite, quite an alteration. And I haven’t lived in the city since 1961, and, and I’m quite certain that there have been a lot more alterations since. Well, I knew the city obviously beyond ’61. I didn’t live in the city after ’61 but obviously my mother and father did. So until we moved south in 2000 I was in and out of, in and out of the city so I know what developments went, went on up to the beginning of the current century but what’s gone on in since then is anybody’s guess from my point of view. Obviously there must have been a lot more development but —
JS: Yeah.
KH: Not that I’m aware of.
JS: Places change don’t they? Yeah. Right. Well, that’s really comprehensive. Thank you very much for all that for your time in, and your patience in talking to me about that. Is there anything else that you can think that you would like us to say for the record given that it is a Digital Archive. Was there anything that you would like to say? Anything you can think of now or any comments that you would like to make?
KH: Not really. Except, the only thing that I would say is that I feel that it is vitally important that what the likes of my parents, my wife’s parents and their generation what they did for this country should never ever be forgotten. And the generations that come up it should be made quite clear to them why we are still a free country. And they should never assume that things will just drop into their lap. Everything that is worth anything has to be fought for and cherished. Those are the things that I think are sometimes lacking in the teachings now of the youngsters coming up like, like our granddaughter. I mean our two children when they were at school were taught a certain amount of history and in fact, it’s quite amusing. They came home on one occasion and we, we discovered that they were being taught the details of the ‘39/45 war as history. So we decided as parents that we weren’t just parents we were history. But you know, that was, that’s the lighter side of it. But I think seriously the current young generation I don’t think they’re taught the history. Not just what happened in two world wars although obviously they’re getting a lot about the First World War just at the moment but I think, you know some of the so called ancient history of this country on which a lot of our civil rights are founded. A lot, a lot of that doesn’t seem to be taught anymore and I think that is very sad. And I think, you know the education system needs to be looked at in that respect because we can’t afford to lose our history because that is part of our identity. Alright. I might be pontificating a bit but I do feel fairly strongly about it and I wouldn’t want to be called a Little Englander but you know I think we need to be proud of Great Britain and ‘great’ being the important part of it.
JS: I don’t think many people will disagree with you. I think that’s absolutely a fair point. Well, again thank you very much. Thank you for your time and your patience and thank you to Sybil as well, your wife who is here with us. And I very much appreciated you taking the time
KH: I’m only too pleased to have been able to do it because I think it’s important that those of us who lived through the war should leave a record of what, what happened so as far as they’re concerned. And you know sadly the people who actually fought the war for us are becoming few and far between now so it’s only the likes of us who are now getting sort of towards the end of our active life as you might say you know we’re the only ones who perhaps have a memory of it. And if those memories disappear a bit like the, some of the memories of the First World War which have just disappeared and only been found by archaeologists and things like that. Because there was no such things as digital recordings.
JS: No. No.
KH: Which is what we’ve got now.
JS: No. We’re fortunate to have the tools now at our disposal and that’s what the Digital Archive is all about.
KH: Yeah.
JS: Which is keeping those memories alive and keeping that message alive
KH: Yeah.
JS: So that, so what you’ve done for us today is really important.
KH: I’m pleased.
JS: So thank you very much both of you.
SH: It’s ok.
KH: Pleased to help.
JS: Thank you.
KH: Really pleased to help. 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
A name given to the resource
Interview with Ken Hayton
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Joyce Sharland
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-10-04
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AHaytonK171004, PHaytonK1701
Format
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00:59:30 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Civilian
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Second generation
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Durham (County)
England--Gloucestershire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Tyne and Wear
England--Yorkshire
England--Durham
England--London
England--Newcastle upon Tyne
England--Sunderland (Tyne and Wear)
Description
An account of the resource
Ken Hayton’s father, George Stanley Hayton (Stan), worked worked for Lloyds Bank. In 1940 Stan left his post to join the Royal Air Force; Ken recalled going to Durham station to see his father off, travelling to start basic training at RAF Padgate. Ken believes his father completed his training as a fitter armourer at RAF Lytham before joining 97 Squadron at RAF Woodhall Spa. When 617 Squadron replaced 97 Squadron, Ken remained and was involved in bombing up 617 Squadron aircraft ahead of the Dambuster operation. Stan was sent to help with the clear up of a Lancaster crash on land near a bomb dump and for the rest of his life he could not stand the smell of lamb being cooked. Towards the end of the war Stan was posted to RAF Riccall where he prepared redundant .303 browning aircraft guns for storage, he was finally demobbed from RAF Waddington in 1945 and returned to Lloyds Bank where he remained until retirement. After the war Stan trained for his private pilot license at Newcastle Aero Club and took both Ken and his mother flying in the club’s Tiger Moth.
Ken describes his schoolboy life in Durham, including leaving the Anderson Shelter one evening and watching searchlights scanning the sky over Sunderland. One bombing on Durham was shortly after Coventry had been bombed: the mist rose from the river and shrouded the city, with local folklore being St Cuthbert protecting the Cathedral. During his father’s service at RAF Woodhall Spa, Ken recalled travelling there with his mother from Durham by train and seeing extensive bomb damage to York railway station. Ken served three years in the RAF, posted to RAF Insworth a non-flying RAF station where the RAF Records Section was based, transferring to the Coronation Unit for training ahead of the ceremony in 1953. He recalled route lining in the Haymarket, due to the narrowing of the road he was very close to the Queen’s coach and in the evening went to Buckingham Palace and assisted the police with crowd control. Ken recalls watching The Dambusters film with his father in 1955 and his father commenting on the accuracy of the film.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
1942
1943
1943-05
1944
1945
1953
1954
1955
Contributor
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Jim Sheach
Julie Williams
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
617 Squadron
97 Squadron
bombing
childhood in wartime
crash
Eder Möhne and Sorpe operation (16–17 May 1943)
ground personnel
Lancaster
RAF Innsworth
RAF Padgate
RAF Riccall
RAF Waddington
RAF Woodhall Spa
searchlight
shelter
superstition
Tiger Moth
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1009/11267/YMadgettHR1330340v4.1.pdf
dd60ad5138604bcfae53e895a1ee4833
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Madgett, Hedley Robert
H R Madgett
Description
An account of the resource
250 items. The collection concerns Pilot Officer Hedley Madgett DFM (1922 - 1943, 147519, 1330340 Royal Air Force), a pilot with 61 Squadron. He was killed 18 August 1943 on the last operation of his tour from RAF Syerston to Peenemünde. The collection consists of letters, postcards and telegrams to his parents while he was training in the United Kingdom and Canada. In addition the collection contains memorabilia, documents from the Air Training Corps, artwork, a railway map, diaries, medals as well as his logbook, photographs of people, places and aircraft. Also contains letters of condolence to parents and a sub collection containing a photograph album with 44 items of his time training in Canada'.<br /><br />The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Joan Madgett and Carol Gibson, and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.<br /><br /><span>Additional information on Hedley Madgett is available via the </span><a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/114690/" title="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/madgett-hr/ ">IBCC Losses Database</a><span>.</span>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-03-17
2019-06-14
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
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Madgett, H
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
THE
AIR FORCE
DIARY [page break]
[Inside front cover of diary]
XMAS 1942
To Hedley [?]
From Dad Mum [?]
With best love
“Happy landings”
Whoopee! [page break]
[underlined] Personal Memoranda [/underlined]
Name. H.R. MADGETT
Address. 127. LONGLANDS ROAD
SIDCUP. KENT.
Telephone No. Foots Cray 1695
Motor Car No. FLO 311
Driving Licence No. 4/4445
Due. 1/4/43
[underlined] Train Service [/underlined]
To Town
A.M.
4.16
4.49
6.26
6.34
6.54
7.4
7.16
7.23
7.40
7.50
8.3
8.14
8.32
8.38
8.45
8.56
9.10
9.19 [page break]
Memoranda from 1942
[blank]
[page break]
JANUARY 1 Friday 1943
Sick leave 23rd. Dec. to 13th. Jan. (3 weeks). Appendics [sic] out Dec. 25th. [page break]
[Pages from 2 January 1943 to 7 January 1943 have been left blank]
JANUARY 8 Friday 1943
Took Mum & Peter to see Tommy Trinder in “Best Bib & Tucker” at Palladium. Quite good effort. Up to George Black’s usual standard. [page break]
JANUARY 9 Saturday 1943
Took Mum & Dad to Lewisham Hippodrome this evening – Billy Cotton, Adelaide Hall, Nan Kenway & Douglas Young (very tasty, very sweet!) were the well known ones. Very good show really.
[Pages from 10 January 1943 to 12 January 1943 have been left blank]
JANUARY 13 Wednesday 1943
10.10 a.m. train from Kings X [smudged] X [/smudged] change at Grantham for Lincoln. I was in Waddington just after 2 p.m. 1661 Sqdn. Con. Unit has moved to [inserted] W [/inserted] inthorpe nr. Newark & think my kitbags in store have gone there also. Medical Board Inspection at Rauceby not til [sic] 18th. so no work yet. Only report to S.W.O. office every day at 9 a.m.
Its [sic] going to be very boring doing nought. Was told that I would pick up another crew at Con. Unit. If so, am not making application for transfer to light bombers as had intended. [page break]
JANUARY 14 Thursday 1943
No trace anywhere of my 2 kit bags.
In afternoon went to Lincoln to look round, had tea at a café & and then saw Abbot & Costello in “Pardon My Sarong”. Pretty good & very funny. Palled up with an AG I met in the cinema & we had supper in the town N.A.A.F.I. which is quite a modern place. [page break]
JANUARY 15 Friday 1943
[underlined] Pay day - £7-10s. [/underlined]
Still looking for my kit. To Winthorpe, nr. Newark in afternoon looking for kit – no results. Its [sic] a sea of mud over there, and everything half-finished in construction. No time to see Brom himself at Bottisford [sic] (10 miles from Newark) Had meal in N.A.A.F.I. Lincoln & came back just before warning went, & later actually saw a night fighter shoot a Jerry down which had just bombed Lincoln. Good shooting. [page break]
JANUARY 16 Saturday 1943
Rang up Brom at lunch time at Bottisford [sic] after 2nd attempt to find him. Says he put my kit into discip. office, not stores. So I enquire at all discip. offices here & ring Winthorpe. No success but ringing again tomorrow.
Our aircraft over Berlin this night
JANUARY 17 Sunday 1943
I’m orderly Sergeant today. Quite easy job. Rang Winthorpe again twice at last found the missing kit & and was now in Winthorpe Gaurd [sic] Room. [page break]
JANUARY 18 Monday 1943
[underlined] Memo: [/underlined] 12.45 hrs. report S.S.Q. for transport [underlined] to Rauceby Hospital [/underlined]
Got through Medical Board at Rauceby O.K. & am now A.1. flying fit again.
M.O. took pulse before & after jumping on and & off a chair five times & then did the old mercury blowing affair. Did O.K. on 2nd. go, but first time did not take big enough breath to start with. Collected my kit at long last at the Gaurd [sic] Room this evening after being sent over from Winthorpe. [page break]
JANUARY 19 Tuesday 1943
Reported to M.O. that I passed Medical Board & asked him if he could not hurry my papers through for posting to the Con. Unit – he rang up Adjutant & he has done something so M.O. gave me 3 days leave for the posting to come through.
Got 3.45 p.m. train from Lincoln arrived home at 10 p.m. [page break]
JANUARY 20 Wednesday 1943
Spent morning in hanging around doing nothing in particular, but in p.m. went shopping with Mum in Eltham Stayed in in evening. I was going round to see Diana Tatnal [sic] but put it off as it started raining.
During dinner time there was an alert & guns going. 6 out of 30 Jerry kites had reached London & dropped their bombs. They were F.W. 190’s & Me 109’s. 10 of them shot down but a lot of children in a London [deleted] shcool [/deleted] school killed. No balloons up or warning till all over. Somebody ought to catch a packet for being aslepp [sic]. [page break]
JANUARY 21 Thursday 1943
Went round to see Mrs. McJames with Mum. She had just come out of a week in hospital with a poisoned little finger, & has had several ops. on it. It is getting better now though.
Stayed in in [sic] evening to write Rosemary. Have not heard from her since being in dock nor from Edna. [page break]
JANUARY 22 Friday 1943
Had bath in morning & caught [deleted] 9 [/deleted] 2.35 p.m. from New Eltham as there was an unexploded bomb [deleted] on [/deleted] near the line to Sidcup.
4.00 p.m. train from Kings X and 6.45 p.m. [deleted] tr [/deleted] local train from Grantham to Lincoln where it was pouring with rain having left London in quite decent weather. I got in camp 8.30. p.m. – i.e. 4 ½ hours from home.
Other occupant of my room due back from leave today. [page break]
JANUARY 23 Saturday 1943
Reported to M.O. in morning & he told me I was already posted to Winthorpe. Caught 2.50 p.m. train from Lincoln to Newark where got a taxi as had my kit. Lot of bother finding the airfield. Nobody knows what I’m here for – typical Raf [sic] as all crews are complete here. Will see adjutant first thing tomorrow. The mess is terrible – wrotten [sic] food & little of it. Also hell of a lot of mud everywhere.
JANUARY 24 Sunday 1943
C.G.I. is fixing me up a crew. Only 2 more members to get hold of, & probably will be posted to another Con. Unit. Heard old Brom. has died. Something wrong with his oxygen mask on Berlin raid on [sic] Jan. [page break]
JANUARY 25 Monday 1943
A wretched day from all points of view. C.G.I. out all morning and got wet in the pouring rain going again in the afternoon to his office but was informed he had this day off! So I couldn’t do anything except get wet again going back to the mess.
The meal for tea was an improvement & was quite good – cheese-potatoe [sic] & mash potato & sauce. But we still have no jam or marmalade. Stayed in the mess all evening & got to bed early at 10.30 p.m. [page break]
[Pages from 26 January 1943 to 27 January 1943 have been left blank]
JANUARY 28 THURSDAY 1943
Arrived in Cambridge at 5.30 p.m. after having an hours wait for a train at Ely. Bob Grimwade (at Marshall’s Airport which is a short bus ride out of town) could not be found. Presume he had gone out so am calling again tomorrow.
Saw “In Which We Serve” with Noel Coward. A very good picture & very moving in places. It is supposed to be the best film ever produced. All about a destroyer – H.M.S. Torrin. [page break]
JANUARY 29 Friday 1943
Spent all morning finding Bob Grimwade with no success; learnt at last he was on leave & due back tonight. Had dinner in the mess and caught [deleted]010[/deleted] 1300 train to Liverpool Street. Next train to Hornchurch where Bob lives was too late for me to catch him, so went straight on home.
Wonderful weather for a change. Quite a warm sun. [page break]
JANUARY 30 Saturday 1943
Many heavy hail storm showers today & very windy. Took Mum & Dad to Odeon and saw Diana Barrymore in “Nightmare”. Pretty good. Also “Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch”. I did not like this much – old fashioned style.
JANUARY 31 Sunday 1943
Rain all day and extremely windy. Left Sidcup in pouring rain; caught 8.20 p.m. King’s Cross & arr. Newark 11.45 p.m. only 16 min. late. In my bunk by 12.20 a.m. [page break]
[Pages from 1 February 1943 to 2 February 1943 have been left blank]
FEBRUARY 3 Wednesday 1943.
Up late. After tea caught 5.33 p.m. train from Newark for Nottingham again, & met there in a pub Sgt Dundas & Sengus [?] & few others ex Kinloss. Dundas has done one trip to Berlin as 2nd. dicky and did a Lorient raid on their own. Went to the other dance hall – Victoria Ballroom – but did not like it so much as the Palais.
Stayed for the night at same place as on Monday night. [page break]
FEBRUARY 4 Thursday 1943
Got up too late to catch 9.15 a.m. train back so caught 11.30 a.m. & in meantime played snooker at Y.M.C.A. with Canadian soldier.
Did not go out in evening but wrote letters to home & Rosemary. Have not yet heard from her for ages now. I wonder why? [page break]
[inserted] Paid £7 – 18s -0d. (for 1 month) [/inserted]
FEBRUARY 5 Friday 1943
In the afternoon was one of the coffin bearers in the Aussie A.G’s funeral, who was killed in a prang on Monday night. Very cold as we could not wear greatcoats. After this had a meal in town with some Flight Engineers and went to see Jean [sic] Tierney in “Sundown” which I have seen before.
Then back to camp for the mess dance. Plenty of beer drinking but dance itself not so hot. Music supplied by Horace Finch on the Organola. He played O.K. but awful to dance to. At piano was George (?) Cohen of [deleted] Abl [/deleted] Albert Sandler’s trio. Bed at 1.00 a.m. but did not get a date. [page break]
FEBRUARY 6 Saturday 1943
This evening went to a dance at the Technical College down town with Harry Robinson who I have palled up with and is to be my Flight Engineer. His tart got me in as a ticket was required, the reason very few Raf chaps there. Harry’s tart’s friend was Mary & was a real bundle of fun. Was a nice crowd & bags of fun & girls who were very nice. Took Mary home & made telephone date for Monday.
FEBRUARY 7 Sunday 1943
Down town with Harry for free cinema show news, a cartoon, “Crime Does Not Pay” Serial, & Wallace Beery in “Barnacle Bill”. Bang on show! [page break]
FEBRUARY 8 Monday 1943
Very cold today.
Stayed in mess in evening for a change & wrote letter home. Bed early. [page break]
[Pages from 9 February 1943 to 9 March 1943 have been left blank]
MARCH 10 Wednesday 1943
Posted to 61 Squadron, Syerston. Notts. [page break]
[Pages from 11 March 1943 to 21 March 1943 have been left blank]
MARCH 22 Monday 1943
First op. to [underlined] ST. NAZAIRE [/underlined] as 2nd. pilot to F/LT Barlow, an Aussie & very nice chap. I acted as Engineer.
Rather uneventful trip – very little flak or search-lights. Back over base we were diverted to AYR because of vis.[sic] At AYR had best meal ever in R.A.F. – egg, chips & bacon in big helpings.
6.15 hrs.
14 S.B.C.s
MARCH 23 Tuesday 1943
Flew back to base this afternoon – 1.35 hrs.
[Pages from 24 March 1943 to 25 March 1943 have been left blank]
MARCH 26 Friday 1943
2nd. op. as 2nd. ‘dickie’ again to F/LT Barlow to [underlined] Duisburg [/underlined]. Moderate flak.
5.00 hrs. In our own aircraft “B” (ED 722) Christened “Brenda”. It is practically brand new & this is its 2nd. op. it is the latest type of Lanc – type III.
1 x 4000 lb. 12 S.B.C.’s (90 x 4) [page break]
MARCH 27 Saturday 1943
Ops. to the big city – [underlined] BERLIN. [/underlined]
I was pilot & had F/O Burgess as a captain Navigator & acting as my Engineer – Robi. Did not come.
A lot of S/L’s & guns.
8.00 hrs.
1 X 4000 lb. 10 S.B.C.’s (90 X 4)
[Entry for 28 March 1943 has been left blank]
MARCH 29 Monday 1943
Ops to [underlined] BERLIN [/underlined] again with our whole crew complete.
More flak this time & we had one hole in port wing but not serious.
7.45 hrs. Weather very foul over North Sea – bags of thick icing cloud.
1 X 4000 lb.
12 S.B.C. (90 x 4) [page break]
[Pages from 30 March 1943 to 12 April 1943 have been left blank]
APRIL 13 Tuesday 1943
5th OP. to [underlined] SPEZIA [/underlined] Italy. On last leg, NAVI & I boobed & steered wrong course for 15 mins. Making us too late for target so bombed Savona & got back with very little petrol to spare.
11.00 hrs. my longest trip. [page break]
APRIL 14 Wednesday 1943
6th. O.P. to [underlined] STUTTGART [/underlined]
6.40 hrs. A good prang – moderate but accurate flak and a fair number of S/L.
8 x 1000 lbs. [page break]
APRIL 15 Thursday 1943
[blank]
APRIL 16 Friday 1943
7th. op. to [underlined] PILSEN [/underlined] Czechoslovakia.
8.20 hrs. Thought we had pranged the target good & proper, but found later everyone had bombed another village south of Pilsen. All the newspapers said Pilsen had been bombed very effectively!! Propoganda [sic]!!!!!
14 S.B.C. (90 x 4)
APRIL 17 Saturday 1943
[ blank]
APRIL 18 Sunday 1943
[underlined] 8th. OP. to Spezzia, Italy. [/underlined]
14 S.B.C.’s (90 x 4). 9.25 hrs.
APRIL 19 Wednesday 1943
[blank]
APRIL 20 Tuesday 1943
[underlined] 9th. op. Stettin. [/underlined] 9.05 hrs.
1 X 4000. 12 S.B.C.’s (8 X 30)
Bang on trip – low level on the deck. Bags of shooting up by towns & flak ships. 31 holes in our kite, but was not our own “B” Brenda. [page break]
[Pages from 21 April 1943 to 25 April 1943 have been left blank]
APRIL 26 Monday 1943
[underlined] 10th. op. to Duisburg. [/underlined]
1 x 4000 12 S.B.C.’s (90 x 4)
6.00 hrs. [page break]
APRIL 27 April 1943
[blank]
APRIL 28 Wednesday 1943
11th. op. Gardening in Baltic Sea just off Swedish Coast. 5 mines.
[underlined] 7.55 hrs. [/underlined] [page break]
APRIL 29 Thursday 1943
[blank]
APRIL 30 Friday 1943
12th. op. to Essen.
1 X 4000. 12 S.B.C. (90 X 4)
[underlined] 4.45 hrs. [/underlined]
MAY 1 Saturday 1943
[blank]
MAY 2 Sunday 1943
[blank]
MAY 3 Monday 1943
[blank]
MAY 4 Tuesday 1943
13th op. to Dortmund.
1 X 4000. 12 S.B.C’s (90 X 4)
[underlined] 5.30 hrs. [/underlined] [page break]
MAY 5 Wednesday 1943
[blank]
[Pages from 6 May 1943 to 10 May 1943 missing]
MAY 11 Tuesday 1943
[blank]
MAY 12 Wednesday 1943
14th. op. to Duisburg.
1 x 4000. 12 S.B.C.’s (90 x 4)
[underlined] 4.50 hrs. [/underlined]
[underlined] Took off after midnight [/underlined]
MAY 13 Thursday 1943
[underlined] 15th. op. to Pilsen again [/underlined]
1 x 4000. 4 x 1000.
[underlined] 2 X 500. 7.35 hrs. [/underlined]
2 ops in 24 hours !!! [page break]
[Pages from 14 May 1943 to 22 May 1943 have been left blank]
MAY 23 Sunday 1943
16th. op. to Dortmund
1 x 4000.. 12 S.B.C.s (90 x 4)
5.35 hrs. [page break]
[Pages from 24 May 1943 to 10 June 1943 are left blank]
JUNE 11 Friday 1943
[underlined] 17th. op. to Dusseldorf. [/underlined]
1 x 4000. 4 x 500 M.C. 12 S.B.C.s (8 x 30)
[underlined] 5.00 hrs. [/underlined] [page break]
JUNE 12 Saturday 1943
[underlined] 18th. op. to Bochum [/underlined]
1 x 4000. 4 x 500 M.C. 12 2/3 S.B.Cs. (90 x 4).
[underlined] 5.05 hrs. [/underlined] [page break]
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Hedley Madgett RAF Diary 1943
Description
An account of the resource
Entries start at home and then cover posting to RAF Waddington and Winthorpe, medical boards and leaves. Posted to 61 Squadron at RAF Syerston on 10 March 1942. Covers first 18 operations starting 22 March and ending 12 June 1943. Targets include Duisburg, Berlin, La Spezia, Stuttgart, Essen, Dortmund, Dusseldorf, Bochum, Pilsen, Stettin and gardening in the Baltic.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1943
Format
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Thirty five double page pocket diary
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Text. Diary
Identifier
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YMadgettHR1330340v4
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Conforms To
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Pending review
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Lincolnshire
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Czech Republic
Czech Republic--Plzeň
Poland
Poland--Szczecin
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Stuttgart
Germany--Essen
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Bochum
Italy
Italy--La Spezia
Germany
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
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.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Hedley Robert Madgett
61 Squadron
bombing
entertainment
mine laying
RAF Syerston
RAF Waddington
RAF Winthorpe
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/935/11292/ALunnLG171107.2.mp3
c8898a3fbc1d4aa984ad1a002702b5df
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/935/11292/PLunnLG1701.1.jpg
aae5ca1ca0b65d1af4c24762035c0442
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
Lunn, Leslie Grantham
L G Lunn
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Squadron Leader Leslie Lunn (b. 1923, 1317021, 157825 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a pilot with 127 Squadron
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-11-07
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Lunn, LG
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today is the 7th of November 2017 and we’re in Balsall Common near Coventry talking to Squadron Leader Leslie Lunn AFC about his life and times. So, Les, what are the earliest recollections you have of life.
LL: My sister [laughs] boxing me in, in the house and looking after me. Not allowing me to move. I wasn’t allowed to move [laughs] I was very very young then. After that I don’t know. I just, I just went to school and it was we went to school at Wembley and then at Watford. Then we moved from Watford down to Plymouth and I went to a school called Warren School and didn’t learn a thing because it, it was a totally incompetent and my father and mother decided that their son was an absolute idiot. And I sat the entrance exam to Plymouth, Plymouth College and somehow or other passed and I started and I did my education in Plymouth College. Finished it off at the age, I started about the age of thirteen and I, and I got my School Certificate eventually at eighteen. And then with the bombing raids on Plymouth my parents moved out to, out into the country and we lived at Cornwood in, in Devon. And I volunteered for the RAF from there. I had a bit of a row with me mum and in a huff I went into Plymouth and volunteered. And when I came back and told my mother she wouldn’t believe me [laughs] until my call up papers came [laughs] And then I was attested in Oxford and oh, I had to wait something like oh three or four months before I was attested and then I had to go. I’d never left home and I had to get up to London to Lord’s Cricket Ground to where we were all assembling and I went up by train and eventually got to Lord’s Cricket Ground where there was hundreds of us waiting and we sat there and waited and waited and waited all day and, or for the rest of the day and eventually they never got to me. The L’s. So we were billeted out in, oh I can’t remember now, and we had to go back again and we were eventually had a medical and all that sort of stuff and I was in the Air Force. And the reason why I came to, went in the Air Force was that my father was in the First World War and he was in, he was unfortunately eighteen when the war was declared and he joined the Norfolk Regiment and was in the trenches for nearly a year and he saw these funny little biplanes flying up above him and he decided that he was better up there then down in all this mud. So he volunteered too for aircrew and he was sent to back to England and became an observer. And I can’t, and he was posted then back to Germany as an, as an observer and he flew with a captain, I don’t know his name, in and I can’t remember, I think it was 14 Squadron. It could be. I don’t. I can’t really remember. And the life expectancy was somewhere in the matter of three weeks. Possibly three months. And my father somehow survived for the rest of the war. Three years. So he was a very, very lucky man. And he met my mother in, on one of his leaves because his, his father was a master tailor in, in Norwich, Mother was a typist in in the railway or something and he met her and they were married. And after the war pop couldn’t get a job so he joined the Black and Tans.
CB: Oh.
LL: Yeah. The Black and Tans, and went to Ireland with my mother and my sister then who was a baby and they spent some time in, in Ireland. And it wasn’t, it wasn’t very pleasant. And then pop came, then when they came back father became, worked for a firm called Blundell’s. And they did a hire purchase system. And father stayed with them for the rest of his career and he became the manager of a department store in Plymouth because we moved from Watford to Plymouth and and he retired from, from that particular job. And then during the Second World War he volunteered for is it AR? Not ARP. What was it?
CB: Yeah.
LL: Was it ARP?
CB: Yes. Yeah.
LL: And he had a uniform and there’s a photograph of us somewhere with me in my officer’s uniform and pop in his. And, and the reason why I suppose I joined the, I wanted to be a pilot and join the RAF was because of my father’s background really. Am I nattering too much?
CB: That’s really good. Keep going.
LL: Oh, I see [laughs] where do I go from there?
CB: Well, you were at ACRC so —
LL: Oh yes. I I volunteered and, and I was at ACRC. That’s right. ACRC. That’s right. ACRC. And from there I was sent to Paignton to do my ITW and we lived in a [tin barny] hotel on the front and I made friends. Three chaps. And we all four of us got together and eventually the postings came through and my three friends were posted to, on one of the drafts to America to do their pilot training. And I was left out. And I tried to get on the same tour but they said that I would be on the next one. So anyway I continued doing my training at the ITW and then I was posted to America and we had to go up to Manchester and had to be called from Manchester which was a reception area. We went by, up to Liverpool. I think it was Liverpool where we boarded a troopship called the Montcalm and I had the most awful journey to America, or Canada. It was, it was our troopship plus another troop ship and the weather got worse and worse and worse and we were escorted by those American, ex-American destroyers. Four funnel jobs.
CB: Yeah.
LL: Nasty old things. Anyway, the weather got so bad they turned back to England and left us and we had to go right up towards the Arctic Circle to avoid U-boats. And we landed eventually in Halifax. And the life on that boat was absolutely awful. I was eighteen, never left home and I had to suffer these. Everybody was being sick and the ship was riddled with cockroaches. All the food that was just dished out, we had to go down to the galley and collect it had cockroaches in it. You sliced the bread and you sliced through a cockroach. And consequently I hardly ate anything for the two weeks I think it was. Goodness knows how long I took to get to Canada. But we landed at Halifax eventually and at, I went to Moncton, Moncton, Canada. Where we were stayed for I don’t know what we did there but then we boarded a train and went all the way down to Montgomery in Georgia. Or was it —
CB: Alabama.
LL: Montgomery. That’s right. Montgomery, Georgia. And that was quite an adventurous journey. We stopped at New York and we had a, a walk around Grand Central Station, and oh it was, to be in America and all the food was was absolutely fantastic. And I started, and then we did what they called a conversion to American system of marching and I was, oh yes. I’ll go back. I actually was, my number of the course was number 42H. So ‘42 being the year and H was my graduation month I think. And anyway, we did drill and lectures and things like that. Then I was posted down to Arcadia, Florida where I started my primary training on Stearmans. And my instructor was Mr Ryan and he was a civilian and he had three or was it four students. And I was the only one to survive. The others didn’t make it. And I did sixty hours there. Then I went to Gunter Field, Montgomery, where I did my basic training on [pause] oh dear, Vultee13s I think they were called. Fixed undercarriage and wound the flaps down, that’s right [laughs] So anyway another, did another sixty hours there and then from there I went to [pause] Carlstrom? No. I can’t remember the name of the place. Was it Carlstrom Field? No. I did my advanced training anyway on Harvards and I graduated in August. I think it was August. It could have been early September but I’ve got it in my logbook anyway.
CB: Ok.
LL: And they’re on the table there. And somehow I became a natural pilot. On the advanced we went down to an airfield, Eglin Field in Florida and did air gunnery. That’s right. And I did quite well and that billed me in good stead because eventually when we got back to England and we were at Bournemouth we were all interviewed and they were building up Bomber Command all, all the time. And I should think out of the hundreds that were there the majority of them were pushed into Bomber Command. But at my interview I said I wanted Spitfires and I wanted Fighter Command. And fortunately I had a good gunnery score and that, on my records and I was posted to 129 Squadron on Spitfires. Much to my relief. And to fly a Spitfire was absolutely marvellous. And I was still, let me see at the end of the year oh, I had, gosh [pause] I left a bit. I’m sorry. I was posted to an OCU. That’s right. From Bournemouth I was posted to Grangemouth. Grangemouth in Scotland where I did my OCU and, on Spitfires. And from there I was posted to 129 Squadron at, it was at [pause] oh dear. Oh dear. Carlton? That was Carlstrom Field, I think. It was one of these wartime strips with Somerfield tracking and we lived in — no. I’m I’m sorry. Ignore that. Ignore that. Ignore that. Ignore that. That was sometime later. Ignore that. That’s right. I went to, I joined 129 Squadron at [pause] is there an airfield near Ringwood? Oh I can’t. I can’t remember.
CB: At Hurn.
LL: It will be in my logbook anyway. And the Squadron had actually gone to Hornchurch and so my 129 Squadron didn’t, wasn’t there. So I had to wait until they came back again and then of course I started, and I started my ops from, from there. And we did [pause] I was very green of course and they looked after me, I suppose. And then we were posted from that airfield. I can’t remember the name again, to Hornchurch where I operated from. I don’t know for how long, but we were on Spitty 5s to start off with at, at the airfield I can’t remember the name of. And we then converted on to Spit 9s when we were at Hornchurch and we did fighter patrols and I was nominated as, as I was a good Number 2 I used to fly Number 2 to the station commander and also the Squadron commander. And from there we, the war, the invasion, we prepared for the invasion and we were posted down to, this is where we went to, oh dear. Why? Why can’t I think of it? It was one of these wartime airfields and it was Sommerfield tracking and we lived in tents and life was a bit rough. Unfortunately they had a system where the pilots moved to the new station and took up the aircraft and they had the ground crew of those particular aircraft. And the the airfield was run by a Polish wing and Wold, no it wasn’t Woldzinski, but anyway we had two Polish Squadrons there and we, and we joined with our Spitfires at this particular place. But we had Polish ground crew. But we got rid of our Spitfires almost immediately and we got Mustangs and our serviceability went down very badly because they didn’t understand what we were talking about and we didn’t understand what they were talking about. The ground crew. And eventually we got British ground crew and everything was a little bit more satisfactory and we did patrols. We escorted Fortresses to, into Germany. We did a lot escort work. And most of our, a lot of our, when I was on on on Spitfires we escorted American bombers in France and into Germany and yes it was all all very, very well, I can’t say exciting really. It [pause] and I’m about bouncing around a bit. Does that matter?
CB: Fine. It’s fine.
LL: I’m bouncing around a bit. So anyway. The invasion. We were at this airfield, and oh yes we with, with the Mustang of course we could stay airborne for quite a long time and we, on these escorts to in to Germany with the Fortresses we were airborne in the Mustang for three hours, three and a half hours, maybe four hours some times. And when we got back on one particular trip it had a tremendous rain storm and all our tents had been flattened. All our bedding was soaking wet. And it was a bit of a mess actually. The whole airfield. And it took quite a while to sort of get ourselves sorted out. The other thing about it was that the Squadron commander made me the imprest holder and I had to go to base accounts and collect all the money and pay the troops and the officers the money they wanted. And the trouble was there was there was nowhere to put this money. I had no safe. I had, and I and I used to go on operations with my pockets full of, full of money because I had nowhere to put them. I couldn’t leave it in the tent. So eventually I saw the Squadron commander and I said, ‘This is ridiculous, sir. I can’t, I can’t cope.’ Anyway, he agreed and they got somebody in to, an officer, ground crew officer and he took over the imprest. So if I had been shot down in Germany I would have had lots of money [laughs] Oh dear. So anyway, from there we went to [pause] we were preparing to go over to, over to France. Oh yes. The invasion. We took, we started with the, the invasion started and we didn’t actually take part in the very first day. The 6th. We were, we were on standby and we were on, and I flew supporting the invasion on the, the second day and it was amazing to see. To fly over that beach head and the, and the number of ships in the harbour there. But the Navy was very very light fingered and they invariably fired at us. And to avoid this they introduced a system where we lowered our undercarriages, circled round to prove to them that we were British and then off we went again. But they still fired at us and they invariably got at least one aeroplane which was very, very upsetting. But the fact was that we were then doing ground, ground support and we were supporting the troops in, against the German tanks and doing a lot of ground work and we lost a lot of pilots through ground fire. And I’ve got all the names in my logbook if you want it. And then we were, the Doodlebugs started and we were diverted from the invasion to shoot down Doodlebugs. And we went to Dungeness, a little airfield in Dungeness with our Mustangs and we were given new Mustangs with a higher boost so that we had more speed to catch these Doodlebugs. And I met, I got one which blew up in front of me and bits of metal through all, from the doodlebug sort of passed over me and blackened all my windscreen. And I got two possibles. So, so I had a little bit of a success there. And then from there I was tour-ex and I was posted to Ingham on fighter affil duties. Can we stop there?
CB: We will.
[recording paused]
LL: Then we had the undercarriage down and circled around them. And that’s the whole Squadron you know, sort of doing it. They still fired at us. But it was the actual invasion supporting the troops and doing ground, ground attack work was more or less new to us. We did what they called from Hornchurch and, and, and the other airfields we used to do what they called ramrods.
CB: Yes.
LL: That was low level stuff and we sorted out trains and German cars and things like that. Interdiction I think they called it, didn’t they?
CB: Yeah.
LL: Keep on whirring. So anyway, Ingham.
CB: Just quickly, what was the armament you had on the Mustang?
LL: Sorry?
CB: What was the armament on the Mustang?
LL: .5s, .5s.
CB: Right.
LL: .5s.
CB: But on the Spitfire you had twenty millimetre cannon.
LL: We had. The early ones of course they had eight 303s and then we got two cannons and two 303s on each wing. No. One cannon and one, that’s right and also a couple of 303s and then they dispensed with the 303s altogether and we had two cannons per wing.
CB: How did you feel about that?
LL: Oh, jolly good. Jolly good. For ground attack work they were marvellous. And on these what they called ramrods.
CB: Just quickly on the V-1 Doodlebug.
LL: Yeah.
CB: So what was the technique that you were trained to pursue with them?
LL: Ah. Well they came in at around about two thousand feet, the Doodlebugs. And we had a sea patrol which was, and then and, and we, if you picked and we stayed at about three or four thousand feet above and so when we saw them we used to have to dive on them and with that extra speed we managed to keep up with them. And we then chased them and fired at them or we hadn’t, if we had missed them, they were still pressing on we had to stop because there was a gunnery belt, anti-aircraft belt and we had to stop and turn back otherwise we would have been fired at. And the gunners took over the Doodlebug from us.
CB: Yeah.
LL: And had a go at it. So it ran a pretty dicey journey.
CB: Sure.
LL: The old V-1s, really. So it, oh yes and one of one of the gunners when we were on this airfield the gunners actually shot, shot one down and winged it and it didn’t blow up. It actually sort of tipped over and headed for the ground and it came straight for us. And we scattered and, and, and it landed in the field just behind the airfield. And when I, we sort of came, I came to I was under the petrol bowser [laughs] Can you imagine it? I was under the bloody petrol bowser. Stupid thing. So, anyway it was from, it was quite exciting chasing the old Doodlebugs.
CB: The one you hit —
LL: Because they didn’t fire back at me you see [laughs]
CB: No. But what was the recommended technique for the approach?
LL: To dive down on them from height to get the speed.
CB: So was it a passing shot or did you actually dive and then come in from behind?
LL: Oh yes. Always from behind. You couldn’t get a deflection shot on them.
CB: Right.
LL: You had to fire on them from behind.
CB: So the one that you got. The kill you did. It blew up. You got a ton of explosive at the front going up.
LL: I must have stopped the engine which then slowed it down and I hadn’t realised that and of course I then closed in rather rapidly and then of course my cannon fire actually exploded it.
CB: Right.
LL: And it, and somebody else did this and they finished up with bits of the Doodlebug stuck in their wings.
CB: Yes. And they were, people were brought down by it as well.
LL: That’s right.
CB: So now you’ve gone through the blackness and your windscreen you said was covered in black. So what did you do then? You can’t lean out and wipe the windscreen.
LL: Somehow, somehow you can’t lean forward and clean the windscreen [laughs] somehow by looking out sideways I managed to get back and land it. Oh, I had engine failure on take-off at that airfield too.
CB: This is at Dungeness.
LL: Yeah. We had Packard Merlin engines and they suffered from internal coolant leaks. And I was leading a section off from there and all of a sudden I started losing power and all this smoke came out of the exhaust. And I had selected undercarriage up because I’d just left the ground and the, and that was it. The engine stopped and I finished up at the ditch at the end of the airfield. And my number two sort of pressed on, fortunately.
CB: So, in those circumstances the number two leads the flight.
LL: No. He had no other opportunity. He had to carry on actually. I don’t know what happened. Whether he landed again or not I can’t remember. I was more concerned about getting out the aircraft [laughs]
CB: So you said there were two probables. How did that occur?
LL: They, they were winged but they, but they and they went down, started going down and then they went into cloud and, and that was it. They, for some reason or other they didn’t give the, they didn’t award me them. They just gave me probables.
CB: Because they couldn’t link it directly to you. Is that it?
LL: They couldn’t link it directly to me. Yeah.
CB: Yeah. How did you feel about that?
LL: Well, had to accept it didn’t I?
CB: Not as sick as a parrot.
LL: So anyway where did we get to?
CB: Right. So you then went to Ingham.
LL: Ingham.
CB: In Lincolnshire.
LL: Oh yes, where we had Hurricanes and Spitfires. And I’d never done this sort of thing before and of course the daylight fighter affil was, was relatively easy. In fact, it was enjoyable. Really enjoyable doing quarter attacks on, and we used to meet the bomber above his airfield and then we used to, off we used to go and do the quarter attacks.
CB: This is the fighter affiliation.
LL: Fighter affil, yeah. And, and then of course we, I had to do it at night. Well, at night time I wasn’t very, I didn’t like night flying very much and, but I had to get used to it. And again we had to take off at night, find the bomber because he always used to be above the airfield and then he used to lead us off. Off somewhere. And then we used to do our quarter attacks at night time. We had infrared lights or lamps under each wing tip on the Spitfires and the Hurricanes so that the gunner can photograph us at night time and assess their abilities. And it was their responsibility to bring us back to base because we had no idea where we were going or where we were. And we, the trouble was that we daren’t lose the bomber because we had no navigation systems and we had no radio systems to get home. And it was their, the bombers responsibility to bring us back home again and when it was a lot of cloud around the bomber used to descend into cloud and we had to formate on this bomber in cloud. And the only ident, the only visual, visual of the bomber was the downward ident light. And you had to sort of fly more or less underneath it to keep in touch with it. And it was quite, quite frightening actually. And you daren’t lost it because you had, you had no idea when you broke, if you eventually broke cloud on your own where you were and there was no identification on the ground and and you were really were sort of lost in a way. But fortunately I managed to hang on to the bombers and I never had that, that situation at all. But it was. And then from Ingham we were, they decided that we would have to go to the bomber stations themselves and we went to Lindholme. The whole unit went up to Lindholme where we operated on fighter affil there. And then we saw Bomber Command operating at its, at its full [pause] I remember one night. Would they have had Halifaxes or Lancasters? I think. I can’t remember. But they took, one aircraft took off and crashed immediately after take-off and then the next aircraft took off and that did exactly the same thing. And instead of selecting undercarriage up the chappie must have, they think who operated the flaps must have brought the flaps up and the aircraft must have stalled and gone straight in. But it was a dreadful mess. It was something that sort of stuck in my mind. Anyway, one of the pilots who was posted on to Typhoons and he didn’t want to go and I wanted to get away from Bomber Command at the time. So I wanted to get back into Fighter Command so I volunteered to take his posting and I was accepted and I went down to Aston Down and converted on to Typhoons. And when I was there the war ended. And I had managed to scrounge trips on Tempests instead of Typhoons. I got on to Tempests which was more of a faster and better aircraft and from there I was declared redundant. And I went home on leave and I was recalled and when I got back I found that they wanted pilots on 222 Squadron in Germany flying Tempests and I was nominated. And I was, I think I said, ‘Thank goodness for that,’ and off I went to Germany to, oh dear what was the name of the damned airfield? Anyway, I joined 222 Squadron and on Tempests. And we, we just did ordinary training and flying and, and then we were sent back to England. I was only on, in Germany for a short period like three or four months and the Squadron was brought home and we were converted onto Meteors. And we went to Molesworth and we converted on to Meteors and they were Meteor 1s. And of course they were twin-engine and we, I had never flown twin engines before. None of the pilots had. And we were given dual in an Oxford. And this, the asymmetric training they gave us was the instructor, throttle back one engine and he said, ‘You push the rudder in the opposite side to keep it straight. Ok? And if you throttle back the other one you push the other rudder. Ok?’ And he said, ‘Now, you do it.’ And I do it. And then we went in and landed. And that was my asymmetric training [laughs] They didn’t show no, no approaches or anything and and consequently we had an awful lot of Meteor crashes because the, the engine, the fuel for some unearthly reason had, when they manufactured was getting water into it and the engines were, were, tended to stop. And unfortunately a lot of pilots had to do asymmetric landings and they had very little training and consequently they, they killed themselves approaching on one engine and it, it was, it was, it was amazing. The Meteor had a very, very high accident rate [pause] What did I do from there? Oh, yes. I can’t remember, [unclear] no. Meteors. Where did I operate? We went to Exeter. That’s right. Exeter, on Meteors. And of course that was quite close to my home which was in Plymouth. And I used to sort of nip home over the weekends quite easily. And I had a car then so I managed to get home quite easily. And then I was posted from 222 Squadron to 1 Squadron to convert them on to Meteors. They had Spitfire 21s. And I had the opportunity to fly Spitfire 21s and 22s with, some of them with contra rotating props so you went from Meteors to Spitfires again. And the Squadron commander brought me in one day and said, ‘How would you like to be posted overseas?’ I said, ‘I don’t know.’ He said, ‘You’re a bachelor and they want pilots in Italy, and how about it?’ So I said, ‘Oh, ok.’ And consequently I was posted to Italy. We went by train all the way across the continent on this military train and it took two days to get to Northern Italy. And it was Treviso. Treviso in Northern Italy. That’s right. Where we flew Mustangs. So, I’ve gone from jets back to piston engines. And we, and of course they were disbanding Squadrons left right and centre at the time and our Squadron was disbanded and I was sent up to a transit camp in Austria where we spent days doing nothing and waiting for a posting. And I assumed I was being posted home again but I was posted to the Middle East. And I [pause] and I eventually after a lot of journeys and trains and aircraft I managed to get via Malta to the Canal Zone, Egypt, where we lived in tents. And from there I was posted to Cyprus on to 213 Squadron. And I, and they were so short of pilots there was the Squadron commander, one flight commander and two pilots. That totalled the Squadron. And I turned up plus a couple of others and we sort of expanded the Squadron a bit. And then they were gradually, Cranwell had started up again and we eventually got some Cranwell students. Pilots posted in and we spent about nearly a year in good old Cyprus. We had a marvellous time in Cyprus. And then I was posted from there. We were sent to Khartoum. And that’s the first time I really saw the Sahara Desert and I was amazed at the extent of that desert. It was fantastic. And flying sort of single engine aircraft over this desert is, is quite, quite something really. And anyway we arrived at at Khartoum and we spent nearly a year there. And we were, from Khartoum we had, yes that’s right it was hot and awful and they had what they called an international front. A weather front called a haboub. And this had, it was high winds and it picked up the sand and it had rain and this black cloud was extended, used to move right across the ocean northwards and and sand was blown everywhere and it was, and it was the first time we’d seen rain. And it was quite, it turned the sand into sort of mud and what amazed me was that after two or three days of this sort of haboub and rain the, if you looked horizontally across the sand you could see it turning green. Grass was actually growing again in the sand. And then of course it didn’t last. It was then of course the heat and the sun killed it off again but that is there, and what amazed me was that it could actually grow and if you could cultivate it I suppose you could have, you know turn the desert into the grass. But anyway, we from Khartoum we were sent down to Mogadishu in —
CB: Somalia.
LL: Somalia. Where we lived very very primitively. It was a dreadful thing. The only toilet was a hole in the ground with a big trench in the ground with holes in it and you sort of had to sit over the hole. We had an air liaison officer, a Claude [Histead?] his name was and he was, he stayed with the Squadron all the way from Cyprus. And he stayed with us for ages. Anyway, he decided that he was, and of course there was a lot of flies over this thing and he decided that he was going to do something about it. So he got some petrol and poured it down into this hole, there were various holes and threw a match in and the whole thing went up in smoke including the [unclear] so it was left a dirty big hole and no small holes for us to sit in, over [laughs] But he got rid of the flies. Anyway, the AOC came down to see us I can remember and, and we thought we’d give him a decent lunch so I went into Mogadishu and I bought these chickens and gave them to the chef or the cook and we, he cooked them up and they served them. And boy those chickens must have been a hundred years old I think because they were so tough that we couldn’t even get a knife into them. And so that was the special dinner for the AOC was a complete washout and we finished up eating corned beef and what was it? What are those red things? Oh, it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter. Anyway, we had a makeshift corned beef lunch much to the amusement of the AOC. So we spent time there and we were actually supporting the army in the unrest in that area. And we used to fly, we had long range tanks of course and we had to locate this army unit and we used to fly over them. And our presence helped to back up their system I suppose in keeping the natives quiet because there was a lot of unrest there. And we used to put on rocket demonstrations at [unclear] and do rocket demonstrations just to show them what was in store for them if they didn’t behave themselves. You can’t do that these days. But we had quite a while at Mogadishu and then from Mogadishu we went up to Aden and stayed at Aden for a while where 8 Squadron was. And then I got up to, posted, we were posted back up to the Canal Zone. And the first thing they told me I was required at Group Headquarters for an interview for a permanent commission. And of course I hadn’t got any kit and anyway I got the batman to press my KD and whatnot. Made myself reasonably respectable and reported to Group Headquarters where they kept me waiting all morning and then when I was ushered in I can’t remember what rank they were but they started asking me questions on political situations and things. And I said ‘Excuse me, sir. I haven’t seen a paper or heard a radio now for nearly two years. I have no idea what’s happening in the world so I cannot answer your questions.’ He looked at me as if I’d gone mad and I got, I must admit I got a little bit annoyed because you know he just couldn’t believe that I didn’t know what was going on in the rest of the world. You know, with Russia and what not. And consequently I was turned down. And when I got back to base, to Shallufa, that’s right, Shallufa we were stationed at, the station commander said, ‘How did it go?’ And I said, ‘Not very well.’ And then of course it came through that I’d, I had failed and he said, ‘Right. I’ll put you up again.’ So I was put up again and before I was actually summoned for another interview I was posted home tour-ex. That was after two and a half years. And as a matter of interest my overseas allowance then was two shillings a day, 10p now. That was not exactly [laughs] that was added to my salary and of course taxed as well. Can I go back a little bit? Back to Khartoum.
CB: Do.
LL: When I was, when I was at Khartoum I was sent home on a, on a course. Some, I don’t know I’ve forgotten what course it was now but anyway I took the opportunity and I thought it was jolly good. Anyway, I eventually got back to England again and I did the course, and I had a week’s leave and when I was coming back to report back to Air Ministry I got, we had first class tickets in those days. In my compartment there was a young lady and a young man and she was wearing, and it was a hot day and she was wearing a fur coat. And I said to her, ‘Are you cold?’ She said, ‘Yes. I’ve, we’ve just come home from Khartoum.’ I said, ‘Really? So have I.’ She said, ‘Oh, my daddy is a district commissioner in, in the Sudan.’ And then I told her what I thought of district commissioners because while we were stationed at Khartoum they would have nothing to do with us. We used to go to the Sudan Club where there was a swimming pool and when we used to go to the mess they completely ignored us and wouldn’t have anything to do with us because we were service. And I told her what I thought of district commissioners and I left the compartment. Found somewhere else to sit. So I didn’t think much of her. So, anyway where did I get to?
CB: So you went back on a course.
LL: Oh yes. On a course. And, and that was on the train journey —
CB: Yeah.
LL: To London. Then I had to go up to, oh some transit camp up in Lancashire somewhere and then I got, got on a troop ship and we went, I went back to the Middle East and I rejoined the Squadron in the Canal Zone. And then of course we got involved with the Israeli Egyptian war.
CB: Yeah. 1948.
LL: Yeah,1948. And these, I can remember the Egyptian Spitfires landing at Shallufa and they were in a dreadful state these aircraft, these aircraft. There were panels missing off them and they were, oh dreadful looking aircraft. They were completely and utterly neglected. Anyway, the highlight then that had happened was that 208 Squadron had red nosed Spitfires and I can’t remember what base they were on and four of them went missing one day. And they’d been shot down by the Israelis. And our Group Captain Anderson came over to us and while we were at Shallufa we used to do readiness. We used to do twenty fours hours on, and twenty fours off and we shared it with 6 Squadron. And we had just come off readiness and they had de-tensioned the BFMs which is the Belt Feed Mechanism. And anyway, the group captain came to see me and my Squadron commander was in, in Cairo at the time so I was looking after the Squadron. And he said, ‘Get your aircraft ready, Les and we’re going to go and find these bloody Spitfires.’ And anyway, we got airborne and 6 Squadron got airborne and we flew towards Israel and, well it wasn’t Israel in those days. It was —
CB: Palestine. Yeah.
LL: Palestine, wasn’t it? Palestine. And we saw these two Spitfires, red nosed Spitfires flying out to our left and so we assumed they were 208 Squadron and they came around and the next thing that happened is they were firing at us and they shot down my number two. We couldn’t believe it. And these bloody Israelis attacked us and shot down and killed my number two. [Tattersfield?] was his name. He’d only joined the Squadron a couple of months before. Anyway, it broke up and I somehow finished behind a Spitfire which was firing at one of my Tempests and I pressed the tit to shoot at him and of course the guns didn’t work because my BFMs had been de-tensioned. Anyway, he must have seen me. He broke up and disappeared. So I, in way saved the chap’s life in that second. When we got back to base we looked at his aircraft and there were bullet holes through the fuselage and hitting the back of the armour plating. You know, behind the seat. So he was jolly lucky. And gosh, our Group Captain Anderson was absolutely furious. He said, ‘I’m going to put rockets on these bloody aircraft. We’ll, show these bloody Israelis.’ Anyway, Group managed, somehow found out and they calmed him down and that was the end of that. But it was, it was quite a thing and it never appeared in the papers. I don’t know what would have happened if, if I had shot this bloody Spitfire down. So that was quite an excitement there.
CB: These, these Israelis were all ex-RAF pilots.
LL: Most of them. Yeah. So, anyway what had happened is that they had shot down these four pilots and fortunately all four pilots survived and they were taken prisoner. And [pause] and believe it or not I was given a book and I think it’s called, “Silent Witness,” or something like that. This is stories by RAF pilots that had not been printed or not known. And one of the stories is the, is by the pilot of one of these Spitfires that were shot down. And he recalls his adventures or what happened to him after he was shot down, and he also mentioned the fact that the Israelis actually shot down one of the Tempests. So, I had a double. It’s up, it’s up in the bedroom somewhere, this, this book.
CB: This double link for you.
LL: A double link. I was reading both sides.
CB: Yes.
LL: I found out both sides of the story. But the Israelis were not very nice at all. They were, they were, they were bombing people. They were putting wire across the road, you know and motorcyclists, despatch riders were, had been decapitated by this bloody wire. They blew up half, one of the wings of the headquarters. They, they, they got hold of some army colonel or major and imprisoned him in a tomb somewhere and eventually the services managed to find him again. They were doing all sorts of nasty things there. And they were also trying to get extra aircraft and they would bribe, we found out they would bribe us with money if we actually landed our aircraft into Israel. They would take us over. They would take us out to sea and put us in a dinghy and say [laughs] and say that we had, had engine failure over the Mediterranean and of course there was no sign of the aeroplane. But I don’t think anybody took [laughs] took that little adventure anyway. But that was a little bit of bribery on their part. So it was all very sort of what do you call it? Exciting, I suppose. Interesting.
CB: What did they do with these pilots they captured.
LL: They, they put them in prison actually. And, and I think they looked after them. They didn’t sort of torture them or anything like that. But I can’t remember how they got released. But they were released somehow or other. But I’d have to read the story again. I can’t honestly remember. So anyway, I was posted back to England and I took over a comm flight at Hawarden in north, near Chester, North Wales, where we had Ansons, Oxfords, and this AOC had a Spitfire, and we had a Harvard. And we used to fly ATC boys over the weekend and we, and we flew people from A to B as, as a communications flight. And I eventually got my permanent commission interview and I got my permanent commission there. So it was quite a long time after the war that I actually I got my commission. And the reason, and how I stayed in the Air Force was that there were at the end of the war they were offering, it was about a year after the end of the war they were getting short of pilots or something or the other and they were offering four year commissions. And I accepted the four years and I managed to get my permanent commission during that period of extended service as they called it. Extended service. From, I stayed there for, [pause] oh I don’t know whether I ought to mention it but all my, my friends used to ring me up when they were posted from A to B because they didn’t have cars in those days and I used to go across with the Proctor and pick them up and take them to their new airfield. And I used to charge them ten bob for the [laughs] for the pleasure of doing it. I didn’t keep it. I put it in this, in the, in the flight fund and, and at Christmas time we spent this money on a nice party for the ground crew and the pilots. It was called, “Lunn’s Airlines.” [laughs] I don’t know whether I should say that. Nobody knows that really. So, anyway from there I was posted down or sent down to Little Rissington for an interview to be an instructor. And I didn’t want to be an instructor, but they said you’re going to be an instructor. So I eventually got a posting to Little Rissington on the instructor’s course. And what we used to do there is you had dual with a, you know with a at Little Rissington a CFS instructor and then we used to fly mutual. You know, two pilots together. And believe it or not my co-pilot or confederate was an Israeli I was told and believe it or not his name was Captain Israel Stern. He had renamed himself Captain Israel Stern and I went up and saw the Squadron commander and I said, ‘I don’t want this man. I won’t fly with him,’ and I told him a bit of the story and he said ok and he gave me, they gave me somebody else. But it was amazing that I should be given this bloody man because I must admit I hated them. Anyway, I graduated funnily enough with a B1 instead of a B2 and I was sent up to [pause] outside of York. What was the name of the blasted airfield?
CB: Elvington?
LL: Who?
CB: Elvington.
LL: Elvington. No. No. It’s a prison now. Full Sutton. Full Sutton.
CB: Yeah.
LL: Full Sutton, and of course the Korean War had started.
CB: Yes. 1950.
LL: Yeah. It was the Korean War and they were calling up ex-RAF pilots back into the RAF and we, and Molesworth was opened up again. And it was a disused airfield and there were no facilities there. There were nissen huts and I had half a nissen hut, a bed and a wardrobe I think, or a cupboard or something to put my clothes in. And we all ate in the airmen’s one mess because there was no officer’s mess or sergeant’s mess or officer’s mess. So we all ate together. And we had to set to and open up this airfield and prepare to get aircraft. And we got Spitfires believe it or not, and Vampires and Meteors. And we did a conversion course of these pilots who were being called up. It was, it was quite a lot of, in fact a graduated CFS instructor spent a lot of his time initially in shuffling manure out of the air traffic control building [laughs] so they could get that place, the air traffic control building sort of back into operation again. It was a bit of a mess actually. But after a lot a lot of work we got this airfield going again and I became a flight commander there. And it was a lot of work. We used to start at 6 o’clock in the morning and we lived in nissen huts. And the officer’s mess was a nissen hut and [pause] oh yeah. We, we worked jolly hard actually and we worked weekends as well. And then from there after I can’t remember how long I was at Full Sutton but I spent a lot of time, and of course I did a lot of asymmetric flying there because we had to teach these students or ex-pilots asymmetric. And they used to shut down an engine in the air and then do a single engine landing. And then so many aircraft had accidents they decided it was rather silly to shut down the engine so we just throttled it back.
CB: This was on the Meteors.
LL: On the Meteors, yeah. And anyway, I was summoned to the station commander’s office one day and he said there was an air commodore, I think he’s one, he said, ‘He’s never flown in a jet and,’ and he said, ‘I want you to take him up on a trip.’ So I said, ‘Ok. Fair enough, sir.’ So we took him out to the aircraft and I briefed him and whatnot and set him in and we took off and I got, had an engine failure just as I left the ground. There was a bang and bingo the engine stopped and by God, I really had to work hard to keep that aircraft in the air. Anyway, we managed to slowly climb away and we came around and landed again. And the air commodore said, ‘Oh, asymmetric flying is easy in the Meteor isn’t it?’ [laughs] Little did he know that I was struggling. That I struggled. Anyway, that was one incident anyway. It was a very primitive airfield. Everything was very primitive and it’s now, it’s now an open prison. Full Sutton is. And what happened then? Oh yes. I was posted from there as flying wing adjutant down at CFS where I met Diana Broadhurst, she was a WAAF officer there.
CB: So, Harry’s daughter.
LL: And, and she used to come down to the office every other day and see me. And she said, ‘Look, Les, the WAAFs in the tower haven’t got a toilet. Can you organise a toilet for them?’ And I said, ‘Well, there’s nowhere in the air traffic building that we can put a lady’s toilet.’ Anyway, she used to pop down practically every other day on this subject and so we got to know each other quite well, and I married her [laughs] And she said, ‘You’ll have to ask my dad.’ And I said, ‘Oh.’ And he was CnC Bomber Command at the time. And so I had to go up with Diana to High Wycombe and I stayed with the CnC that weekend and I asked permission to, to marry his daughter. I can’t remember whether he said yes or no but he, the one thing he did say. That she was extremely loyal, and Diana [excuse me]
CB: It’s alright.
Other: It’s alright.
[pause]
CB: We’ll stop there just for a mo.
[recording paused]
LL: Yes. Oh, yes. We we got married at High Wycombe and her father Harry, Sir Harry went on this, the Vulcan was just coming in to service and they had three Vulcan 1s which they were, which they used for trials work and one of them they took out to the Middle East and then out to the Far East and Diana’s father went as co-pilot to Podge Howard, who was the captain. And they went all the way out to Australia and New Zealand and they came back again and they landed at, in North Africa somewhere. And they were scheduled to land at London Airport and the weather at London Airport was awful and they, and it was in the early days of London Airport and Broady, as they used to call him didn’t want to land at London Airport. And he said, ‘Waddington is open and clear. We’ll go up to Waddington.’ But they said, ‘The reception committee is at London Airport. You’ll have to land at London Airport.’ And Podge Howard said, ‘Ok. We’ll have one go and if we can’t make it we’ll divert to, up to Waddington.’ And you know the consequences, don’t you?
CB: Yeah. So do you want to just describe that?
LL: Anyway, what had happened is they were doing a talk down and of course they were doing a GCA.
CB: Yeah. Ground Control Approach.
LL: And you’re azimuth and elevation and you’re on the glide path or below the glide and you’re left or you’re right and you adjust to what you’re being told and the Vulcan 1 had its pitot head heaters, pitot head on the wing tips. So when you came in. we didn’t have flaps so when you were coming in on the approach the aircraft was at quite a high angle.
CB: Yes.
LL: And consequently you got disturbances in the pitot head which produced a two hundred foot error in the altimeter. Now, if you are being talked down it doesn’t matter what the altimeter is showing. You’re either on the glide path or you’re not on the glide path. The altimeter can read anything. If you are actually doing a talk down and they say you should now be passing through eight hundred feet you had to have a thousand feet on your altimeter to be at eight hundred feet.
CB: Yeah.
LL: So you had to add this two hundred feet on.
CB: Yeah.
LL: And they blamed this error into the actual cause of the accident. The trouble was the controller had not guided a jet aircraft in on a GCA before. It was his first attempt. And consequently it was much faster than the piston engine aircraft.
CB: Yeah. On his approach.
LL: On the approach. And they broke cloud and they were very low. And Broady looked up and the runway was at this angle instead of down there. Then they hit the ground and broke the undercarriage off or one of them and if, if Podge Howard had carried on and landed he would have slid and everybody would have been alright. But he attempted to overshoot. Anyway, he opened up to overshoot and somehow or other the undercarriage had hit the underside of the aircraft and knocked all the generators off, and the control systems were defunct. They wouldn’t work and the aircraft started to climb and roll. And Podge Howard said, ‘I’m going,’ and pulled his blind and shot out and Broady eventually yelled to the crew, the rear crew, ‘For God’s sake get out,’ and he was at an angle. You know, ninety degrees, and he operated his ejector seat and went out and landed and broke his, his feet or his, and his leg I think. Something to do with his feet anyway because he hit the ground rather hard. And of course his wife and other daughter Claire Broadhurst were in the tower waiting for him. And they have a controller at the side of the runway in the cabin and they came out and found Broady and they brought him into, into the cabin until they could get transport and take him in because he couldn’t walk. And of course they came out all in fire engines and what not and they thought that Broady had been killed because they couldn’t find him. And so for a while his wife thought she was a widow. But anyway they got transport out and they got Broady and they finished up in that military hospital. I forget where it was. And it was, and of course we’d only been married, what a couple of weeks and we were living in Peterborough and I was posted to 63 Squadron on Canberras and after the honeymoon, two weeks honeymoon I reported to, and of course to the Squadron and as I walked into the officer’s mess the Squadron Commander Wingco Charles was it, and his navigator met me and said, the first thing they said was, ‘Your father in law has crashed at London Airport.’ And I though God, I must get in touch with Diana. Anyway, I managed to get a hold of Diana but she had already been told by someone that her father was ok. But that was the beginning of our marriage really. Anyhow, I was on Canberras there and we lived in Peterborough and —
CB: Where were you stationed?
LL: At Upwood.
CB: Right.
LL: Oh, sorry. Didn’t I say? No, I was stationed at Upwood on Canberras. And then of course the, that Canal Zone fiasco.
CB: 1957.
LL: Nineteen, was that ’57? Occurred. And I think Broady must have, didn’t send 63 Squadron out. They sent, they sent the other Squadron because he thought it would be a bit unkind to send his son in law out after [laughs] I think. I’m only suppositioning this. And, and but he didn’t send me, my Squadron out. So anyway we were, I flew with my, the two navigators and one was the Squadron commander and he had asked for a mature pilot. And of course I flew these Canberras and it was, yeah we did detachments to Malta and that sort of thing. And then our daughter was born, Dorothea. And then I was posted after a while on to Vulcans and I was up at Waddington. Did the OCU and joined 617 Squadron. In the meantime we were, we had moved from Peterborough to, oh golly Moses [pause] A lovely thatched roof cottage aye, aye, aye. And that’s where Dorothea was born. Do you know I can’t remember the name of the place. Anyway, it doesn’t really matter. And I did the OCU at Waddington. Then I was posted to Scampton. And they had one Vulcan that had been delivered and they were building the Squadron up of course. And, and I stayed with 617 Squadron for five years I think it was.
CB: Was that a long tour or two tours?
LL: Yeah. I did two tours with them, I asked. I asked to do a second tour and I was nominated as the Bomber Command demonstration pilot and I used to go off on Battle of Britain days and demonstrate the Vulcan. And I went to Canada and I did it over there. I went to Norway, Oslo and I demonstrated it there. And I was awarded the AFC. I assume for my abilities.
CB: What was the Vulcan —
LL: Sorry?
CB: What was the Vulcan like to fly?
LL: Oh, it was bloody marvellous. It was an absolutely wonderful aircraft. It really was. When I was in, doing this demonstration at in, in Norway they were celebrating so many years of powered flight. And the Americans were there with a, B not a 52. 47? Would it be a 47?
CB: Yeah.
LL: Yeah. I think it was a 47. And at the briefing they said, ‘All the spectators are at stands at,’ so and so side of the runway, ‘Could you, can you, would it be alright if you took off on runway — ’ so and so, ‘Which is slightly downwind. You’ll have about a five knot downwind. Will that be alright?’ And the Americans thought and thought and thought and they got their calculators out and what not. And I immediately said, ‘Of course I can. No problem at all. I can get airborne in four hundred yards.’ At a guess. And these Americans wouldn’t believe me and they actually paced out four hundred yards on the runway. And I thought, ‘You’ve got to get airborne boy.’ [laughs] And on the very first demo I taxied out and opened up full bore on all those lovely Olympus engines, released the breaks and I, at the right time I hauled back on the old pole and the old Vulcan lifted off the ground and up she went. And everybody amazed at this aircraft climbing away. And I actually appeared on Norway’s television. And after I’d landed, the Americans they were shaking their heads. Bloody marvellous. Bloody marvellous. So I felt, I felt very proud of the old Vulcan then. I really did.
CB: Well, the story was that the 47 would only get off the ground because of the curvature of the earth.
LL: They had rocket assisted take off.
CB: Oh did they?
LL: Most of the time. Yeah. When, yes we used to do lone rangers from Scampton and we used to go to America. To Omaha. The base there. And I can remember taking off from there on the return journey and I took off and as I say they called up and said, ‘Call passing five.’ I said, ‘Passing ten.’ And they said, there was a pause they said, ‘Call passing fifteen.’ I said, ‘Passing twenty.’ [laughs] They couldn’t believe that I was climbing up that fast, you know.
CB: Yeah.
LL: Because they were used to the old 47s. Again I felt very proud of the old Vulcan.
CB: This was the bombing competition.
LL: And of course there was the bombing competition as well. Yes.
CB: How did you get on with that?
LL: We did, we did very well actually. We, the Squadron came, were second. We didn’t, we never actually won it. We came second actually.
CB: Was it an annual event?
LL: Yes. Oh yes. On one particular trip we were doing we had taken off, at night of course and we were pressing on and my navigator, not Godfrey Salmond. Oh lord. Lord. Lord. Isn’t it amazing how you can’t remember things some times? Anyway, he had a habit of acting rather funnily when he got on board the aircraft. And a couple of times my navigator Arthur Wheatman said that whatever his name was, ‘Is sort of banging his head on the table.’ And I said, ‘What?’ Because I can’t see, you know in a Vulcan, you know. They’re back down there.
CB: Yeah.
LL: And I can’t, I can’t see them. I could see the navigator that side but I couldn’t see down there. And he said, ‘Oh, he’s ok now.’ Anyway, on this bombing competition we were on, on doing the navigation leg and Arthur called on the intercom and said, oh God, I wish I could remember his name, I have to look in my logbook, ‘He’s banging his head on the table again.’ And I said, ‘What do you mean? And he said, ‘He’s looking funny and he’s gone white and he’s banging his head on the table.’ And I thought, well I said, ‘Keep me informed.’ And after about five minutes he said, ‘He doesn’t look too good, skipper.’ So I said, ‘Ok I’ll have to cancel, and I’ll call base and return.’ Anyway, I cancelled the thing, called base and, and got back to Scampton and I asked for an ambulance to pick him up and they hauled him off into the sick quarters. And I went to see him later on and he was sitting up there perky as anything. Anyway, that was the end of him. We couldn’t take him anymore. I got a new AEO called Godfrey Salmond. Why can I remember his name and can’t remember the other chap? And so I got a new, a new AEO. And anyway they got special permission for me to do the, our trip again.
CB: Right.
LL: Normally if you return its part of the exercise. You’ve failed.
CB: Yeah.
LL: But because of the situation they allowed me then to do my portion of it again for 617 Squadron and we got, we were second.
CB: Was he the nav plotter or the nav radar?
LL: Who?
CB: The one who had the problem.
LL: Oh, the AEO.
CB: Oh, he was the AEO.
LL: Yes. I’m sorry. Didn’t I say?
CB: The air electronics officer.
LL: I didn’t say AEO.
CB: Yeah.
LL: That’s right. No. I had, we had a good crew. I had a good crew. And the wives got on well together. And, and Harry, our son was born at Scampton. And Harry is, now lives in Australia. He emigrated about ten years ago to Australia [pause] Oh, when Diana died he immediately came home. Both of them actually, and they looked after me.
CB: We’ll just pause there again.
[recording paused]
CB: Now, you spent your formative years you might say in the war on fighters. And then you transferred eventually to the Bomber Command force but particularly into Vulcans. I just wonder whether as there were some people who had flown Lancasters or Halifaxes or Stirlings in the war whether there was any link in their minds with the more modern arrangement with the V force.
LL: It never, I don’t think it ever occurred to them. It certainly didn’t come up in conversation anyway. It, they like Tommy Thompson he was one of the pilots on our Squadron who was a wartime bomber. And he used to, he did refer occasionally to incidents during the war but he was very, very remisent about it. He didn’t. Unless you particularly asked him he would never introduce the subject. All I know is that Tommy, we used to do these lone rangers and they bought, and he he went out to, I think it was [pause] I forget. It was out to Butterworth, that’s right. In Malaya. And they staged back and they got to North Africa and at the time they said that we should only do one stage a day. And anyway things were getting a bit tight for them so they decided to, when instead do two stages to get home. And they got airborne from North Africa and, and headed home. And the got airborne from North Africa and headed home. And when they got back to Scampton the Group headquarters summoned him up and said, ‘Why did you do two stages instead of one when it’s against orders.’ And anyway, anyway he, I think somebody some high ranking officer was asking him and he said, I know, ‘If you can’t trust me at this stage, I’ve flown in Bomber Command during the war, I’ve flown Lancasters, Lincolns, Canberras and now on this and I have an impeccable record. If you can’t trust my judgement now I’m leaving the Air Force.’ And he turned around and walked out and resigned his commission.
CB: Did he really?
LL: And, and he finished up by going out to Australia. And he took a Land Rover and drove all the way out to Australia [laughs] with his family. That was one incident. That’s all I can think of.
CB: Did, did many people in your experience in the RAF after the war discuss their experiences during the war of any type?
LL: Well, most of the pilots on my Squadron were, weren’t in the war. You know, like in 213 Squadron there were no — they were all ex-Cranwell cadets or pilots that graduated after the war and got commissions and things like that. No. I don’t think so.
CB: Going fast forward again then to the Vulcan. It was an extremely manoeuvrable aeroplane. Did you feel any link between your fighter days and flying the Vulcan?
LL: Well, when I was doing the demonstrations, yes [laughs] In fact I’ve got a book down there and didn’t even bother to put my name to it. I was referred to as the “Star of the Air Show.”
CB: And what did you do there?
LL: I did my demonstration. And we had rapid starter on the old, on the Vulcan and and it was, we had an electrical and then they had air pressure and they made it a rapid start on all four engines. And I had my crew chief to make me a plunger thing which I could press down on the starter buttons and get all four to go down together. And I taxied out at, at, in Paris and, and stopped the engines at the beginning of the runway and then I called for take-off. Or they told me it was ok to take off and I pressed the old buttons, this thing down and I took off and consequently again got the aircraft airborne you know very early and I had a minimal amount of fuel and I climbed up and got almost, and then I practically rolled her and in fact they said I did a half roll and then I carried on with my demonstration. And I was referred to as the star. “Star of the Paris Air Show.”
CB: Where was that? That was at the the [unclear] Show was it?
LL: That was —
CB: Orly.
LL: I can’t remember the name of the airfield in Paris we went to. Anyway, my crew were all married of course and and the wives came out and joined us. In fact, Diana came out with Stuart Macgregor. I think his name was Stuart McGregor and he was Broady’s AD, not ADC. He was something to do with, he was a Squadron leader anyway. He actually had, flew Diana out in one of the Bomber Command communication flight aircraft into, into and she joined me at the hotel in, in Paris.
CB: So in your demonstrations did you ever roll the Vulcan? Or at any time?
LL: No [laughs] I wanted to but I thought it would be a little bit too far-fetched in a way. I half rolled it but I never fully rolled it.
CB: So —
LL: So, of course my crew in the back were sitting there being thrown around.
CB: So, technically a half roll is being inverted is it?
LL: That’s right. Yes.
CB: Yes. And then taking it back.
LL: Yeah.
CB: And pulled through and turned.
LL: That’s right. That’s what I used to do at the top of the climb.
CB: Yeah.
LL: And pull around.
CB: And then turned back the right way on the way down.
LL: That’s right.
CB: So we’ve —
LL: I used to enjoy those, it and when I went to Canada it was their, some exhibition and I was introduced to a chap, a Canadian who, he told, he was a most interesting chap. He had spent his career flying. And he started flying a solo aircraft and out in the Arctic, Northern Canada and he used to take, deliver mail to these outposts in the Arctic and he used to sleep in the aeroplane because there was nowhere else to go. And to stop the aircraft oil system solidifying because of the intense cold he used to have a small burner thing underneath it. Underneath the engine to keep the engine sort of warm. And he did that for some years and then he bought a twin engine, and he became quite a rich man and he had, he used to spend six months down in Florida. In for the summer and then fly back up to Canada again for the Canadian summer. And, and I was allowed, or the AOC who was out in, in Canada with me as part of the ground effort allowed me, said that it was ok. This chap wanted to fly in a Vulcan. And he said, ‘Ok. You can take him up.’ So, anyway, on my demonstration he sat or stood on the ladder holding on to the back of the two ejector seats while I threw the aircraft around. And when I landed he said, ‘God, that was bloody marvellous, [laughs] That was bloody marvellous.’ And when we were due to come home he had this fruit farm, or I don’t know, but he had he brought this crate of peaches and he put them, we put them in the bomb bay and when I landed at Scampton, we got all these peaches, this crate out and we distributed amongst the fruit to the, to the ground crew. But he was a marvellous chap. And, oh yes, the ex-Squadron commander of 617 Squadron. The Canadian. And he was the first to drop that huge bomb. What weight was it?
CB: Oh, the twenty two thousand pound Grand Slam.
LL: Grand Slam, he was one of the first to drop that. He was the CO and he was in Canada and he contacted me and actually took us out a couple of times. In fact, we were invited to a hotel, to a big reception and he, this ex-Squadron commander and my crew had a table and it was dry, there was no drink. And anyway this, why can’t I think of his name?
CB: What, Shannon?
LL: Sorry?
CB: Shannon?
LL: Sorry?
CB: Shannon or did he not become a CO? One of the Dambusters was Shannon. He was an American.
LL: Yeah.
CB: Who became Canadian.
LL: No. He was a Canadian.
CB: Right.
LL: Not an American.
CB: Ok.
LL: No. He was a Canadian. Oh lord. I wish I could remember his. Because he looked after us and in fact I think he was invited and he in fact invited myself and my crew to this reception. And they had all these dignitaries on a top table and all these other small tables around in this big hotel. And anyway, anyway this ex-Squadron commander called a waiter over and said, ‘I want some drinks.’ And he said, ‘I’m sorry, sir.’ He said, ‘Get me some drinks.’ Anyway, we had wine with our dinner. And, and anyway. Oh dear, my navigator. He was —
LL: Right. We’ll just stop for a mo.
[recording paused]
CB: So you all got your wine.
LL: We all got our wine. Anyway —
CB: Yeah.
LL: That naughty navigator or ours went around collecting napkins.
CB: Oh yes.
LL: And he tied them all up together, you know, into a great big — and he crawled to the next table and said, ‘Pass it on.’ You see. And this long stream of napkins headed its way up towards the top table. And I thought, oh God. Anyway, it started, it got to the top table and started to go across and then it stopped before it got to the dignitaries and of course our AOC was on the top table as well. And he, and next, next morning the AOC came to see me. Oh, I can’t remember the name of the bloody airfield, and said I was a very naughty boy. And when I got back to Scampton my squadron commander met me and said, ‘I understand you’ve been a rather naughty boy, Les.’ [laughs] but it was a good party. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.
CB: Why was it a teetotal event? Was it a religious?
LL: I don’t know. It was a teetotal event. For some reason they had it was I forget what it was all about. I don’t, I don’t think I ever did know. But anyway this ex-Squadron commander got a little bit tiddly and when he was driving, he was driving us back home he stopped and said, ‘God, I can’t drive anymore. You drive Les.’ And of course, I [laughs] I drove his car back to, to base.
CB: Vancouver was an Air Show where they very much appreciated the Vulcan.
LL: Yes. That’s on, that’s on the further side.
CB: Yes.
LL: Yeah.
CB: So this was the Atlantic side.
LL: Oh yes. That’s the thing I had not mentioned and that was that we had a reunion when I was at Coolham. That’s right. Coolham. This airfield down south. And from there we had a reunion. Afterwards, that’s right. No. I’m getting a bit mixed up. Hang on a second. Anyway, the Squadron in that area had a reunion which also celebrated the invasion [of the day] and somebody organised all this and they got hold of this lady whose father, Skip Paine was her father and he was killed in a flying accident at Coolham. And she came over from Canada and we met and we became firm friends. And Christine and Rick, he’s to do with the theatre, they come to England and they come and see me and we talk and I keep in touch with them and and they’re very very good friends. Christine and Rick. And her father, she planted a tree in memory of her father when she came over once. Can I pop and see Sarah?
CB: Please do.
LL: Yeah.
[recording paused]
CB: You’ve talked about the tragic accident at Heathrow.
LL: Well, we used to do target study.
CB: Yes.
LL: And we had to do so many hours every week and we used to go in to a locked secret room in the operations block and study our targets. And I always think at the back of my mind that it was never going to happen. And I think we lived with that feeling that it’s not going to happen because it’s impossible. We can’t do this sort of thing. It would be ridiculous even to start it.
CB: This is nuclear war.
LL: Yeah. A nuclear war is out. Really out of the question and I think in our minds that people will eventually sort themselves out and it will all be cancelled. And I took a Blue Steel out to Australia in the Vulcan.
CB: Right.
LL: Because that was, I don’t know, a weapon.
CB: A stand-off weapon.
LL: A stand-off weapon.
CB: Yeah.
LL: And I was hoping that we would be able to fire it but they had, they took it off our aircraft and put it, and they did it themselves. The test people down there out in the —
CB: They didn’t drop it from a V bomber at all.
LL: No. Well, I don’t know what they did with it. They must have done trials on it. They must have dropped it from something.
CB: But a Canberra wasn’t big enough.
LL: And of course the navigator had to keep the Blue Steel working all the way out and of course he had a lot of work to do.
CB: Yeah.
LL: But when we got there a car turned up and I said, and they said, I said, ‘What’s this for?’ He said, ‘It’s been ordered for you.’ And I found out that that dear father in law of mine had been in touch with somebody out in Australia and ordered this, this car for me so I could use it to get around.
CB: Fantastic.
LL: That was, that was marvellous.
CB: This is, this is Woomera isn’t it? And Woomera is the middle of ruddy nowhere.
LL: Broady was, he was a fine chap actually and it’s, and that’s his picture up there when he was a wing commander.
CB: Oh yes.
LL: And there are all his medals.
CB: Yes.
LL: Behind you there. And those medals were sold. Somebody who was doing the history of Hornchurch, a chap called Mr Smith got in touch with Diana because he knew that her father was station commander at Hornchurch at one time. And he told her that the medals were at this particular auction, on an auction and I tried to stop it and I couldn’t. I just couldn’t get anybody to talk to me. Eventually I got hold of somebody after a lot of trying and I said I wanted the medals to be withdrawn. And they said, ‘You can’t do that. We can’t do that. A family member has put them up and they’re in the catalogue and they will be sold.’ I said that, ‘They are not to be sold. They are to stay in the family.’ But no, they wouldn’t listen and they were sold. So where Broady’s medals have gone I have no idea but I think they fetched something like thirty eight thousand pounds at the auction. And where that money went to I don’t know. But Diana’s half-sister Claire she was a rather spoiled girl. She dropped us completely and after her mother died she inherited everything. Diana hardly got anything at all. And she just dropped us. And we haven’t heard from her at all for donkeys years. But Harry, actually, when he, she’s living in Spain and Harry actually managed to get in touch with her by email to inform her that Diana had died but she didn’t even try to contact me or anything. So as far as I’m concerned Claire doesn’t exist. But Diana’s other sister Jill, she lives in Herefordshire and she’s been absolutely, she was absolutely marvellous and I keep in. I still keep in touch with her. And she’s very artistic and I’m celebrating my ninety fifth birthday in January and she is doing the invitations for me.
CB: Oh excellent.
LL: And it [pause] and I’m going to have that put on the front.
CB: Oh excellent.
LL: And this is the sort of invitation.
[pause]
CB: That’s jolly good. Yeah. With your picture on the front of it. That’s really good.
LL: Yeah. That’s right.
CB: With your Meteor behind.
LL: That’s right. Yeah.
CB: Is that a 1 or an 8?
LL: This is a Meteor 3.
CB: Oh, 3. Right. Just quickly you mentioned you never expected a nuclear war to happen. Did you believe in those days that you were making a substantial contribution as a deterrent?
LL: Yes. I’m pretty certain we did. I’m pretty certain we did. We did all this QRA, you know.
CB: Quick Reaction Alert.
LL: Quick Reaction. And we were also detached on to a peculiar airfield in Scotland so that if Scampton was bombed at all we would be up, you know away from it. And we did have, I had, Diana and I had discussed it and she said, ‘If anything does happen I’ll grab the kids and everything else and head for Herefordshire. If it does. If it does happen.’ So we had planned that sort of thing.
CB: Changing the topic to an earlier one which is the crew of a V bomber is five and three of the crew sit facing backwards. In the case of the Vulcan below the two pilots. Only the pilots have an ejector seat. What was the attitude of the crew to the inherent danger of such an arrangement for escape?
LL: They just, they just accepted it.
[telephone ringing]
LL: They just accepted it.
CB: Yeah.
[pause]
LL: I don’t think [pause] did we ever bale the rear crew out? Yes. I was watching the Vulcan take off once and as the nose lifted the whole nose wheel hydraulic system fell out and the nose wheel ran along the runway so he just had a stump. And I rushed back and rang air traffic and said, ‘For God’s sake get hold of that aircraft. He’s lost his nose wheel.’ And anyway they called him up and he came on around and they took and he flew low over the airfield and they said, yes, the nose wheel had disappeared. And then for some unearthly reason they sent him over to Waddington and they baled the rear crew out over Waddington. Why they didn’t do it over Scampton I don’t know. But a chap called Blackwell I think his name was, his ‘chute didn’t open properly and he was killed. But they naturally had to have the undercarriage up because the nose wheel was right behind the door. The whole structure. So if you slid down the door you hit, you would hit the the nose wheel. So therefore the undercarriage had to be retracted to bale the rear crew out.
CB: So, then what did they do? Did they do a —
LL: They, they, they had the undercarriage up, they opened the door and you had to have the speed somewhere below two hundred knots actually to —
CB: Yeah.
LL: For the door to open fully.
CB: Yes.
LL: One of the Vulcan crashes was that, on the Mark 1 and they grounded the Vulcan for a bit was that the a, that they had a single buzz bar for the generators, alternators. And one of the alternators back fired and knocked off all the other general alternators and this was on a long range to Canada.
CB: Oh.
LL: And they were over Canada when all this happened at forty thousand feet. And they always said that the batteries would operate the powered controls for ten minutes. Anyway, they had, believe it or not there was no means of resetting these alternators. So they couldn’t get them back on line again and so the aircraft was incapacitated really and it started to descend and it consequently got faster and faster and of course the co-pilot ejected and the captain didn’t. And they couldn’t get the rear crew out as far as I know.
CB: Because they couldn’t open the door.
LL: They were going too fast. And anyway, the co-pilot was, hadn’t got his Mae West on and he landed in Lake Michigan and was drowned.
CB: Jeez.
LL: And the aircraft crashed and the Vulcan was grounded. And then they split the buzz bar, so that if it happened again you’d only lose one side.
CB: Of power generation.
LL: Yeah. So that was the only time I can think of that you would want to get the rear crew out. But then of course the door wouldn’t, as it was over two hundred knots the door wouldn’t open properly. So —
CB: Now, after a bit then the nuclear deterrent was withdrawn and replaced by the Navy so low level flying was the order of the day.
LL: Yeah. It was quite exciting. Low level. But it wasn’t designed for that sort of thing. It, it didn’t absorb the, you know the disturbance or the bumps.
CB: The buffeting.
LL: It was an uncomfortable trip really. No. It’s the old Mark 2 of course we could get up to what forty thousand feet almost fifty thousand feet on the old Mark 2. It was a bloody marvellous aeroplane.
CB: Some people got over sixty.
LL: Yeah.
CB: Thousand.
LL: Yeah. I got a Canberra up to forty odd thousand feet [laughs]
CB: Just going back to your very earliest days there you are in America being taught by civilians. Are you treated as civilians yourselves in civilian clothes or was it RAF?
LL: We were in, we were the first British cadets to go in uniform after America had declared war. Before that they had to wear civvy clothes.
CB: And the instructors. Were they all —
LL: At, they had American sort of senior instructors but they had recruited civilians because they hadn’t got enough instructors with the expansion.
CB: Right.
LL: And so they employed the ordinary civil aviation instructors.
CB: And what was the general attitude of the American towards the British? The RAF.
LL: They were fine. Fine. We put up a bit of a black hole when we arrived because we arrived at Turner Field. That’s right, Turner Field on the very first day. We came down from Canada we finished at Montgomery at Turner Field and when we got off the train we all assembled, fell in and we were marched off and somebody struck up the tune, “As we go marching through Georgia.”
CB: Oh.
LL: And we all started singing, “As we go marching —” and the Americans were not very pleased [laughs] and [pause] in fact we had a mutiny there on my course. It was, they were in six months we did all the ground school and all the flying and sometimes we used to get up at 6 o’clock in the morning. Do ground school until lunchtime, flew all, flew all the afternoon and then did night flying. And then, alternatively it was flying. Get up, do flying in the morning ground school in the afternoon, night flying at night. So it was a lot of, a long, long day.
CB: So the mutiny was —
LL: I admire the Americans for their organisation. They expanded so quickly and they really, they really got cracking once they got, they declared war. They really did. Craig Field. That’s right. Craig Field. That’s where I went to. Did my advanced. Craig Field.
CB: And there you’re flying Harvards.
LL: Harvards. Yes.
CB: Or T6 Texan.
LL: Yeah. Oh, you remember I said I had these three friends at ITW.
CB: Yes.
LL: Well, all of them were killed during the war. None of them survived. I was the only one to survive.
CB: But was that on operations or were some killed in other ways?
LL: Well, one was killed on, on, in Bomber Command. Another one was on Mosquitoes and I don’t know what happened to him and the other one was on Tempests and they were off on a trip to France and he had engine failure over the Channel. And of course he tried to ditch the thing but with that great big intake in the front, you know —
CB: Yeah.
LL: It just immediately tipped up and it sank and he was killed. And in fact, I’ve got another, in that same book this chappy is talking about this particular incident of Neil. Neil was his name. Was it Neil? Anyway, that’s how I got confirmation that he [pause] so all three of them died.
CB: Yeah. You were talking about the losses in training. Were they a mixture of the instructors and the students or just the students?
LL: Well they had, we lost, again the course before me, where that would be 42 EFG F 42G they, we did a day/night cross country. We flew the, the, these were on basic training. I think it was the basic training. Anyway, we did a first leg down to Miami from from Montgomery. It would be the Vultee basic training aircraft and then they did a trip. Took off at night and flew a dog leg and back up to Gunter Field. And the Met forecast was completely and utterly wrong and they hit one of these ghastly tropical storms. And there was something like twenty odd aircraft. One aircraft managed to get back to base. We lost six pilots that night, were killed. And others force landed and survived. But that was a big blunder by the Met people. That was the course before me. And when I was at primary I think you were either born lucky or born unlucky and I certainly was born exceedingly lucky. But this chap was flying with his instructor and he hadn’t got his seat strap done up and they hit a bump and he left the cockpit and finished up sitting astride the fuselage in front of the rudder. Much to the amazement of the, of the instructor up front. But anyway the instructor managed to get the aircraft back again and landed and then the next, then a couple of days later he was testing the mags at the end of the runway, running the engine up and the engine just blew off. Just left the aircraft. Boom. And then believe it or not somebody landed on top of him and killed him. Now, that is what I call unlucky.
CB: Yeah. Extraordinary.
LL: Yeah. But the Americans were very good actually. We, we had no — the only leave we got was three days I think it was. After primary. And we registered at this military club and they were, Americans would come along and pick you up and take you off and entertain you and look after you. And two of my friends and I went to this club and these Americans [unclear] was their name, took us down to, this was in Florida, to their house and they had a private beach with cottages on it and they gave us a cottage and we lived in this cottage. The provided all the food and we had barbecues and they looked after us. And they wrote to my parents as well. So yes, they were very good actually.
CB: A very hospitable people the Americans.
LL: Very good.
CB: Right. We’ve done extremely well. Thank you very much and I think we need to have a pause because you need your lunch.
LL: [laughs] Yeah.
[recording paused]
CB: Did the, the turbine blades would come off at any time would they on the Meteors?
LL: Hmmn?
CB: The turbine blades you said separated.
LL: Yeah.
CB: Was that in flight as well as on the ground?
LL: Oh yes.
CB: And what was —
LL: Mostly in flight.
CB: What was the effect of that?
LL: Just a rumble really. A vibration.
CB: And then you had to shut down the engine quickly.
LL: You had to shut down the engine. Then you were faced with asymmetric which you hadn’t been trained for. That’s why you had so many fatalities.
CB: Yes.
LL: The thing is on an asymmetric, on the approach you have an approach speed and if you get low and of course as you, as you approach you’re throttling back and if you’re getting a bit low you open the throttles but you’ve got have to have sufficient rudder to offset the amount of asymmetric.
CB: Yeah.
LL: And eventually if you got too low and you got too, if you had too much power the aircraft would naturally, you’d got full rudder on but you would still divert from your heading. So you’re only faced with one thing and that is to dive and get a bit of speed up but then of course you haven’t got that height most times.
CB: Oh right.
LL: So you’re in, in a non-return situation.
CB: Was it realistic to go around again?
LL: Well, you wouldn’t be able to do because your rudder wouldn’t allow you to open up to full throttle.
CB: Right.
LL: All it would do was swing you around and eventually you’d —
CB: You’d topple it.
LL: Topple on to your back and that would be it.
CB: Right.
LL: You couldn’t go around again.
CB: Right.
LL: Because your speed was too low.
CB: Yeah, I see, right.
LL: You had an asymmetric speed of say one hundred and sixty five knots or something and you didn’t want to let it go below that.
CB: What was your touchdown speed normally?
LL: Well, as you approached the runway of course you could reduce that speed and it was the actual Meteor touchdown was something like ninety, ninety five knots.
CB: Oh was it?
LL: Something around about that.
CB: I’ve seen figures that suggest that the RAF lost four hundred and eighty pilots flying on Meteors.
LL: Yeah. And also they lost pilots because of the oxygen system. We had a couple of aircraft go in from altitude at Full Sutton and when they were doing that they couldn’t understand why. We assumed that they’d lost control and they’d gone into a spin and that was it. But in fact what had happened was when they were doing a service, a major service on one of the aircraft they had the oxygen system out and they was found that it wasn’t actually producing the oxygen that was required. There was something wrong with it. It had worn or was leaking or something like that and they checked all the other Meteors and they were all, they were faulty.
CB: Were they?
LL: And we were all flying Meteors with a faulty oxygen system [pause] And they were of course passing out from lack of oxygen at height. And then of course that was it.
CB: They wouldn’t recover.
LL: They wouldn’t recover in time to do, and they lost a lot of pilots that way.
CB: So we talked about you on Squadron in the Vulcan. And we haven’t got to the end of that.
LL: No.
CB: So, did, did you move to another Vulcan Squadron after 617?
LL: No.
CB: Or did you go to something else?
LL: I went straight from 617 to Boscombe Down.
CB: Right.
LL: And I joined the Transport Flight at Boscombe Down and I spent six years there. A most enjoyable six years.
CB: And what were you actually doing then?
LL: I was, well I was on the transport side actually.
CB: But was it experimental or were you delivering people?
LL: Well, it was experimental with the VC10 of course. And we had the Andover. And I’m not a test pilot. And the other pilots were in fact test pilots.
CB: Right.
LL: And so they were doing trials on cross wind landings and all that sort of stuff. And we did some overseas tropical trials. And what Boscombe normally do but you need a test pilot to qualify to do it?
CB: Yes.
LL: And I was not qualified. So I spent some time just flying. We had, we had a Beverley [laughs]
CB: Gosh.
LL: I took, and I took a Beverley all the way to Churchill in Northern Canada. We took [pause] we went from, from Boscombe Down to Iceland.
CB: Yeah.
LL: And then —
CB: Greenland.
LL: No. We didn’t. We were going to go to Greenland but there was a lovely low and they had, we got the navigator had found that we had if we went a little bit further south we’d have a lovely tail wind and the old Beverley was tanking along at a hundred and forty five knots. With a, you know fixed undercarriage four bloody great engines. And we went from there —
CB: It’s a flying brick.
LL: All the way to Goose Bay.
CB: Oh yeah. Labrador.
LL: Labrador. And then from Labrador we went to [pause] where was it? Near Toronto. An airfield near Toronto and then from Toronto up to Churchill. That was an amazing station. That really was.
CB: What were, what were you doing there? Delivering something?
LL: I was, I went there to collect the helicopter that was doing cold weather trials.
CB: Oh.
LL: And the helicopter was put in the back of the Beverley. And I had ground crew with me as well of course to keep us in service and, but I’ve never, of course the Aurora Borealis was in full swing when we were in Churchill. And it was amazing to see all this. And I could see icebergs in the in the gulf there. And the, and the whole station relied on this power station that provided electricity to keep the station going. And they had an emergency system that if ever that power station packed up that the Churchill itself would freeze. And consequently like the loos and all that sort of stuff would all be non-operative so they had an emergency escape. Evacuation system.
CB: Oh.
LL: But as far as I know it never happened. And they also had warnings that when the temperature was so low that they weren’t allowed to go out and most of the buildings were actually interconnected so you didn’t have to go outside.
CB: Too cold.
LL: To get to another building. And of course to get people to actually service there or work there they were, they were usually naughty boys who [laughs] who wanted to get away from it all. Like doctors. That’s what I was told anyway. But it was, it was quite an experience. And there from there, from Churchill I went all the way to the Azores and we landed. I had to refuel enroute. I forget where. Then we finished up at the Azores. And on the way to the Azores the engineer was, said, ‘Well, the revs have dropped slightly on number three,’ I think it was. And he said, ‘It’s still running ok.’ Anyway, when we landed he ran the engine up and it sort of, and there was hardly any mag drop. Or the mag drop was in limits anyway. Anyway, we took off the next day and this engine was still showing a bit funny but it was running reasonably smoothly, or smoothly and when we got back to Boscombe Down when they checked the engine and put it unserviceable they found that one of the cylinders, you know, a radial engine had actually become detached and it was actually bouncing up and down with the piston.
Other: Wow.
CB: Blimey.
LL: And it actually had dented the actual cowling.
CB: Gosh.
LL: And that engine kept going.
CB: Bristol Centaurus.
LL: Amazing, the old Centaurus, yes.
CB: So after Boscombe.
LL: Boscombe. Oh yes. I was sent up to Finningley to take over the Vulcan simulator. And I had to be checked out on the Vulcan again.
CB: On a flying one.
LL: Yeah. And we used to go there and I used to fly about once or twice a week.
CB: So, with the simulator did the crews go into that before they did flying in the OCU?
LL: Yes. Part of their training for their conversion.
CB: Yeah.
LL: Was to do the simulator.
CB: Right.
LL: And then they had to, when they were on the Squadron they had to do so many hours on the simulator every month.
CB: Right.
LL: And of course they came to me. Then we put in faults and all that sort of stuff.
CB: Yeah.
LL: And it was very, it was an analogue type simulator. It was nothing like what they have these days.
CB: Right.
LL: And the one I saw at Heathrow for an aircraft, I forget what it was, you know you could dial up Toronto or Singapore or various airfields and you could do your landings at, you know at those particular airfields. And when you took off it actually looked as if you took off. You know. There was a slight rumble and they’ve got airborne and the horizon and the cloud and all this sort of stuff and it was so realistic it was amazing. It put my simulator to shame.
CB: So how long did you do your tour at Finningley?
LL: I did —
CB: What age were you then?
LL: I retired there and I was coming up to tour-ex and I didn’t, and of course we bought the house and we were living in it and I applied to stay. So I actually did another tour. I did nearly ten years there.
CB: Did you really?
LL: I got a bit bored towards the end of course with it all. I tended to lose a bit of interest.
CB: Well, you’d been doing it in total for how many years? The Vulcan.
LL: Yeah. Anyway, the, I left the Air Force and then they decided that they would civilianise instructors on simulators, The Air Ministry. And as I was leaving the Air Force I thought I might as well become a civilian. And I had to go down to Air Ministry and had an interview and I got the job with the Civil Service as a simulator instructor. A civilian one. And I did that for a couple of years and then because the Vulcan was, the V force was disbanded and I lost my job. And that’s when I left for, a friend of ours put me, put me in touch with somebody or somebody was put in touch with me and came to see me and asked if I would like a job with a recorder with the Milk Marketing Board. And I said, ‘Anything to stop me being bored.’ And that’s how I started and I did ten years of that. And then Diana retired because she was a teacher.
CB: Right.
LL: At the Rossington School in Yorkshire. And she did twenty odd years teaching. When we were at Boscombe Down she just suddenly over one meal said, ‘I’ve enlisted in the teacher’s training course in Salisbury. I said, ‘What? You’ve done what?’ ‘She said, ‘I’m going to be a teacher.’ So, anyway when I was posted north she hadn’t finished her teacher’s training course. She had another term to go. So I got into a married quarter at Finningley and Diana stayed down at, in Salisbury. She stayed with a friend of ours, Geoff Boston and his family. And then she came up and got this job with, at Rossington School.
CB: Brilliant.
LL: You could hear Diana out. I used to go and pick her up sometimes. She had her own car but sometimes I used to go and pick her up. And I could, as I approached the school you could hear Diana’s voice telling the kids to shut up or do something or other. Using her sergeant major voice. One day when I was there and the kids had all gone out and I was back, still on the classroom I wrote on the board, “Silence in class,” in big letters. And the next morning when Diana came in, and the children she couldn’t understand why they were so quiet. You know. Sitting there all peaceful quiet. And then she turned to put the date on board and saw, “Silence in — [laughs] Oh dear. Lovely. Lovely.
CB: Can we do a fast backwards?
LL: Oh yes. Go. Yes.
CB: Most people flying with your seven thousand hours of experience have had the odd hiccup and we’ve talked about one or two things but when you were at Hornchurch what happened there as the most dramatic event at Hornchurch when you were taking off one day?
LL: At Hornchurch.
CB: So, two of you in Spitfires.
LL: Do you know I can’t [pause] Hornchurch.
CB: You mentioned earlier that at Hornchurch you’d had a bit of a dicey time taking off with your wingman.
LL: Oh yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes, it was a grass airfield. Hornchurch was. We were over there. 129 Squadron and 222 Squadron were over here and Wing Commander Crawford Compton.
CB: Oh yes.
LL: Was the wing commander flying and he had a Spitfire which was the pride of Hornchurch. It was a special finish. And anyway that day we were called for operation and we used to take off in twelves. And Crawford Compton taxied out with 222 Squadron and lined up across the airfield and we came up and lined up behind us. And I was flying as number two to the CO. And I had my number two, number, number one to the CO, and I had my number two tucked in here and of course we had the other aircraft. And we saw the aircraft ahead of us 222 Squadron getting airborne. And [unclear] was my Squadron commander and he put his hand up and dropped his hand and we were off and I formated on him. Up came my tail to be confronted with a bloody Spitfire right in front of me, you know. And I slammed. I couldn’t turn left because I’d hit the CO. I couldn’t turn right because my number two would have gone straight into me. So I slammed the throttle closed and I couldn’t stop and I finished up on top of the Spitfire. I married it [laughs] And Crawford Compton saw me coming and he leapt out. Got out of the cockpit but he was still attached from his Mae West to his dinghy and so when he left, got out the cockpit he was held in, part in and part out by his connection and he actually physically broke it.
CB: Blimey.
LL: And then fell onto the ground as I hit, landed on top of his aircraft. And he tried afterwards to break that and he couldn’t. It was sheer bloody wilful powers.
CB: Yeah.
LL: That actually did it. And that morning he had said at briefing anybody who damages or [unclear] that Spitfire is posted out. And I’d got two. [laughs]
CB: What had happened to his Spitfire that caused you to catch him?
LL: Well, it was my prop chewed up all the tailplane and the fuselage and that sort of thing. And anyway, Crawford Compton came to see me afterwards and he said, he apologised to me. What had happened was that he had been running his engine on the Spitfire and consequently it was warmish or hottish before he got into it. And of course we started up and he taxied out and he was looking at his watch for take-off time and of course it got over heated. And he closed the throttle and shut down the engine and waved the rest of the Squadron on, and stayed put. Well, it was bloody obvious that the Squadron behind, somebody’s going, somethings going to happen. What he should have done was taxied out and to hell with the engine boiling and got out of the way. But he apologised for, and said that it was alright. And funny enough when we were married and at the reception committee at the CnC’s house old Crawford Compton was there. No, it wasn’t Crawford Compton. It was, I’ve got the wrong name. He was a New Zealander. Anyway, he came up and sort of was talking and I said to him, ‘I nearly killed you.’ And he looked at me and he said, ‘Hornchurch.’ I said, ‘Two Spitfires. Remember.’ ‘Oh, of course.’ [laughs] He was at, he was at our wedding reception. Crowley-Milling was the CO of 6 Squadron out in the Middle East. And he became quite a very senior officer. He became an air marshall or something.
CB: Yeah.
LL: And I met up with him again at Broady’s funeral. He was there.
CB: Yeah. He was a Battle of Britain man.
LL: That’s right.
CB: What would you say was your most memorable point during your service in the RAF?
LL: That’s a very difficult question. Getting my AFC at Buckingham palace, I think. Because I’m very much a royalist and to go to Buckingham Palace was really something. And Diana was with me and my mother.
CB: How did the day go?
LL: Unfortunately, Diana had a stinking headache when she came out and we were going to celebrate but all she wanted to do was to go to bed and rest. And so we were staying with a friend of hers and so the rest of the day was, had to be cancelled. But it was, you know I think getting, going to Buckingham Palace and getting the AFC was really a highlight in my life. And I appeared in, my name was in the Plymouth paper and what not.
CB: So how did the day progress? How did it start?
LL: What for AFC?
CB: Yes. Did you spend the night in London?
LL: Oh, yes.
CB: And then go.
LL: Yes.
CB: Or what did you do?
LL: We were living in Salisbury and we came up by train and we got a taxi. And I think we went straight to Buckingham Palace.
CB: You were a Squadron leader at that time.
LL: No, I was — was I? I suppose I must have been. Yes.
CB: And what was the procedure? You came to the front of Buckingham Palace.
LL: Yes. And then the ushers actually took us in and took us to this big hall and got the AFCs and those sort of minor medals were right at the end. All the knighthoods and things, you know were up front.
CB: Yeah.
LL: So I was right, right at the end.
CB: In your number 1 uniform.
LL: And the Prince. Yes. Oh, yes. Nicely pressed and presented. And Prince Phillip said, ‘What did you get your medals for?’ I said, ‘Well, I haven’t seen the citation, sir.’ In fact, I never did see the citation.
CB: oh.
LL: And I told him that I was the Bomber Command demonstration pilot and I performed in various places and countries. And he said, ‘Did you bend it? Did you bend it?’ Said Prince Phillip. I said, ‘No. I pulled the odd rivet, I think.’ And he grinned and that was it.
CB: So the procedure is that he pins on the AFC medal.
LL: Yes. That’s right.
CB: What did you do then?
LL: Oh I don’t know. I think we just left. There wasn’t a sort of reception or meal or drinks or anything like that. I think we, I think we left. Do you know I can’t recall. All I know was that Diana wanted to get away because she had this ghastly headache. It was a migraine of some sort.
CB: In the wartime what was the most exciting activity that you engaged in? Was it chasing the V-1s? Was it ground attack?
LL: I think it was ground attack. We, when I was on Mustangs at Coolham and the invasion started we had two five hundred bombs stuck underneath each.
CB: Did you?
LL: One under each wing and every time we went over there we bombed sort of bridges or targets, and various targets, and it was, it was quite hairy at times I can tell you. We’d got twelve aircraft sort of, you know milling around and doing things. You had to keep your eyes open.
CB: Did you have a designated target before you left or was it a target of opportunity?
LL: No. It was, we had to go to a certain area.
CB: Yes.
LL: And possibly bomb a certain bridge, and then it was freelance after that. But we knew where the front line was and all that sort of thing. And it was the old Typhoons that really braved the day. Of course, the old Tyffy was designed for ground attack and at Falaise Gap they really slaughtered —
CB: Yeah.
LL: The Germans there.
CB: With rocket firing.
LL: Yes. The introduction of rockets was really a step forwards.
CB: Yeah. The sixty pound warhead, rocket.
LL: When they said that Rommel was killed, you know.
CB: Wounded.
LL: I think it was, was it an accident?
CB: He was in his staff car, wasn’t he?
LL: Well, I thought it was me did it in a way because on one of these ramrods I was leading another Mustang and we came across this staff car with outriders and, and we attacked it. And the, and the occupants sort of dived for the ditches and that sort of thing and it looked like a senior officer as I shot over the top. So afterwards I thought I must have done it. But I hadn’t. It must have been some other senior officer. But on those ramrods. It was a target of opportunity if you see what I mean.
CB: Yeah. You weren’t called up by a forward air controller.
LL: Yeah. We went for trains and that sort of thing. Engines.
CB: How did you get trained to drop your five hundred pounds bombs?
LL: Sorry?
CB: How did you get trained to do your bomb dropping?
LL: Ah, there’s a thing, there’s a thing. When, before we went on to Mustangs or it could have been afterwards, anyway we went to an Armament Training Centre. Now, where I’ve no idea. I think it was North Wales. We did air gunnery and we did bombing. And the way you did bombing was using your gunsight. You know, diving down but generally speaking when you’re low level it, we just came up towards the target, hoped for the best, pressed the tit and both bombs went.
CB: But you needed to know —
LL: It was hit and miss. Very much a hit and miss but with the, if you dived down from any height you used your gunsight on a target and you had to get a, possibly a forty five degree angle.
CB: And would you put deflection on the gunsight?
LL: That’s right. And when I was in the Middle East with 213 Squadron I became an ace at rocket firing, I don’t know why.
[doorbell rings]
LL: Ah, that’ll be the gardener.
CB: Right, I’ll stop it there.
[recording paused]
CB: We talked a bit earlier about fighter affiliation and you being up at Ingham and it’s really the process of that that I wanted to know more about. So before the sortie, how did the briefing go when you ran a fighter affiliation?
LL: I was just told that the bomber would be over head at a certain time and then it was my responsibility to get airborne and meet it.
CB: Right.
LL: That’s about it.
CB: I was thinking in terms of once you’ve done it you can do it regularly. But what was the instruction for the fighter pilot? In terms of his actions —
LL: Had to do quarter attacks on it.
CB: Right. So that means —
LL: To give the gunner deflection —
CB: Yeah.
LL: Type practice.
CB: So would that be from the forward as well as the rear quarters?
LL: You mean the upper —
CB: When you’re coming away from —
LL: Well, whoever I suppose all positions were manned and I suppose they were all taking pictures of me.
CB: Yes. I was thinking of your attack on the bomber. So the bomber is flying along.
LL: Yeah.
CB: Would you be doing some attacks from the front quarter?
LL: No. I would up to the left and diving down on to them
CB: Right. Now, with fighters there is a fairly prescribed route that you take. You don’t go straight in, do you? It comes, you come in you come in on a curve. How does that work?
LL: Practice.
CB: But, but yes, so you work it out. Could you explain how you work it out what you need?
LL: Well, the thing is somehow, in daytime of course it’s easy.
CB: Yes.
LL: Because you can see the bomber and you do a quarter attack on to it as you would do on to, on to another fighter really.
CB: Yes.
LL: But at night time, of course to see the bomber invariably you had to be much closer before you actually started.
CB: Yeah.
LL: If you were got far away you lost sight of the bomber.
CB: Yeah. Just going back on this just to get some idea are you coming in in a sort of parabolic curve? So that means that it’s not entirely predictable but you are coming in instead of straight —
LL: Oh yes.
CB: In a curve.
LL: One varies one’s attack, so from partially below or from above. And that sort of thing.
CB: Right.
LL: Oh yes. You had to vary your, your attack.
CB: Yeah. And in the dark identify where the bomber is. What can you see of the bomber? Can you see the exhaust flashes?
LL: Not really. Not really. They had the downward ident and I think while we were actually doing the attack they had the nav lights on dim or something like that. We had a method of somehow seeing the bomber. You know, you are asking me something now I can’t honestly remember. All I know is I daren’t lose it.
CB: No. But you were in a, in a group doing this activity at Ingham. There was a unit.
LL: That’s right.
CB: So there were a number of you who were fighter pilots who’d finished a tour.
LL: In fact one or two were ex-bomber pilots.
CB: Oh.
LL: Who’d been transferred across. And they’d come from Lancasters to Spitfires.
CB: Really?
LL: In fact when I, that posting I told you about that I accepted it was one of the bomber pilots, ex-bomber pilots who was posted on to Typhoons and he didn’t want to do it, and I took his posting.
CB: So, as a, as a unit to what extent did you exchange views, ideas and experiences in attacking bombers?
LL: I don’t think we did, we did it just our own experience.
CB: Because you were all experienced. Normally you were experienced pilots.
LL: That’s right. We were all experienced.
CB: Yeah. And then in the dark you would follow the, if you were at Ingham then the bombers didn’t land at Ingham did they? So —
LL: Oh no.
CB: So did you land with the bomber and then move in the daytime back to Ingham?
LL: Well, Ingham was quite close to the Bomber Command station and sometimes, most times we flew up to the, say Lindholme or Sandtoft or someplace and met them above. Above. Above.
CB: Yeah. But you wouldn’t be able to see the airfields normally would you?
LL: No.
CB: Right. And did the bombers have their IFF switched on so people —
LL: Ah. If they did it certainly didn’t help us.
CB: No, but I was, what the reason I asked that is the Identification Friend or Foe is designed to make sure that other aircraft —
LL: Oh yes, yes.
CB: Night fighters particularly don’t shoot you.
LL: Well, we carried IFF enough.
CB: Yeah.
LL: On the fighter.
CB: As well.
LL: I’d forgotten about that.
CB: So yours would have been switched on.
LL: Yeah.
CB: Because you don’t want to get jumped by a bona fide night fighter.
LL: [laughs] Oh dear, yeah. Then of course when we moved from Ingham and we were actually posted to, to Lindholme we were actually on the airfield where they took off.
CB: Yeah.
LL: And so therefore we used to just take off and meet them up above. And I can remember once there was thick cloud and I climbed up and up and I came out the top and I hadn’t a clue where I was. I couldn’t find this bloody bomber. I milled around and I called him. We could talk to each other and I couldn’t find him. And so I eventually descended and fortunately I knew where I was.
CB: When you go under the cloud.
LL: Under the cloud. I came in and landed. Aborted.
CB: So —
LL: Couldn’t find the blasted man.
CB: So, you’re in the dark coming back to land. How do you know where the airfield is and what runway you’re on?
LL: Well, contact air traffic.
CB: And they would put up the landing lights, would they? Airfield lights.
LL: We had — yes.
CB: The lights on the runway.
LL: That’s right. They had lights on the runway. They had to have.
CB: I’m thinking of just as —
LL: Yeah.
CB: The RAF did interdiction into Germany to shoot down night fighters the Germans actually did the same. So you had an interesting contradiction here.
LL: Do you know I suppose they must have had some sort of lighting on the runways. I can’t honestly remember. I can’t honestly remember. And talking about landing. Going back right back to America. When we started night flying on Harvards the American way of landing a Harvard at night was to come in on the approach and when you touched down stuff the stick forward to stay on the ground. And I couldn’t do this. I was either too early or too late and consequently if you hit the ground and you were a bit late you started bouncing. And I couldn’t master this and I went, go around again with my instructor sort of in the back getting a bit sore and I said, ‘Can I land this thing the way I want to please, sir.’ And he said, ‘Alright.’ And I came in and landed three pointer as I would in the daytime. And I made a lovely smooth landing. And he said, ‘Oh, that was good. Do it again.’ So off we went again. Opened the throttle, round we went on the circuit and I came around and I did another beautiful three pointer again. He said, ‘Right. You can do that in future.’
CB: So, there was a logic to their process. Their own process. What was that?
LL: I don’t know, it was a stupid idea.
CB: A good way of bending your propeller.
LL: And the wheels actually touching the ground, instead of touching you had to stamp your stick forward to hold, to keep the thing on the ground and of course the tail came up in the air. Oh dear. It was the most awkward bloody movement. I didn’t like it, that’s why I couldn’t do it I suppose.
CB: Did it result in accidents with people cartwheeling?
LL: No idea why they did it. But they did teach me one thing, and that was to land in the dark with practically no runway lightings. They had these goosenecks.
CB: Yeah.
LL: On the runway.
CB: [unclear]
LL: And they only had two at the beginning and two at the end. Towards the end. And the rest of the runway was dark and we had to land on that. Now, that bore me in quite good stead because when I was at Coolham George Powell and myself were scrambled in the, in the evening to intercept some fighters and it was aborted or something. Anyway, it got dark or getting dark and George and I somehow got separated and they had told us to divert to Ford Airfield. And I didn’t get it because my radio had gone unserviceable. So anyway, I returned to Coolham in the dark and circled the airfield and I came in and landed on the airfield in the complete darkness. And my flight commander came out and said, ‘Christ, how did you do that. What did you do that for? You were supposed to land at Ford.’ I said, ‘Was I?’ But I landed at the airfield in the dark on this, the runway which was this Somerfield tracking.
CB: Because of your training. At Ingham did they have Somerfield tracking?
LL: No. It was just pure grass airfield.
CB: So, landing there with no identification of runway —
LL: That’s right.
CB: In the dark was a bit of a challenge was it?
LL: It was a challenge at night. Yes. They had, sort of the odd light sort of around the airfield to indicate where I think, where the peritrack was or something like that but it was it was just a grass airfield. We just landed on it.
CB: Right. A lot, a lot of airfields had drem lighting, so once you got on the drem pattern —
LL: It’s amazing what you can do from just pure experience.
CB: Yes. But the drem lighting system led you on to the airfield.
LL: Yeah.
CB: You didn’t get that.
LL: They didn’t have drem lighting.
CB: No. Right. Which was the aeroplane you enjoyed flying most?
LL: I liked the Mustang. It was a roomy cockpit you see and we had this big canopy and you could actually sort of look around and it was, it was nice to fly.
CB: Bubble canopy.
LL: Bubble canopy, yeah.
CB: Yeah.
LL: No. I think the Spit, the Mustang and the Vulcan were the aircraft I liked flying best. And we were caught out in thick fog once in the old Vulcan and, and the country had gone out and when we got back to base they were completely out and they diverted me to Waddington and they were just about as bad. And, and of course we had this ILS approach. And I actually started the approach with the ILS and I kept on going and I couldn’t see the airfield at all. I just kept on coming down and then I flew over a landing tee, you know which is at the beginning of the runway. And I actually got on to the runway and I touched down and I yelled to the co-pilot, ‘Stream.’ And we streamed the ‘chute and I slammed on the brakes because I really couldn’t see where I was going. But I landed and I actually stopped on the runway. Much to my amazement. And I had to shut down there because I couldn’t see the taxi the fog was so thick. How I got down I just don’t know. But the wingco flying, silly bastard. He came out in a vehicle and parked himself beside the runway when I was landing. I could have —
CB: Run him over.
LL: I could have run over him if I hadn’t got straight on the runway. Anyway, they towed, they had to tow my aircraft back into, because I couldn’t taxi it. And when you put your landing lights on of course it reflected on to the fog and it made it even worse.
CB: Yeah. So you landed without your landing lights.
LL: Yes. I think that was my hairiest landing I think I’ve ever done.
CB: What were you carrying at the time?
LL: What was I — ?
CB: What were you carrying at the time? Bomb load.
LL: Nothing.
CB: Right.
LL: I wasn’t carrying any bombs or anything. It was just purely a training flight. Any more?
CB: That’s it. Les Lunn, thank you for a most interesting talk today.
LL: I hope I haven’t bored you.
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Interview with Leslie Grantham Lunn
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Chris Brockbank
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IBCC Digital Archive
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2017-11-07
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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ALunnLG171107, PLunnLG1701
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03:00:37 audio recording
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eng
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Fighter Command
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Leslie Lunn joined the RAF and after his basic training did his flying training in America. In the UK he joined 129 Spitfire squadron after completing his training. The squadron later converted to Mustangs. His squadron covered the D-Day landings and was switched to dealing with the V1 flying bomb threat, and during these sorties he destroyed one V-1 and recorded two probables. He later took part in fighter affiliation duties working with Bomber Command. He converted onto the Typhoon and later the Tempest with 222 Squadron after moving back to Fighter Command. He joined 1 Squadron flying the new Meteor jet fighter. He was later posted via Italy and Austria to the Middle East serving in the Canal Zone. When he returned to the UK he joined 63 Squadron flying the Canberra, and later converting on to the Vulcan joining 617 Squadron. He also became the display pilot for the Vulcan. He was awarded the AFC by Prince Philip at Buckingham Palace.
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
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Canada
France
Germany
Great Britain
United States
England--Essex
England--Lincolnshire
England--London
208 Squadron
222 Squadron
63 Squadron
aircrew
Meteor
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
P-51
pilot
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (1921-2021)
RAF Hornchurch
RAF Ingham
RAF Shallufa
RAF Waddington
Spitfire
training
Typhoon
V-1
V-weapon
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Title
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Leedham, Bob
Herbert John Lewis Leedham
H J L Leedham
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Squadron Leader Bob Leedham (b. 1922, 1183577, 160986 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a pilot with 90 and 57 Squadrons.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2018-12-12
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Leedham, HJL
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Transcription
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HB: This is an interview between International Bomber Command Centre volunteer Harry Bartlett with Mr Herbert, Bob, Leedham, who lives at Ashbourne in Warwickshire. He joined the RAF in 1940, but we’ll no doubt will come to that shortly. Bob, if I can just ask you what were you doing on, in the few years before the war?
BL: My family, my father was a skilled carpenter, but on my mother’s side, she had three brothers all of which were very keen engineers and one of which was exceptionally keen and he worked for a local motor company and he was involved in motor bike racing at Donnington, mainly, and it was him that inspired me with a heavy engineering interest, and consequently when I left school, I was educated in Burton on Trent, the dear old brewing place, I finished up there, I was, won a scholarship to be educated at the main system, which was the central system and the grammar school and so on in Burton and I survived that. And on leaving I decided my real choice was to follow my uncles as it were, into the motor trade, which I did. And I was trained fairly quickly as an apprentice in the motor trade and of course when the war started most of them were already on the reserve and they were the first people to be called up. So myself and a couple of my colleagues of my age, and at that time we are talking about an age of seventeen, sixteen to seventeen, I had already passed my driving test and was driving of course and we were left to run the very large garage very quickly after all the others had been called up, and so it was hands on experience with a vengeance. We were left to run the garage and carry on operations and consequently even a relatively short time I had a good engineering background. However, when I got to seventeen and a half, all my mates that I knew and went to school with and so on had all got into the air force, they’d volunteered in some way or other. In fact some of them were actually called up and I knew that sooner or later I would be called up as soon as I got to the age of I think it was eighteen or nineteen and the chances were that I would maybe put in to the Army. Well I had no interest whatsoever of going into the Army. My first choice was always the air force. Unknown to my parents, at seventeen and a half, I went over to the Assembly Rooms in Derby to the recruiting centre and signed up to join, but I had to give my age as eighteen. They probably accepted this with tongue in cheek knowing that I’d lied a little bit about my age. However, I was accepted and instructed to come for a medical a couple of days later. Very amusing and perhaps interesting thing was, that bearing in mind I had been brought up in a relatively conservative sort of area in Burton on Trent as opposed to big cities and so on, so we were living in a relatively closed environment, despite the fact we were all qualified, and highly qualified tradesmen then. So I went over to have the medical. There was about twenty of us lined up. The doctor came in, he says, ‘right, take your shirts off boys, I’m going to check your hearts.’ So he went along, checking everyone, all the way along, and when he got to the end he says, ‘Right, put your shirts on boys,’ then waited a few minutes, said, ‘drop your trousers then.’ I thought ‘drop my trousers!’, bloody hell! I’d never been exposed to anyone in my life before, you know! And I feel that at that moment I changed from being a boy to a man. That’s the way I felt about it, I couldn’t believe, having to drop my trousers and expose myself even to a doctor. That was the sort of background we were brought up in of course, in those days. It’s totally different now of course. So really from then on the next few days I was down at Cardington for the, attestation and so forth and then I was allocated for training. So initially because of my engineering background the RAF at that time were quite short of experienced engineering people, and they’d set up training units and so on but, they were very good from a theory point of view but nothing in the way of hands on. So I was immediately shuffled into training as a fitter 2E. But I wasn’t happy that, I wanted to fly. So it didn’t last long, and I managed to wiggle my way in to ITW at Blackpool, and found myself on a pilot’s course.
HB: ITW?
BL: ITW: Initial Training Wing.
HB: Right.
BL: Which was at Blackpool in those days and that’s where they carried out the tests as to whether you were suitable to fly in an aircrew capacity. So I was accepted to fly an aircrew capacity to be decided specifically by the selection board’s requirements. And the next thing was, at that time the pilot training was being geared up dramatically. The original pilots in the air force at the start of the war and going right up to probably about the end of 1941, were pre-war pilots, mostly people who’d come from quite wealthy backgrounds who could afford to train them as pilots and by the end of 1941, these were the people that the air force had to rely on in the early days. When I look back historically on some of the situations, bombing raids and that sort of thing using obsolete aircraft like Lysanders and stuff like that, it was dreadful really and by the end of ’41 most of these boys had disappeared: they’d either been shot down, been killed, they crashed or were POWs. Result was that there was a colossal demand for fully trained new aircrew. This was done from a pilot’s point of view in Canada, or America, or Southern Rhodesia as it was then, which is now Zimbabwe, of course. Those were the three, main three areas where the pilots would train from about 1941 onwards. And they set up very, very good systems. But there was a difference between Rhodesia trained and particularly American trained. The American instructors were extremely, quite different to us: they were very hard, very dedicated and they set up a system for training pilots, that if you didn’t go solo in twelve hours, you were thrown off the course. You were downgraded to either a navigator or a bomb aimer or anyone else that had any sort of background which would be useful to the air force, in my case an engineering background. And when you consider, you know, people, ex bank managers if you like, and people from a whole variety of trades in civilian life, there they were, shipped over to America to train as pilots and expected to go solo in twelve hours. Just dreadful really. However, that was the way the system worked. It wasn’t quite so severe in Canada, but nevertheless it was similar to the American system but the ones trained in Southern Rhodesia of course, it was very much more realistic, and they didn’t stick to any specific hours to go solo and things like that you see. So the result was when finely trained aircrew of any category then came back to the UK, the usual routine was Initial Training Wing and then on to type training unit and so on and find a way into things like Wellingtons and Hampdens and Lemingtons, er Wellingtons and things like that.
HB: Can I just take you back a little bit Bob? [Cough] excuse me. When you joined up, you started your initial training as a fitter.
BL: Yup.
HB: But you then went for aircrew training.
BL: Yes.
HB: Did you go to train as a flight engineer, or did you go to train as a pilot?
BL: No, I went to train as a pilot initially.
HB: Right. And where did, which you, where did you actually go train as a pilot?
BL: I went to 32 SFTS in Carbery Manitoba, Canada.
HB: Canada, right.
BL: But I didn’t make the twelve hours solo so I was downgraded, the same as three quarters of them. There were very few, at that time anyway, who were competent enough after twelve hours to go solo. So it was a very hard path really. I came back to the UK, together with many others, who’d been diverted then in to training as a navigator or a bomb aimer or a gunner – I’d forgotten that one – and, but in my particular case the fact that I had the engineering background, which they wanted, they downgraded me to co-pilot and flight engineer. So predominantly I was trained as a full flight engineer, despite the fact I was accepted that on aircraft for instance like the Stirling I had to act as co-pilot as well. So I had to take link training and all that. I was never allowed to take off and land, but I was there to relieve the main pilot and to act as co-pilot duties. And that applied pretty well throughout: Stirlings, Lancasters, Halifaxes and so on. So we were always virtually the number two so far as the mechanical operation of the aircraft was concerned. As opposed to the gunners who had their job to do, bomb aimer had his job to do and the navigator. A number of the early bomb aimers of course were also trained as type of navigators but very few of them flew as navigators, they flew mainly as usually as bomb aimer come front gunner. There was always a front turret, gun turret on the Lancs and the Stirlings and Halifaxes, so the bomb aimers were expected to man the front turret and also act as the bomb aimer so far as the targets were concerned. And the navigators of course, they did the actual navigation guidance to the pilots.
HB: So you came back to England and you went to do your flight engineer training for aircrew.
BL: Yes. At St. Athan.
HB: At, St Athan, right. So at the end of that training, where did you sort of stand in the scheme of things?
BL: I was at training, already I’d had my link training as a co-pilot as well, before I went to St Athan, when I left St Athan, fully qualified, the next thing then was to join a crew on either Lancs, Stirlings or Halifaxes. In fact in my particular case I was posted to Stradishall which was a main training base for Stirlings and then the crew of seven were created. There was nothing directed, they put us all in hangar and between ourselves we had to get to know each other and put ourselves together as a seven man crew, which is how it happened. Once that’s established as a crew then your flight training started, which we did at Stradishall of course, on the Stirlings in our particular case.
HB: Where did your, is it all in this hangar, did somebody come to you or did you think oh I like the look of him, I’ll go with him? Or? How did it work? What were the mechanics of it?
BL: It’s a variety really. Our captain, our skipper, was an ex Birmingham policeman and personally, personality was absolutely first class, but he was a strict disciplinarian being ex-police, of course, and so he was highly respected despite the fact he was definitely one of us, but very highly respected. And we got to know him, chatting away and he said well, he says ‘I’ve just come from OTU from Wellingtons,’ he says, ‘I’ve got a navigator and I probably have a bomb aimer.’ He says, ‘I’m looking for a couple of gunners and a flight engineer co-pilot to get the seven man crew together,’ and so from then on it was a question of who you knew and whether you thought they were capable, and see whether they were already in a crew or not that was how we all created seven together. It was done quite amicably, in various reasons, various forms, whether you knew each other or you say well I know old so-and-so, he’s a bloody good navigator, try and get him on our crew, you know, and that sort of thing. So we finished up as a very tight crew and it so happened, subsequently, that when we were doing our ops on the squadron, the camaraderie within the seven man crew was very tight indeed. The result was we found that we had seven first class crew members. Everyone worked together, helped each other and that was the way it went on the Stirlings. Unfortunately the Stirlings of course had a very bad reputation subsequently. The reason for this was because in its early days, [cough] it was built pre-war of course, a long way pre-war, and was a very good four engined heavy bomber when it was produced, extremely good, but unfortunately it came under the influence of the political decisions, the politicians came along and said that aircraft’s got a wingspan of a hundred and sixteen feet! We won’t get it in to the hangars at Cardington, they’re only a hundred feet, you’ll have to take sixteen feet off the wings. So, reluctantly, they put pressure on the manufacturers and the Stirling was modified to have sixteen feet, either, eight feet either side taken off the wings. Not only that by doing that they had to alter the structure quite considerably and raise the undercarriage very high in order to cope with this. Disaster so far as performance’s concerned, the result was the Stirling was always very, very much – what shall I say - the underdog as far as the heavy bombers were concerned. Result was the highest we could ever get to bomb was about twelve thousand feet. The Lancs and the Halifaxes were up above at twenty two thousand and frequently if your time was slightly out we were bombed by their bombs from above us. Frequently happened, there was a lot of aircraft were lost that way. Just one of those things. So really, although at that stage, when you think that the Lanc didn’t come in to service till towards the end of ’42, so in the early days the Stirling was the only heavy bomber and he was restricted in its performance by this political intervention and consequently it had a reputation of being something of a, I won’t use, I want to use the words death traps, but Bomber Harris had his own ideas on this and he was fully aware of it. In fact as ‘43 went on we were doing the Ruhr bombing and then of course Hamburg and then the start of the Berlin offensive which was in the autumn of ’43, and at that stage our losses were running on average seven, eight percent, we had one occasion when our losses were seventeen [emphasis] percent. And it got to the stage where Bomber Harris, he couldn’t stand it any longer, he was at war with a lot of the politicians himself of course by his insistence that Germany had to be bombed in order to minimise their war effort, and consequently it’s on record in one of, I think it was Max Hastings’ book Bomber Command I think he mentioned it in there, the extract of a meeting that Harris had with Churchill in round about October, I think, or maybe November ’43, and he was thumping the table and he said to Churchill, he says, ‘if I send my boys out [thumping] to get lost any longer in these bloody death trips, death traps called Stirlings they’ll call me a murderer.’ He says, ‘what I want is Lancasters, Lancasters and more Lancasters.’ there was a hell of a row went on and Churchill didn’t say a word. But finally he leaned across and said you’ll have your Lancasters. And it was then that the production on Lancasters was even, set up considerably higher than what it was already.
H: So when [cough] -
BL: So really, just interrupting,
HB: No, no.
BL: so going back from our training at Stradishall as a crew were posted to 90 Squadron to a little place called Ridgewell which was in Cambridgeshire, and not terribly well known and we were the first people in. A couple of farms that had been demolished and replaced with an impromptu quickly built runway. There was no, shall we say buildings, which were you might say were suitable for an operational squadron. There was mud everywhere, conditions were foul. They put a series of nissen huts up for us to live in and also for headquarters and the conditions there were not terribly good at all. However, there we were in the spring of ’41, er ’43, expected to use that as a base to operate, operationally against the various targets which were set out. We were at Ridgewell I think for no longer than about three months, four months, something like that and we moved then to a place called, it was West Wickham when we moved there but it was renamed Wratting Common, and consequently conditions there were far better. Again, it wasn’t a wartime, it wasn’t a peacetime airfield, but it was a good airfield and conditions there were far better airfield than Ridgewell. I don’t quite know what happened to Ridgewell in the end, whether it survived or not. I shouldn’t think it did: it was foul. But nevertheless we went to Wratting Common and we continued to fly our ops from Wratting Common on 90 Squadron, until, as I say, the autumn when the squadron was destined to change from Stirlings into Lancs and consequently they were moved to just outside Mildenhall at Tuddenham.
HB: How many ops did you actually fly in Stirlings for your tour?
BL: On Stirlings alone I think we did about twenty one I think it was, on the Stirlings, before we went on Lancs. As I say during that particular time conditions using the Stirling were very difficult, to make an understatement. Our losses were constant and it was amazing really, I mean for instance there was a Canadian pilot called Geordie Young. He was the senior pilot on the squadron, he’d got a lot of experience, and they went off on their last trip, their thirtieth trip, and they got blown up over Dusseldorf on their very last trip and that was, had a very, what shall I say effect on morale on the squadron, because they were regarded you know, the top boys on the squadron. One of the problems, in those days throughout Bomber Command, not just 3 Group which was a Stirling Group, but all the other groups as well, is that when Don Bennett set up the 8 Group, Pathfinder Group, he got old Hamish Mahaddie who he took on as his recruitment boss to collect all the very best crews off the different squadrons he could get hold of, to go into Pathfinders, and of course there was a colossal amount of opposition to this from all the squadrons. No squadron commander wants to lose their best crews, and consequently there was a war going on particularly on 5 Group, with Cochrane was the AOC on 5 Group in those days, based at Swinderby and he was very, very strongly opposed to it. There was open warfare going on the whole time, and despite the fact that 5 Group at that time of course, was the elite group which contained all the 617 boys and various other specialist crews for specialist bombing trips and he obviously didn’t want to lose any of those. And consequently he managed to get some political background particularly from Arthur Harris two of the Pathfinder squadrons in 8 Group would be transferred back to 5 Group. So he eventually had his own Pathfinder boys. Of course then when Gibson set up 617, that was also again from selecting top quality experienced crews. In the early days that was, but before the Dambuster raid, but not so much later on when they were really struggling to get replacement crews from the various crews they’d lost. So really Bomber Harris, Arthur Harris, he was very much supporting the 5 Group people, it was his elite group in Bomber Command and he always gave it sort of first preference on everything. There’s one, a very amusing aspect came at a conference they were having at Swinderby when at the time Princess Margaret was having this affair with Fighter Command Townsend and there was all speculation in the press about whether she’d marry him or whether she’d marry somebody else, and so on, and at this particular meeting, this conference of crews at Swinderby, it was a bit of a hilarious topic and someone was saying, ‘well it’s unknown who she’s going to marry, but it won’t have any effect on us here in 5 Group.’ And somebody stood up and said, ‘well there’s one thing for certain, whoever she marries, it’s bound to be somebody from 5 Group!’ [Laughter]
HB: Yeah. Can I just take you back a little bit Bob.
BL: Yes of course.
HB: I just noticed in some of your notes, I know this is jumping right back, it says you [cough] were posted to Coastal Command, 86 Squadron and flew on Sunderlands.
BL: Yes. That was when I was on 86. We were, we did a detachment down to Gosport actually.
HB: Oh right.
BL: And then to St, St Athan, when the two battleships Gneisenau and the Scharnhorst were at Brest and they were trying to get up the channel to get away and consequently we went down there with 86 Squadron to carry out operations against the two battleships. But for some reason or other, some of the squadron was detached to, in Coastal Command, to a flying boat squadron, which was 10 Squadron based at Mountbatten, at Plymouth. I don’t quite know why this happened, it was only a very short time, but I was one of the people that went on the flying boats for about three months.
HB: So you were there as a co-pilot engineer?
BL: Yes, on the flying boats. And again, bearing in mind our engineering background was what they wanted more than anything because we had to get involved with the maintenance schedules and so on as well. So I only had three months, I didn’t like it at all. Flying boats was not for me, and that was the main reason I thought that there must be a better way that I enjoy so I volunteered while I was there for Bomber Command. That’s where I started into Bomber Command
HB: Right. It’s all right, I was just trying to get the sequence of events into some sort of order.
BL: That was really how the sequence went through. Of course in Bomber Command, very lucky with our crew to survive a tour on 90 Squadron.
HB: What were the operations, you know, you’re flying operations into the Ruhr in the Stirling, and you’ve very clearly explained the shortcomings of the Stirling. What was it, you know, what was, what were your experiences of those, those individual sort of operations?
BL: Well it varied actually. But the Ruhr targets at that time I can remember them vividly. Dortmund, Dusseldorf, Duisburg, Krefeldt, Essen. And Essen was the one everyone hated [emphasis] because at that time that was the home of Daimler Benz, Krups and all the munitions factories, and they had a ring right the way round Essen, three thousand anti aircraft guns and radar controlled searchlights and when you’re flying towards Essen and you looked ahead, you think, ‘Christ you’ve got to get through that to get to the target point,’ and usually at briefing when the curtain was finally pulled back - we were never told what the target was until the very last minute of course - and when the target was pulled back you see Essen area, ‘oh Christ, not Essen,’ you know. However, going from what I say, first five trips Essen, then we went on to Gelsenkirchen, Wuperthal, Mulein, Bochum, Cologne, Munchen Gladbach. Now in my history of 90 Squadron book, there’s various aspects of the work that we did, and there’s a typical battle order printed there as an example. And that was August the 26th I think it was, on Munchen Gladbach and we were on the battle order for that particular night. I think the squadron was putting up something like thirty two aircraft or something that night. There was eight hundred and fifty on the, the full main force. And at that time the procedure on ops on the squadrons was that you didn’t do, as a pilot or co-pilot or anything like that, you didn’t go out with your own crew until you’d done a familiar flight with an experienced crew as a supernumerary and it just so happens that on that battle order I had one under supervision and there was one other crew with another one under supervision. It was on the 31st of August ’43. And these two chaps, I had one of them under supervision, and another crew had the second one. Out of curiosity, in the back of the book there’s seven pages of casualties on the squadron, and when I looked for the names down, both these boys’ names were down on the casualties, one, bear in mind, was on the 22nd of September bear in mind that was just 22nd, twenty two days after we had taken them on the supervision. One of them went on the 22nd, the next night the second went on the 23rd. So they only survived twenty three days on the squadron. And that was typical, absolutely typical. We used to live in a long nissen hut, seven beds each side, two crews in there. Three times we had a new crew come in, and three times we’d wake up after an op the night before, about midday, be woken up by the military police going through the, collecting the bits and pieces, belongings of the other crew who had got the beds on opposite. Three times we had new crews come in and three times we lost them very quickly, in two cases within the first three ops, and consequently we had, as a crew, we had a reputation of being a Jonah crew and nobody would move in with us. [Laughter] But in all seriousness that was the way it happened, you know and we lost some very quickly and didn’t even get to know them. There we were, soldiering on and finally got to the stage as I say, when the Stirlings were taken out of service and deployed on other work, mainly glider towing and things like that. Then the Lancs took over as the Lancaster production of course, got higher and higher.
HB: What do you put down to, I don’t want to use the word success, your ability to have got through those twenty something operations?
BL: A lot of people would say you must have been one of the lucky ones. Yes, to a point. But we had a very good crew; highly [emphasis] dedicated crew to the individual job they had to do and it was, there were various aspects of the operation that needed high concentration and dedication to execute that. I mean our rear gunner, Eddie, he’s still alive now in New Zealand, and he had eyes like a bloody hawk; he could spot these fighters coming in and he would control the operation immediately if he saw a fighter, to the pilot at the front, saying, ‘corkscrew, corkscrew,’ and instead of flying at straight and level from a to b to a target on our particular crew, we would fly perhaps just for a minute or so, then start weaving like that, so that there was no chance of the fighters beaming on to us in, as if we’d been flying straight and level they had a much easier job of coming in to us, and under from mid or something like that, shoot us down. But by weaving like that, was one of the things which we did continually, it was uncomfortable but it was very safe. But apart from the anti aircraft of course, it certainly kept the fighters at bay from us and I mean I think three times we were attacked by fighters and three times we got away from them. Largely due to Eddie in the rear turret. Who shot one of them down actually.
HB: Did he?
BL: Yup, He opened up, he waited till he got it in his sights, and let fly and it blew up in front of him, or behind him should I say. So really that aspect of it is the thoroughness of the type of flying and the operation which was necessary, but on the other hand of course, where anti aircraft was concerned it’s a different story. We, in the Stirling we were in the middle of it, weaving through it and if you had a direct hit or a hit which say damaged the aircraft severely you could say right you were just bloody unlucky like Geordie Young on his thirtieth trip, and that sort of thing, so. The worst night of for Bomber Command for all losses was the Nuremburg flight, you may or may not have heard of this, but it was on the Nuremburg trip when the met people made a complete balls of the forecast. They were forecasting plenty of cloud so that you could fly comfortably in and out of cloud and the fighters couldn’t detect you quite so easily. But on this occasion the weather didn’t turn out as they predicted and consequently it was a full moon clear, crystal clear night and the result was that the main force – there was eight hundred and fifty aircraft on that particular target. This was in the autumn of ’44, I think it was, and that particular night we lost ninety four aircraft on that night, and when you think there were seven men in each aircraft. Work that one out. That was the worst night ever [emphasis] for Bomber Command.
HB: And your crew were on that.
BL: No. We weren’t on that.
HB: You weren’t on that one.
BL: It just so happened that we were on leave at the time so we weren’t on it. But that was, that’s the hard statistics of it.
HB: Because I was interested in the, in the thing you were saying about the Lancasters and the Halifaxes going at twenty two and you know, the Wellingtons, obviously the Wellingtons were at eighteen thousand and the poor old Stirling’s down at twelve.
BL: Yeah.
HB: I mean that must have, that must have influenced your pilot and your crew at that point, when you were on, when you were on the bigger raids.
BL: Well, yes, to a point, but you had to admit it was one of those things. I don’t think, it was only when we got to grips with the Stirling and training and so on and realised what effect the modifications had had on the performance of the aircraft. It was not easy to get off the ground with a full load on. For one thing the inertia of the engines meant that it was, always had this sort of pull to starboard, to the right, which you had to maintain correction on, and not only that but the fact that the undercarriage had been raised quite considerably, very high up. There’s a picture here will show: that was our aircraft and the one that saw us all the way through our tour, and it was so high up it that when this sort of inertia from the engines, it was very difficult to keep it straight down the runway. In fact there was numerous occasions when the aircraft just couldn’t control it with a full bomb load on and it crashed or something and numerous messy situations like that developed. But this is why as I say, I meant occasionally that when I went from Stirlings up into 5 Group, I was posted up to the elite group. How that happened was, that at that time the Lancs were coming on stream and 5 Group at Swinderby was the training base for the Lancs, but again they needed them on the squadron so rapidly that they were pushing the crews through probably too fast, not quite enough training. And the result was that a lot of the crews had been trained on the twin engined Wellingtons and stuff like that, which didn’t give them any [emphasis] experience on four engined stuff. So in the, when we finished a tour on Stirlings, it was decided then by the powers that be as it were – Harris and co – they’d put a few Stirlings up to be based at Swinderby to get, be engaged on the Lancaster training programme so that we could give them experience on another four engine aircraft which was more difficult to handle than what a Lancaster was, and consequently I was one of the eight crews that were, instructors that went up there and that’s how I got in to 5 Group, posted up there on the Stirlings. And I always remember when we got up there about 7 or 8 o’clock in the evening. So we parked the aircraft went over to the officers mess, went in the bar straight away for a drink of course, and we were standing there and there was another group of the instructors and so on and amongst them was Dave Shannon and Mickey Martin – ex 617 – and quite a number of others who’d survived and they were curious as to who we were. And finally old Dave Shannon, who was a big Australian as you probably know from 617, came across and said, ‘who are you blokes then and what are you doing here?’ ‘Oh we’ve brought some Stirlings up to give you some help in the training programmes here.’ ‘Stirlings!’ he says,’ bloody hell!’ He said, ‘have you done a tour on Stirlings?’ I said, ‘yes’. He rubbed his hand over here, says, ‘Well where are your VCs then boys?’ [Laughter] And that was their attitude towards us.
HB: Yes. That tells the tale.
BL: But there again, life’s about winners and losers isn’t it, you know. And what we had we had went out to do the best you can, and as I say, it’s sad really that our losses were consistently high.
HB: So when you’d done, you did, you know, when was you last operation that you did with the Stirling? Can you remember?
L: It was on, I think it was either Hannover or Stuttgart, it was not the Ruhr, north of the Ruhr, but that was my, our last op. We did two Berlins on the Stirling, surprisingly, and relatively quiet trips too, long trips but relatively quiet, for us anyway.
HB: What was your feeling on, you know, you’re going to do your thirtieth or your last tour on the Stirling? What was going through your mind then?
BL: I don’t really think there was any feeling about it. I mean on our crew there wasn’t any suggestion of any feeling of stress or concern or the fact that you might be, the crew expression was – you might get the chop. No, we were a very good competent crew. We operated very correctly and safely as far as we could and I think that had a, that was the predominant factor in the crew. I mean a lot of people today often say to me well what about all the stress and everything? I said well the simple answer was we couldn’t even spell the word. You know, I mean the stress wasn’t there, it was concern. Admittedly we had one occasion when our mid upper gunner, Mick, suddenly went down with something, tonsilitis or something and he couldn’t, he had to go sick and consequently they stopped him flying that night and we were doing an op that night, on, I’ve forgotten where it was now, somewhere in the Ruhr, so we had to have a mid upper gunner, spare mid upper gunner who apparently for some reason or other he’d lost the rest of his crew, he’d done no ops at all, but he was spare, so they said oh you’re joining Cawley’s crew tonight because the gunner’s gone sick so he came to us and was a dreadful situation. He was absolutely petrified of the thought of going on ops, and halfway towards, over the Dutch coast on the way to the target, he suddenly started firing off indiscriminately at what he thought were fighters but they were clouds. And of course it immediately was bloody dangerous because if fighters around they see tracer bullets going out they home in on us. And Charlie was absolutely crackers, he went mad. What the hell’s going on? Go back and have a look!’ And this bloke was sitting in his turret there, absolutely terrified and it happened again, at a very dangerous point, he suddenly started firing off. Anyway when we, we survived the op, we got back and we landed, the crew bus was there to take us back to the base for intelligence and debriefing and he never said a word, wouldn’t speak, he wouldn’t get on the bus, he walked back and of course when he was interviewed by the Station Commander he said, ‘what’s the problem?’ The medical people there saw the condition of him and the RAF had a very cruel aspect of dealing with situations like that. They immediately used to braid you, used to name you as Lack of Moral Fibre which was dreadful really. You were immediately stripped of your rank back to basic and sent off to a unit which was down at Brighton to deal with these people who were so called Lack of Moral Fibre and that went on your records throughout your, a very cruel way of looking at it really. But that happened to us on this particular flight and as I say amazing really, the bloke was just absolutely petrified. Couldn’t face up to what he was asked to do, despite the fact he’d gone through training and managed to survive to train to become a qualified gunner, but there we are. Just one of those things.
HB: What did you do when you got back from your last op?
BL: [Laughter] Well I normally drink a gin and tonic but I think I had something a bit stronger than that that night! No. we had a, all went down to the pub locally and had a nice evening and then we knew the next day we’d be posted out, we’d all be posted to different directions and it was a question then where everybody went. It just so happened that in my particular case I was posted, for a very short time, to a place called Wilfort Sludge which is on the A1, but from there of course this deal came up to send some Stirlings up to 5 Group, so I was then posted out of 3 Group into 5 Group. And previous to that I’d, before I finished my tour I’d been recommended for a commission so my commission had come through so I was, and that came through six months late, so I went straight in as a commissioned Flying Officer then and went to Swinderby then as an instructor and it was, the rest of the crew: Johnnie went up to, he was the captain, he went up to near High Ercall, which is up near, in Shropshire somewhere, near Whitchurch to start training Stirling crews up there to tow gliders in anticipation, of course, of the Arnhem offensives and so on, so he went up there on towing gliders. The two rear gunner, the two gears, er gunners, the mid upper gunner and the rear gunner, they were posted to somewhere on special duties. Where they thought they were going on rest they suddenly found they were on ops again, on the special duties, doing, dropping these Resistance guys in France and so on. Harry our wireless operator, the navigator by the way, suddenly when I went to Swinderby I found he was already there and I was sharing a room with him in the mess for a while. Unfortunately, he’s the son of a clergyman in Cornwall, highly religious, he used to spend all his time playing the organ in the local church where we were down the pub having a drink, but he had a heart attack right at the end of the war and died straight away. The bomb aimer, little Barry, little short bloke, he went on rest for a short time and then decided he’d go on a second tour, But got shot down on the third trip of his second tour, but he was lucky. He managed to bale out and he was a prisoner of war for about the last six months. But Harry, our wireless op, his previous job in life he was, worked in the Metropolitan Police, on the vice squad and he was absolutely obsessed on flying against the Germans on Bomber Command, absolutely [emphasis] obsessed. His one aim in life was successful bombing Germany and when we were tour expired and they say, sent out as instructors or rested and so on, and what they called screened as they said, screened from operations. He refused point blank he says, ‘No, I’m not going,’ he said, ‘I’m going to carry on.’ There’s a little bit of discussion with the commanding officer about it and the adjutant and so on, but anyway he got his way was posted on to a Special Duties squadron somewhere, and he carried on flying. He did seventy four ops in the end. And in the end he got shot down over Denmark I think, on one these special, highly secret operations on his seventy fourth. If you go back to Lincoln his name is on the, one of the what do they call it, the metal -
HB: The walls.
BL: The walls.
HB: wall 118.
BL: That’s what happened to all of us in the end. And as I say, the two gunners they survived, despite the fact they were amazed to find themselves on this resistance dropping and that sort of thing. So that was where we all finished up.
HB: So you ended up at Swinderby as the instructor on, you know, giving people experience on four engines.
BL: Yes. So, when I went to Swinderby I was instructing on Stirlings and Lancasters at the same time.
HB: Right. So how did you, how would you relate to the engineering side of the ground crew?
BL: Well, very closely indeed, in fact the whole crew did. I mean our ground crew was our survival in many respects and we respected them, we had a very good ground crew. They kept our aircraft serviceable against unprecedented odds at times. I mean there’s numerous occasions we’d come back with shrapnel holes down the fuselage and that sort of thing, and there was one occasion when there was, we had a near hit, this was Dusseldorf again funny enough, the intelligence people used to say well when the anti aircraft batteries are shooting at you, if you can’t hear on, if you can’t hear any noise you know you’re safe, but if you hear a bang you’ll know it’s very close. We heard this bloody great bang over Dusseldorf and that was very close and it finished up with Norm Minchin, the mid upper turret, with the perspex turret round his head, a piece of shrapnel came up and cut right through the back of the perspex and cut the back of his turret off, and he didn’t know it! Without touching him at all! It just cut through this Perspex and the back, and after we had left the target we were flying back home and he came on the intercom and said, ‘Christ it’s bloody cold up here, have you got some heating on?’ Didn’t even know it had happened! Of course when we got back to base not only that but there was a hole in the side of the aircraft you could damn near crawl through. So the maintenance people had a pretty big job, you know, to patch up all the holes on it. And that sort of thing, but the, yeah, the ground crew were very much part of the team, very important and we had a very good ground crew, very good.
HB: And when you got to Swinderby, you would, you would continue that relationship as you do in the training of the crews.
BL: Well not with the ground crew, not at Swinderby.
HB: Right.
BL: No, I mean we were, at Swinderby all we were concerned with was training the new crews coming through, and the ground crew was general ground crew, not to with, nothing to do with individual aircraft whereas on the squadron each aircraft had its own maintenance crew and its own flight crew and that was our particular aircraft which took us all the way through.
HB: Ah right, yeah.
BL: That finished up by the way, when we handed that over to another crew, actually I read historically in one of the books somewhere it was listed, I forget where the, I think it was the Bomber Command Diaries, every aircraft that was lost they gave indications where they were lost and where they were found and so on and our particular aircraft, the other crew that had it and it finished up in the Zuider Zee!
HB: Oh right.
BL: It was recovered eventually, by the Dutch people, who were, the Dutch people were doing the archive details and so on and there was actually some photographs of it being pulled out of the sea, they’re printed in the Daily Mail I think it was actually, so I couldn’t believe it when I saw this, when I saw the number on the side BF524, that was its serial number. WPNN and it was just being pulled out the water and you could just see the name, the number BF524 on the side of it. Couldn’t believe it. Recovered it and there’s a bloke, a very elderly gentleman, he’s a semi historian based at Alconbury and he’s very much a Stirling enthusiast and he’s got a workshop there full of all the bits and pieces of crashed Stirlings and so on and he works hand in glove with the, his counterparts in Holland and one of the major museums in Holland loan him parts of aircraft which he’s, he’s rebuilt a complete cockpit of a Stirling.
HB: Has he!
BL: At this. Yes, Andrew found this out and took me over there and we had a morning with him. I was intrigued and he’s got this bloody old shed there, old hangar I think it is, a small hangar, packed with all these bits and pieces of a Stirling and in the middle he’s got a cockpit he’s already built. And when we went over there he was sorting out an undercarriage and he was showing us that the Dutch archive people were loaning him stuff out of their museum which he photographed and copied and so on and sent it back to them. He said he had a very good rapport with them. Very interesting this guy. I can’t remember his name. Andrew knows it, but it was at Alconbury where he is based.
HB: Well I think, what we might do, Bob, is we might just have a break now because I’ve just gone to check the battery and we’ve now been talking for over an hour! So if we have a quick five minute break. I’m going to have to change the batteries anyway. So we’ll just stop the interview for the time being.
BL: Yeah. Okay, fine.
HB: Well we’ve had a comfort break and we’re just going to, we’ve had a battery change. So we’re just going to resume the interview -
BL: Oh these bloody things! I hate these!
HB: Just having a problem with a hearing aid battery at the moment. [Whistling]
BL: That’s better.
HB: So we should be go, on the run now. So we’re all settled now for our second part of our interview.
BL: Yes. What I was going to say was, when we were talking about the losses on the Stirlings, the turning point I think, was when it was decided, when Goebbels was boasting that the German fighters and defences were quite adequate against the RAF Bomber Command, he made statements saying that they’ll never touch Berlin or our second biggest city, Hamburg, they’re quite safe with our defences and so on, they’ll never touch them. And that was the challenge which Bomber Harris took up, and decided in conjunction with the naval people, who were very concerned because all these u-boats and subs were based at Hamburg and they were going out into the Atlantic to pick off the convoys and so on, and naval people said we’ve got to get rid of these u-boat pens at Hamburg. So Bomber Harris decided we’d obliterate Hamburg; it’s in July ’43. And at that time, as I was saying, particularly on the Stirlings, our losses were very high indeed and morale was very low and they introduced for the first time this metal foil thing called window. That was these patches of metal things which we discharged through the flare hatch at the back of the aircraft every twenty seconds I think it was, or every thirty seconds, something like that, and these packs, when they went out into the slipstream, developed into a big screen of metallic which completely killed the German radar defences and those, radar, the German defences were based, anti aircraft, were based on the radar picking up the aircraft or picking up the target with a blue, bright blue light, searchlight and once it picked you up, it then brought all the other normal searchlights into a cone and you were in the middle of it, and once you were coned like that, it was curtains it just picked you off then because they had you, and the whole secret of their success was this radar control and when we used this window for the first time it killed their radar. The result was, the first time it was used on Hamburg, it could have been used very early in 1943 but the politicians and defence people were so concerned they thought that if we use it early the Germans will follow this, copy it, and use it against us. So they were very reluctant, but it was only that when our losses got so high they had to introduce it. And our losses immediately on Hamburg dropped to one percent: fantastic! I we went to Hamburg, we did the four nights out of six: I did all four of ‘em. The fourth one was a disaster in that the first three were completely successful and I can remember it now, looking down, a whole wave of fire throughout, it just wiped this whole place out, just like that. The fourth night we went of course the met people again, they were predicting storms, but nothing like as severe as we found. The result was I think of, the storms were so bad, we were struck by lightning and St Elmo’s fire which is on the windscreen, and goes down the fuselage, all the compasses were knocked out and our radar and Gee box was knocked out. We hadn’t the faintest idea how we were, how to navigate back again and I think out of seven or eight hundred aircraft there’s only about twelve or fourteen actually reached the target. All the others had turned back because of the weather, and we were icing up very heavily and on the Stirlings the oil coolers were slung underneath the engines and you know what happens to diesel vehicles in cold weather, the fuel starts waxing and clogs up the carburettors, and the engines stop and that’s exactly what used to happen to us. These coolers which start icing in the middle, and what we call coring, and you had to keep hot air flow going through them in order to keep them serviceable. We suddenly found that we’d got two engines with, suffering from this icing and then there was chunks of ice coming off the wings, battering against the side of the fuselage like, dreadful we had to abandon short of the coast. We jettisoned our bombs into the sea and the only way we could navigate back to the UK was star navigation, and Cyril, our navigator, he was particularly good, he could take star shots with his, with his, my blinkin’ names, what my memory’s going.
HB: Sextant.
BL: Sextant, yes, with a sextant. And a combination of that and following the stars he managed to get us going back in the direction of the UK. When we finally hit the coast instead of being, coming over the coast over Essex or somewhere, we were in the north of Scotland, over the Hebrides and that’s where we came in and of course we immediately identified where we were and we were able to fly back down to, in fact we made an emergency landing ‘cause we were running a bit short of fuel, at Wattisham, in Suffolk. That was on the fourth trip, but the first three were so highly successful, we absolutely wiped the place out, and as I say the losses dropped right down to one percent because of using this window. The rise in morale then was just fantastic, you know after that. Of course sooner or later the Germans found that they could, they changed their system and they found that they could nullify this window by using different types of radar and so on, so it didn’t last, obviously, but we were able to use it for some months actually, and it was very good. We’re just having a new kitchen put in at the moment.
HB: Ah right. That explains the banging.
BL: And the other thing about the ops on the Stirling, in ’43 when our losses were so high, when you counted the number of ops you’re doing, the way it was calculated by Group headquarters, it was decided that because when they analysed the losses and how it was happening and so on, they came to a system of doing thirty ops in a tour and the total would depend entirely on the type of ops. For instance when 90 Squadron went to Tuddenham on Lancasters in the end of ’44, or half way through ’44, their main job - they did very, very little main force bombing – but ninety percent of the jobs of their work and I’ve got it all listed in my history book of 90 Squadron, was on either, was mainly on resistance work dropping resistance and equipment for low level intervention into Europe, dropping arms and equipment to the French and the Dutch resistance movements and so on, and consequently this was done individual very low level operations and the result was that the ops compared with ’43 were very easy and the losses were very low and consequently because, and the short ops as well, and because of this to count one trip as an op they had to do four trips to count as one on the tour, and consequently this system which was introduced before we finished, was that because of the severity of a lot of our ops on the Ruhr operation were so incredibly high losses and so very difficult that they allocated that some of the ops, because of their severity, would count, you had to do one op was counted as two on your tour, because of the severity of the operation and the high level of losses. So it wasn’t, it didn’t always follow that you did a straight forward thirty trips, you could have done say twenty five trips but they counted as thirty on your log book and the severity of the targets.
HB: Did you ever do mine-laying, gardening?
LB: Mining? Yes. Gardening as they called it. Yeah. We did two actually. One off Le Creusot and one other, I’ve forgotten what it was now. We did, our particular crew we only did two mining operations, those were, they were easy ones too.
HB: Yeah. So. You got to Swinderby. You’re doing the training there. How did you move forward from there? So that would be 1944.
BL: Well it was the end of, Christmas, yes Christmas time ’43 when I went to Swinderby, and most of ’44 and as I said earlier I was a fully qualified instructor on Lancs and Stirlings then and towards the end of ’44, I think it must have been round about September, October, something like that, some of the Lanc squadrons in 5 Group were having very heavy losses and the analysis of those losses, was in many cases put down to the fact that, to inexperience, training not sufficient for them, because they’d been rushed through very quickly because squadrons, with their losses, need quick replacements and so on. The result was that at East Kirkby 57 Squadron and 630 Squadron were both there at East Kirkby, and 57 particularly although they’d been engaged on very difficult targets their losses were astronomically high and a hell of a lot of them put down to pure inexperience. So myself and Dicky, we were both instructors at Swinderby, we were seconded to 57 Squadron for three months to set up a revised training unit there, which we did, to give the training, give the operational crews quite a bit more familiarisation and training and so on to try and cut these, some of these losses down. So I had that period there. And it was whilst I was at 57 and about to go back to Swinderby, ‘cause I was still on the strength at Swinderby despite the fact I’d been loaned to 57 at East Kirkby to do this training programme, 463 Squadron at Waddington, the Aussie squadron, had been suffering a few losses here and there, and the, one of the leaders of the squadron, the co-pilot and flight engineer leader there had been lost, so I was posted to 463 as his replacement and I was lucky to stay there until the end of the war.
HB: So that was back on to operations.
BL: So, yes, so I went back on to ops. Of course when I was at 463, because I was the boss of A flight, I was the leader, I didn’t have a crew, so I could only put myself on to do ops when there was a, somebody had gone sick or something you see, so I did them with any crew, and by extremely strange coincidence, I said to you about Essen earlier, my very first trip on my second tour here was a low level daylight on Essen. [Laugh] I couldn’t believe it! But I’ll tell you what, it was so bloody easy, it was so different to 1943. But, so I stayed there really, and at the end of the war as I said earlier, I went to Skellingthorpe, just outside Lincoln when Tiger Force was set up. I was posted on to Tiger Force.
HB: And Tiger Force was - ?
BL: That was the equivalent to 617 to go to Japan to do the [cough] vital targets into Japan, very similar to what 617 had been doing, because the adjacent to 617 Squadron was 9 Squadron. They were both based then at Woodhall Spa and Wing Commander Cheshire was the, was one of the commanding officers at 617 at that time, amongst others. But so when I went to 463 as I say, I was there till the end of the war then, and doing ops from there, and because I was the leader there the flight engineer leader on 463, I was posted to Skellingthorpe to join Tiger Force and I was promoted then at Tiger Force to be in charge of that particular section to go to Japan and we were half way through their training when the bomb was dropped of course and it all came to a halt then. Consequently I found myself in civil flying.
HB: Yeah. You did tell me before the interview started, you were, you were made an offer by the RAF before you -
BL: Yes, offered a, I was a substantive flight lieutenant then, and for a very short time I was an acting Squadron Leader but only for four weeks! [Laugh] Because it all ended then. But I was offered a extended seven year flying, extended flying committee, er, commission and given the choice. I didn’t know much about, well I didn’t know anything about civil flying. I didn’t even understand what BOAC meant until I got there.
HB: But you were originally offered Transport Command weren’t you.
BL: Yes.
HB: What was your view on that?
BL: But I turned that down. I turned that down flat. But there’s a very, there’s another, a very ironic twist that I’ll tell you about. So immediately because we were then seconded from the air force to BOAC we had to get civilian licences. We had to get civilian licences and then they decided what they were going to train us on, so we had to go through the basic theory and all that sort of stuff to get civilian licences and we were allocated I think it was about either fifty or a hundred block licence numbers in the very early days. Once we’d done type training on, at that time on Avros produced the very first post-war airliner called the Tudor and the first dozen Tudors were just being built and they were destined to go to BOAC to start up to date pressurised passenger aircraft. They were quite nice aircraft actually, very good. So since we’d just, we were the first people to be trained on the Tudors. So we did our training on the Tudors and when they were just about to start to take, BOAC to take delivery of the Tudors, for some reason there was a political change and instead of coming to BOAC, they went to British South [emphasis] American Airways, and at that time was run by the old 8 Group Pathfinder chief, Air Marshal Don Bennett, who was a real press on type. [Cough] Highly successful with Pathfinders of course and he was the boss at British South American. They’d previously been running some converted Lancasters into what they called Lancastrians before long distance flying in South America and so on, and they hadn’t got a particularly good record they’d lost three or four of them I think, for different reasons and so they took delivery of the Tudors. Tudor 1s these were, Mark 1s. And I did quite a bit of flying with the, on the Tudors on the South American routes, down to Bermuda, and the Caribbean and so on, and I was put in charge of training at BSA as well. And then, as things went on, we got as far as 1948 I think it was, ‘46’ 47’ ’48 I think it was, yes, ’47 ‘48. Suddenly the Berlin Airlift comes up, and from nowhere I suddenly found BSA, because of their Tudors, the air force was already in force on the Berlin Airlift using mainly Dakotas, the old C47s and they couldn’t cope with, couldn’t make it that economical to cope with the heavy loads that was necessary so they asked a lot of the civilian charter companies and so on, if they could provide crews and aircraft to come on to the Berlin airlift to increase the load factors, and British South American got one of the contracts to, with two Tudors, to go on the Berlin Airlift and I was one of them selected to go on the first one. So I found myself flying over to Wunstorf near Hannover where we were based, to fly on the Berlin Airlift these two Tudors between Wunstorf and Gatow, Berlin. And ironically, I think, when I think that three years before, when I did my last operational trip with 463, there we were still bombing and knocking hell out of ‘em; three years later, there I was at Wunstorf flying into Berlin to try and keep the so-and-so’s alive. Ironic really, they were three years the difference. Anyway, I stayed at Wunstorf for nearly a year, I think it was. I did nearly three hundred flights between Wunstorf and, there were only three of us on board.
HB: What sort of things were you taking in?
BL: Well when I first flew out there, we were taking huge packs of canned meat and stuff like spam and all that sort of stuff, corned beef, and all that, which was fairly easy to handle, in big cases and so on. And then the RAF were getting a bit uppity about what they were going to do and what they were carrying and bear in mind that the US air force was also on the operation with their C54s and Skymasters and so on, they were based at Schleswigland I think it is. I’ve got maps showing all the different air bases that we used over there but we always used Wunstorf and because we were larger aircraft, they decided that instead of carrying packs of food and so on, we suddenly found ourselves carrying coal, huge packs of coal, great big sealed bags of coal, about a hundredweight apiece. So we spent some months then, this coal at Berlin. Landing at Berlin was quite something. It was the ground force of people doing all the unloading and so on was predominantly very elderly German ladies, old grandmothers and mothers and so on, and it was sad to see them. They were dressed, whatever they could find to wear, and they used to come on board. They did all the work of loading and unloading, all the heavy work and they used to come on board to us carrying these lovely family heirlooms like Leica cameras and stuff like that to exchange. They were desperate for two things: cigarettes and coffee, and you could get anything for a couple of packs of coffee, in fact I got a lovely Leica camera in exchange for two bags of coffee at one stage. They used to come up, had it all laid out on the nav table there when they were unloading and they’d bring these heirlooms up and do deals with us. Anything we could, anything they wanted we could give it to them, you know. Children we gave cigret – we gave sweets and chocolate to the children. The children loved it. The Americans set up, at one stage, when they flew into Gatow, over the Frohnau beacon flying on to finals for landing, all the children used to sit round the lake underneath waving to the Americans going over and the Yanks were throwing out chocolate and sweets to them. At one stage they set up, got large handkerchiefs which they tied up sort of like a parachute, and tied these bags of sweets to them, were throwing them out and in dropping them out and the kids loved it. Absolutely fantastic.
HB: Amazing.
BL: But anyway, as I say, another aspect came up then, some time after been carrying the coal, which was a very dirty operation, dust and everything in the aircraft and they suddenly decided that what they wanted desperately in Berlin was medicinal, what do you call it? Two things they were short of, one was straight run gasoline and the other one was, oh dear me, some large amount of some sort of medicinal fluids. I’ve forgotten what they were now, what they were called. But these were in great big packs but the hospitals were desperate for them. So when it was decided that they’d fly the stuff in, it meant that the aircraft that were going to do this had to be modified with huge tanks in the back to carry it. And the air force said point blank they wouldn’t do it, they refused absolutely point blank to carry straight run gasoline in bloody great tanks down the back of the aircraft, they said its far too dangerous, so they refused point blank to do it. So the civilian contracts were asked to do it and we had then replaced our two Mark 1 Tudors with two Mark 5s which had been built and never been put into service but they were much larger and so our two Mark 5s were then equipped with these bloody great tanks for straight run gasoline and this medical stuff and so for the last few months we were flying that into Berlin.
BH: How did you feel about that?
BL: Oh dear me. Well it was just a bloody big laugh I thought, we thought. Bear in mind we’ve still got this enthusiasm from Bomber Command which we’d brought from the air force to the civilian and it was such a big change, you know, but to us it was more of a bloody big laugh than anything else. But anyway, we settled down to it and it was a good operation, it worked extremely well. When you are turning on to final approach into Gatow, Berlin, you came in over the lake on the outskirts of the city and the final beacon was at a place called Frohnau, Frohnau Beacon, you had to call over the beacon which was virtually the outer marker for final approach and the timing was so accurately it had to be done. The timing of aircraft over Frohnau was every twenty seconds between aircraft.
HB: Blimey.
BL: When you think there was a variety of aircraft, everything from small Bristol freighters to Dakotas and converted Lancs and Halifaxes and anything the charter people could lay their bloody hands on. They buy them for peanuts and take them out there to take part because the airlift they pay very big money and we were no exception with our Tudors and it’s an amazing operation really.
HB: So you went through the Berlin Airlift. Just one thing just I’m just quite curious about. You started off I think, on particular kinds of aircraft as a fitter.
BL: Yeah.
HB: What was, what was the system for re-training you when you went to different engines and different engine management systems?
BL: Well there were various training stations set up. I think the initial one for fitter 2Es, or 2As, that’s the difference between fitter rigger and fitter engines was at Kirkham, Lancashire and that was the number one training base, apart from Halton of course which is still there and still doing it today! And Halton of course was always the base of the so called Halton Brats as they call them. They go there as small, young apprentices and three year training straight away and they’re still doing that today. Yeah, they’re still churning out young lads from Halton.
HB: Right. So when you were working with the Stirling –
BL: Yeah.
HB: And then you go on Lancasters, obviously you’ve got Merlin engines, you’ve got Hercules engines, you’ve got all sorts, you’ve got air cooled, liquid cooled. You’ve got all these different engines.
BL: Yes.
HB: So was there an element of self training or was it all formalised?
BL: Well it was to us, to a point where we were fully trained and fully experienced with a lot of hours in on Stirlings when we went up to Swinderby, the 5 Group elite Group., but we hadn’t been trained on Lancs. So we had, it was virtually self-training on the Lancs there by virtue of working on them and flying on them and training every day. So that part of it, yes, was to a large extent I think we did, there were short courses laid on for us. I did one at Cosford for instance, and places like that, but generally speaking more than anything you were self taught, and as instructors you were expected to be experienced and knowledgeable on all the different aspects, so that was how it worked. But go back to the Berlin Airlift though, when that finished, I came back, by that time British South American, there was a lot of demands because they had a very poor safety record. We lost Star Tiger and we lost Star Ariel, both in the Caribbean. Those were Tudor 1s, from the first Tudors that we trained on. The first one was lost over the Bermuda Triangle as they call it, up at twenty thousand feet, no idea what happened to him; it just disappeared. And the second one was, had flown out of the Azores which at that time was a very difficult operation, flying over the south Atlantic from the Azores to South America and weather conditions and very poor nav and all rest of it was very prevalent round the Azores; very difficult route to operate.
HB: How many passengers did the Tudor 1 carry then?
BL: It varied, on whether, the Tudor 1s, I’ve just forgotten. I think up to about eighty or ninety passengers, something like that. The Tudor 5s were much larger but they didn’t actually go into passenger service after the Berlin Airlift. I don’t know what happened. They were scrapped I think, in the end. But anyway, as I say, because of the loss of the two Tudors and the BSA had lost quite a few Lancs so Don Bennett was criticised very heavily and finally he was forced to resign. So he was taken over by BSA who was then taken over by one of the old traditional north Atlantic BOAC captains, Gordon Storr his name, and it was Gordon Storr who I was with, on the, we were the first two Tudors at Wunstorf when the Airlift started and then shortly afterwards after Bennett had left, they decided BSA would be would up so what was left of it came back into, it came into BOAC. But that stage I was still being paid as a flight lieutenant substantive from the air force, seconded to BOAC so I was paid by BOAC who in turn seconded me to BSAA so I was paid by three companies, very interesting situation. But then of course, having come back to BOAC then, BOAC were operating Yorks and converted Halifaxes called Haltons, and, oh there was still a few Dakotas being used, but generally they were waiting for the next civil airliner which came from Handley Page called the Hermes and that was a very good aircraft. I liked the Hermes very much. Performance wise it hadn’t quite got good altitude performance as such, but it was a very easy aircraft to fly, very comfortable, it was designed specifically for the comfort of passengers and so on. And it was after then that the Comet 1 came in from De Havillands, the DH106, which was designed and built by DHs and was at least twenty years before its time. And then of course to us anyway, a huge attraction to get on the first jet aircraft into service. So in no time at all I was, I joined the Comet 1 fleet. We were flying, first of all flying down to Johannesburg and then it was extended to the Far East and out to even as far as Tokyo and Hong Kong and so on. Then of course you know the story that Xray Kilo blew up over Elba on its way between Rome and London. They were immediately grounded, no one could understand why it had, how it had happened. There was a huge inquiry and after ninety-odd modifications they decided that one of them must have been the reason so they put it back into service. And in no time at all they lost a second one which blew up over Naples Bay. That was flown by a South African crew who were on loan to BOAC. We’d also got French crews flying them, and it, so it was then decided that because two of them had blown up, they couldn’t leave them into service any longer. Unfortunately a third one went. The third one was out of Calcutta and that had just taken over from Calcutta and was flying through heavy cloud and they put that down to the fact that it flew into a cunim cloud and the stresses were so great the aircraft just broke up. So then they were grounded completely and when Farnborough rigged up the test rig there, and put a whole aircraft on this water test bed, and they found out exactly why it had happened. The general opinion from the public and in aviation generally was that the pressurisation caused the windows to blow out but that wasn’t true at all. The fault arose through bad engineering practice on the design of the hatches in the roof. The hatches which covered the radio communication, adf system and these two hatches were like that square like that. Engineering practice is that if you design something that’s a square and it’s put under pressure, you see that little crack there, where that join is -
HB: Showing me on the photograph frame.
BL: That little crack there.
HB: In the corner. [cough]
BL: If a crack occurs, it will always come from a corner, and find its way across and finally disintegrate and that’s precisely what happened to the Comet. It was bad engineering practice because if you round the corners those cracks wouldn’t occur. Simple [cough]. Again, in fairness to De Havillands, they produced some very fine fighter aircraft, put in their own engine, the Ghost 50 engine in them, Vampires and stuff like that but they had no experience ever of high altitude pressurised aircraft, and so they built them to what they considered would be strong enough and so on. But I’ve got a book upstairs which Andrew’s been reading, of the whole story, the whole official story of the enquiry and the way they found out all the reasons for it at Farnborough. The summing up at the end of it, when they said officially you know, that the initial fault was the adf hatches that disintegrated because of the bad engineering practice, how it was designed. The general feeling was that the aircraft was twenty years before its time but it simply wasn’t strong enough, because De Havillands, or anyone else for that matter, had experience enough to build them strong enough, when you think that at forty two thousand feet the pressurisation equivalent in the cabin was only eight thousand feet. That was the highest the cabin pressure was ever taken up to give passengers comfort without having to go on to oxygen. So the difference between eight thousand and forty two thousand across the structure of the aircraft was eight and a half pounds per square inch which is massive [emphasis] from the outside to the inside, and it has to be extremely strong, the sort of structure, in order to withstand these pressures. So you can imagine that it was not only not built strong enough, but of course the fault occurred on the hatches which caused it to blow up anyway. The first one that went, Xray Kilo, I had flown that on quite a number of occasions, got it in my log book in a number of places prior to it blowing up. I think previously I’d, we operated it from Tokyo to Hong Kong only the day before I think it was, before it blew up at Elba, but that aircraft had only done seventeen hundred hours. The second one that blew up over Naples had done just over two thousand hours and the one that disintegrated at Calcutta had done less than two thousand hours. They were all going at the, virtually the same time. That was another factor that the inquiry of course dug up, when they said that, Tom Butterworth I think it was, that because of lack of experience at DHs on high altitude stuff the aircraft simply wasn’t built strong enough. You’ve got to go back to Con Derry who was the chief test pilot at De Havillands a few years before when he was doing demonstrations at the Farnborough air show in a, I think it was a Vampire, he was doing very, very tight turns demonstrating and on one of those tight turns the bloody wings came off. He crashed into the crowd there and killed a few people, including himself. That was another example that under extreme stress conditions, that DHs aircraft wasn’t strong enough.
HB: Yes.
BL: So all those factors, you know. So result was that going back to the Comet days, I was involved very heavily with the whole Comet story because then it was decided that they’d have to, they’d build the new aircraft much stronger and up to date. The other thing was, by the way, that De Havillands had their own engines, the Ghost 50 which only produced five thousand pounds thrust, which was quite adequate for the fighters, but for a aircraft like the Comet 4 Ghost 50 engines, they insisted on putting their own engines in and all the experts said no, we needed Rolls Royce Merlin engines, or Avon engines they were, but they refused point blank, they said no, its our aircraft, we’ll put our own engines in and they simply weren’t strong enough. We couldn’t even do a safe level cruise at altitude, you had to do a five degree climb the whole time to get to top of descent, largely because by continuing to fly like that you’re reducing your fuel flow and consequently you had adequate fuel to start your descent. It was because of the consumption levels and the lack of real thrust on these DH engines, it was extremely [emphasis] critical on fuel, extremely [emphasis] critical. They devised this method of five degree climb. You had to fly, when you flight plan you fly backwards starting at top of descent instead of top of climb and things like that, you know. So anyway, when it was decided then they’d build the new Comet 4 much stronger and it would have Rolls Royce engines of much higher quality and it had Rolls Royce Conway engines. So, they’d, after the 1s, they built some Comet 2s, which were destined to go to the air force. But of course after the crashes they never even got airborne, never even delivered, they were just stuck there at Hatfield. So they decided that they’d have to carry out a two year test flying programme to make sure that everything that was being put into the Comet 4 had been well proved, correctly and properly using these two Mark 2s which were used as test beds. So they modified these two Mark 2s, strengthened them up and made sure they were adequate to do the work. They put the standard Conway engines on the inboards and then the new big 524 engines on the outboards which were destined to go into the new Comet 4. So they hadn’t got any crews to fly these at De Havilland, so they asked BOAC if BOAC could loan them I think it was six, was six crews to fly a two year test flying for De Havillands on these Comet 2s, 2Es as they called them. So I was one that went on to those, on to test flying. The first year we, every day we flew non-stop to Beirut from London and back, every day for a year. The aircraft hadn’t got a certificate of airworthiness, of course it was experimental, so there was only three of us allowed on board, no one, none of the boffins were allowed on so they got all the, all the usual test equipment and everything was loaded all the way down the fuselage and it was all fed up to the cockpit where we were and we used to have, they used to give us a list of things we had to check and write the results down, the results of this stuff as we flew, and we had to fly at thirty two thousand feet and record all this stuff for them which was really interesting. I loved it actually. It was a bloody good programme and extremely well paid as well! [Laugh]
HB: Right!
BL: So the first year we did London Beirut every day and the second year they decided we’d have to do the Arctic North Atlantic trials to make sure it was adequate for very low temperature conditions so then we started a programme going from London to Keflavik in Iceland and then across to Goose Bay and Gander in to the Maritimes and then back to London. So we did that for six months. That was a very interesting programme, I liked that part of it particularly. And then of course decided to try and get permission to fly into America. So the Americans were very keen on noise abatement and the Comet did make quite a bit of noise on take off of course, and so they said yes you can fly in to America but not land there, and not do take offs and landings. So then we had a period where we were flying out to different places around America using the new VOR navigation systems and so on, and then eventually politically we got permission to do landings over there and it was at that time then when a lot of the American airlines were looking very enviously at the jet Comet to replace traditional old fashioned piston engine aircraft and we did a series, we were doing a series of demonstration flights when, at the time when Pan American, the number one American outfit had just received, they’d just taken delivery of the first of the civilian Boeing 707s and they were pushing out a lot of typical American bullshit that they were going to be the very first pure jet passenger flight on the Atlantic, transatlantic ‘Fly American. Fly pure jet’, and all that, you know. Anyway, at the time we were down in Detroit doing some demonstration flights for United Airlines, they wanted to buy some of these Comets, so we were doing demonstration flights there. And it was there when we suddenly got a call to fly back to New York and, for some reason, and we found we got to New York we were going to do the first transatlantic flight the next day. We beat the Yanks by sixteen days! And when the Yanks had put all this, all the usual stuff in the papers, and they got the big banners out: ‘Fly Pan American the first jet flight across the Atlantic’ and so on. And after we beat them like that they had to change it all and where it said, ‘we are the first,’ they had to put in: ‘we are one of the first.’ They never bloody forgave us for it! Amazing story! [Laughter]
HB: Oh dear.
BL: But anyway, as I say I was very, very strongly involved in -
HB: How many people were on -
BL: - the whole Comet programme from start to finish.
HB: How many people were on that first trans-atlantic flight?
BL: I think we had about sixty, sixty passengers, something like that, yes. You’ve seen the menu of course.
HB: Yes, yes. Got a copy of the menu there [cough]
BL: We got back to London and it was a very historic occasion. They gave us immediate take off at New York and cleared all the flights from London to give us number one priority to land. BBC and everyone were all were there in force to welcome us, and it was headed by Eamon Andrews on BBC.
HB: Oh right. Yes.
BL: They got our wives there and so on waiting. There was two aircraft actually. We did the eastbound New York London and the other one went the other way, London New York and we crossed over at about twenty degrees west I think it was and acknowledged each other, but you know, two of them, one going one the other. And when we went through all the procedure at London old Eamon Andrews said, ‘We’ve got a coach here for you, we’re taking you up to,’ um to, I’ve forgot where the studios were now, I’ll think of it in a minute, ’taking you up to, see we want to put you on TV tonight.’ They’d decided to put us on that programme ‘What’s My Line?’ And old, the panel at that time dear old, oh my bloody memory’s going, bloke who was extremely well known on the BBC, was the chairman of the panel there. Anyway we went on TV and on this programme and all that sort of publicity and so on; it was really interesting. And then of course the following year I was picked to go to, one of the flight crew to go to Ottawa, Canada to pick up Duke of Edinburgh, Philip. We went in the Comet; he was very keen to fly in the Comet, so we went there to pick him up. He’d been there doing a series of talks and so on. The Queen was at Balmoral at the time so we were to pick him up at Ottawa and fly him back to Leuchars in Scotland, which is quite close to Balmoral, drop him off there. But anyway, we picked him up at Ottawa and we were just, hadn’t been airborne very long when a signal came through to say there’d, a big mining disaster had just occurred at Monckton in the Maritimes and would we divert to Monckton and so the Duke could just put in a quick royal visit, two hours royal visit to the disaster area. So we dropped him off at Monckton and then we flew down, further down to Gander and we waited at Gander for him to come, come back and then we brought him from Gander and flew him to Leuchars, dropped him off there. Oh it’s here somewhere I’ve got a picture of it. On board on the way back he was fascinated with the Comet 1, he loved to fly in the Comet, oh the Comet 4 I should say and on the way back he got a lot of individual special pictures of himself and he signed one each for us, and a handshake.
HB: Oh lovely.
BL: I thought she’d got it up here, it’s been on the wall here somewhere. She must have put it away. But it’s personally signed: Philip.
HB: Oh lovely.
BL: Which is, very has, carried a lot of weight, in the years to come. It’ll be worth a few bob I should think!
HB: So when did you actually stop flying Bob?
BL: Well, from then on, after the Comet programme, first BOAC decided to buy the Boeings so they ordered these new Boeing 707s from Boeing of course, from America and in January 1960 the first delivery of, or first Boeing 707 was ready for us to collect. And there was nobody trained on it or anything at that time of course, since we hadn’t got any Boeings. But in America the military version of the Boeing was the KC135 and they’d already built eight hundred of those, they’d all gone to the American air force and the American navy and so on. So having had that number built, all the bugs and problems had all been ironed out, needless to say, unlike so many of our aircraft you see. So it was a well [emphasis] tried and well proven aircraft before it even went into service. So in January ’60 I was, one of the, I was, been an instructor on Comets for some time I’d always been instructing quite a lot and so there’s four instructors, myself and three others were sent out to Seattle to get trained on the 707 and the first Boeing 707 to come off was number hundred and eleven off the line, the production line, so we were still quite a way behind other airlines. Anyway, when we got to Seattle we were trained by the Seattle test flight crew. At that time there’s no civilian aircraft, aerodromes rather, in the UK that could take the 707 except Heathrow and obviously you couldn’t use Heathrow for training but they could use it for service, not for training. Shannon hadn’t got a long enough runway at that time anyway, but they were building a new one. So there was nowhere in the UK where they could train us. So Boeings decided, got permission to use Tucson, Arizona. So Tex Johnson was there, er Tex, not Johnson, Tex Gannard, Tex Gannard was the Boeing Chief Test Pilot at that time and he decided that we’d, he’d take us down to Tucson and we’d set up a training base there and he would train us as instructors and so on, to stay on at Tucson to train the BOAC crews as they were sent out from the UK. So we stayed there to run the training unit [cough] and the crews had come from London, we trained them and they went back and then flew the aircraft in service. So we had a very nice six months so, Tucson and the trainer, super that was. But hard work. I’ll tell you what impressed me more than anything else when I went to Seattle, to Boeings: the difference between the British way of life in [coughing] workload, dedication and that sort of thing in the British aviation industry, was so different to that of the Americans. Soon found the Americans are far ahead of us in their dedication to the work they were doing. It was a bloody eye-opener, believe me. Hard work, but they knew how to do it and it was an absolute revelation to us. For instance when we were doing flight training unit details at London they’re usually about two and a half to three hours at the most, something like that, and then the time we went to Tucson the thing that surprised us was that the minimum flights times were five hours! [emphasis] Bloody long details, oh Christ, but that was typical of the Americans and the hard work they put in. They had three of the test pilots at Tucson with us and a fleet to train us and certify us as being fully trained instructors on Boeing aircraft. And I’ve got a certificate to say that.
HB: Yes. That’s grand.
BL: And anyway, BOAC then got a bit hot under the collar about the cost of running Tucson and all the British bases, so they got permission to use St Mawgan at St Athan, at Newquay. They got permission from the aircraft, from the air force for us to move from Tucson to Newquay and used St Mawgan for training from then on so I then moved, as I say, from Tucson to the Bristol Hotel in Newquay. And being a typical seaside resort, very popular, they didn’t want any weekend flying Saturdays and Sundays, there’s all sorts of objections from the local authority and so on, so it was a bit of a doddle down there.
HB: Good grief!
BL: So it was on the 707 where eventually that was my last flying for BOAC.
HB: I see. There’s a good few years in the air there Bob!
BL: Forty years.
HB: Can I just –
BL: The reason I retired in the end by the way, I was very close to retiring at that time, but I was on training at Shannon at the time on the Boeing fleet. We were doing our winter training at Shannon and one of the details we had to do was to demonstrate the capabilities of the aircraft at high, high speed characteristics of the 707. The normal cruising in the 707 was point eight one mach, but the “never exceed” was about point eight eight, which you should never exceed on a Boeing and we used to have to demonstrate though as you got somewhere near the point eight eight the flight control characteristics changed aerodynamically and you had to be aware of this to happen should you ever stray up there in flight. So we had to demonstrate this and we used to fly at forty odd thousand feet from Shannon across to five degree west in the Atlantic then back again doing these high speed runs and I was doing one of those with two students and we suddenly hit a bloody air pocket – bang! It threw us up in the air and down again, hit it really hard, couldn’t, didn’t even realise it was there just clear air turbulence, and I got thrown up on the ceiling and when I dropped down I dropped right across the arm of the co-pilot’s seat with my hip like that and it buggered up something in my hip and I couldn’t even walk off the aircraft carrying my briefcase. So I had to go sick straight away. I went through all the usual palavers of different Harley Street specialists and lord knows what and all they could tell you, ‘oh you’ve slipped a disc in your back,’ you know and all this. They threatened to send me off for a laminectomy operation, but the BOAC doctor at Heathrow who looked after the flight crews, he was ex-RAF and he was bloody good doctor, Doc civil and liked gossip here with the boys, and he really looked after us, one of us, you know.
HB: Very much so yes.
BL: He says, when finally I got to the end of my tether, I couldn’t clear this up, the bloody pain was there, could virtually, almost couldn’t walk and he says, ‘I tell you what,’ he said, ‘I’ll pull a few strings for you,’ he said, ‘you’re an ex RAF officer’ he says, ‘I’ll get you in to Hedley Court.’ So a couple of days later he says, ‘I’ve managed it, you’re going off to Hedley Court they’ll sort you out there.’ So I went off to Hedley Court which of course is very famous today because all these guys from Afghanistan are going in there for amputainees and that sort of thing you know, so I went into Hedley for three months. Within three days of being there they found out exactly what was wrong with me. What I’d done when I fell down like that over this arm, I’d stretched what they call the sacroiliac joint in my hip, it’d stretched it and bent it and that was the cause of all of the trouble.
HB: Good grief!
BL: And they found that after three days there! All these bloody Harley Street specialists I went to see kept telling me all I’d got was a bloody slipped disc. But the outcome was that I spent three months there and they cured it ninety nine percent. And when I finally got to, they wanted to discharge me I went to see the old Group Captain medical and he says, ‘Well,’ he says, ‘we’ve cleared it up for you,’ he says, ‘you’ll be all right,’ he says, ‘there might be the odd occasions when you get a recurrence but the only thing is,’ he says, ‘I’ll have to put a four hour restriction on your licence,’ and of course BOAC wouldn’t accept that because I was on a world wide contract so they said no we can’t accept that but you’re very close to retirement we’ll give you an immediate retirement on pension. So that’s really how I finished. But it didn’t end there.
HB: Oh right.
BL: Another little facet came. I’d been very interested in act, different aircraft accidents and accident investigation. I was on the accident committee for a few years before that, while I was still flying and somebody at BOAC obviously realised that I’d got experience on them and they said well we’ll keep you on but not in a flying capacity, would you like to become a CAA FIA flight accident investigator. I said yes, so they said right. So they sent me off to the University of Southern California, in Los Angeles, to do the full official FIA accident inspector’s course so I had a couple of months over there, and did the course in the university and I qualified, graduated and got my little badge and everything, as an official accident investigator. So I came back to London and I went on two of the accidents actually, one of which was a Boeing which landed with a wing on fire at Heathrow after one of the engines had dropped off into the Staines reservoir. I’ve got a photograph of that landing, with the wing on fire, amongst this lot here somewhere.
HB: Good grief. Yeah.
BL: And anyway after that I found it was a bit boring and of course by that time I’d got a farm in Surrey and I’d got, we were milking a hundred and twenty five Jersey cows, and I’d got thirty thousand chickens, got five vans on the road delivering fresh eggs and cream around London and it was taking up so much time I thought well I haven’t got bloody time to go in so I finally decided I’d quit completely and carry on farming and that really was the end of it.
HB: Yeah, it does bring it to an end, doesn’t it really.
BL: So, quite a lot of various incidents in my career.
HB: Just a few, just a few. Just going back, I meant to actually ask you this ages ago. When you were on 463 Squadron -
BL: Yes.
HB: With the old, the Australians, that would be towards the end of ’45. Did you ever, when you were there on operations did you ever come across the German jet fighters?
BL: Er, no. Not, not the jets, no.
HB: No. All right.
BL: Incidentally, talking about that, of course, when Peenemunde came up, it just so happened, we didn’t, on the Stirlings by the way, the Stirlings from the squadron, I think we put about a dozen Stirlings up on the Peenemunde operation and we’d been briefed from weeks and weeks and weeks that something very special was coming up, no one knew what it was except it was something very special operation but it was tied in very closely to the right weather. It had to be absolutely perfect on weather forecast and of course it turned out it was Peenemunde. And it just so happened that when the Peenemunde trip came up we were on two weeks’ leave. So we missed it.
HB: Yeah. Right.
BL: But it was from then on of course we were very active on bombing these flying bomb sites in France and various parts of Europe. But we never came across any of the jet fighters at all. No definitely not.
HB: Right. Well I think. I think Bob, we’ve come to a natural sort of end, and I just thank you very much. Absolutely fascinating.
BL: Well I hope I haven’t bored you too much.
HB: Oh no! Well I haven’t gone to sleep! [Laughter] No absolutely fascinating, absolutely fascinating.
BL: I’ve been lucky really in a sense, that you know, had all these different variants, military and civilian, I’ve very lucky to be on you know, these special products, projects. Rather like the as I said, the two years I was test flying with De Havilland, that was really interesting.
HB: Yeah. I’m going to, one of the things I forgot to do at the beginning, I didn’t actually say at the beginning: it’s Wednesday the 12th of December 2018. I forgot about that at the beginning, I got a bit excited! So I’m going to terminate the interview Bob and get on with the paperwork. Thank you very much again.
BL: Yeah.
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Interview with Bob Leedham
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Harry Bartlett
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IBCC Digital Archive
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2018-12-12
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
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ALeedhamHJL181212, PLeedhamHJL1801
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Pending review
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02:16:46 audio recording
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eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Bob Leedham was a flight engineer who carried out twenty-one operations on Stirlings. At the outbreak of war Bob was an apprentice motor mechanic, and along with other apprentices, was left to operate the garage when all the engineers were called up. In 1940 he enlisted in the RAF and following initial training, Bob was selected for pilot training but did not achieve the requirement of flying solo within twelve hours. His engineering background meant he was posted to RAF St Athan and trained as a flight engineer. A posting to RAF Stradishall followed, and conversion to Stirling aircraft. Now part of a crew and posted to 90 Squadron at RAF Ridgewell, operational flying commenced. Bob suggests political interference restricted the performance of the aircraft resulting in a higher casualty rate amongst Stirling crews, and explains how the introduction of Window anti-radar equipment improved this. In Spring 1943 the squadron moved to RAF Wratting Common and in Autumn, converted to Lancasters. With more Lancasters coming into service, there was a lack of experience on four-engined aircraft, and some Stirling’s were deployed to RAF Swinderby for crew training. This move coincided with Bob obtaining his commission and he became an instructor on both Stirling and Lancasters. Late in 1944, Bob was back flying operations with 463 Squadron at RAF Waddington, where he was senior co-pilot/flight engineer. Following peace declaration in Europe, Bob joined Tiger Force in preparation for moving to Japan, but the war ended before this materialised. Bob began a post-war career in civil aviation, initially operating the Avro Tudor, and flying approximately three-hundred operations during the Berlin airlift. He also gives an account of the development of the DH 106 Comet and details the faults which resulted in the aircraft being grounded. While undertaking demonstrations in America, Bob was recalled to New York, where his crew discovered they were to operate the first civilian jet flight eastbound across the Atlantic. In 1960, Bob was one of four certified to instruct on the new generation of aircraft, the Boeing 707. An injury sustained from clear-air turbulence curtailed Bob’s flying career, and he progressed into the investigation of aircraft accidents.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Ian Whapplington
Anne-Marie Watson
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Azores
Canada
Germany
Great Britain
Italy
Netherlands
United States
Zimbabwe
Arizona--Tucson
England--Burton upon Trent
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Essex
England--Hampshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Suffolk
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Essen
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Nuremberg
Germany--Peenemünde
India--Kolkata
Italy--Elba
Mediterranean Sea--Bay of Naples
New Brunswick--Moncton
Ontario--Ottawa
Scotland--Leuchars
Wales--Glamorgan
Washington (State)--Seattle
England--Cornwall (County)
Arizona
Ontario
New Brunswick
India
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
England--Staffordshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
1943
1944
10 Squadron
463 Squadron
5 Group
57 Squadron
617 Squadron
86 Squadron
90 Squadron
aircrew
Bennett, Donald Clifford Tyndall (1910-1986)
bombing of Nuremberg (30 / 31 March 1944)
C-47
flight engineer
Gneisenau
Halifax
Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984)
lack of moral fibre
Lancaster
Pathfinders
pilot
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (1921-2021)
radar
RAF Alconbury
RAF Halton
RAF Ridgewell
RAF St Athan
RAF St Mawgan
RAF Stradishall
RAF Swinderby
RAF Tuddenham
RAF Waddington
RAF Woodhall Spa
RAF Wratting Common
Scharnhorst
Stirling
Sunderland
Tiger force
training
Window
-
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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
Brooks, Harry
Brooks, C H S
Brooks, Charles Harry Sidney
Description
An account of the resource
Collection contains 18 items concerning Sergeant Harry Sidney Brooks (1915 - 1942, 1357673, Royal Air Force) who was killed in an aircraft accident 20 December 1942 while serving as a wireless operator with 9 Squadron at RAF Waddington. Collection consists of pages from logbook, letters and telegrams to his wife from Harry Brooks, Brooks' father, official sources and others of condolence as well as photographs of him and family. <br /><br />The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Pamela Tickner and catalogued by Nigel Huckins. <br /><br />Additional information on Harry Sidney Brooks is available via the <a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/102784/">IBCC Losses Database</a>.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-02
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Brooks, HS
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
LETTER AND TELEgam [sic] when I was BORN
[page break]
Sgts Mess
RAF Station
Waddington
Lincs
Monday
[RAF Crest]
My dearest darling,
I do hope you got home safely this afternoon without any incidents as I have been thinking of you and as I write this you should be at Catford making a fuss of Pamela.
It was grand to see you although it was only for so short a time, but let us hope that I shall be home for Christmas this year as I haven’t spent a Xmas for so long at home.
[page break]
[underlined] 2 [/underlined]
I am glad we have such a good friend in Lincoln as Miss Green because anytime I am off or know will be off for 24 hours or so she can put us up.
Darling I do hope the Hospital will be able to put you right without an operation, but darling if you have to have one keep a stiff upper lip as I know that you will come through it OK.
It was very funny, but old Joe Skinner was looking for me yesterday afternoon
[page break]
[RAF Crest]
[underlined] 3 [/underlined]
to attend a lecture and he asked the Flight Sgt. where I was this morning. The Flight Sgt said that I had told Mr Skinner that my wife was down for the weekend, but I hadn’t, I had only told the Flight Sergeant. Well Mr Skinner said “Oh yes that’s right” - but he was lying because he knew nothing about it - that shows that old Joe Skinner likes me because he never said a word this afternoon to me.
Well dear I want to write to Pop so I will
[page break]
[underlined] 4 [/underlined]
close now with all my love and may God bless you both sweetheart and keep you safe for me always.
[underlined] Harry [/underlined]
xxxxxxxxxxxx
For Pamela bless your little heart from Daddy
xxxxxx
P.S. I hope you can read my “SCRAWL” - [underlined] cheeky [/underlined]
[page break]
[Post Office crest]
POST OFFICE TELEGRAM
[postmark]
21 6.40 P:M SH16
MRS BROOKS ST = ALFEGES HOSPITAL GREENWICH SE =
MARVELLOUS DARLING PROBABLY HOME TOMORROW LOVE TO YOU BOTH = HARRY +
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Letter and telegram from Harry Brooks to his wife
Description
An account of the resource
An undated letter from Harry Brooks at RAF Waddington to his wife. He writes about her short visit and hopes to be home for Christmas. He mentions the possibility of his wife having to go into hospital and tells an anecdote of something that happened at the station.
Additionally there is a telegram sent by him to his wife after the birth of their daughter, Pamela, saying he will be home tomorrow.
Additional information about this item has been kindly provided by the donor.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
H Brooks
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1941-07-15
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Four-page handwritten letter and telegram
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Correspondence
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
EBrooksHSBrooksW410715
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Alan Pinchbeck
David Bloomfield
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941-07
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
love and romance
RAF Waddington
-
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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
Brooks, Harry
Brooks, C H S
Brooks, Charles Harry Sidney
Description
An account of the resource
Collection contains 18 items concerning Sergeant Harry Sidney Brooks (1915 - 1942, 1357673, Royal Air Force) who was killed in an aircraft accident 20 December 1942 while serving as a wireless operator with 9 Squadron at RAF Waddington. Collection consists of pages from logbook, letters and telegrams to his wife from Harry Brooks, Brooks' father, official sources and others of condolence as well as photographs of him and family. <br /><br />The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Pamela Tickner and catalogued by Nigel Huckins. <br /><br />Additional information on Harry Sidney Brooks is available via the <a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/102784/">IBCC Losses Database</a>.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-02
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Brooks, HS
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
[RAF Crest}
Sgts Mess.
Waddington
Thursday
My dearest darling,
Just a very hurried line to say that my pass has gone through OK, so you can expect me sometime on the 22nd which is Tuesday dear.
I received a nice letter from Spiros today but he has been moved to a terrible camp so he says near Grantham so I shall not have much chance of seeing him unless I get a day off.
[page break]
[underlined] 2 [/underlined]
How are Pamela & you today sweetheart, I do hope you are OK and I am glad to say I am fine.
I did not receive a letter from you today but hope to hear from you tomorrow dearest
Well I'll close now sweetheart with all my love & may God bless you both & keep you safe for me always.
[underlined] Harry [/underlined]
xxxxxxxxxxxx
For my little cherub bless you from Daddy xxxxxx
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Letter from Harry Brooks to his wife
Description
An account of the resource
Letter from Harry Brooks to his wife telling her that his pass has been approved and he will see here on 22nd. He says that he has received a letter from Spiros who has been moved to 'a terrible camp, so he says' near Grantham. He finishes by sending his love to both his wife and daughter.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
H Brooks
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Two-page handwritten letter
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Correspondence
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
EBrooksHSBrooksWM[Date]-01
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Grantham
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Margaret Carr
David Bloomfield
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
love and romance
RAF Waddington
-
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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
Brooks, Harry
Brooks, C H S
Brooks, Charles Harry Sidney
Description
An account of the resource
Collection contains 18 items concerning Sergeant Harry Sidney Brooks (1915 - 1942, 1357673, Royal Air Force) who was killed in an aircraft accident 20 December 1942 while serving as a wireless operator with 9 Squadron at RAF Waddington. Collection consists of pages from logbook, letters and telegrams to his wife from Harry Brooks, Brooks' father, official sources and others of condolence as well as photographs of him and family. <br /><br />The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Pamela Tickner and catalogued by Nigel Huckins. <br /><br />Additional information on Harry Sidney Brooks is available via the <a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/102784/">IBCC Losses Database</a>.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-02
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Brooks, HS
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
[RAF Crest}
Sgts Mess
RAF Station
Waddington
Lincs
Saturday
My dearest darling,
Just a very hurried line to tell you that I have been notified that I have a Registered Letter but I have not yet had a chance to collect it but will get it later today when the Camp Post Office is open.
Darling I could not 'phone you on Thursday as I was on duty as I said but I tried to
[page break]
[underlined] 2 [/underlined]
get through last night and booked a call for 7.15 but after I came back to the box at that time they said there was no reply so I presume you did not go over to Auntie Marys last night and that everyone was out. I did not write yesterday as I had no time and also thought I should be speaking to you, but thats [sic] just our luck.
Look darling I am really terribly busy just now but will be free tomorrow afternoon I think, so will write you a lovely long.
[page break]
RAF Crest
[underlined] 3 [/underlined] letter then my darling
Now before I close I want to say that I love you & baby more than anything in the world and always will.
I am enclosing £5 so that you can buy yourself a coat etc so that you can look lovely when I come home at the end of the week.
All my love and may God bless you & keep you both safe for me.
[page break]
[underlined] 4 [/underlined] Harry xxxxxxxxxxxx
For Pamela my darling daughter. Daddy xxxxxx
P.S. It is Sunday now sweetheart and the chap who was going to register this latter last night got down to town too late to register it, so he gave it back to me today and I am posting it myself so I am going into town myself tonight to the pictures. So I will save the money until I come
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Letter from Harry Brooks to his wife
Description
An account of the resource
Letter from Harry Brooks to his wife explaining why he did not manage to telephone her. He also apologises for not writing before, but says that he has been very busy, and promises to write the following day. Sends his love to wife and baby and is sending £5 for her to buy a coat. Postscript explains that post was missed by colleague and he will post it himself.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
H Brooks
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Four page handwritten letter
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Correspondence
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
EBrooksHSBrooksWM[Date]-02, EBrooksHSBrooksWM[Date]-03
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Margaret Carr
Steve Christian
David Bloomfield
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
RAF Waddington
-
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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
Brooks, Harry
Brooks, C H S
Brooks, Charles Harry Sidney
Description
An account of the resource
Collection contains 18 items concerning Sergeant Harry Sidney Brooks (1915 - 1942, 1357673, Royal Air Force) who was killed in an aircraft accident 20 December 1942 while serving as a wireless operator with 9 Squadron at RAF Waddington. Collection consists of pages from logbook, letters and telegrams to his wife from Harry Brooks, Brooks' father, official sources and others of condolence as well as photographs of him and family. <br /><br />The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Pamela Tickner and catalogued by Nigel Huckins. <br /><br />Additional information on Harry Sidney Brooks is available via the <a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/102784/">IBCC Losses Database</a>.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-02
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Brooks, HS
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
LETTER
[page break]
Sgts Mess
RAF. Station
Waddington
Lincs
Thursday.
[RAF Crest]
Darling.
I received your two letters today and I was going to write and tell you to come up this weekend but I cannot guarantee that I shall be able to see you for long as I don’t know how busy I shall be.
Look darling if I [underlined] don’t [/underlined] phone tomorrow night come up but if it is not possible I shall phone you tomorrow and tell you which day will be
[page break]
[underlined] 2 [/underlined]
better for you.
I do hope that you are both well Sweetheart and am glad to say that my cold is a little better today.
I haven’t got much time and I want to catch the post so that you get this in the morning. So I’ll see you off the 4.57 train in the Main Booking Office on Saturday or if I am not there leave a message at the Milk Bar for you.
So cheerio sweetheart with all my love & may God bless you both & keep you safe for me always.
Harry
To my darling baby [eighteen kisses]
[page break]
[RAF Crest]
[underlined] 3 [/underlined]
tell you otherwise.
I went down to Lincoln last night and saw James Stewart & Hedy Lamaar [sic] in “Come live with me” and enjoyed it very much.
If I am not busy tonight I hope to go and see “Gone with the wind” as I do so want to see it.
Together with the cheque I am enclosing £5 which I said in Saturdays letter I was enclosing but could not register so I did not
[page break]
[underlined] 4 [/underlined]
send it, and please darling buy yourself I [sic] nice coat won’t you. We will see what other things you want darling when I come home and then we can put the rest of the money away.
Well dearest I will close now with all my love and may God bless you both & keep you safe for me always.
I’ll write again tomorrow Sweetheart.
Harry.
[twelve kisses]
To my darling daughter, see you soon
Daddy [six kisses]
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Letter from Harry Brooks to his wife
Description
An account of the resource
Letter from Harry Brooks at RAF Waddington to his wife. He talks about arrangements for her coming to visit and he hopes he can get the time off.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
H Brooks
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Two page handwritten letter
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Correspondence
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
EBrooksHSBrooksWM[date]-04
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Alan Pinchbeck
David Bloomfield
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
RAF Waddington
-
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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
Brooks, Harry
Brooks, C H S
Brooks, Charles Harry Sidney
Description
An account of the resource
Collection contains 18 items concerning Sergeant Harry Sidney Brooks (1915 - 1942, 1357673, Royal Air Force) who was killed in an aircraft accident 20 December 1942 while serving as a wireless operator with 9 Squadron at RAF Waddington. Collection consists of pages from logbook, letters and telegrams to his wife from Harry Brooks, Brooks' father, official sources and others of condolence as well as photographs of him and family. <br /><br />The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Pamela Tickner and catalogued by Nigel Huckins. <br /><br />Additional information on Harry Sidney Brooks is available via the <a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/102784/">IBCC Losses Database</a>.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-02
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Brooks, HS
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
Sgts Mess
RAF Station
Waddington
Lincs
Sunday.
My dearest darling,
I am sorry that we have both been bitterly disappointed about this weekend, but unfortunately it could not be helped, as I did not get back from Thorney Island until early Saturday afternoon, so I could not 'phone Mrs Wratten on Friday although I tried to get through but the delay was 3 hours and
[page break]
[underlined] 2 [/underlined]
it would have been too late to 'phone strange people.
When I got back to Waddington I felt really lousey [sic] and I went to the MO's on Saturday afternoon and he advised me to stay in bed, and I have only got up for dinner today as I was hungry. I have a touch of the flu but don't feel too bad after my day in bed although I must keep in the warm.
I am so sorry my darling I have not sent you a birthday card
[page break]
[underlined] 3 [/underlined]
but as you can realize I have been unable to get out for the past 3 days and even if I went down to the village today which I shouldn't do according to the M.O. I could not get a card as the shops are shut.
Please forgive me my darling as I feel so mean about it all, and can only send my best wishes to the sweetest girl in the world and hope that God will let us spend many many years together
[page break]
[underlined] 4 [/underlined]
as happy as we are now.
I know how you must feel dearest at home this weekend when you should be in Lincoln loving me, but never mind dearest, perhaps next weekend will be more rosy and I'll write and let you know if I can get Miss Green to fix it up for us. Will you let me know if Auntie Mary will have baby and then providing everything is OK here, I'll make arrangements.
[page break]
[underlined] 5 [/underlined]
I will 'phone you in any case one night this week and will write and let you know as soon as I can.
I will be sending you a card as soon as I can get out, and will buy you a nice birthday present when I see you, so forgive me again darling as I hate neglecting you like this because I love you, and always will.
How have baby and you been over the weekend, I do hope you have not
[page break]
[underlined] 6 [/underlined]
been miserable, but I am afraid I have because I was so looking forward to seeing you, but still if you come next weekend we will have a happy time won't we darling.
Al my love and may God bless you both & keep you safe for me always.
Harry.
xxxxxxxxxxxx
For my darling cherub from daddy xxxxxx
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Letter from Harry Brooks to his wife
Description
An account of the resource
Harry Brooks write to his wife apologising that he couldn't see her at the weekend. He also tells her that he has been unwell and unable to buy her a birthday card. He says how much he loves her, and talks about possible arrangements for the next weekend.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
H Brooks
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Margaret Carr
David Bloomfield
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Six page handwritten letter
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Correspondence
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
EBrooksHSBrooksWM[date]-05
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
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
love and romance
RAF Waddington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/727/11320/EPellyAGBrooksWM421223-010001.1.jpg
3b6513049f136809ba72d01611d9c990
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/727/11320/EPellyAGBrooksWM421223-010002.1.jpg
04c02dd2d42928ccf48b9c0bf3581673
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
Brooks, Harry
Brooks, C H S
Brooks, Charles Harry Sidney
Description
An account of the resource
Collection contains 18 items concerning Sergeant Harry Sidney Brooks (1915 - 1942, 1357673, Royal Air Force) who was killed in an aircraft accident 20 December 1942 while serving as a wireless operator with 9 Squadron at RAF Waddington. Collection consists of pages from logbook, letters and telegrams to his wife from Harry Brooks, Brooks' father, official sources and others of condolence as well as photographs of him and family. <br /><br />The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Pamela Tickner and catalogued by Nigel Huckins. <br /><br />Additional information on Harry Sidney Brooks is available via the <a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/102784/">IBCC Losses Database</a>.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-02
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Brooks, HS
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
Sergeant Pelly.
C/O Sgts Mess
R.A.F. Station
Waddington
Lincs:
23.12.42.
My Dear Mrs: Brooks:
It is my painful task to write and tell you of your husbands [sic] death in a recent flying accident, it may console you a little to know that his death was absolutely instantaneous, and consequently as they crashed from such a low level he could have felt nothing.
I think before I go any further I had better explain who I am. I joined the crew when we converted onto this particular type of aircraft, & have flown with the crew for a long time. I used to like flying with the crew for
[page break]
many reasons one of them being that there was always such a good feeling between each member. I never remember a hard word from any body [sic]. Every member new his own job thoroughly and in many [inserted] cases [/inserted] knew other peoples as well making everything very much easier. The reason I am here now is that at the time of this tragedy I was on the sick list after a slight accident which occured [sic] some time ago.
I am dealing with all his personal belongings personally, or in other words seeing that they get into the hands of the right people. You will receive them in due course.
If at any time there is anything, I can do to help you I will be only too pleased to help you in every possible way.
I remain a sympathising friend of yours Anthony E Pelly
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Letter from Sergeant A Pelly to Mrs Brooks
Description
An account of the resource
Writes to tell Mrs Brooks about her husband's death as a result of a recent flying accident. States that it was absolutely instantaneous and that, as the crash had been from a low height, he would not have felt anything. Explains that he had been part of the crew and had flown with them for a long time. Sergeant Pelly had liked flying with that crew because there was always a good feeling between them: 'every member knew his own job thoroughly and in many cases knew other peoples as well making everything very much easier'. He states that he was dealing with her husband's personal belongings which would be sent to her in due course.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Anthony Pelly
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1942-12-23
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Two page handwritten letter
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Correspondence
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
EPellyAGBrooksWM421223-01
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942-12-20
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.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Robin Christian
killed in action
RAF Waddington